Reading :: Studies on the History of Behavior: Ape, Primitive, and Child

Studies on the History of Behavior: Ape, Primitive, and Child
By L.S. Vygotsky and A.R. Luria

I first picked this book up at Iowa State as a graduate student, but I quickly put it down: although I had been fascinated by Vygotsky's other books, this book's focus on apes did not appeal to me much. But twenty years makes a big difference: now, with a better grounding in the work of the Vygotsky Circle, I see great value in the book.

To be sure, that value overlaps with those of Vygotsky's and Luria's other writings. But in some ways, this book is more clearly written and more concisely argued than those more widely-read sources. In fact, the book's structure helps us to better understand the essential Vygotskian argument that human cognition is essentially social; it explains the cultural-historical approach in terms of a progression. At the same time, for 21st-century readers, this claimed progression has blind spots that suggest an important critique of Vygotskian thought.

First, the progression. The book consists of a thin author's introduction and three thick chapters:

• Chapter 1: Behavior of the Anthropoid Ape
• Chapter 2: Primitive and His Behavior
• Chapter 3: The Child and Its Behavior

The first two chapters are based respectively on the works of the primatologist Kohler and the "ethnic psychology" of Levy-Bruhl and others. The third is based on the authors' own work.

As the authors state in the introduction,

All three essays are united by one idea, that is, the idea of development. Their aim is to schematically present the path of psychological evolution from the ape to the cultural man. (p.36, their emphasis)

Each essay deals with

only one dominating feature or aspect of behavior, namely the one that, like a compass arrow, points from a certain starting point to a new direction and path in the development of behavior. Our task was to portray three main lines in the development of behavior—evolutionary, historical, and ontogenetic—and to show that the behavior of cultural man is the product of the three lines of development and may be understood and explained only by analyzing the three different paths that make up the history of human behavior. (p.36, their emphasis)

The authors argue that behavioral development was initially evolutionary—in the sense of the physical evolution of an organism—but when anthropoid apes invented tools, they took a new path, "creating thereby the main psychological prerequisite of historical development of behavior" (p.37, their emphasis). This historical development was labor, which involved "the development of human speech and other psychological signs used by primitive man to gain control over behavior" (p.37, my bold emphasis). And in child development, they saw a third line of development: "the cultural development of behavior based on the acquisition of skills and modes of cultural behavior and thinking" (p.37). "Thus we have concentrated on the turning points, the critical stages in the development of behavior," the authors add: first tools, then "labor and the use of psychological signs," then the child's cultural-psychological development as opposed to natural development (p.37). Each "process of development dialectically prepares for the next one, transforming and changing into a new type of development" (p.38).

Readers will note that the account of labor is linked to Engels' account of evolution in Dialectics of Nature, which later became the cornerstone of Leontyev's activity theory. This account became an article of faith in the USSR. But Vygotsky and Luria handle this basic account with perhaps more nuance than Engels does.

In Chapter 1, the authors review Kohler's work in detail, then interpret it from the view of Marx and Engels. First, they claim that although apes can use tools, they have not yet developed labor: "Use of tools in the absence of labor is what draws the behavior of man and ape closer and at the same time separates them" (p.74; as a side note, compare Gen. 3:17-19, which also portrays labor as a uniquely human pursuit, but with a more negative valence). The authors, as good Marxists, argue that "quantitative differences may transform into qualitative ones," and tools thus change the very nature of man—although they don't do this for apes or other animals (p.74).  Here, the authors cite Engels' account of human development through labor, adding that labor is an "adaption to nature, foreign to apes" (p.75).

Apes use tools to manipulate conditions, the authors say, but man uses signs to control his own behavior—and "this constitutes the essence of the cultural development of man's behavior" (p.77).

This brings us to the second chapter, in which the authors draw on what we might consider sketchy anthropology to argue that (a) current "primitive" people can serve as a proxy for the people in our past development and (b) these "primitives" are at a lower level of development (p.82). They appeal to the aforementioned work by Levy-Bruhl for these points. But they also treat "primitives" more sympathetically than one might expect, understanding these people as fully equal agents, but whose cultural tools have not provided the structure to perform certain actions. Specifically, the authors claim that nonliterate peoples tend to develop better eidetic memory (e.g., p.99), while literate peoples tend to rely more heavily on artificial signs to do this work and thus allow their eidetic abilities to atrophy (p.101). They argue that in the absence of artificial signs, nonliterate peoples' "language loads thought down with endless details and particulars and does not process the data of experiences"; the examples from Wertheimer and Thurnwald (p.111) sound quite similar to those Luria later reported from his Uzbekistan trip. Some of the later work in this chapter deals with the development of word usage in associations and complexes, similar to the discussion in Vygotsky's Thought and Language.

As interesting is the discussion of numeric operations: the authors claim (sensibly, I think) that "our system of calculation counts for us" (p.130)—that is, our cultural tools provide a system that changes the task and shares the load, an idea that has been developed considerably. Similarly, the authors quote Bucher's description of Borneo digging sticks, which are composed of a big stick (for digging) and a little stick (which clicks with each stroke): the authors say, "This sound, being something like a work cry or a command, has the purpose of rhythmically organizing work" (p.138).

And this brings us to the third chapter and the authors' own work. The authors revisit Engels' story of evolution through labor (p.170), then move to the question of memory—mediated and unmediated. In their experiments, children past a certain age were first tested in terms of natural memory, then given mediators and tested again. They tended to do better in mediated tasks, not because their natural memory improved, but because they could substitute the mediator for their own memory (p.180). "Developing culturally, a child gains the opportunity to create himself those stimuli that in the future will influence him, organize his behavior, and attract his attention" (p.189).

Yet, as the authors demonstrate with a discussion of the famous forbidden colors experiment (pp.190-192), these mediators can be internalized—an analogue to the numeric system that "counts for us" in Chapter 2. "Upon closer examination we are convined that the process of attention still remained indirect; although instead of externally indirect, it became internally indirect" (p.192). That is, children's natural memory did not improve; instead, they internalized psychological tools that changed and systematized the task.

The authors also discuss the so-called Vygotsky blocks (pp.193-199) as a way to explore how children developed abstraction.

Ultimately, the authors conclude that the difference between natural and cultural ability was crucial. They argue for a better understanding of cultural giftedness:

Cultural giftedness means first of all to rationally use one's endowed capabilities, be they average or poor, to achieve the kind of results that a culturally undeveloped person can achieve only with the help of considerably stronger natural abilities.

Cultural giftedness, in essence, means the ability to control one's own natural resources; it means the creation and application of the best devices for using these resources. (p.230)

This advice would be right at home at Lifehacker.

In conclusion, the book is fascinating and valuable. It is in some ways not as developed as other work by the authors, and the discussion of primitives did not endear it to me, but it explains some of the Vygostky Circle's work more clearly than other texts I have read. If you're interested in cultural-historical psychology, definitely pick it up.

