In the latest episode of Useful Idiots, Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper speak with Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova on the origins of her life as an activist and surviving prison under Vladimir Putin.
Tolokonnikova reflects on how her childhood in Russia’s most-polluted city, Norilsk, shaped her identity. From the early age of 15, she recognized corporations were silencing the conversation on environmental issues and felt an anger that would propel her into a life of activism.
“I was growing up in a city built on bones of prisoners and then I ended up in prison by myself,” Tolokonnikova tells the Useful Idiots hosts. “Unfortunately, that’s the weird logic of being a Russian activist.”
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