Tonight the Russian artist, political activist, prisoner and former member of punk band Pussy Riot, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, will talk about her book How to Start a Revolution. In this book she writes about the circumstances in the penal colony and the fate of her punk band Pussy Riot, but also about a different Russia, with interesting and creative people who pursue a different society than the present rulers do.

Please join us and come to this exclusive interview by Ferenc Laczó, to learn about human rights in Russia, Tolokonnikova’s activism, her feminism, her life in the prison camp and Pussy Riot.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova is (in)famous as a singer of the Anarchist Feminist punk rock band Pussy Riot. On her 16^th she began studying philosophy in Moscow, at her 21^st she started Pussy Riot and few years later she was convicted for two years in a Russian punishment camp in Mordovia.

After a gig in a Russian Orthodox Church, where she ‘prayed’ to save Russia from Putin, she was found guilty of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred". During her stay in the camp in Mordovia, where she had to sew uniforms, she wrote the book How to Start a Revolution. On December 23, 2013, she was released early with another Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina under a newly passed amnesty bill dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Russian constitution.

Tolokonnikova was recognized as a political prisoner by the Russian human rights group "Union of Solidarity with Political Prisoners". Amnesty International named her a prisoner of conscience due to "the severity of the response of the Russian authorities".