Reading :: The History of the Development of Higher Mental Functions

The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky: The History of the Development of Higher Mental Functions (Cognition and Language: A Series in Psycholinguistics) (Volume 4)
By L.S. Vygotsky

A little background. Although some of Vygotsky's works had been translated into English, including an over-edited 1963 version of Thought and Language, the publication that set off the boom in US-based Vygotsky studies was 1978's Mind in Society. I read this book in graduate school and loved it. Only later did I understand the import of the editors' introduction: The book was a collection of Vygotsky's works, curated by Michael Cole's mentor A.R. Luria and supplemented by illustrative studies by Luria, Leontiev, and other Vygotsky associates. Those works included the unpublished "Tool and Symbol"; section 3 of The History of the Development of Higher Psychological Functions; and two essays from the 1934 collection Mental Development of Children and the Process of Learning. Some of the illustrative material came from other sections of The History of the Development of Higher Psychological Functions.

Since The History of the Development of Higher Psychological Functions was such a big part of this intriguing book, and since it was referenced repeatedly elsewhere by Luria, I was very interested in reading the actual text. But that was easier said than done, since the book had not been published as a standalone text. I could get parts of it. For instance, a condensed version of Ch.1, 2, 4, and 4 takes up about 35pp of Leontyev, Luriya, and Smirnov's (1966) Psychological Research in the USSR under the title "Development of the Higher Psychological Functions." The chapter "The Genesis of Higher Mental Functions" is in Wertsch's 1981 collection The Concept of Activity in Soviet Psychology. But if you want to read the entire book (and then some), you have to go to the 1997 Collected Works, which is translated from the Russian Collected Works. (For a while, I didn't think the UT library had the CW, but apparently I wasn't using the right search terms.)

The Collected Works version includes the originally published chapters (Ch.1-5), published in 1931 [but see note in comments below: August 6, 2019]. But it also includes Ch.6-15, "which are being published for the first time," according to the footnotes from the Russian edition (p.279). Of course, this footnote does not provide much context, so I'm unclear whether Vygotsky actually saw these as part of the same work or wrote them at the same time.

In this review, I'll only cover the original book. I may take up the rest in a future review. [Edit: I did review the rest on Sept 25, 2019]

Ch.1. The problem of the development of higher mental functions
Here, Vygotsky begins by urging a new point of view on the development of higher mental functions. Previously, the questions had been formulated in a one-sided, erroneous fashion, primarily because investigators had seen higher mental functions "as natural processes and formations," failing to distinguish the natural from the cultural (p.2). "Higher mental functions and complex cultural forms of behavior with all their specific features of functioning and structure, with all the uniqueness of their genetic path from inception to full maturity and death, with all the special laws to which they are subject usually remained outside the field of vision of the researcher" and thus "complex formations and processes were partitioned into component elements and no longer existed as wholes, as structures" (p.2). That is, traditionally, analysis chopped up the system of a higher mental function (HMF) and consequently could only study its components, lower mental functions (LMF).

Consequently, psychology tells us when children learn abstract concepts, but not why or how. Psychology had not yet distinguished between two lines of development, the natural and the cultural, and the two different sets of laws that each follow (p.3). Vygotsky's solution is to introduce the dialectical method into psychology (p.3). Here, he notes that American behaviorism and Russian reflexology are both reductive, decomposing forms without regard to quality—a nondialectical approach that, he says, results in "an enormous mosaic of mental life" rather than a unified whole (p.4). In contrast, Vygotsky's dialectical approach viewed mental functions as interoperating in a system that is qualitatively different from its parts (p.4). He adds:

The history of the development of higher mental functions is impossible without a study of the prehistory of these functions, their biological roots, their organic properties. The genetic roots of two basic cultural forms of behavior are established in the infantile age: using tools and human speech; this circumstance in itself places the infantile age at the center of the prehistory of cultural development. (p.6)

Vygotsky notes a rupture between general psychology and child psychology, which he credits to a rift between the study of lower and higher mental functions (p.7). He lists three basic concepts of his research in the present volume:

• higher mental functions
• the cultural development of behavior
• the mastery of one's own behavior through internal processes (p.7)

He argues that there are two branches in the development of HMF:

• "the processes of mastering external materials of cultural development and thinking" such as language and arithmetic;
• the processes of development of special HMFs such as attention and logical memory (p.14)

Vygotsky argues that cultural development in man is preceded by, but separate from, his biological development. "In a wholly different type of adaptation in man, the development of his artificial organs, tools, and not a change in the organs and structure of his body, is of primary importance" (p.16). Indeed, primitive and cultured man are biologically equal (p.17; recall that this claim is at the root of the Uzbek expedition that went on in 1931-1932). (Vygotsky does not say it here, but his concept of the New Man relied on cultural development; as he implied in his 1930 essay on the subject, the Soviet alteration of man was cultural, not genetic, and anyone from any genetic background could acquire the cultural tools to reach new heights.)

Here, Vygotsky lists some of the HMFs: verbal thinking, logical memory, concept formation, voluntary attention, will; these are all thoroughly changed in cultured man (p.17). "In the process of historical development, social man changes the methods and devices of his behavior, transforms natural instincts and functions, and develops and creates new forms of behavior—specifically cultural" (p.18). And in a cultural environment, organic development yields "a historically conditioned biological process" in which cultural development is merged with organic maturation. One example: "the development of speech in the child" (p.20). 

Citing Jennings, Vygotsky notes that, like animals, "Man also has his system of activity that keeps his methods of behavior within limits. In his system, for example, flying is impossible. But man surpasses all animals because he can extend the radius of his activity limitlessly by using tools. His brain and hand made his system of activity, that is, the sphere of available and possible forms of behavior, infinitely broad." Thus the decisive moment in a child's development is when s/he independently finds and uses tools (p.20).  Here, the child transitions from animal to human activity; but this transition does not mean leaving one for the other. Rather, the two systems (animal/organic and human/cultural) develop together (p.21). (Compare Engestrom's account of the evolution of mediators in the transition from animal to man in Learning by Expanding.)

Animals, Vygotsky argues, do not have the biological platform that we do, "a certain degree of biological maturity" that is required for underpinning HMFs (p.23). Vygotsky proposes understanding the seams between biological and cultural systems of activity by examining "deviations from the normal type," including "the so-called defective," in which natural-cultural merging does not occur normally (p.23). (Vygotsky later became interested in other, higher-achieving edge cases such as that of a mnemonist, and planned to write a book about them; Luria eventually wrote a book about the mnemonist, which was very much in the same vein as the current book, but less broad in its implications.) Specifically discussing "child primitiveness," Vygotsky warns us against understanding "primitivism of the child's mentality" as "feebleness": "The child-primitive is a child who has not gone through cultural development or, more precisely, who is at the lowest step of cultural development" (cf. Luria's 1930s twin research). 

Ch.2. Research method

In this chapter, Vygotsky lays down his methodological principles. Although it's been a while since I read his Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology, the chapter seems in line with it. "Our main idea" is that in making the transition from animal to human, we made 

a dialectical leap that leads to a qualitative change in the relationship itself between the stimulus and the response. We might formulate our basic conclusion thus: human behavior differs by the same kind of qualitative uniqueness in comparison with the behavior of animals as the whole type of adaptation and historical development of man differs from the adaptation and development of animals because the process of mental development in man is part of the total process of the historical development of humanity. (p.39)

Man acts upon nature—including himself—and creates new conditions for self, conditions that allow him to shape himself (p.38).

