The Moscow Orphanage or Foundling Home was an ambitious project conceived by Catherine the Great and Ivan Betskoy, in the early 1760s. This idealistic experiment of the Age of Enlightenment was intended to manufacture "ideal citizens" for the Russian state by bringing up thousands of abandoned children to a very high standard of refinement, cultivation, and professional qualifications. Despite more than adequate staffing and financing, the Orphanage was plagued by high infant mortality and ultimately failed as a social institution.

Ivan Ivanovich Betskoi or Betskoy was an educational reformer in the Russian Empire who served as Catherine II's advisor on education and President of the Imperial Academy of Arts for thirty years (1764–94). Perhaps the crowning achievement of his long career was the establishment of Russia's first unified system of public education.