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A Smolny Album

Glimpses into Life at the Imperial Educational Society of Noble Maidens
  • Edited by: Nancy Kovaleff Baker
  • With contributions by: Alexander Liarsky
Languages: Russian, English
Published/Copyright: 2018
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About this book

The Imperial Educational Society of Noble Maidens was founded by Catherine the Great as the first state educational institution for women in Russia. A scholarly article by Alexander Liarsky presents the history of the Institute, followed by over 50 photographs of the Smolny from Kovaleff Baker’s extremely rare album, accompanied by Liarsky’s informative commentary drawing on primary sources.

Author / Editor information

Kovaleff Baker Nancy :

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.Liarsky Alexander :

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.

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.

Reviews

“This handsome and carefully crafted volume would serve well as a coffee table gift to be perused by those interested in the lost world of the Russian aristocracy before the 1917 Revolution. But this reproduction of what is today an extremely rare commemorative album of the St. Petersburg Smolny Institute, the legendary finishing school for privileged young women founded by Catherine the Great in the eighteenth century, does far more than appeal to the nostalgic yearnings of a public endlessly attracted to the daily life of the wealthy and well connected of an earlier time. As Professor Alexander Liarsky points out in his engaging and informative introduction, the history of that school for young women is interwoven with key moments in modern Russian history, including the October 1917 Revolution and World War II. During the first, Smolny served as headquarters for the Bolsheviks; during the tragic Siege of Leningrad in which 600,000 citizens lost their lives, the municipal government used Smolny to keep the city alive. In the minds of Russians, the Smolny Institute became more than an educational institution or symbolic representation of the aristocracy; it also came to be a site of power. Because of this dramatic past, the book should appeal to scholars and the general public equally.” —Ben Eklof, Professor of History, Indiana University

“The Smolny Institute was Russia’s most prestigious girls’ school, and this 1905 album gives an unparalleled glimpse into the life of its early twentieth-century pupils, the last generation of pre-revolutionary Russia’s social elite. Alexander Liarsky’s fascinating commentary provides a rich social and cultural context for the beautiful photographs, and the album’s owner, Nancy Kovaleff Baker, tells the story of her family’s lives in Russia and America, and how they came to acquire their heirloom. Only a few copies of the album are known to exist, two in Russian collections. This bilingual publication, making the book available to scholars and general readers, is a major event.” — Catriona Kelly, Professor of Russian, University of Oxford


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Alexander Liarsky and Александр Лярский
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
December 27, 2018
eBook ISBN:
9781618118936
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
192
Illustrations:
51
Downloaded on 28.12.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781618118936/html
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