[3] She was the first woman in Russia to become a doctor and to have completed her education at a Russian medical school, an event which occurred at a time when women were barred from receiving training at such universities.

[1][3] At the age of twelve years, Rudneva ran away from her adoptive family, a period during which she contracted typhus and was hospitalized for many months, and found her way to St. Petersburg hoping to learn a trade to provide for herself.

[3] While in St. Petersburg, she used a recommendation from the medical staff that presided over her to briefly be taken in by a seaman's family whose son taught her to read and was later introduced to a childless army surveyor that assumed guardianship of Rudneva by adopting her.

[1][3] Dr. Tarnovsky referred her for a position at the Kalinkinsky Hospital where she continued her training learning about and specializing in venereal diseases and how to treat, in particular, syphilis which was increasingly becoming a public health predicament for the population as it devastated the Bashkir people.

[2][8] In the year 1864 it became illegal for women to take medical courses making her already controversial attendance a greater grievance for many, but Rudneva was allowed to continue studying for her diploma on the condition that she would not receive that academic rank that traditionally accompanied it.