Two members of the Pussy Riot collective were in London last week to meet their supporters and discuss future plans. They had to keep a low profile for security reasons – the meeting I went to was in a room at the back of a nondescript café. The activists, who introduced themselves as Serafima and Schumacher, spoke about the difficulties they face in Russia. Four of their videos have been placed on the Federal List of Extremist Materials; though not officially banned, the group is a de facto underground movement; and of course two of its members remain in prison. There are currently eight people in the collective, flanked by a support group, which has been infiltrated by government spies.

I can't say if the Pussy Riot trial tells us anything new about Russia, but it tells me something about feminism. In the UK at least, the new feminism has been polite, well-mannered and, well, twee. When the pro-life protesters get out their tiny plastic models of foetuses, we get out our iced gingerbreadwomen. We open feminist conferences not with exhortations, but with jokes about sexist children’s books. Abortion clinics are inspected for pre-signing forms, but hardly anyone is saying that the 1967 act is antiquated and unfit for purpose. Big gestures can seem empty and small ones futile. I’ve left too many meetings, conferences and rallies feeling the absence of Angela Davis, of Simone de Beauvoir – and, it turns out, of Pussy Riot.

The Russian Orthodox Church is on holy war footing. The ‘sacrilege’ of Pussy Riot is no isolated incident, Patriarch Kirill says, but part of a wave of attacks on the church, ranging from accusations of financial irregularity to seemingly random acts of vandalism against church property. The attack on the church is not just anti-religious, according to pro-Kremlin media, but part of a larger geopolitical campaign by America to destabilise Russia.