Vygotsky and colleagues

began our research with a psychological analysis of several forms of behavior that are found, not frequently it is true, in everyday, common life and are thus known to everyone, but are also to a high degree complex, historical formations of the earliest epochs in the mental development of man. These techniques of methods of behavior, arising stereotypically in given situations, represent virtual solidified, petrified, crystallized psychological forms that arose in remote times at the most primitive stages of cultural development of man and in a remarkable way were preserved in the form of historical survivors in a petrified and in a living state in the behavior of modern man. (p.39) 

 One is the dilemma of Buridan's ass, which humans solve via artificially introduced auxiliary stimuli (ex: you can make a decision by flipping a coin; p.46). In fact, humans frequently determine their own behavior "with the help of artificially created stimuli-devices" such as tying a knot to remember or throwing dice (p.50). He adds, without evidence: "Tying a knot for remembering was one of the very first forms of the written word. This form played an enormous role in the history of culture, in the history of the development of writing" (p.50; but evidence suggests that Vygotsky was wrong in this example.)

Here, Vygotsky discusses signs, defined as "artificial stimuli-devices introduced by man into a psychological situation where they fulfill the function of autostimulation" (p.54). Signification is the creation and use of signs, and it distinguishes human behavior (p.55). "In the process of social life, man created and developed more complex systems of psychological connections without which work activity and all social life would be impossible." Signs are "devices of psychological connection in their very nature and in their essential function" (p.56). (Here, we see signs take center stage, as precursors to work activity—a formulation that Leontiev would later turn on its head.) One example of the use of signs is in memory: the knot "remembers" the errand for the man who ties it, in the sense that the knot is an active form of adaptation or external process of remembering. That is, memory is converted to external activity, whether in knots or in monuments (p.59).

Vygotsky warns that although we can speak of signs as tools, it's an analogy that can't be carried through to the bitter end, and "we must not anticipate finding much similarity to working tools in these devices that we call signs" (see his very similar discussion from 1930). What he calls the "instrumental function of the sign" is "the function of stimulus-device fulfilled by the sign with respect to any psychological operation, that it is a tool of human activity" (p.60). We can't collapse the distinction between tool and sign: "tools as devices for work, devices for mastering the processes of nature, and language as a device for social contact and communication, dissolve in the general concept of artifacts of artificial devices" (p.61). Rather, Vygotsky argues that we should understand the difference in this way:

• the use of signs is a "mediating activity" in which humans control behavior
• the use of tools is a mediating activity in which humans subjugate nature (pp.61-62)

These are "diverging lines of mediating activity" (p.62). Again, Leontiev later turns this formulation on its head by considering labor activity as the origination point for human psychology, thus collapsing the distinction between tool/sign and external nature/self-regulatory behavior.

Ch.3. Analysis of higher mental functions

Vygotsky opens this chapter by briefly discussing Lewin's systemic approach to psychology. Characteristically, Vygotsky does not provide a cite, but the thinking is quite similar to the linked book. However, Vygotsky didn't buy Gestalt psychology, which (he argued) rejects analysis of the whole and remains descriptive (p.66, 67)—despite Lewin's own argument that the sciences must move from a descriptive to an explanatory approach (p.69). Vygotsky proposes the experimental-genetic method (p.68). Whereas classic psychological experiments are set up to analyze complex reactions in automatized form—a sort of "post mortem" (p.75)—Vygotsky aimed to convert an automatized process to a living reaction (p.76; compare Bodker's focus on breakdowns, which I continued in my own methodology). 

A little later in the chapter, Vygotsky presents his famous triangle diagram showing a stimulus, response, and mediational means (p.79; this diagram also shows up in "Tool and Sign," and was introduced to the US readership through Mind in Society). Vygotsky argues that this mediated structure is what all higher forms of behavior consist of (p.80). 

Ch.4. The structure of higher mental functions

Here, Vygotsky distinguishes between primitive structures (natural, mainly dependent on "biological features of the mind") and higher structures ("a genetically more complex and higher form of behavior") (p.83). Critically, traditional psychology did not investigate "this phenomenon which we call mastery of one's own behavior"—and even, in James' case, explained HMFs such as will in terms of miracles (p.86)! Vygotsky examines self-mastery, again using the distinction between tool (which is directed outward) and sign (which is directed inward, reconstructing one's mental operations) (p.89). Everything in higher behavior—that is, everything that is uniquely human—is connected with artificial means of thinking (p.90). Yet higher behavior is an aggregate of lower, elementary, natural processes; culture creates nothing (p.92). 

Ch.5. Genesis of higher mental functions

Here, Vygotsky first reviews the work of Kohler and Koffka (who he characterizes as Lamarckian) and Buhler (who tries to unite Lamarck and Darwin; p.100). Via Janet, he argues that everything that is internal in HMFs was formerly external; the relations between HMFs were once relations between people (p.103). This leads us to the general genetic law of cultural development: that every function appears twice, first interpsychologically, then intrapsychologically. This is the sociogenesis of higher forms of behavior. All HMFs are the essence of internalized relations of a social order (p.106). Development is seen as taking place, not in steady accumulations of small changes, but as qualitative leaps (p.110; note the quant->qual argument based on dialectics).

And that's the original book. This volume of the Collected Works has many more chapters, which apparently remained unpublished until the CW came out. I may review these in the future. But my main focus was this hard-to-find translation on HMFs. After reading it, I have a much clearer idea of what Vygotsky was trying to do in 1931 and how it influenced (and diverged from) his colleagues. If you're interested in Vygotsky, especially the Vygotsky you thought you first encountered in Mind in Society, I highly recommend it.

Reading :: A Handbook of Contemporary Soviet Psychology

A handbook of contemporary Soviet psychology
Edited by Michael Cole and Irving Maltzman

This 1969 collection is 856 pages without the indexes. I didn't read all of it, since my specific interests are cultural-historical theory and activity theory. Instead, I selected chapters with the following characteristics:

• I recognized the authors as belonging to one or both of these schools.
• I saw Vygotsky, Luria, or Leontiev in a chapter's references. 

That methodology yielded 15 of the 30 chapters. I won't cover all of the 15. 

Editors' Introduction

In Cole and Maltzman's Editors' Introduction, they cover the historical background of the volume. They note that in the mid-1930s, psychological testing was outlawed and psychological journals were discontinued, so "psychologists who wanted to publish their work had to turn to educational journals for an outlet." And the conventional wisdom was that "the discipline went into a deep decline during the period 1935-1950" (p.6). But, the editors argue, important work was being done, just not published. That situation changed in 1959-1960 with a "two-volume handbook of Soviet psychology" referencing "work done during the 1930's and 1940's which was unpublished at the time or appeared only in the form of zapiski (notes) of the institution where the research was done" (p.6). That handbook "forms the backbone of the present volume" (p.7).

