Institutes for Wellborn Girls

boarding schools in pre-revolutionary Russia for the daughters of members of the nobility. The first institute for daughters of the nobility, known as the Society for the Upbringing of Wellborn Girls (later the Smol’nyi Institute), was opened in St. Petersburg in 1764 according to I. I. Betskoi’s plan. Subsequent ones, called Catherine institutes, were founded in St. Petersburg (1798), Moscow (1802), Kharkov (1811), and other provincial centers. Instruction and upbringing in the institutes had a narrow, class-oriented bias.