ENThe article is based on archival sources and historiographical analyzes the life and scientific-pedagogical activity Alexander Mickiewicz, one of the first professors of the University of St. Vladimir. There is an attempt to describe the one hand the problem of self-determination for a single person who represented thousands of people who due partitions late eighteenth century. was a part of the new state, the other to illustrate the then education and national policy of the Russian Empire regarding them.