The outcome was exactly what had been feared. On Friday, a Moscow district court found three members of the punk band Pussy Riot guilty. They were each sentenced to two years in prison. It was a verdict that surely would not have been delivered against the will of President Vladimir Putin. 
 
 The public debate in Russia over the handling of the three musicians -- Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alyokhina -- was passionate and controversial. Writers, artists and intellectuals expressed their solidarity with the defendants. 
 
 The trial drew no shortage of criticism on the uncensored radio station Echo Moskvy, which is sympathetic to the opposition, and other radio stations, as well as in daily and weekly newspapers. The debate was a far cry from what would have been the case in a totalitarian society. Compared to the Soviet Union of the 1980s, a state without freedom of speech or freedom of travel, today's Russia has come a long way. 
 
 That, however, is little consolation in the light of current events in Moscow. Russia's powerful seem to be unaware of the degree to which the politicized trial of Pussy Riot is a symptom of the deep crisis that currently afflicts Russian society. 
 
 Doing Themselves a Disservice 
 
 It was inevitable that the stunt by the punk band in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior would provoke objections. By entering the altar space and insulting the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church as a "suka" ("bitch") in their song, the band hurt the feelings of many believers. 
 
 The performance, with its "blasphemous words which insult Christians," had deeply shocked "the faithful of all religious communities," read a statement by the Interreligious Council of Russia, which was also signed by the Federation of Jewish Communities. 
 
 Some Orthodox Christians also separately called for the activists to be severely punished. One arch-abbot even went so far as to write, in a Moscow weekly paper, that "the country will go under if you do not punish profanity." 
 
 The court has now ruled that the three women had been "motivated by religious enmity and hatred." But those in power seem not to understand that the Church and state are doing themselves a disservice by locking up the three young women, two of whom are mothers of small children. 
 
 Rejecting Corruption and Abuse of Power 
 
 The judgment against Pussy Riot will likely not only cause problems for Russia at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Above all, the hope of those in power that the judgment will contribute to the stability of society could prove to be a false belief. The trial has divided Russian society deeper than any other incident in the Putin era. 
 
 There were voices that called for moderation during the legal proceedings even from within the ruling United Russia party. The leader of a United Russia district party organization in Putin's home city of St. Petersburg wrote a sympathetic letter to the three defendants saying that, even though their stunt had been "bad," the threatened punishment was completely unreasonable. "I am sure," he added, "that the majority of my party colleagues think the same way." 
 
 That means that, despite the authoritarian tendencies of supposedly strong men, Russia will not become a totalitarian regime again. And the closing argument of defendant Maria Alyokhina, who said that "Russia as a state" has for a long time resembled "a thoroughly diseased organism," reflects an opinion that is shared by many state officials, even including longtime colleagues of Putin's in the security services. There, too, there is opposition to policies that have allowed corruption and abuse of power to grow. 
 
 'War and Blood' 
 
 The opposition Duma deputy Gennady Gudkov, who like Putin is a KGB veteran, is one of those who are calling for the rule of law in the parliament and at opposition rallies. Gudkov is not a revolutionary, but a moderate social democrat. 
 
 The powers-that-be reacted harshly to Gudkov's criticism. A company he founded was shut down and several hundred employees lost their jobs. Now the Moscow authorities want to impeach him for "illegal business activity" and even strip him of his parliamentary immunity. 
 
 By turning basically harmless artists into criminals, the regime has transformed the trial against Pussy Riot into a political time bomb. With its hard line against the oppositional civil society, the state is conjuring up a scenario that Olga Allyonova, a journalist with the liberal Moscow newspaper Kommersant, warned of in March. 
 
 If a hard line drives the opposition to "hate and malice," Allyonova wrote, it will not lead to peace, a just social order or an honest state power. Instead, she concluded, "it will lead to revolution and to war and blood." ||||| Pussy Riot Verdict 
 
 The Moscow trial of the Russian punk group Pussy Riot, which ended Friday with a two-year jail sentence for ‘felony hooliganism,’ showed just how far Russia is traveling back in time. Masha Gessen on the 17th-century court. 
 
 On the eve of the verdict I found myself in New York City, at a reading of some of the Pussy Riot members’ statements, letters, and poems. I was on vacation with my kids, but being away from Moscow, where everyone I know was protesting outside the courthouse, made me feel even more helpless than I did when I was there with them a few days earlier. So I asked if I could help with the reading. 
 
 The next day three members of Pussy Riot would be convicted of felony hooliganism and sentenced to two years in penal colonies—for a protest they staged inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior on Feb. 21. The cathedral had been virtually empty during the morning hours, and the protest lasted all of 40 seconds before the women were removed by security. But church staff members testified during the trial that they were deeply traumatized by observing the young women in brightly colored dresses and balaclavas lip-sync to a recording of what Pussy Riot calls its punk prayer: “Mother of God, cast Putin out.” 
 
