ABSTRACT
The scandal took place on the eve of the presidential elections, and in the context of the liberal opposition's criticism of the Moscow Patriarchate for offering its overt support to Putin. Prime among the discursive displacements from the Pussy Riot scandal was the paranoid vitriol launched by the Orthodox Church and the hyperbolic professions of piety. The Moscow Times singled out from among the prosecution's far-fetched accusations the charge that the 'punk prayer' inspired a terrorist attack on Muslim leaders in Tatarstan. As Mamontov's anathemas broadened to include multiple assortments of the marginalized and the excluded, the indirect implications for ethnic cohesion became apparent. The conspiracy was portrayed as having two sources: one historical and specifically Russian; the other contemporary and purportedly emanating from beyond Russia. The preliminary investigation's indictment stated that the women 'denigrated the Russian Orthodox Church's centuries-old principles and basic guidelines in a blasphemous way' and accused them of 'opposing themselves to the Orthodox world'.
