The Empress hoped, by removing children for a long time from an ignorant environment and returning an already developed and ennobled girl there, to help soften morals and create a "new breed of people".

This accepted daughters of the hereditary Russian nobility and also of persons no lower in rank than a colonel or a Real State Adviser to the treasury bill.

From 1859 to 1862, the class inspector of the institute was Konstantin Ushinsky, who carried out a number of progressive reforms, establishing a new seven-year curriculum with a large number of hours devoted to Russian language and literature, geography, history, natural sciences, etc.. After Ushinsky's forced departure from the institute, all of his major reforms were reversed.

In the summer of 1919, with the Russian Civil War intensifying, the institute left Russia and was re-established in Serbia, where it would continue to teach the daughters of white emigres until 1932.

[4] The vacated building of the Smolny Institute was taken up by Lenin as the headquarters of the victorious Bolshevik Party, and as such featured prominently in annals of the October Revolution.

Parents or relatives who assigned the girl to the institute should have given "a written commitment that they, prior to the expiration of the period set for education, will not demand her back under any circumstances".

The program also included teaching Russian literature, geography, arithmetic, history, music, dancing, drawing, secular manners, various types of economics.

Later, the training period was reduced to 9 years; Empress Maria Fyodorovna believed that "children, for such a long time, are weaned from their parents so that, at the end of the course, they return home with disgust" and in 1797 the youngest age was eliminated; now the pupils were divided into three ages: "blue", "gray" and "white" (senior); in the "philistine branch" began to accept from 10 years.