As Nikolaev's troubles grew, he became steadily more obsessed with the idea of "striking a blow." On October 15, 1934, he was arrested by the NKVD, allegedly for loitering around the Smolny Institute, where Sergei Kirov, the popular administrator of the Leningrad district, had his offices.
The building was commissioned from Giacomo Quarenghi by the Society for Education of Noble Maidens and constructed in 1806–08 to house the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens, established at the urging of Ivan Betskoy and in accordance with a decree of Catherine II (the Great) in 1764, borrowing its name from the nearby Smolny Convent.
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Lev Tikhomirov was born in Gelendzhik on January 19, 1852, to a military doctor and his wife, a graduate of the Institute for the Education of Noble Maidens.