The editors note something that I mention in recent reviews, that in 1950—the 100th anniversary of Pavlov's birth—"Pavlov was elevated to the position of a demigod of Soviet biological science" due to Stalin's political involvement (p.7). "The 1950 Joint Session was convened with the explicit purpose of forcing deviant physiologists back into the fold and effecting total Pavlovianization of psychology" (p.7). But Stalin's death in 1953 resulted in sudden changes, including a decrease in dogmatism (p.9). The editors also note that the 1950 Joint Session was not as severe as the 1948 genetics purge (p.9). In fact, one result was to encourage empirical research rather than philosophical declarations (p.9). 

Importantly, Pavlov argued shortly before he died that "language acts as a 'second signal system'" (p.10); this endorsement was a boon to psychologists working on "verbal behavior and language learning" (p.10). (Look through the recent reviews on this blog and you'll see that Luria uses this Pavlovian term liberally to validate his work with language, work that proceeds theoretically and methodologically from Vygotsky.)

At the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party in 1964, "there was a re-emphasis of the Leninist principle of objective scientific examination of reality" and "no reference to Pavlovian principles" (p.11). 

Zaporozhets, A.V. "Some of the psychological problems of sensory training in early childhood and the preschool period."

The editors note that this chapter comes from a 1963 book he edited with Usova. For this chapter, I want to highlight only one thing: "interiorization," which he characterizes as being proposed by Vygotsky, then developed by Leontiev in Problems of the development of mind (pp.115-116). This theory is "of cardinal import" (p.116).

Luria, A.R. "Speech development and the formation of mental processes."

The editors call Luria "perhaps the best known of the psychologists represented in this volume" and note his friendship and work with Vygotsky (p.121). They also note his "prolonged 'vacation' from neuropsychological research" in the early 1950s—he "was required to leave his position at the Institute of Neurosurgery for work at the Institute of Defectology" (p.122). 

Luria overviews the history of research in speech development in the USSR, starting with Rybnikov, Kornilov, Ivanov-Smolenskii, and his own early work (p.123). He emphasizes Vygotsky's "significant contribution in the materialistic solution" of the question of "the role of speech in the formation of consciousness and thinking": the child was seen "from the very beginning[] a social being" (p.127). Luria discusses the work of Vygotsky and his students at some length, then concludes that "Vygotskii proceeded to a new and most important branch of psychology—the basic regularities of conscious forms of human thinking" (p.137). 

Vygotsky also shows up in Luria's discussion of children's written speech: his and El'konin's work "indicated that written speech represents an entirely new psychological phenomenon, different from oral speech in its origin and in its structural and functional features" (p.141). Whereas oral speech is "insufficiently conscious, unseparated by the child from general speech activity," written speech is "always the product of special training" (p.141). Indeed, "the functional and structural features of written speech ... inevitably lead to a significant development of inner speech" because it "delays the direct appearance of speech connections, inhibits them, and increases requirements for the preliminary, internal preparation for the speech act" (p.142). 

In the subsection "The role of speech in the development of higher psychological functions," Luria argues that in the view of Soviet psychology, the mind is the "product of social life" and is treated "as a form of activity which was earlier shared by two people (that is, originated in communication) and which only later, as a result of mental development, became a form of behavior within one person" (p.143). Luria portrays dyadic relation as an adult-child relation (p.143). "Complex forms of conscious activity ('higher psychological functions') are least of all initial 'properties' of mental life or inherent qualities of the brain. They are functional systems formed by the social experience of the child" (p.143). Luria goes on to discuss his twin study coauthored with Yudovich, and dates the study to 1935-1936 (p.145). 

In the subsection "complex functional systems mediated by speech: Voluntary attention," Luria defines the phenomenon: "By 'voluntary attention' we should understand a reflex act, social in origin and mediated in its structure, in the presence of which the subject begins to guide himself by the very changes which he has produced in the environment; and in this way he masters his own behavior" (p.149). Here, he credits Vygotsky's and Leontiev's earlier works (p.149). 

In the subsection "The role of speech in imagination and thinking," Luria refers to Pavlov's claim that "the word is a 'signal of signals' which constitutes the foundation of the second signal system. Close interaction between the first and second signal systems is a distinctive feature of human higher nervous activity" (p.151). Specifically, humans use speech to self-regulate; animals do not self-regulate but must be constantly reinforced (p.152). 

El'konin, D.B. "Some results of the study of psychological development of preschool-age children."

The editors' note does not date this entry, which perhaps comes from the two-volume handbook they referenced in the introduction. They do note El'konin's long discussion of the 1936 pedology decree and his use of "testing" as an epithet (p.163). El'konin does indeed discuss pedology at length, approving of the Decree and claiming that pedology "deprived" psychology of "an outlet into pedagogical practice and of the use of genetic analysis of the developmental process" (p.165). He claims that "Vygotskii, one of the Soviet Union's most able psychologists, was in the vanguard of the fight against mechanism and behaviorism and produced many valuable works. In the last years of Vygotskii's life (he died in 1934), in his work on the development of the infant's psychological processes, he was drawn into the stream of pedology. In spite of this, Vygotskii produced a number of studies of the utmost value for child psychology" (p.167).

El'konin goes on to praise Vygotsky's work on thinking and speaking (specifically the 1934 Thinking and speaking) and adds that "Vygotskii was the first in Soviet child psychology to direct attention to the problem of instruction and development and to emphasize the leading role of instruction in the development of the child" (pp.167-168; note that El'konin is more or less defending Vygotsky from Rudneva's charge that he embraced the withering away of school). Yet "he had an erroneous conception of the origin of various aspects of the child's development, which he considered to be the result of a change in the structure of consciousness. On the contrary, the change in the structure of the mind, which occurs during preschool age, is the consequence of the new relations which are coming into being, of a new type of activity on the part of the preschool-age child" (p.168). 

He adds that "during the last years of his life (when he had been drawn into the current of pseudoscientific pedology), Vygotskii was distinguished from the pedologists by his psychological orientation; for him the problem of the concrete psychological characteristics of consciousness and of its development remained the central problem, on which he worked until the last days of his life" (p.168). Meanwhile, other psychologists "had been working on the question of the relation between the development of consciousness and activity, of thought and practice" (p.168), specifically Rubinshtein (p.169). And "about the time Rubinshtein was doing his work, another group of psychologists under the direction of Leont'ev in Kharkov, was carrying out an experimental project aimed at explaining the role of practical 'object' activity in the development of generalization and of other aspects of mental development. This work, begun in the 1930's, sought to extend Vygotskii's research on the development of children's thought, more specifically, the development of generalization. These projects were also directed against Vygotskii's tendency to overestimate the role of speech and communication in this development" (p.169). He quotes Leont'ev's 1935 unpublished manuscript "The mastery of scientific concepts as a problem for educational psychology," which characterized changes in word meaning as following changes in activity (p.170). 

Later, he notes Gal'perin's work in emphasizing "the fundamental difference between tools as used by man and auxiliary instruments used by animals" (p.191). Under the heading of personality, he notes that "Leont'ev (1945, 1948) was the first after Vygotskii to propose a general theory of preschool personality development," based on changes in the structuring of activity (p.201). 

