A History of Marxist Psychology

The Golden Age of Soviet Science

Anton Yasnitsky

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367340094
• eBook ISBN: 9781000205411
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

An illuminating and original collection of essays on 20th century Russian psychology, offering unparalleled coverage of the scholarship of Vygotsky and his peers.

Yasnitsky et al. challenge our assumptions about the history of Soviet science and the nature of Soviet Marxism and its influence on psychological thinking. He significantly broadens the discussion around Vygotsky's life and work and its historical context, applying theories of other notable thinkers such as Alexander Luria and the much-neglected philosopher/psychologist Sergei Rubinstein, alongside key movements in history, such as the pedology and psychohygiene. A diverse range of researchers from countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Russian Federation, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the UK, give this book a truly global outlook.

This is an important and insightful text for undergraduate and postgraduate students and scholars interested in the history of psychology and science, social and cultural history of Russia and Eastern Europe, Marxism, and Soviet politics.

PART I
Theory

1
REMINISCENCE ABOUT FUTURE MARXIST PSYCHOLOGY

One hundred years of solitude

Leonid Radzikhovskii

First I got amused, then I got amazed. I was amused by the invitation that I received from the editor of this volume to contribute a new chapter that would be based on my 30-year-old paper that I once published in Russian academic journal Issues of Psychology (Voprosy psikhologii, in original Russian) amid the so-called perestroika (“reconstruction”) period in the latest history of the Soviet Union. On the surface, the editor’s offer appeared very unusual and utterly weird, to say the least. And only then it was that, upon rereading this virtually forgotten text, I got amazed by realizing how contemporary this old paper looks now, 30-something years later, at the close of the second decade of the 21st century. Indeed, virtually nothing has changed since then and it is as if time has stopped for Russian psychology, from the perspective of Marxist thinking in this field of knowledge, at least. That said, one cannot but acknowledge quite a few changes that took place in Russian psychology in a number of other respects over the last 30 years. These I am going to somewhat sketchily overview in the initial, newly written part of this chapter. Then, I will proceed to the considerably revised “prequel” of the story that reflects the state of the art in the field as of the end of the 1980s as it was reflected in my earlier publication (Radzikhovskii, 1988). Yet, before I proceed any further, a personal comment on my place in this story – rather, a history – of Soviet and Russian psychology is in order.

1970s–1980s: the portrait of the author in social context

The author of these lines graduated in 1975 from the Department of Psychology of Moscow State University and soon thereafter, at the age of 26, officially defended his doctoral (more precisely, “Candidate of Sciences”) dissertation in the field of the history of psychology in 1979, specifically, on the scientific legacy of Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934). Given that his 226 pages long doctoral research topic was dedicated to the pioneering exploration of the topic of “main stages of scientific creativity of Lev Vygotsky” (Radzikhovskii, 1979b), he seems to qualify as one of the pioneers in the field of the “Vygotsky Studies”, a new and emerging subfield of scientific inquiry back then, and a burgeoning field of knowledge now, the field of research that is currently undergoing a “Revisionist Revolution” of the 21st century (Yasnitsky, 2012, 2019a; Yasnitsky & Van der Veer, 2016b; Yasnitsky et al., 2016). Besides, not only was he an established authority in Vygotsky’s legacy, its history and historiography (Radzikhovskii, 1979a) and one of the key organizers of the first conference on Vygotsky’s legacy in the Soviet Union in June, 1981 (Davydov et al., 1981), but also a scientific researcher at the Institute of Psychology in Moscow (more precisely, the Scientific Research Institute of General and Pedagogical Psychology of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR, as it was officially titled at the time) well-known by the names of a few of its former employees, including a few academic celebrities: Lev Vygotsky and his collaborators and members of the “Vygotsky-Luria Circle” such as Leonid Sakharov (the author of the famous “Vygotsky-Sakharov test”), Alexander Luria, Mark Lebedinskii, Viktor Kolbanovskii, Aleksei N. Leontiev and many others. Thus, it does not come as a surprise that the author of this chapter was appointed as a secretary of editorial board of the forthcoming six-volume project of Lev Vygotsky’s “Selected Works” that were published in Russian in 1982–1984. It was this very edition that was subsequently translated and published in English in 1987 (first volume that included “Thinking and speech”) and then, after a pause, in 1993 and 1997–1999 (cumulatively, other five volumes).

