“The main thing is to be a person”

During his lifetime he was known as a great healer, a brilliant surgeon, and the author of a number of outstanding discoveries that marked the beginning of a new era in medical science. Mykola Pyrohov’s innovative works on pedagogy, particularly his indefatigable efforts to reform the education system in the Russian Empire in the mid-19th century, won him wide acclaim but also served to expanded the ranks of his vicious enemies- those who envied him, as well as the intriguers and soft-headed reactionaries who, above all, despised freedom of thought.

The distinguished physician, educator, and public figure Mykola Pyrohov (1810-1881) does not need any introduction, and there is no need here to recount his numerous accomplishments. Any doctor can tell you about the immense theoretical and practical importance of his legacy, his widely acknowledged pioneering research work on anesthesia, and scrupulously accurate anatomical charts that are still used by surgeons today.

Between November 1854 and December 1855, during the Crimean War, Pyrohov performed dozens of surgeries every day, saving the lives of seriously wounded soldiers in Sevastopil, where “the chances of dying occur 36,400 times a day (the number of shots fired by the enemy),” as he wrote in a letter. He was renowned for his hard work: “My motto is ‘Not a second without work!’” and often told his colleagues, “I don’t understand idlers, I despise them.” Pyrohov’s tireless pursuits, strict adherence to his principles, and honesty were greatly admired.

A good portion of Pyrohov’s life (27 years spanning the period from 1854 to 1881) was connected with Ukraine. He was a hero of the defense of Sevastopil (since the city is now part of Ukraine, this is one of the Ukrainian pages in his biography), and later worked as an administrator of the Odesa and Kyiv school districts. After he retired, he worked as a doctor of European caliber and a pedagogue, spending the last 20 years of his life on his estate in the village of Vyshnia near Vinnytsia. These are the main stages of Pyrohov’s productive life and activities, which will be briefly discussed below.

Many of Pyrohov’s contemporaries were stunned when the famous hero of Sevastopil and leading light of the medical profession switched to pedagogy. His appointment as the administrator of the Odesa school district in September 1856 had been preceded by many years of intense reflections on ways to develop society, educate people effectively, and raise a new generation that would be truly free and ready to take on its responsibility for the country’s future. In the spring of 1856, on a wave of public elation over the death of the martinet Tsar Nicholas I, who was called “an awkwardly unforgettable Obstacle,” Pyrohov published a long article entitled “A question of life,” which began with the following epigraph:

“What are you preparing your son for?” I was asked.

“To be a person,” I said.

“Don’t you know,” said the one who asked me that question, “that people do not in fact exist in the world: this is a deviation that is not necessary for our society! We need merchants (or, in contemporary terms, entrepreneurs — I.S. ), soldiers, mechanics, sailors, doctors, and lawyers rather then persons.”

Pyrohov proceeded to raise the following key question: “Is this true or not?” His entire article is an answer to this question, a call to develop and assert a “civic worldview” in contrast to the “worldview of men in uniform.”

There are two types of people, Pyrohov writes, who do not ask themselves any questions as they enter life: the ones whom nature has endowed with the miserable privilege of idiocy and those who, like planets, were given one push and now move in a given direction by inertia. Others ask: “What is the purpose of life? What is our mission? What are we called upon to do? What should we search for?”

Pyrohov says that “in order to answer these questions, you need to have convictions. Schools do not give students truly noble convictions-they only make them repeat highfaluting words from early on. The social live-for-yourself trend has erected a high wall between good intentions and accomplishments. In order to break down this wall, you do not have to be a mechanic, sailor, doctor, or lawyer- above all, you have to be a person, a real human being ready for the inevitable future struggle. Instead of being a schoolboy who has learned beautiful truths by rote, you have to be a person who is convinced that these truths are beautiful.”

Two months after the publication of this article and having applied for retirement from the Medical-Surgical Academy, where he had taught for 13 years, Pyrohov wrote to his wife: “I am now a free man. I have served my time and now I am free. Neither with favor nor with anything else will they make me serve any longer.” He set off for Odesa to head a school district and educate “people and citizens,” who would “live for society.” What did he manage to accomplish in his nearly two years in Odesa from September 1856 to July 1858?

When he was already well- advanced in years, Pyrohov admitted, thinking back to this time: “I was inexperienced and did not know all the hidden springs in the mechanism ruling society, and of course I was mistaken in my hopes.” The “hidden springs” included, among other things, reports about him to the tsar and accusations of “freethinking,” “lack of faith,” and “lack of patriotism.” Some of them were signed by Count Aleksandr Stroganov, the Governor General of Odesa.

Pyrohov’s “lack of patriotism” lay in his views: “From the time I stepped onto the path of science in the field of public service, the most repugnant things to me were class prejudices, and unintentionally I transferred this attitude to national differences. Both in science and in life, with my friends, subordinates, and superiors, it never occurred to me to differentiate in terms of class and national traits...These same convictions, the result of my education, which were developed throughout my entire life, have become my alter ego, and I will not abandon them as long as I live.” Naturally, the imperial bureaucracy could not accept such a credo.

