About the book: 2017 / By order of Catherine II, in the first women's educational institution, "girls of a new formation" were to be nurtured in order for educated and cultural graduates to become married to worthy husbands, they produced a “perfect man.” The regime in Smolny was like a prison: noble maidens lived nine people in one room, went to bed early and woke up early, were constantly under the watchful gaze of the warden, and ate sparingly. Only rich girls could afford, for an additional fee, to drink tea in the same room with the teachers or pay a watchman to sneak forbidden sweets from the nearest shop in the top of his boot. This book tells about all the details of the life of the pupils of Smolny. United under one cover, the memoirs of famous graduates of the institute tell the best story about how the lives of Smolensk women passed..