SMOLNY INSTITUTE

In the 18th century there were tar warehouses here (smola means tar in Russian) which provided for the needs of the national fleet. The convent, founded by Empress Elizabeth and intended to receive young orphan girls, was built largely by Rastrelli in 1748. Later, on the orders of Catherine II, various buildings were added, including the boarding school for young girls of the nobility (designed as a Russian replica of the Royal House of Saint-Louis created in Saint-Cyr by King Louis XIV to ensure the proper education of young girls of the nobility in difficulty, whether poor or orphans) and a house for widows, due to the architects Quarenghi, Bajenov and Velten. This classically built complex, which forms the famous Smolny Institute, paradoxically became, in 1917, the headquarters of the workers' soviet and an insurrectional centre of the October Revolution.

The Revolutionary Committee, of which Trotsky is one of the most active leaders and which counts Stalin among its members, occupies the second floor of the building. On October 25, 1917, the decrees of Peace and Earth were adopted by the Congress of Soviets in the Column Hall of the Institute in the presence of Lenin. Chaired by Lenin, the first Soviet government sat at the Smolny Institute until March 1918.

Built in 1923, by the architects Schuko and Helfreich, the Institute's propylées bear, in gold letters, the inscription Proletarians of all countries, unite! In 1927, a grandiose monument to Lenin by the sculptor Kozlov was erected in front of the central façade of the building. Even for a short time, Lenin's stay in the monastery buildings of Smolny Monastery inevitably gave rise to a museum. Inaugurated in 1927, the museum traces the great moments of the October Revolution up to 1918, without neglecting the history of the Smolny Institute. You can see the room Lenin shared with his wife, Nadezhda Kroupskaya, and the office where he worked from October 1917 to March 10, 1918, the official date of the Soviet government's move to Moscow. Since 1991, the government of St. Petersburg has been located in Smolny as well as the governor's residence. For this reason, the Smolny Institute is closed to individual visitors, so it is necessary to go through an approved local travel agency to consider a visit (Russia Autrement or Tsar Voyages for example).