Founded in 1921 by Vera Schmidt (who had also been one of Freud's students), the "Detski Dom" was intended to teach children based on Freud's theories. The school was only an orphanage in name: along with Schmidt's own son, the school had children from prominent Bolsheviks (including Joseph Stalin, whose son Vasily Stalin was enrolled as well). Use of discipline was avoided and children were allowed maximum freedom of movement. Sexual exploration and curiosity was also permitted. Spielrein's involvement included supervision of the teachers, and she may have supported them in a protest about their poor conditions of work, which led to their dismissal. The school had to close in 1924, in the wake of accusations of experiments to stimulate the children's sexuality prematurely. The accusations were possibly made in response to attempts by Leon Trotsky to proletarianize the school's intake During Spielrein's time in Moscow, both Alexander Luria and Lev Vygotsky came to work at the Psychoanalytic Institute and "Dyetski Dom" and studied with her. Spielrein's characteristic way of combining subjective psychological ideas from psychoanalysis with objective observational research of children is likely to have been an important influence in their early formation as researchers, leading them to become the foremost Russian psychologists of their time.