Press Release, 16.04.2024

On 15 April, a screening and discussion of the film “The Key to a Clockwork Orange” (2014) was held at Yabloko. The documentary film by Grigory Grishin and Olga Yakovleva about the phenomenon of war between the youth movements of “anti-fascists” and “nationalists” on the streets of Russia in the 2000s provoked a discussion about the physiological and social nature of violence, the attitude of the state towards subcultures and the transformation of the main protagonists – the leaders and active participants in youth movements in Moscow and Saratov.

An exchange of views about what causes unprovoked violence in youth communities and where it goes as they grow up led to an attempt by the audience of “The Key to a Clockwork Orange” to answer the question asked by another character in the film – a Russian philosopher, publicist and writer of 19^th century Nikolai Chernyshevsky: “what to do”? The monument to Chernyshevsky in Saratov looks down from the height of its pedestal on young people who try to find their place in life.

What can be done to reduce violence in society? How to deal with the reasons that push young people to participate in senseless and bloody street wars? The director of the film, politician Grigory Grishin knows the answer:

“This is a process that has existed as long as humanity has existed. We are like that. This is our nature. My task as a politician is to create such social institutions in our country that will allow these forever young people, at least not to harm themselves, not to destroy anything, overcome this age, and achieve something positive and normal to the extent what is possible.”

To pull people away, at the right moment, from the abyss of the Russian revolt, which will drown everyone in blood – both personally and nationwide. “The Key to a Clockwork Orange” is about this. And this is what Yabloko is doing, Grigory Grishin says.

The film: