Building a State of Fear in “Extremist” | The New Yorker

Alexander Molochnikov’s short film reinterprets an act of protest that called attention to the invasion of Ukraine, and led to the imprisonment of Sasha Skochilenko, a young Russian artist, in 2023.

Building a State of Fear in “Extremist”

Related:

Open Society University Network: Case Study of Sasha Skochilenko

Prepared by Sofia Semenova for the Open Society University Network.

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Sofia Semenova is a student at Bard College majoring in Human Rights, a Russian political and anti-war activist. She participated in the election campaign of a member of Navalny’s team in St. Petersburg, served as an independent observer in Russian elections, and was involved in the Feminist Anti-War Resistance. The Human Rights Center Memorial recognizes Sofia as being persecuted for political reasons and declared wanted in Russia.

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Who is Sasha Skochilenko?

Sasha Skochilenko is a musician, artist, and writer. She is openly lesbian.

She graduated from Smolny College (Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences), a dual degree program between St. Petersburg State University and Bard College in New York in 2017 (in 2021 Bard was the first higher education institution to be named an undesirable organization by the Russian government and since the start of the war in Ukraine Smolny has been systematically dismantled by St. Petersburg State University). She also studied at the Theater Academy of Cinema and Television.

Skochilenko was actively involved in music: she recorded her own songs, performed at festivals and concerts, and organized “free jams” — events where people of any level of preparation, age, gender, physical, and mental abilities could play various musical instruments together.

Sasha is an advocate for mental health awareness. She created the comics “The Book about Depression,” which has been translated into English, Spanish, and Ukrainian.

Sasha worked for the independent media outlet “Bumaga” and filmed reports from protest rallies and demonstrations in Saint Petersburg and Moscow for other media outlets too. In 2016, she was an independent observer at the elections to the Legislative Assembly of Saint Petersburg, where she was able to document violations and present them in court.

Sasha participated in many educational and charitable projects: she helped NGOs prepare manuals on working with people with bipolar disorder, organized musical evenings as art therapy for people with disabilities, went on an anthropological expedition to the Arkhangelsk region to record interviews with the oldest local residents, engaged in cathedral restoration and learned to do basic home repairs, filmed videos for her friends’ poetry and music, and recorded lectures for the feminist project “Eve’s Ribs” in Saint Petersburg and other scientific and educational centers.

Additionally, Sasha worked as a counselor at a children’s camp in Ukraine, teaching children and teenagers video editing and filming skills. After the full-scale invasion began, Sasha actively spoke out against Russia’s military actions in Ukraine: she participated in anti-war rallies, made anti-war posts on her social media pages, published anti-war postcards she drew, and performed anti-war songs she wrote.

Smolny College/History:

The Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences emerged from Smolny College (officially the Arts and Humanities Program), which was created in 1994 by Saint Petersburg State University in close collaboration with Bard College (U.S.).

Google AI overview:

The Open Society University Network (OSUN) is a global higher education initiative led by Bard College and Central European University (CEU), funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, aiming to provide global learning, academic freedom, and expanded access to higher ed for diverse students, integrating liberal arts with research on global challenges like human rights and inequality through partner institutions worldwide. Bard plays a central role in OSUN’s structure, co-leading key initiatives like the Hubs for Connected Learning, focusing on crisis-affected regions, and integrating its own diverse programs into this larger global network.

Open Society Foundations Give $500 Million to Bard College

OSUN | Open Society University Network

Through OSUN, a network of top international academic institutions led by Bard College and Central European University, you’re able to exchange ideas, gain cultural insights, and explore new perspectives that will transform your worldview and arm you with new tools to address tomorrow’s global challenges.

Endowment Challenge: A Milestone for Bard

The importance of having Bard continue as a beacon for higher education—its exemplary commitment to the liberal arts and its spectacular success in developing innovative programs for providing access to rigorous, high-quality education for new populations around the world—was a motivating factor for George Soros and the Open Society Foundations to commit to a pledge of $500 million for Bard’s unrestricted endowment. This pledge ranks among the largest commitments to higher education in the United States in recent memory. 

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