Simultaneously, he attended the lectures in natural sciences at the Kiev University where he became familiar with the political ideas of Russian enlighteners such as Herzen, Belinsky and Chernyshevsky.
By this time the ideas of Nikolay Stankevich, N. G. Chernyshevsky, Nikolay Dobrolyubov, Pisarev and other Russian revolutionary democrats, the materialistic philosophies of Ludwig Buchner, Karl Vogt, and Jacob Moleschott, and the revolutionary theories of Darwin and Herbert Spencer had gained considerable ground among Serbian intellectuals.