In the autumn of 1922, outstanding representatives of domestic philosophy, culture, and art departed from this embankment for forced emigration. A memorial was established thanks to the efforts of the St. Petersburg Philosophical Society. "Philosophical Steamboat" is a collective name for two voyages of ships that transported emigrants from Petrograd to Stettin.

The memorial was established on November 15, 2003.

S. S. Khoruzhiy, discussing the reasons for the expulsion of the intelligentsia in 1922, when the Civil War had already ended, noted that despite the apparent expansion of freedoms during the NEP, the Soviet power began to concentrate ideological levers in its hands, striving for ideological dictatorship, initiated by V. I. Lenin. L. A. Kogan also emphasized that although the idea of expulsion could have arisen simultaneously among several people, it was Lenin who was the driving force behind this action.

At that time, Lenin expressed in a letter to F. E. Dzerzhinsky the opinion that the magazine "Economist" was "an obvious center of the White Guards... All of them are obvious counter-revolutionaries, accomplices of the Entente, an organization of its servants and spies, corruptors of the youth. It is necessary to organize the matter so that these 'military spies' are caught and systematically expelled abroad."

L. D. Trotsky, in an interview with American journalist Strong, called this action "humanism in a Bolshevik way": "We expelled these people because there was no reason to shoot them, and tolerating them was impossible."

Among those expelled in the summer and autumn of 1922 (both abroad and to remote areas of the country), the majority were teachers of higher educational institutions and representatives of humanitarian professions. Out of 225 people: 45 doctors, 41 professors and educators, 30 economists, agronomists, and cooperators, 22 writers, 16 lawyers, 12 engineers, 9 political figures, 2 religious figures, and 34 students.