 I listened to one of New York’s performance artists read a Pussy Riot manifesto sent from jail. “Patriarch Kirill [head of the Russian Orthodox Church] has repeatedly evangelized on behalf of the figure of Putin—clearly no saint—and continues to urge his parishioners not to participate in protest rallies...We respond to the political activity of the faithful, and counter the patriarch’s efforts to distort the truth on behalf of all believers. And we needed to sing it at the altar, not on the street in front of the temple—that is, in a place where women are strictly forbidden. The fact is, the church is promoting a very conservative worldview that does not fit into such values as freedom of choice, the formation of political identity, gender identity, or sexual identity, critical thinking, multiculturalism, or attention to contemporary culture. It seems to us that the Orthodox Church currently lacks all of these virtues.” 
 
 I suddenly realized these texts sounded better in English than they do in Russian. It wasn’t that the translators had improved the quality of the writing: the originals, which I had read in Russian, had been clear and cogent and surprisingly erudite for three very young women—they range in ages from 22 to 30—who had been known for staging radical actions, not for writing political commentary. The problem with the writing in Russian was that the women were speaking the language of the modern world in a country that is rapidly traveling backward in time. 
 
 Those of us who live in Russia often feel like we have been forced into a time machine. Now the rest of the world has seen it happen: three women shaped by 20th-century thought tried by a 17th-century court. Consider the testimony of altar warden Vasily Tsyganyuk, classified as a victim because he claimed to have suffered psychological trauma as a result of the performance. 
 
 VICTIM: “Those who are possessed can exhibit different behaviors. They can scream, beat their heads against the floor, jump up and down...” 
 
 DEFENSE ATTORNEY NIKOLAI POLOZOV: “Do they dance?” 
 
 VICTIM: “Well, no.” 
 
 JUDGE: “Stop questioning him about those who are possessed. Tsyganyuk is not a medical professional and is not qualified to render a diagnosis.” 
 
 Or the testimony of another altar warden, Pavel Zheleznov, also classified as a victim. He described trying to restrain the women at the cathedral. One of them, he said, broke free and began crossing herself. 
 
 JUDGE: “Did she cross herself the way all citizens do?” 
 
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 VICTIM: “I don’t remember exactly. But in essence it was a parody of crossing herself, a satire. People should cross themselves with piety and without rushing. She crossed herself kind of rapidly. This was not the sort of cross with which Orthodox Christians should bless themselves.” 
 
 Or consider this. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, the informal leader of the group—and also the youngest of the three women—asked many of the prosecution’s witnesses and “victims” whether they considered the word feminist to be obscene. All gave the stock answer: yes, if it is said in a church. “For an Orthodox believer it is an insult, an obscenity,” said cathedral security guard Sergei Beloglazov. When Tolokonnikova asked him whether he knew the meaning of the word, the judge disallowed the question. 
 
 Imagine what would have happened if the judges in the Salem witch trials had encountered not their contemporaries but ours. Or just read the verdict rendered Friday by judge Marina Syrova. She quoted a court psychiatrist who had concluded that Tolokonnikova suffers from a “mixed personality disorder” with symptoms such as “stubbornness and a tendency to insist categorically on her own opinion as well as a tendency toward oppositional forms of behavior.” Sound awkward in English? That’s because it’s not just from a different world but from a different era. 
 
 Fifteen minutes after quoting the psychiatrist, the judge announced the women’s sentences. The members of Pussy Riot, seated behind a Plexiglass partition lest they escape or attack someone, laughed. Outside the courthouse, where a protest had been underway for hours, some people cried. ||||| Editor's note: Rachel Denber is deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia division at Human Rights Watch. 
 
 Moscow (CNN) -- There is no basic human right to barge into a church to make a political statement, jump around near the altar, and shout obscenities. But there is most certainly the right not to lose your liberty for doing so, even if the act is offensive. 
 
 But that is exactly what happened Friday. A court in Moscow sentenced the three members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot to two years in prison. 
 
 In my two decades monitoring human rights in Russia I've never seen anything like the Pussy Riot case -- the media attention, the outpouring of public support, the celebrity statements for the detained and criminally charged punk band members. 
 
 The image of three young women facing down an inexorable system of unfair justice and an oppressive state has crystallized for many in the West what is wrong with human rights in Russia. To be sure, it is deeply troubling. 
 
 For me, even more shocking were the images of Stanislav Markelov, a human rights lawyer, lying on the sidewalk with the back of his head blown off in 2009, or the body of tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in prison in 2009 after he blew the whistle on a massive government extortion scheme. 
 
