To the surprise and dismay of many observers in Moscow, last week’s legal hearing against the members of an all-female punk rock band, Pussy Riot, took place in the Khamovnichesky District Court  – the same court that convicted Mikhail Khodorkovsky for a second time on blatantly political charges.  The outcome for the the three members of the rock band – who were originally arrested in February on charges of “hooliganism” for having performed an anti-Putin song at a church – were foretold upon seeing the Kremlin’s favorite show trial operator.  Their pre-trial detention was extended yet again without reason.

According to the journalist and author Masha Gessen, Russia is entering a new age of show trials, with 17 of them are getting under way this summer.  Writing on a New York Times blog, Gessen points to the psychological impact that things like show trials, criminal libel, and the new laws against NGOs and protests have upon a society, which goes a long way toward explaining the prevailing attitude inside Putin’s third administration.

“The ideology behind Stalinist show trials was that they were supposed to demonstrate that no ‘enemy of the people’ would go unpunished. In reality, what they demonstrated was that anyone can end up being an ‘enemy of the people,'” writes Gessen.   “As people watched their friends and neighbors go on trial, they found themselves doing circular mental calculations: What — if anything — makes me different? Will I be arrested, too? Can I convince myself that I won’t be?”

Read the full article on the New York Times here.