Editing Vygotsky: how I wrote Leontiev’s famous chapter

My duties and responsibilities in my capacity of scientific and editorial secretary included a wide range of activities and assignments, including the lion’s share of textological work, preparation of indexes and compiling bibliography. In retrospect, one of those assignments appears particularly curious and strange. Thus, I distinctly remember the situation when Vasilii Davydov (1930–1998), my direct administrative supervisor as the Institute’s Director (in 1973–1983, then, again, in 1991–1992), scientific collaborator (Davydov & Radzikhovskii, 1980, 1981, 1985) and one of the chief members of editorial board of the project, approached me and assigned the task of writing an Introduction to the six-volume collection of Vygotsky’s texts, which would present an outline of Lev Vygotsky’s life and historical development of his legacy. There was nothing curious or strange in that, given my scholarly interests and expertise at that time, and I successfully accomplished the job some time by early January 1981, when the whole manuscript of the first book was submitted to the publisher. That also implied its prior authorization by Soviet official censoring agency, which was preoccupied with its hard work and granted publication of the volume by the Christmas, in December, 1981. This very text was published as its introductory chapter in the first volume of the Collected Works in 1982. Yet, curiously and strangely enough, it was signed not by its author’s name, but the name of Aleksei Nikolaevich Leontiev (1903–1979), who outlived the closest Vygotsky ally Aleksander Luria (1902–1977), but was, in turn, slightly outlived by another former immediate collaborator of Vygotsky, who, I would claim, for a long time remained the main active force behind the project: Aleksander Zaporozhets (1905–1981), a notable Soviet psychologist and prominent administrative authority in Soviet psychology and education in his capacity of the founding director (from 1960) of the Moscow’s Scientific Research Institute of Preschool Upbringing of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR. Thus, my chapter – albeit under Leontiev’s name – came out in Russian in 1982 and, once again, in English translation, in 1993.

I can hardly remember specific discussions that I must have had with my superiors or the explanations of the situation that I was given on this matter prior the publication. I guess, the main argument ran somewhere along the lines that “Leonid, you should understand, Aleksei Nikolaevich [Leontiev] is the first, the best and the most devout student of Vygotsky, his major intellectual heir, and, furthermore, he is the founder and the Dean of the Department of Psychology of Moscow State University, therefore, it is Aleksei Nikolaevich only, who could have written this introductory chapter of utmost importance for the whole six-volume collection, but Aleksei Nikolaevich is really not feeling well and, besides, for a long time already cannot find time to contribute this important piece of writing, etc.” – or something of the kind. In any case, as I junior scientific worker at the very start of my career in the stagnating Soviet Union in early 1980s I was not given much choice or freedom of discussion or action. Yet, I would like to emphatically state here that – as strange as might appear today – at the time it never crossed my mind to blame anyone for anything (pretty much like I am not inclined to accuse and blame anyone personally now) as the whole situation was perceived as absolutely normal by all sides involved, and totally fitting the dominant scientific ethos in Soviet scientific practice of the time, the idiosyncratic “archetype of Soviet psychology” and the contemporary age-old “Stalin model” in Soviet and Russian science, as it was described recently (Yasnitsky, 2015, 2016). Like every psychologist around me, I was a part of this system, shared its values and never questioned the accepted practices. Furthermore, I was really glad and proud to have received such a flattering and honorable assignment as a junior researcher, whose work turned out good enough to be signed by the name of a Great Man such as Aleksei N. Leontiev. This is how I truly felt and perceived the situation then.

Yet, the situation was quite strange indeed, and it took another couple of decades for important memoir interviews to be published of the key direct witnesses to the inside activities of the top-rank administrative and scholarly authorities in Soviet psychology (Shchedrovitskii, 2001; Zinchenko, 2003) that shed light on what had chiefly remained hidden from the lower-rank researchers like myself. From these memoirs we know about the considerable resistance among the top-rank Soviet psychologists (including Vygotsky’s former students and allies) to the very idea and initiative of publishing the works of Vygotsky after 1956. Georgii Shchedrovitskii (1929–1994) reminisced that it was only due to Aleksander Zaporozhets’ open interference at one of the ritualistic critical public discussions that helped him to counter the critique and defend the prospective Russian publication of Vygotsky’s works volume in 1960 (Vygotskii, 1960). Yet, this was the last major publication of Vygotsky’s works that would come out under the editorship of a psychologist in Soviet Union during the following two decades. The end of this period was witnessed and discussed by the other memoirist, Vladimir Zinchenko (1931–2014), who recalled Aleksei N. Leontiev, the official heir to Vygotsky’s legacy and the founder of the “activity theory”, who not only resisted, but also apparently deliberately delayed the release of the six-volume “Collected Works of L.S. Vygotsky”, in preparation since the late 1970s, at least as long as my involvement in the project is concerned. According to Zinchenko, one of the techniques Leontiev used to indeterminately postpone the conclusion of the project was his presumed “solemn duty” and eternal promise to contribute an introductory chapter, yet always avoiding actually writing it. The problem seemed to have promised to keep remaining endlessly, and it was in this very situation that Vladimir Zinchenko suggested his friend and colleague Vasilii Davydov assign the task of writing this introductory chapter to a young Vygotsky expert and prolific author Leonid Radzikhovskii. This is how, it seems, this chapter, confirmed and signed by Leontiev, made it into the first volume of the collection, which eventually gave the green light to the publication. Further, Zinchenko remarked that it looked as if Leontiev so much resisted the idea of publication that he did not live up to seeing that: Leontiev died in 1979, roughly three years before the first volume actually saw the daylight.

