Vera Schmidt (psychoanalyst)

She attended the Kiev Women's Educational Institute for three years from 1913 to 1916 where she received training in the methods of Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel.

By the outbreak of the revolution, they had both developed an interest in psychoanalysis and Vera, who spoke German, had read Sigmund Freud in the original.

A supporter of the revolution, Otto Schmidt rose to positions of power and influence in the new Soviet regime becoming a member of a number of People's Commissariats including Narkompros (Narodnyi Komissariat Prosvescheniya, or the People's Commissariat for Education) and he was also employed as the director of the State Publishing House (Gosizdat) from 1921 to 1924.

He was also officially responsible for the Detski Dom ("Children's Home", a Russian term for orphanage) which opened in May 1921 in the center of Moscow and shared with the Psychoanalytic Institute the magnificent Art Nouveau building in Malaya Nikitskaya Street designed by Fyodor Schechtel (August 7, 1859 - July 7, 1926).

Although Ivan Ermakov, president of the Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, was nominally in charge of the home, it was run by Vera Schmidt assisted initially by fifty-one staff members, among whom was Mosche Wulff and the prominent psychoanalyst, Sabina Spielrein.

"[1] Vera Schmidt's own son, Vladimir, whose nickname was Wolik, also attended the Detski Dom and she recorded his, as well as the other children's activities, in journal.

In an ironic turn of events, Stalin's son, Vasilii, Vasily Dzhugashvili occupied the site of his former nursery after Gorky's death.

In 1930, after the Russian Psychoanalytical Society was dissolved she worked at the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences Experimental Institute of Defectology.