 The Pussy Riot case shines a much needed, if highly disturbing, spotlight on the issue of freedom of expression in post-Soviet Russia 
 
 On February 21, four members of the group performed what they call a "punk prayer" in Moscow's Russian Orthodox Christ the Savior Cathedral. They danced around and shouted some words to their song, "Virgin Mary, Get Putin Out." The stunt lasted less than a minute before the women were forcibly removed. 
 
 The same day, a video widely shared on social media showed a montage of the stunt with the song spliced in. The song criticizes the Russian Orthodox Church's alleged close relationship with the Kremlin and the personally close relationship of President Vladimir V. Putin with the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. 
 
 Three of the band members were tried on criminal "hooliganism" charges. Their trial was theater of the absurd. In their closing statements, the women and their lawyers delivered devastating critiques of the state of justice and civic freedoms in Russia. 
 
 During the Soviet era, the human rights landscape in Russia was stark. But since then the situation has been harder to figure out, often making it easier for outsiders simply to give the government a pass. But the devil is in the details. 
 
 It has been incredibly difficult to pin down any involvement of officials in the beatings and murders of investigative journalists and human rights activists. And the government, while not silencing civil society groups outright, tries to marginalize, discredit, and humiliate them, and crush them with heavy-handed bureaucracy, trumped-up accusations, threats and the like. 
 
 Whatever misdemeanor the three women incurred for their antics in the church should not have been transformed by the authorities into a criminal offense that in effect punishes them for their speech. It's typical, though, of how the authorities try to keep a lid on controversial issues. The Russian think tank SOVA has documented dozens of cases in recent years in which the authorities used the threat of extremism charges to silence critics. 
 
 This also isn't the first time Russian authorities have misused criminal legislation to stifle critical artistic expression. In 2010 a Moscow district court found the co-organizers of a controversial art exhibit guilty of the vague charge of "inciting religious hatred." The art exhibit organizers were fined. 
 
 By making the Pussy Riot band members await trial in jail for almost six months, the authorities made clear how they plan to set boundaries for political criticism. 
 
 After a winter of unprecedented, peaceful opposition protests, a dozen demonstrators whom the authorities claim were involved in a scuffle with police during a mass demonstration in May have been arrested and are being charged with crimes grossly disproportionate to their alleged actions. Police have searched opposition leaders' homes. 
 
 Laws rammed through Russia's parliament this summer sent more signals: criminal liability for leaders of nongovernmental organizations for "serious breaches" of new restrictive regulations; much tougher sanctions for violating rules on public assembly; and new restrictions on the Internet that could easily shut down big social networking sites. Critics of the Kremlin have been subject to vicious harassment, intimidation and grotesque public smear campaigns. 
 
 For years Russian human rights defenders have tried to draw attention to the lack of independence of the courts. With the unprecedented attention to the Pussy Riot trial, the surreal state of justice when political interests are at stake is there for all to see. What we really should be wondering isn't why Pussy Riot is so distinctive, but whether it's just the tip of the iceberg. 
 
 Too often, foreign governments have resorted to wishful thinking about the direction Russia is heading. Talking about human rights at a high level -- where all things in Russia are decided -- is unpleasant business. It might be hard, but Russia won't respect other governments if they shy away. 
 
 If three women in the defendants' cage had the courage to speak out about where Russia is headed, surely members of the international community should too. They, at least, won't be thrown in jail. 
 
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 The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Rachel Denber.
– The 2-year prison sentence given to Russian punk band Pussy Riot yesterday has sparked angry commentary from Western observers. Among the reactions: Voices in the ruling United Russia party called for moderation in the sentencing, which means "Russia will not become a totalitarian regime again," notes Uwe Klussmen at Der Spiegel. But "by turning basically harmless artists into criminals, the regime has transformed the trial against Pussy Riot into a political time bomb." He quotes a Moscow journalist who predicts that "it will lead to revolution and to war and blood." At Daily Beast, Masha Gessen sees a resemblance to the Salem witch trials. The sentencing judge said a member of Pussy Riot has a "mixed personality disorder" that includes "stubbornness and a tendency to insist categorically on her own opinion as well as a tendency toward oppositional forms of behavior." Writes Gessen: "Sound awkward in English? That’s because it’s not just from a different world but from a different era." The "stark" human rights drama of Soviet times has morphed into a situation that's "harder to figure out, often making it easier for outsiders simply to give the government a pass," writes Rachel Denber at CNN. But under Vladimir Putin, critics have been silenced or murdered; now Pussy Riot has shown us how Russia works. "What we really should be wondering isn't why Pussy Riot is so distinctive, but whether it's just the tip of the iceberg."