# Aleksandr Skobov

Aleksandr Skobov (born 1957) is a Russian historian, activist and Soviet dissident.
Skobov has been convicted and subjected to punitive psychiatry for ″anti-Soviet propaganda″ twice, one time in 1976 and the other in 1982. He was arrested in April 2024 and sent to a pre-trial detention center, charged with "justifying terrorism" and ″participation in a terrorist community″ after he had been openly opposing Russian military action against Ukraine since 2014.

## Biography
### Early activism and convictions

Skobov was born in 1957 in Leningrad, then in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. He took part in his first anti-government protest at age 19, when he and members of an underground organization he was part of threw flyers calling for ″humanistic socialism″ from the roof of a building downtown on the eve of the 25th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1976. As a result, several of the were kicked out of their universities, but Skobov, who was a first-year history student at Leningrad State University at the time, was sent to a disciplinary meeting with the Komsomol youth group. Later in October 1976, he was arrested for publishing an anti-government magazine called Perspectives, after half a year spent in a KGB prison, he was sentenced to forced psychiatric treatment where he spent three years in confinement.
In 1981 following his release, he joined the dissident group Free Interprofessional Association of Workers, which led the first attempt to create an independent trade union in the Soviet Union. In 1982, he was once again sentenced to psychiatric treatment, this time for writing a samizdat article where he defended Chile's former socialist president, Salvador Allende, who had died in unclear circumstances in 1973, and criticized the dictator Augusto Pinochet. The article was deemed "anti-Soviet propaganda." He spent five years in the hospital, being released during the summer in 1987, the initial phase of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's liberalization campaign.

### Opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine

When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Skobov openly supported Ukraine and condemned Russia's military action on social media. The same year, he was attacked by two unidentified men armed with knives outside his home, which his friends and family believe was retribution for his criticism of the regime
In early April 2024, he was arrested and charged with "justifying terrorism" after making a social-media post about Ukrainian attacks damaging the Crimean Bridge that links Russia with the occupied Ukrainian Crimea region. Two days prior to being detained, he had given an interview to Okno where he called for the support of Russian volunteer groups fighting along with Ukraine's military against Russian troops that have invaded Ukraine. He was sent to a pre-trial detention center, and in protest to his arrest, he refused to take his medication and glasses with him. He was also later charged with participation in a ″terrorist community″, and was transferred from Saint Petersburg to Syktyvkar.
In July 2024, Novaya Gazeta published a letter Skobov had sent to his wife, it was published with an introduction writted by opposition politician Leonid Gozman, who described Skobov as ″not simply a hero but a Saint in the direct Biblical sense″ and his letter as ″a fantastic document″. Gozman described the letter as Skobov avoiding pathos and thinking about his influence on others, but wanting ″today's young people who bear the brunt of the regime's repression know that the Soviet dissidents are standing alongside them.″