Gregory Skovoroda, also Hryhorii Skovoroda, or Grigory Skovoroda was a philosopher of Ukrainian Cossack origin, who wrote primarily in the Sloboda Ukraine dialect of the Russian language. He was also a poet, teacher and composer of liturgical music. His significant influence on his contemporaries and succeeding generations and his way of life were universally regarded as Socratic, and he was often called a "Socrates." Skovoroda's work contributed to the cultural heritage of both modern-day Ukraine and Russia, both countries claiming him as a native son.
Skovoroda received his education at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy in Kiev. Haunted by worldly and spiritual powers, the philosopher led a life of an itinerant thinker-beggar. In his tracts and dialogs, biblical problems overlap with those examined earlier by Plato and the Stoics. Skovoroda's first book was issued after his death in 1798 in Saint Petersburg. Skovoroda's complete works were published for the first time in Saint Petersburg in 1861. Before this edition many of his works existed only in manuscript form.