A prominent medical doctor, a citizen and patriot of Russia, Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov (1810 –1881) devoted only five of his fifty-some-year-long scientific and public activities to his work in public education. However, even this time was enough to rank his name among Russian most renowned educators and thinkers. According to V.A. Volkovich, “one may say that Pirogov’s whole educational system is a true quintessence of his personality. The core of Pirogov’s educational system is idealism and love to mankind” (1, p.69). The roots of Pirogov’s outlook are very deep and, as it often happens, go back to his childhood. To a large extent, Pirogov’s character formation was influenced by the very life of his close-knit, devout (all religious rites were strictly and zealously observed) and patriarchal family where Nikolay was one of fourteen children. His parents made a strong foundation of such crucial traits of Nikolay’s character as religiousness, patriotism, and love to Russia. The next factor which strongly influenced the formation of the future thinker’s outlook was his studies at the Medical School of Moscow State University which he entered on September 24, 1824. The first-year student had hardly reached the age of 14. That time, the eve of the Decembrist uprising, was the time of dynamic social events, heated political discussions about the situation in the country and a strenuous search for the ways to develop the state and society.

Traditionally, we consider that higher education was born in the Middle Ages as the term ‘higher education’ was hardly ever used in connection with antiquity. In ancient times there was not a single term that could summarize views on the higher stage of education. However, many ancient teachers focused on educational activities of the higher levels which were supposed to help individuals achieve excellence in a certain type of a really higher ‘school’. A Greek ‘student’ lived in tune with the rhythm of the polis, which consisted of open educational spaces and individual daily experiences including people’s behavior, ways of thinking, desires, aspirations, actions, and achievements, which received public evaluation and had an educational impact on the young people. Socrates established polis as an aid to long-lasting and deliberate self-improvement and as a guarantor of educational opportunities for students. He advised mentors to ensure that their students would discover rather than forget themselves in the stream of everyday life (care for children, property, winning in competitions, etc.). In Plato's dialogues, Socrates often described those who competed for educational success at the stage of higher education as students caring only for themselves. Socratic ‘care for the self’ (“ἐπιμέλεια ἑαυτοῦ") was bound to an active participation in the life of the polis. According to Wilhelm Windelband, this Socratic ‘care’ was to a great extent the type of care produced for the sake of the whole polis. It had less to do with care for oneself as an individual (Windelband, 1910, p.7). Caring for oneself could be found in the care for others. Socrates prioritized the polis over the individual and displayed loyalty to this view by drinking his final cup of hemlock.