The purpose of this episode in the history of Soviet psychology within this chapter and the main reason for me telling it here is to provide an illustration of how everyday life of a psychologist in the typical social milieu in the Soviet Union might have sometimes looked like; yet also to give the reader an idea of the kind of events and processes the author of this chapter was involved in during his career as an academic psychologist “back in the USSR”, the land that does not exist anymore. In fact, my career of an insider in academic psychology lasted until the very end of the decade of 1980s, since when I radically changed my lifestyle and professional orientation from a purely academic “ivory tower” thinker to the career of a journalist and a practitioner. Therefore, from the early 1990s I have remained a psychologist (in some sense), but only an external observer of the directions and trends in this discipline in Russian Federation as the newly emerged state after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Perhaps, this turn of events deprived me from certain first-hand experiences and observations from within the academy, but, on the other hand, provided me with an advantageous vantage point of an outsider. It is, thus, exactly from this position that I am going to provide, albeit in a few strokes, a history of Russian psychology as it developed in the Russian Federation after its formation in 1991 following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

1990s: away from the “triumph of Marxism-Leninism” to the “oppressed science” and the “Russian way” in psychology

The most curious, perhaps, transformation that psychology underwent in this country over the last half a century or so, is its most decisive abortion of virtually any Marxist references whatsoever. This is particularly amazing given that until the very end of the 1980s Marxism was proclaimed as the leading intellectual force in this field of knowledge and references to the founders of Marxism-Leninism and the programmatic materials and decisions of the leadership (e.g., Politburo or the Congresses) of Communist Party of the Soviet Union abounded Soviet psychological publications until the mid-1980s. The mystery of this disappearance can be relatively easy explained.

The most important and acute strategic issue for all Soviet psychologists during the so-called perestroika (“reconstruction”, in English) in the mid-end 1980s – as well as for any other national or international psychological community, for that matter – was the adjustment of their field of knowledge to the pressing needs and requirements of the Zeitgeist, the time period it belonged to. Perhaps, this claim can be disputed among the academics in the contemporary industrially developed “West”. Yet, in the USSR of the 1980s it was plain obvious that psychology was diseased with the same sickness as the rest of Soviet social sciences. The main problem was that social sciences hardly reflected the actual life problems of contemporary social reality and, instead, dealt with abstract schemes and abstract images of idealized people as they “should be” as opposed of the real people in the concrete settings of the their socialist social environment in the Soviet Union.

Therefore, the main goal of perestroika in social studies in the Soviet Union – including psychology, of course – was to turn (rather, return) research towards practice and transform it in the genuine humanist spirit in the sense of making it accountable for and capable of solving the problems of the real individuals, the citizens of the country and the social groups populating the land in their effort to solve their mundane problems. The key question was, though, to what extent the actual academic psychology of the time was in principle up to the challenge and capable of solving these problems. Specifically, an open question was what exactly in the contemporary intellectual legacy and related practices required to be changed firsthand. A rational discussion of the topics of “practicality” of science was complicated by a number of idiosyncratic local circumstances that considerably slowed down the development of psychological knowledge in the USSR. The challenge confronted with manifold personal and group ambitions supplemented by the related administrative resources dispersed between these groups of scholars, which had considerable impact on decision-making in Soviet science. In other words, one is safe to claim that “the 1980s was a period of diversification and of increasing numbers of academic psychologists, with psychologists tending to show loyalty to subgroups rather than to one artificially maintained unified field” (Sirotkina & Smith, 2012, p. 438).

Yet, perhaps the major handicap in bringing the actual life problems to the light of critical discussion was the age-old dogmatism seemingly deeply ingrained in the minds of my contemporaries and colleagues. All Soviet grand psychological theories and lesser-scale projects were invariably referred to as “Marxist” ones, according to the Marxist doctrine that was officially proclaimed and imperative for all scholars in the country from early 1930s (Todes & Krementsov, 2010), but not only that. Another major factor that played a considerable role in sus...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I Theory
• Part II Practice
• Part III Dialogues
• Epilogue
• Index