She was born on November 7, 1989 in Norilsk. Her family with the one-year-old baby girl soon moved to Krasnoyarsk, and a few years later returned to Norilsk. Till the age of four Nadezhda Tolokonnikova was brought up by her father and grandmother. After finishing school the girl moved to Moscow and entered the Philosophy Faculty of the Moscow State University. In the student hostel Nadezhda Tolokonnikova got acquainted with the artist Pyotr Verzilov, whom she later got married to. In 2008 18-year-old Nadezhda gave birth to their daughter Gera.

 

Both spouses as members of the Voina art group and its Moscow fraction took part in most of its explosive activist projects, such as a performance in the K. A. Timiryazev State Biological Museum of 2008, the Cockroach Court action (scattering cockroaches in the building of Tagansky court; according to the lawyer Nikolay Polozov, it could provoke bias in judicial consideration in the Moscow City Court on April 14, 2012 ) in 2010, and drawing a phallus on the Liteiny Bridge in front of the FSB building in St. Petersburg (the action became the winner of the Innovation award).

 

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova became known all over the world in the spring of 2012 after her arrest on the scandalous case of “the punk public prayer” performed by the Pussy Riot punk band in Christ the Saviour Cathedral in the heart of Moscow. It was an anonymous appeal of the people to Holy Mother to save from the whip-hand. 

 

For participation in this protest action Nadezhda Tolokonnikova was sentenced by the Khamovniki Court to two years of imprisonment under the Hooliganism article (Part 2 Art. 213 of the criminal code of the Russian Federation) on August 17, 2012. She served sentence in the female penal colony IK-14 in Mordovia, which is ill-famed for its especially severe prison conditions. The girl was released on December 23, 2013 on amnesty, two months prior to the official expiration of her sentence. After the release Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, having endured atrocities of prison regime decided to organize a movement for protection of prisoners’ rights. Jointly with Maria Alyokhina, co-founder of the Zone of Right movement Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has been into human rights activity ever since.