Mascha Alechina, born in 1988 in Moscow, was an active member of Pussy Riot and was sentenced to two years in a penal colony along with Nadja Tolokonnikowa after the punk prayer in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. Before her arrest, she studied journalism and creative writing in Moscow. Alechina spent her incarceration in the penal colonies of Beresniki and Nizhny Novgorod. Since her release, she has primarily worked as a political activist and is a co-founder of the online portal Mediazona. In 2014, she was awarded the Hannah Arendt Prize along with Yuri Andrukhovych and Nadja Tolokonnikowa.