Grigorii (Hryhorii) Savvich Skovoroda, the Ukrainian poet, fabulist, philosopher, and religious thinker, was educated at the Kiev Theological Academy. As a young man he traveled in eastern and western Europe and paid brief visits to St. Petersburg and Moscow, but eighteenth-century European culture left few traces on his thought. He taught, mainly literature, at Pereiaslavl' (Pereiaslavl'-Khmel'nitskii) about 1755 and at the Khar'kov (Khar'kiv) Collegium from about 1759 to 1765, but he fell out with his ecclesiastical superiors and was dismissed. He spent his last thirty years as a mendicant scholar and "teacher of the people."

Skovoroda's disciple, M. I. Kovalinski, has left an engaging account of Skovoroda's manner of life:

He dressed decently but simply; … he did not eat meat or fish, not from superstitious belief but because of his own inner constitution; … he allowed himself no more than four [hours...