About Smolny College

• A Brief History
• The Smolny Campus
• About Bard College
• About St. Petersburg State University

Smolny College -- Russia's first liberal arts college -- is a joint enterprise of Bard College and St. Petersburg State University.  Founded in 1997, it is a young college created by two institutions that have long and venerable histories.  Smolny College seeks to contribute to the democratization of Russian higher education and, in doing so, to serve as a model for a new kind of international education.

The College is unique in offering young Russians the opportunity to construct their own curriculum.  Smolny students are encouraged to develop their minds freely, to think critically, and to love the arts.  Most classes are small seminars led by a diverse group of highly trained faculty.  Guided by individual faculty advisors, each semester students choose from over 130 courses encompassing a wide variety of disciplines in the arts and humanities.  Students are expected to develop broad knowledge with specific skills in research and expression.

Russian students enrolled at Smolny College are a diverse and motivated group.  Smolny's student body of about 450 is comprised of young people not only from St. Petersburg, but from Murmansk, Moscow, Sakhalin, Surgut, and many other Russian cities and towns.  In fact, more than 65% of the student body is from outside of the St. Petersburg region - an unusual statistic at a Russian state institution.  There are also students from Belarus, Estonia, France, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.