Some brief commentary. In Rehabilitation of hand function, Leont'ev and Zaporozhets argue that after trauma (such as a gunshot wound), a person's functional system reorganizes around protecting the affected limb, and that reorganization can impede rehabilitation. Analogically speaking, Soviet psychology experienced severe trauma with the 1936 Pedology Decree and related events during the Stalinist crackdown, and 20 years later, El'konin is still protecting the affected limb: defending Vygotsky's work while keeping a clear separation. Really, when you delve into the critique of Vygotsky here, it comes down to Vygotsky's focus on word meaning and his refusal to view it as a result of practical activity. This move allows El'konin to draw freely from Vygotsky's works while cutting out some of the later (post-instrumental, holistic) work coinciding with his pedological writings. We can see similar moves going on in other works written around the same time by Soviet psychologists in the cultural-historical and activity theory traditions (including Luria's continued focus on higher psychological functions, as seen earlier in this collection).

Bozhovich, L.I. "The personality of schoolchildren and problems of education."

The editors identify Bozhovich's work as an outgrowth of Vygotsky's work on personality development (pp.209-210). According to Bozhovich, "life conditions per se do not directly and immediately determine a child's personality," but rather "the child's interaction with these external conditions," a principle first expressed by Vygotsky (1934) (p.211). But, Bozhovich says, Vygotsky's main factor—"the level of development of generalization"—is just one of the factors involved (p.213). 

After some discussion, Bozhovich concludes by noting the tendency of Soviet psychologists to "overlook Freud's 'unconscious' and, in general, 'depth psychology'"—understandable (p.242)—but Bozhovich argues that the unconscious does exist: "the child's social needs are the major incentives for study" and "generally the child is not consciously aware of this motivation" (p.243). 

Luria, A.R. "The neuropsychological study of brain lesions and restoration of damaged brain functions"

Those who have read recent reviews of Luria's books on this blog will find this chapter familiar, so I'll just hit the highlights. Luria credits Vygotsky for showing that higher mental processes develop from "the child's interaction with adults"; "Vygotskii brought the problem of instruments which organize psychological processes into the foreground of psychological research," especially speech (p.282). Specifically, Luria overviews Vygotsky's method of double stimulation and highlights the changes in word meaning over a person's life, where it "plays a different role both in the reflection of reality and in the mediation of mental activity at various stages of development" (p.282). Luria states that Vygotsky's theoretical position "made the objective study of human consciousness feasible and placed it at the center of Soviet clinical and general psychology" (p.283). Furthermore (as Luria demonstrates elsewhere), in some cases of neuropsychological damage, speech becomes the basic instrument of compensation (p.284). 

Leont'ev, A.N. "On the biological and social aspects of human development: The training of auditory ability."

"This chapter was taken from A.N. Leont'ev's speech at the 16th International Congress of Psychology in Bonn, Germany, in 1960," the editors tell us (p.423). Leontiev reports on the training of auditory ability, but the interesting thing (for me) was how he positioned the subject vis-a-vis activity theory. He begins by arguing that the development of psychological functions could be passed along, not just biologically, but culturally: once society developed, "progress in the sphere of man's psychological abilities was established and transmitted from one generation to another in a unique form, one that was esoteric, that expressed itself through the phenomena of objective reality. The new form of accumulating and transmitting phylogenetic or, more precisely, historical experience emerged because of certain features which are typical of human activity—namely, its productive, creative aspect, which is most apparent in the basic human activity that work represents" (p.425). "By effecting the process of production, both material and cultural, work is crystallized or assumes final form in its product" and thus "the conversion of human activity into its product appears to be a process whereby man's activity, the activity of human qualities, is embodied in the product produced. The history of material and cultural development thus appears to be a process which, in its external objective form, gives expression to the growth of human abilities" (p.425). The use of tools and instruments "can be thought of as expressing and consolidating the gains man has made with respect to the motor functions of the hand" (p.425; cf. Engels' origin story of humanity). The cultural heritage transcends individuals. The world of objects, developed over the course of history through human activity, must be discovered by the individual in the course of relating them to the activity for which they have been developed (p.425). 

Side note: Vygotsky saw psychological tools as giving new abilities of individuals; Leontiev saw psychological and physical tools as objectifications of human ability, passed down as a heritage and activated by using them in the appropriate activity.

The "individual's relationships to the world of human objects [must] be mediated by his relationships with people, so that these relationships are included in the process of exchange. ... The child is not simply thrown into the human world; he is introduced and guided in this world by people in his environment" (p.426). Through this process, "the individual reproduces abilities which the species Homo sapiens acquired in its social and historical evolution"—what animals acquire through biological inheritance, humans acquire through learning (p.426). 

After discussing his experiments with auditory training, Leontiev concludes that the human cortex is "an organ which is capable of forming organs" (p.438, his emphasis; I'm reminded of Vygotsky's early formulation of consciousness as a reflex of reflexes). Such functional organs, once they form, "appear to manifest elementary innate abilities" such as "spatial, quantitative, or logical structures (gestalts)" (p.438—notice the interaction with Lewin and the gestalt school here). Functional organs function as a single organ; are stable; develop differently from simple chains of reflexes; and can differ even if they perform the same task (pp.438-439). Like Vygotsky in his 1931 book on higher mental functions, Leontiev argues that higher psychological functions are socially determined, but built on lower mental functions which are biologically determined (p.440). "The process of mastering or learning the world of objects and phenomena created by people during the history of society is one in which the individual develops distinctly human abilities and functions," he concludes (p.440). 

Solokov, A.N. "Studies of the speech mechanisms of thinking." 

Solokov based his studies on Vygotsky, Blonskii, and Rubinshtein, arguing that "thought is not only expressed in speech but is formed and carried out in it" (pp.531-532). In fact, abstract thinking is impossible without language—but language is not the same as thought (p.532). Drawing (again) on Pavlov's notion of the second signal system (p.533), Solokov sets up his discussion of Vygotsky's work. In mild criticism, he says that Vygotsky did not always adhere to his own materialist position, but did understand that speech is not simply a mirror reflection of thought (p.534). Blonskii, Solokov reports, criticized Vygotsky's 1934 Thinking and speaking in his own 1935 book Memory and thought, arguing that "thought and speech originate from one source"—work (p.536). Anan'ev later criticized both Vygotsky and Blonskii for not considering "the entire systems of speech activity"—including reading and writing (p.537). 

Solokov then gets into more recent investigations, noting that one can detect differences in electrical potentials of the muscles of the tongue and lower lip when silently reading; of finger extensors and the tongue when recalling events and chess figures; and of the lip and tongue when silently counting and solving math problems (pp.547-551). In fact, "when the motor aphasic clamps his tongue between his teeth, his writing instantly deteriorates" (p.563). Solokov discusses implications for rehabilitation.

In all, this book was a fascinating (and massive) overview of different parts of Soviet psychology, and more directly relevant to my current project, an overview of how Soviet psychologists framed and justified work in the cultural-historical and activity theory traditions between 1959 and 1969. If you're interested in this history, definitely pick up this book. 

