the Smolny Institute

Examples of the Smolny Institute in the following topics:

• Catherine's Domestic Policies

  • Shortly after the Moscow Foundling Home, Catherine established the Smolny Institute for Noble Girls to educate females.
  • The girls who attended the Smolny Institute, Smolyanki, were often accused of being ignorant of anything that went on in the world outside the walls of the Smolny buildings.
  • While the nobility put up appreciable amounts of money for these institutions, they preferred to send their children to private, more prestigious institutions.
  • The Smolny Institute, the first Russian Institute for Noble Maidens and the first European state higher education institution for women, by S.F.
  • The building was commissioned from Giacomo Quarenghi by the Society for Education of Noble Maidens and constructed in 1806–08 to house the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens, established at the urging of Ivan Betskoy and in accordance with a decree of Catherine in 1764.

• Enlightened Despotism

  • The Smolny Institute, the first Russian institute for "Noble Maidens" and the first European state higher education institution for women, painting by S.F.
  • Catherine established the Smolny Institute for Noble Girls to educate females.
  • At first, the Institute only admitted young girls of the noble elite, but eventually it began to admit girls of the petit-bourgeoisie, as well. 
  • The girls who attended the Smolny Institute, Smolyanki, were often accused of being ignorant of anything that went on in the world outside the walls of the Smolny buildings.
  • Within the walls of the Institute, they were taught impeccable French, musicianship, dancing, and complete awe of the Monarch.

• Peter's Domestic Reforms

  • The senate did not interrupt the activity and was the permanent operating state body.
  • While all these administrative reforms aimed to weaken the position of the old boyar class, they also moved Russia towards the authoritarian rule, where power was largely concentrated in the hand of the head of the state.
  • The traditional leader of the Church was the Patriarch of Moscow.
  • In 1703, during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great established the Peter and Paul fortress on small Hare Island by the north bank of the Neva River.
  • Clockwise from top left: Peter and Paul Fortress on Zayachy Island, Smolny Cathedral, Bronze Horseman on Senate Square, the Winter Palace, Trinity Cathedral, and the Moyka river with the General Staff Building.

• The Triumphs of Tsarina Elizabeth I

  • The guards repaid her kindness when on the night of November 25, 1741, Elizabeth seized power with the help of the Preobrazhensky Regiment.
  • She abolished the cabinet council system used under Anna and reconstituted the senate as it had been under Peter the Great, with the chiefs of the departments of state attending.
  • The Winter Palace and the Smolny Convent in Saint Petersburg are among the chief monuments of her reign.
  • Work on the building continued throughout the year, even in the severest months of the winter.
  • The deprivation to both the Russian people and the army caused by the ongoing Seven Years' War were not permitted to hinder the progress.

• Pressure from the Western Institutions

• Discontent with the Roman Catholic Church

  • The major individualistic reform movements that revolted against medieval scholasticism and the institutions that underpinned it were humanism, devotionalism, and the observantine tradition.
  • Thus, the ensuing revival of Augustinian theology, stating that man cannot be saved by his own efforts but only by the grace of God, would erode the legitimacy of the rigid institutions of the church meant to provide a channel for man to do good works and get into heaven.
  • Since the breakdown of the philosophical foundations of scholasticism, the new nominalism did not bode well for an institutional church legitimized as an intermediary between man and God.
  • The great rise of the burghers (merchant class) and their desire to run their new businesses free of institutional barriers or outmoded cultural practices contributed to the appeal of humanist individualism.
  • To many, papal institutions were rigid, especially regarding their views on just price and usury.

• Byzantium's Legacy

  • Following the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, Sultan Mehmed II took the title "Kaysar-i Rûm" (the Ottoman Turkish equivalent of Caesar of Rome), since he was determined to make the Ottoman Empire the heir of the Eastern Roman Empire.
  • The modern-day Eastern Orthodox Church is the second largest Christian church in the world.
  • When these nations set about forging formal political institutions, they often modeled themselves on Constantinople.
  • This network revolved around treaty making and included the welcoming of the new ruler into the family of kings as well as the assimilation of Byzantine social attitudes, values and institutions.
  • Leo III's Ecloga influenced the formation of legal institutions in the Slavic world.

• The Great Schism of 1054

  • The centuries-long gradual religious separation between the Eastern and Western Roman Empires culminated in the institutional separation known as the East-West Schism.
  • The East–West Schism, also called the Great Schism and the Schism of 1054, was the break of communion between what are now the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic churches, which has lasted since the 11th century.
  • Prominent among these were the issues of the source of the Holy Spirit, whether leavened or unleavened bread should be used in the Eucharist, the Bishop of Rome's claim to universal jurisdiction, and the place of the See of Constantinople in relation to the Pentarchy.
  • With two Roman Empires, the Byzantines and the Franks, the authority of the Byzantine Empire was weakened.
  • The gradual separation of the last several centuries culminated in a formal declaration of institutional separation between East, into the Orthodox Church (now Eastern Orthodox Church), and West, into the Catholic Church (now Roman Catholic Church).

• The Catholic Church

  • After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, the Catholic Church became a powerful social and political institution and its influence spread throughout Europe.
  • The history of the Catholic Church begins with the teachings of Jesus Christ, who lived in the 1st century CE in the province of Judea of the Roman Empire.
  • In 380, under Emperor Theodosius I, Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire by the decree of the emperor, which would persist until the fall of the Western Empire, and later with the Eastern Roman Empire until the fall of Constantinople.
  • After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, the Catholic faith competed with Arianism for the conversion of the barbarian tribes.
  • The 496 conversion of Clovis I, pagan king of the Franks, saw the beginning of a steady rise of the Catholic faith in the West.

• The Long Telegram

  • Kennan's "Long Telegram" from Moscow helped to articulate the US government's increasingly hard line against the Soviets, and became the basis for the US "containment" strategy toward the Soviet Union for the duration of the Cold War.
  • The first phase of the Cold War began in the first two years after the end of the Second World War in 1945.
  • Kennan played a major role in the development of definitive Cold War programs and institutions, notably the Marshall Plan.
  • The solution was to strengthen Western institutions in order to render them invulnerable to the Soviet challenge, while awaiting the mellowing of the Soviet regime.
  • Soviet pressure against the free institutions of the Western world is something that can be contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and manoeuvers of Soviet policy, but which cannot be charmed or talked out of existence.