Despite obstacles, Pyrohov managed to accomplish much. According to his plan (implemented five years after his departure to Kyiv), the famous Richelieu Lyceum was transformed into Odesa University, the first university in the new imperial province of Novorossia (New Russia), the name by which the part of Ukraine along the Black Sea coast went by at the time. In the course of one year (1857) Pyrohov made three trips around his entire school district: the gubernias of Kherson and Katerynoslavsk, the Crimea, and Bessarabia, where there were hardly any roads. On a visit to a remote school, he would stay overnight in a schoolteacher’s home, turn down an offer of a bed, and, lying on the floor, ask questions, discuss things, and share his opinions the whole night. Pyrohov turned the obscure and dull little periodical Odesskii vestnik into a newspaper for progressive thinkers, which raised the burning issues of The Day: personal freedom, the advantages of free labor, and much needed reforms (e.g., the inevitable abolition of serfdom underlay the phrase “certain benefits to improving the lives of the serfs.”

It is no surprise that Stroganov’s patience finally ran out, especially when Pyrohov began pressing the issue of limiting and then totally abolishing corporal punishment in schools. He was accused of nothing less than “a tendency to adopt the 1789 spirit of France.” However, the tsar deemed it unwise to dismiss Pyrohov now that society was “expecting freedoms.” In July 1858 he was transferred to Kyiv, where he worked as a school district administrator.

With his reputation as a liberal and freethinking man now firmly established, Pyrohov began taking a harder and more resolute line in the ancient capital of Rus’ than he had in Odesa. One of his enemies, a person who was close to Prince Vasilchikov, the Governor General of Kyiv (Pyrohov seemed to have bad luck with governors), recalled: “He immediately put everyone’s back up.” The annoyed Vasilchikov himself wrote to St. Petersburg: “Upon occupying his office, Pyrohov immediately launched progressive activities in educational institutions.”

This was no exaggeration. Pyrohov, who believed that “in the cause of education ...there are no nationalities and all children are equal,” championed the Ukrainian language and its status as the language of school instruction and expended great efforts to open Ukrainian-language Sunday schools in Kyiv district. Not accidentally, a number of notable members of the Old Hromada, which was formed in the late 1850s and early 1860s, spoke highly of him. Mykhailo Drahomanov also had high praise for Pyrohov’s talents as an educator.

At one high-society party Vasilchikov’s wife approached Pyrohov, who was sitting glumly in a remote corner of the hall (as a man of action he did not like these receptions), and haughtily asked him: “Mr. Pyrohov, how do I educate my son so that he will carry the name of the Vasilchikov princes in an honorable way?” Pyrohov replied, “In the cause of education there are no Vasilchikov princes. Here all people are equal, dear princess.” Needless to say, she too became one of Pyrohov’s fiercest enemies.

The great Pyrohov continued to treat poor patients for free. In Kyiv in 1897, the Russian writer Aleksandr Kuprin wrote a story called “Chudesnyi doctor” (The Wonderful Doctor), based, according to the author, on an absolutely reliable fact. One of the four children of the poor Mertsalov family had fallen ill. Earlier, the father had been sick with typhoid fever and spent all his savings to recover from his illness. After he regained his health, he was fired. Without a penny in his pocket and unable to do anything to help his sick child, the father became utterly desperate and contemplated suicide.

Then he met a stranger in a park, who lent a sympathetic ear to his story and requested to be taken to the child, who was on the verge of death. The stranger, a doctor by profession, carefully examined the girl, prescribed treatment, and wrote out a prescription. Mertsalov asked for his name to thank him, but the doctor refused. Mertsalov left with the doctor, and when he returned he found several large- denomination banknotes under the saucer together with the prescription. In the pharmacy where he bought the medicine he learned the name of the “wonderful doctor”- the label on the prescription bottle read: “Made according to Dr. Pyrohov’s prescription.” This incident happened in Kyiv in 1860, and it was not the only example of his largesse.

Pyrohov did not succeed in accomplishing everything that he wanted. For example, he had to compromise on the issue of abolishing corporal punishment in schools by agreeing to the temporary tactical move to curtail them. However, more importantly was the dissatisfaction of the higher- ups whose enmity toward Pyrohov was rapidly escalating.

In early 1851 Vasilchikov wrote to the tsar: “The students at St. Volodymyr University require special supervision: the spirit of freethinking has been observed among them, as well as the desire to form parties that are not alien to parliamentary designs...The gymnasium students also exhibit freethinking and frivolity. The administrator of the school district has adopted measures that do not correspond to the character of the population and could in some way nurture harmful ways in young people rather than paralyze them.”

These were politically-based accusations and on March 19, 1861, Pyrohov was fired. He went to the village of Vyshnia near Vinnytsia, where he lived for another 20 years in his modest house. He made occasional trips to Europe. In Italy he successfully treated the Italian national hero Giuseppe Garibaldi. In 1877, when he was already an old man, Pyrohov traveled to the Russo-Turkish front.

In his rural abode the great doctor had a small hospital, where he treated the sick and performed operations. In all disputes and conflicts regarding land allotments and the distribution of agricultural implements, he always took the side of the peasants. Sensing his good attitude toward them, the peasants always turned to Pyrohov for help.

Pyrohov died of a malignant ulcer of the hard palate. On Nov. 23, 1881, he was buried in the vault of the Church of Nicholas the Miracle-Worker in Vyshnia. His body was embalmed by Dmitrii Vyvodtsev, a doctor from St. Petersburg. Pyrohov’s remains, regularly re-embalmed, have remained in the vault for over a century.

The memory of this great humanist and thinker, who “searched for the essential in the land of ‘semblance’ and ‘form,’” will remain forever dear to us and our descendants.