Reading :: Revisionist Revolution in Vygotsky Studies

Revisionist Revolution in Vygotsky Studies: The State of the Art
Edited by Anton Yasnitsky and Rene Van der Veer

In his foreword, Alex Kozulin—himself no stranger to controversy in Vygotsky studies—warns:

The book in front of us is provocative, one may say deliberately provocative. The authors basically claim that almost all we have read about Lev Vygotsky and his theory is a result of hero worshipping resulting in the cult of Vygotsky. The aim of the authors is to debunk this cult and weed out numerous historical and textual mistakes associated with the "Vygotskian narrative." (p.xii)

 That's a pretty good summary of the thrust of the book. All but two of the chapters are authored or coauthored by Anton Yasnitsky, whose work I ran across a couple of years ago when looking up information on the so-called Vygotsky ban. (The article I found, by Fraser and Yasnitsky, is the basis for a chapter in this collection.) Yasnitsky has published like crazy since 2008 and is listed on the back of the book as an "independent scholar."

Let's mine that Kozulin foreword a little more before diving into the chapters. Kozulin provides some background on the Soviet system, noting that "for practically the entire period described in this book there were only two places in Russia where psychology could be studied—Moscow and Leningrad (St. Petersburg)." Thus "just by occupying the position of Head of the Department (or School) of Psychology at Moscow University, people like Sergei Rubinstein or Alexei Leontiev could exercise unprecedented control over the ways in which academic research was conducted and books or articles were selected for publication" (p.xiii). He adds that due to Stalinism, "from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s, Soviet psychology was indeed intellectually isolated," and that immediately after World War II, "in parallel to a supreme cult of Stalin a system of lower-level cults was created, so that in each area of life a 'great man' was selected as an emblematic example" of his domain (p.xiii). Yet Kozulin is not convinced that the Vygotsky cult, "which definitely was not created in the 1940s," is of a piece with this system. He suggests that these tendencies had deeper roots in the French centralized intellectual system that Russia adopted even before the Revolution (pp.xiii-xiv).

In any case, Kozulin cautions, Soviet psychologists had two intellectual traditions: the written corpus, available "in print and often in a form highly distorted by the authors' self-censorship," and the oral tradition, in which "much of the discussion occurred during informal seminars conducted in the living-room or kitchen of their apartments" (p.xiv). He adds: "Sometimes the gap between these two streams was so wide that one could easily imagine them taking place in two different countries" (p.xiv).

With that introduction in mind, let's get to the chapters themselves. I have typically found edited collections to be quite uneven and insufficiently focused, but this collection is a rare one: I found something of interest in every chapter. So let's give each one subheadings.

Chapter 1: The Archetype of Soviet Psychology: From the Stalinism of the 1930s to the "Stalinist science" of our time (Anton Yasnitsky)
In this first chapter, Yasnitsky provides us with the broad sweep of Soviet psychology. He begins by noting the situation in late Imperial Russia, in which three distinct disciplines dominated: 1) speculative academic psychology, 2) empirical psychology, and 3) applied psychology (pp.3-4). There were not only enormous gaps between these three, but also fragmentation within each one (p.4).

With the Revolution, things changed. As Yasnitsky notes, in the 1920s "one of the key tasks of the post-revolutionary era was utopian 'remolding of man,' the creation of a new type of people, who will master their nature and uncover the yet unknown potential of human beings. These ideas were grounded in the pervasive post-revolutionary belief in the possibility of virtually unlimited personal growth and an active, creative attitude to the world"(p.5; cf. Bauer, Trotsky, and Vygotsky's 'The Socialist Alteration of Man'). Post-revolution, Bolsheviks wanted Soviet psychology to be practical and Marxist, remolding the "old man" of capitalism into the "new man" of Communism (p.6). "Lavishly supported by the Bolshevik leadership, work was done on creating a pragmatic interdisciplinary synthesis of scientific-practical interventions and a higher-level theoretical paradigm that would encompass all human sciences and bring about a universal framework in which disciplines at different levels and from different spheres of application would work together as a complex, based on a shared methodological and philosophical foundation" (p.7). New schools sprang up in psychology as well as the other sciences. In addition, new disciplines (such as pedology and defectology) sprang up, although these tended to overlap in both subject and spokespeople (p.8).

But the end of the 1920s saw Stalin's "Great Break," which naturally affected all spheres of life in the USSR (p.7). In the 1930s, the whole rhythm of society changed, and central planning became more pronounced (p.8). "Nomadic quotes," which signaled loyalty to science sponsors and political leadership, appeared on the first pages of publications (p.9). The Stalinist model of national science emerged, "the hybrid of state, Party, and science" (p.9).

By the mid-1930s, the proliferation of "revolutionary disciplines—such as pedology and defectology—was considered redundant. The disciplinary purge of the 1930s thinned them out, with pedologists taking their work to education and defectologists retreating to medicine. "The winner in the inter-disciplinary struggle for survival" was psychology (p.10).

Yasnitky argues that we can discern two distinct generations of Soviet psychology. The first generation was born in the 1890s and educated pre-Revolution in German-style gimnazia, consequently learning at least French and German. They were intellectuals and "remained for a while in the somewhat ambiguous position of Bolshevik sympathizers" although they came from bourgeois backgrounds. Fortunately for them, in 1936 Stalin invented the category of "toiling intelligentsia," providing a legitimate stratum for these people to occupy (p.12). Subsequently, a small number from this generation dominated the higher reaches of psychology. For instance, "virtually all administrative power and control over national psychology in the 1940s was in the hands of" Rubinshtein—until he was accused of cosmopolitanism in 1949 and deposed from his supervisory and administrative positions (p.13).

The second generation was born in the 1920s-30s. They went through high school during World War II, and their education was "characterized by deprivation and continuous disruption," including poor foreign language instruction. Their graduate work happened in the late Stalinist postwar period. This generation dominated psychology through the early 2000s (p.14). Yasnitsky notes that Toulmin discerned this gap and its effects in his 1978 article on Vygotsky (p.15).

Yasnitsky argues that Soviet psychology had these characteristics:

1. Centralization and control (pp.16-18)
2. Cliquism and patronage (pp.18-19)
3. Ritualism (pp.19-21)
4. Gap between theory and practice. Different frameworks dominated at different times: Pavlov (1950s-early 60s), Leontiev's activity approach (mid 60s-early 70s), and Lomov's systemic approach (mid 70s-1980s) (p.21), but these dominant frameworks were mainly applied as nomadic quotes "mainly belonging to the rhetorical space" (p.22; cf. Cole's afterword to Luria's autobiography). 
5. Intellectual and linguistic isolation (pp.22-23)
6. Cultism and hagiographies. This tendency included portraying a small number of great figures, characterized as good or evil, and often playing the roles of martyrs or victims (p.24). 

Yasnitsky further argues that the Vygotsky "cult" is an example of the last point. In opposition, he argues for a critical revisionism in which we holistically evaluate the record (instead of characterizing Vygotsky as a Great Man); carefully reconstruct the texts; compare histories; and devictimize and deheroize Vygotsky and his followers (p.25). 

