The Imperial Educational Society of Noble Maidens, or the Smolny Institute, was founded by Catherine the Great as the first state educational institution for women in Russia. An informative article by Alexander Liarsky, drawing on primary sources, presents the history of this pioneering Institute until its dissolution during the Revolution. Central to this volume are over 50 photographs of the Smolny from an extremely rare album that belonged to Kovaleff Baker's ancestor, who attended the Institute. Accompanying commentary by Liarsky calls attention to details of the photographs and brings them to life by excerpts from writings of Smolny students and other contemporaries found in St. Petersburg's archives.

About the Author

Dr. Nancy Kovaleff Baker has taught music history at Columbia and Yale Universities, and has been an administrator at Yale, Princeton, Brown, and Boston Universities. She has published translations, with commentary, of an eighteenth-century German theoretical music treatise, coedited a Festschrift, and written a number of articles. The book on the Smolny Institute is her tribute to the Russian side of her family.

Russian historian Alexander Liarsky has published on the history and anthropology of education, the history of childhood and of everyday life, and the history and anthropology of modernization. He has taught at St. Petersburg University of Management Technologies and Economics, the Interregional Institute of Economics and Law, and, currently, is Senior Lecturer at the St. Petersburg State University of Technology and Design.

Book Information
ISBN 9781618118929
Author Nancy Kovaleff Baker
Format Paperback
Page Count 192
Imprint Academic Studies Press
Publisher Academic Studies Press