Here is what Lukomsky wrote in 1922 on the subject. He was the Palace Architect at the outbreak of the Revolution, and in charge of the AP and Winter Palaces during the Civil War period.
All of the museums and all of the palaces went under the administration of the Commissar for Public Education, Lunatcharsky, the woman, who was president of the childrens' camps, took over the buildings and gardens for her orphans. After which, a fight was bitterly engaged, and which was obviously not equal. Mrs. Lunatcharsky easily won and made profit of it by moving in to the palace with dozens of wretched little degenerates which they initially put unto part of the second floor of the Great Palace and who later, when it was realized that it was hygienically inconvenient and unsafe for the patients themselves, they sent them elsewhere.