Chapter 2. Unity in diversity: The Vygotsky-Luria circle as an informal personal network of scholars (Anton Yasnitsky)

"During his lifetime Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) failed to establish himself as the leader of an institutionalized scientific school in the human sciences associated with his name" (p.27). Vygotsky failed—in making this bald statement, Yasnitsky is signaling that he won't be pulling his punches. He notes that the Vygotsky historiography began with his obituaries (by Luria and Leontiev), but the "school of Vygotsky" narrative—he says—emerged in the 1970s-80s around the time that Luria and Leontiev died, penned by their followers and students (pp.27-28). These, he says, were hagiographic—it's improper to speak ill of the dead, after all. But during perestroika, this collective hagiographic account was challenged—specifically claims that Leontiev functioned "as leader of the school of Vygotskian scholars" and that "Leontiev's 'activity theory' was a direct continuation of Vygotsky's theory of cultural development" (p.29). 

This chapter seems to be based on Yasnitsky's dissertation, which I haven't yet read. Here, he cites Anna Stetsenko's (2004) article on the Vygotsky Circle as a collaboration (p.30), then takes up the task of mapping the personal networks of Vygotsky collaborators (p.31). He notes that there is no contemporary evidence of a troika (Vygotsky, Luria, Leontiev), but plenty of evidence for a Vygotsky-Luria partnership (p.31). Vygotsky and Luria worked closely, coauthored texts, and even studied for medical exams together in fall 1931 (p.32). 

Yasnitsky breaks down the history of the Vygotsky-Luria network in the following way:

Phase 1: 1924-1927. Vygotsky moves from Gomel' to Moscow, receives his doctoral degree (without a defense—he spent much of 1925-26 in the hospital), and begins coauthoring pieces with Luria. He also works with colleagues and graduate students (pp.32-33). He also makes contacts with defectologists. He is uninterested in Luria and Leontiev's work with Luria's combined motor method (p.34). At this point, the works do not appear to add up to a unified research program; Vygotsky is searching for a research method and theoretical foundation (p.35). 

Phase 2: 1927-1931. Vygotsky and Luria form a circle, including coworkers and like-minded individuals, communicating frequently with them informally (p.35). This circle includes scholars working in defectology, clinical and medical studies, and child studies (p.36). Leontiev is included in the latter category, but is not understood as a central member of this network. 

Phase 3: 1931-1934. In this period, several members of the extended circle are working at different institutions—Moscow, Kharkov, Leningrad—coordinated by Vygotsky and Luria (p.39). The circle still includes scholars working in defectology, clinical and medical studies, and child studies, but now these scholars are spread across the three cities (p.40). In addition, these collaborators in the early 1930s include several former students of Kurt Lewin (p.40). Also in this period, Vygotsky attempted to organize the psychology department at VIEM in Moscow, but died in June 1934 before this work could be completed (p.41). 

Phase 4: 1934-1936. At this point, Luria and Leontiev both return to Moscow in 1934 to take supervisory positions (p.41). A "pile" of Vygotsky's books are published in 1934-1936 due to the efforts of his students and collaborators (p.43). Luria is still in the center of the circle (p.42). 

Phase 5: 1936-1941. In this phase, the July 4, 1936 Pedology Decree launched a number of other criticisms, including Rudneva's January 1937 condemnation of Vygotsky and some of his collaborators—Luria and Leontiev are named. Based on fragmentary evidence, Yasnitsky believes that Luria and Leontiev both quit their jobs in 1936-1937 (p.46). Luria may have relied on his father's connections as well as his own connections—including someone with whom he had collaborated during his criminal studies of the 1920s. Leontiev wrote a critique of Vygotsky that he probably delivered in 1937. Through these actions and other connections, they weathered the criticism and in 1939 they gained supervisory positions in Moscow and Leningrad (p.46). "It is clear that from the end of the 1930s onward only those individuals who thoroughly understood the real meaning of Soviet science policy and the internal mechanics of decision-making in the country could make scientific careers in the Soviet Union" (p.47). 

Leontiev defends his dissertation in 1940; Rubinstein is on the committee (p.47). Luria joins the Communist Party in 1943 and Leontiev follows in 1948. And the two form the new center of their own network (p.48). 

Chapter 3. Deconstructing Vygotsky's victimization narrative: A re-examination of the "Stalinist suppression" of Vygotskian theory (Jennifer Fraser and Anton Yasnitsky)

This chapter is a version of Fraser and Yasnitsky's article. Here, they discuss the frequently told story of a ban on Vygotsky's work from 1936-1956—a story that is repeated by Jerome Bruner in his foreword to 1962's Thought and language (p.51), Wertsch's 1985 The social formation of mind (p.53), and Joravsky's 1987 article (pp.53-54). None of these are well sourced. The authors suggest that the story comes not from the written scholarship but from the oral tradition surrounding Vygotsky, an oral tradition associated with the inner circle of Vygotskians (p.55). 

The authors give us many reasons to doubt a "Vygotsky ban" beyond the lack of documentation. After Trotsky was exiled in 1929, he was put under a publication ban in 1932; but no such ban or mention by Stalin has been documented for Vygotsky (p.59). 

Perhaps a ban had to do with the fact that Vygotsky cited Trotsky a lot in the mid-1920s, before he was exiled? In later reprintings of Vygotsky's works, censors often simply deleted the quotation marks around these passages or deleted the cites themselves; sometimes they withheld the publications themselves (p.61). But this didn't seem to constitute a ban per se.

Perhaps it had to do with Vygotsky's work in pedology, a field that was banned in 1936? Stalin supposedly found that his son had been judged mentally deficient by a pedologist—and 14% of 7-13 year olds in Leningrad were held back a year in 1935-1936 (p.64). Furthermore, pedology was judged incompatible with the emerging New Soviet Man due to its claims of hereditary and environmental causes (p.64). But after the ban, pedologists just flowed to the field of pedological practices (p.65). Still, pedological books were under an implied ban, and Vygotsky had written pedology textbooks (p.65).

Yet "the late 1930s saw Vygotsky venerated within the Soviet Union"—"his name and theories were referenced (and celebrated) at various times within influential texts during the period 1936-55" (p.65).

Was there a ban? Fraser and Yasnitsky suggest that perhaps there was a de facto ban, but not on the part of the USSR. They note that a multi-volume collection of Vygotsky's works came out in 1956 due to the efforts of his family, not his associates; Luria and Leontiev did not make efforts to have his works republished; and the collected works of Vygotsky did not come out until after their deaths (pp.68-69). They cite Zinchenko's claim that "Leontiev kept deliberately finding numerous excuses for not writing" the introductory chapter required by the first volume (p.69)!

This story is great gossip and works well with Kozulin's claim of a Leontiev-Vygotsky rift. But it seems like thin evidence, and I'd treat it with caution.

Chapter 4. Vygotsky the published: Who wrote Vygotsky and what Vygotsky actually wrote (Rene van der Veer and Anton Yasnitsky)
Here, the authors put Vygotsky's works in context. Almost half of them were not scholarly or substantial (p.78). Even Thinking and speech is more of a compilation than a monograph—the earliest part of the book was written in 1928, with most of the rest being written in 1934. Vygotsky had a period of self-criticism in between! (pp.79-80). They provide a useful table (p.80) breaking down the chapters, their authorship dates, and their original publication dates. (The chapters include a book review; a portion of an undergraduate textbook; and three book introductions.)

