Little big man

They haven’t the gravitas of the great men who stood up to the Soviet Union, like writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and physicist Andrei Sakharov, but that’s why the young women of Pussy Riot have such power. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich are essentially the Russian equivalent of artsy Williamsburg hipsters. You can imagine them at home in Occupy Wall Street, to be passed with a smile, a shrug and, perhaps, a summons for disorderly conduct.

Which isn’t what happened after they staged a vulgar anti-Vladimir Putin protest in a Russian Orthodox cathedral in Moscow. They were arrested, hit with a 2,800-page indictment, convicted of hooliganism and sentenced to two years behind bars.

About which they fetchingly giggled, handcuffed inside a glass box in the courtroom.

The judge spent three hours reading the verdict. “The girls’ actions were sacrilegious, blasphemous and broke the church’s rules,” the judge stated.

Perhaps that will sell in Moscow. Elsewhere, Tolokonnikova, Alyokhina and Samutsevich have brought fearsome czar-president Putin down to their level. This bout is between three chicks and the bear, and the chicks are winning decisively.

With celebrities like Madonna and Sting on their side and Putin as oppressor, Pussy Riot is transformed into a symbol of a regime bent on stifling trivial dissent. The arrest and beating of chess champion Garry Kasparov cemented the image.

The women appear to know exactly what they are doing and to be dedicated to vindicating their beliefs. As one said in her closing trial statement:

“Compared to the judicial machine, we are nobodies, and we have lost. On the other hand, we have won. . . . The system cannot conceal the repressive nature of this trial. Once again, the world sees Russia differently than the way Putin tries to present it.”

As they say in Russian, vsego horoshego: The best of luck.