Latest / The Romanov Dynasty: Rise, Power, and Bloody End — Fexingo History / Catherine the Great and the Smolny Institute: Russia's First Female School
Transcript
- Lucas: We've talked a lot about Catherine the Great's wars and expansions, but today I want to get into something she cared about deeply: education. Specifically, the first state-run school for women in Russia, the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens, founded in 1764. Luna: Wait, the first state school for women in Russia? That's a big deal. Lucas: Exactly. And it wasn't just a finishing school. Catherine was deeply influenced by Enlightenment thinkers like Denis Diderot and Cesare Beccaria. She corresponded with them, and she had this idea that education could create a 'new race of men' — and women — who would be rational, moral, and useful to the state. The Smolny Institute was her experiment in that. Luna: So what did they actually teach there? Lucas: The curriculum was surprisingly broad for the time: languages, arithmetic, history, geography, science, drawing, music, and dance. But also needlework and domestic skills, because the goal was to create enlightened wives and mothers, not independent career women. The girls were admitted as young as five or six and stayed for twelve years, almost completely isolated from their families. Luna: Isolated? Why? Lucas: Catherine and her advisor Ivan Betskoy believed that to create a new generation, you had to remove children from the corrupting influence of their old-fashioned parents. So the girls lived at the Smolny Convent — the Voskresensky Novodevichy Convent — and were only allowed supervised visits. It was a total institution, like a boarding school meets a laboratory. Luna: That sounds extreme, but I guess it fits the Enlightenment idea of perfectibility. Lucas: Exactly. And Betskoy was the real architect. He had this vision of a 'closed school' where children could be molded without outside interference. The Smolny was his pet project. But there was also a social experiment: in addition to the section for noble girls, there was a separate section for girls from the merchant and petty bourgeois classes. That was quite radical for the time — mixing classes, even if they were still separated inside the institution. Luna: So the non-noble girls got a different education? Lucas: Sort of. They were taught more practical skills — accounting, housekeeping, crafts — while the noble ladies focused on languages and arts. But both groups studied reading, writing, and arithmetic. The idea was to create productive citizens at every level of society. Catherine had bigger plans too: in 1786, she issued the Statute of Public Schools, which established a network of free, coeducational primary schools across the empire. The Smolny was the elite model for that system. Luna: And this is a show we make without running ads. We deliberately don't run ads because we want these conversations to be a direct, uninterrupted experience for you. If you value that choice, you can support it at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo — no pressure, just if it matters to you. Lucas: Yeah, and it really does help us keep going. So back to Smolny — what's fascinating is that the institute survived Catherine and continued through the 19th century. By the time of the 1917 Revolution, Smolny had become a symbol of elite education. And then in October 1917, the Bolsheviks took it over and made it their headquarters. Lenin worked from there. So the same building that was designed to produce loyal subjects of the tsar became the command center for the revolution that overthrew him. Luna: That's incredible. So Smolny had this whole second life as a political hub. Lucas: Right. But even in Catherine's time, the institute had its critics. Some nobles thought educating women was dangerous — it might make them discontented with their domestic roles. Others complained that the curriculum was too superficial, more about etiquette than real learning. Still, for the first time in Russian history, a woman could get a formal education that was recognized by the state. That was a genuine shift. Luna: Did any famous women come out of Smolny? Lucas: Yes, a number of writers and educators. One notable figure is Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya, a novelist and literary critic, though she was from the non-noble section. Also, the institute produced many teachers who staffed the new public schools. Catherine's goal was to spread education through trained women teachers, and Smolny graduates filled that role. It wasn't feminism in the modern sense, but it laid groundwork. Luna: So the experiment actually worked — at least in part. Lucas: I think so, yes. By the end of Catherine's reign, Russia had a publicly funded school system, even if it was unevenly implemented. In 1796, there were over 300 schools with about 20,000 students. That's tiny for an empire of 30 million, but it was a start. And the Smolny Institute remained the gold standard for women's education until the 1917 Revolution. It's a testament to Catherine's belief that a state's strength comes from the enlightenment of its people. Luna: And it's a side of Catherine we haven't really explored — the reformer, not just the conqueror. Lucas: Exactly. Catherine was complex. She expanded the empire ruthlessly, but she also tried to build institutions. The Smolny Institute shows her Enlightenment side, even if it was limited by the realities of autocracy and serfdom. Next time, maybe we can talk about her Commission on National Education, or her correspondences with Voltaire and Diderot. There's a lot more to uncover.