Department of Institutions of Empress Mariia

an administration that in prerevolutionary Russia was in charge of institutes for the daughters of the nobility, women’s secondary schools (the so-called Mariia schools) and other women’s schools, orphanages, schools for the blind and deafmutes, almshouses, and some hospitals. In 1796, by a decree of Pavel I, Empress Mariia Feodorovna was put in charge of the Society for the Education of the Daughters of the Nobility; in 1854 this administration, which existed until 1917, was named the Department of Institutions of Empress Mariia. The department implanted an ideology of feudalism and serfdom in all the educational institutions subordinate to it and tried to instill among the children loyalty to the tsar and to the Orthodox Church.