Which publications were most important to Vygotsky? They attempt to find out by looking at three separate documents that Vygotsky put together. (One was for a job interview) (pp.81-82). They also looked at his private correspondence (pp.83-84). Interestingly, this correspondence suggests that Vygotsky planned to publish Studies on the psychology of behavior in December 1927; by July 1929, he was not enthusiastic about the project (p.84). In fact, he underwent a deep crisis in 1929, realizing that some foundational concepts were no longer satisfactory (p.85). By the end of 1932, he lamented that "'we focused attention on the sign (on the tool) to the detriment of the operation with it'" (quoted on p.86). From 1932-1934, Vygotsky studied pathology in medical settings (p.87).

The authors also look at Vygotsky's abandoned works, including his manuscript on the crisis in psychology. Most of the ideas in this manuscript were published in other publications during his lifetime (p.91).

So what were Vygotsky's most important works? The authors list:

1. The psychology of art (his unpublished 1925-26 dissertation)
2. Pedagogical psychology (his 1926 textbook)
3. The pedology of school age (his 1928 textbook)
4. Imagination and creativity in children (a 1930 popular booklet)
5. Studies on the history of behavior (1930, written with Luria)
6. Pedology of the adolescent (his textbook in three volumes: 1929, 1930, 1931)

The authors note that four of these and partially a fifth are popular science books, written for the money—including the book he coauthored with Luria. They also might illustrate Vygotsky's instrumental period, since they were mainly written before 1930 (p.92). The authors suggest supplementing this list with

1. Thinking and speech (1934)
2. Foundations of pedology (his 1934/5 textbook)
3. Mental development of children in the process of learning and instruction (1935)
4. The mentally retarded child (1935)

Chapter 5. Vygotsky the unpublished: An overview of the personal archive (1912-1934) (Ekaterina Zavershneva)

This is one of the only two chapters in this collection that Yasnitsky did not author or coauthor. Here, the author examines Vygotsky's personal archives: "the notebooks, scientific diaries, and scattered notes, which until the early 2000s remained practically untouched" (p.94). She was able to identify several unpublished manuscripts as well as reconstruct the full, uncensored manuscript on the crisis in psychology (Vygotsky cited Trotsky, Bukharin, and Radek) (p.95). 

The entire chapter is worth reading, but I'll focus on a few things. One is that in 1933-34 Vygotsky created the concept of the cooperation of nature and culture, which precludes the notion of unlimited development that he had embraced in 1929-30 (p.105). Another is two letters from Kornilov, from 1925 and 1926. The 1925 letter praises Vygotsky's dissertation and suggesting that they forego a public defense of it due to Vygotsky's stay in the hospital (pp.106-107). 

Zavershneva notes that in 1930, Vygotsky advanced the system principle; in 1932, this principle led to "the appearance of a new theory of consciousness as a dynamic semantic system" (p.107). Based on this new theory, Vygotsky submitted himself and his colleagues to criticism, and along the way, intensified polemic with Leontiev (p.107). He complained that they had focused too much on the sign (tool) and not enough on the development of the operation with the sign (p.112). He also rejected Leontiev's criticism that his focus was just on speech (p.112). 

They did not agree in their theoretical assessment of the processes involved in the transition from speech to thought. ... Speech, [Vygotsky] said, participates as actively in this transition as thought itself; we should not present it as a picture, a cast, a sort of death-mask made of the living process of thinking. The role of speech is not just to fixate the thought or what remained of it after the translation of the thought into a tangible form; the word is not just the main carrier of the thought, its canvas, but also the carrier of consciousness as a whole. Leontiev insisted on the investigation of the practical action as the central theme, but Vygotsky did not agree: the dynamics of the action derive from the dynamics of meaning and in itself, separate from the 'peak' dimension of meanings, cannot be analyzed. (p.112)

Zavershneva adds that "the polemic between them became increasingly pungent," e.g. in an October 1932 notebook (p.112). "We will not analyze this polemic in any detail, but it remains a fact that Leontiev from the early 1930s distanced himself from the study of consciousness as proposed by Vygotsky, although he continued participating in the work of the Vygotsky-Luria extended group, carried out experiments, and participated in the discussion during their symposia" (pp.112-113).

In 1932, Leontiev characterizes Vygotsky as claiming that all psychology was reduced to word meaning (according to his oral biography, which Zavershneva cites; unfortunately for me, it's in Russian) (p.114).

Again, there's plenty more in this chapter, but let's leave it here for now.

Chapter 6. "The way to freedom": Vygotsky in 1932 (Ekaterina Zavershneva)
Zavershneva authors a second chapter, again drawing from her study of Vygotsky's archives. Here, she dives into "one notebook, dated October 1932, [which] stands out because it is one of the clearest and most accessible documents in the archive" (p.127).

The text consists of three parts: (1) the plan for the unwritten book On the question of the study of consciousness; (2) notes about the psychophysical problem; and (3) propositions for talks by Vygotsky's co-workers Ivan Solov'ev and Aleksei Leontiev, presumably written during an internal conference for close collaborators. In general we may say that the text marks the turn toward a new psychological theory—the theory of consciousness as a dynamic semantic system—and also shows the emerging discrepancy between the views of Vygotsky and Leontiev. (p.127)

In 1930, Vygotsky introduced the systemic structure of consciousness; in 1932, he introduced the principle of the systemic structure "and the analysis of interfunctional connections lost its leading role to the semic analysis of consciousness" (p.128). "It is remarkable that below the title of the earliest draft of the plan Vygotsky wrote the names of himself, Leontiev, and Luria. Apparently, the idea was to include them as co-authors and Vygotsky changed his mind" (p.128).

Just an aside here: Much of what I've seen about a Vygotsky-Leontiev split has tended to characterize Leontiev as errant or even as personally betraying Vygotsky. But (a) people can have disagreements, (b) it seems awfully presumptuous for Vygotsky to outline a book and put his coauthors' names on it without asking them, and (c) Leontiev had just seen Vygotsky and Luria's 1930 book criticized for being insufficiently Marxist and very well might have wanted to avoid following their path too closely!

Back to the notebook. Vygotsky evidently planned to include the famed mnemonist Shereshevskii as a case study in the book (Shereshevskii would later appear in Luria's Mind of a mnemonist) (p.129). Vygotsky also planned to discuss schizophrenia, in which speech splits from other psychological functions and the person loses the ability to verbally interact with the self—"a perfect example of the loss of the semantic structure of consciousness" (p.129).

"In contrast to his work from the 'instrumental period' of the 1920s, with its zeal for social 'reforging' and the creation of a 'new man,' Vygotsky's work from the 1930s was focused on the study of the subject's inner world. ... For him the mechanisms of social mediation were not important in themselves; rather they contained the essence of man: they served as the ladder toward the new 'peak' psychology" (p.132). Young Vygotsky had been focused on the birth of the "new man", and Zavershneva reads this focus not as following Trotsky so much as following the Zeitgeist (pp.132-133).

Skipping a bit: Vygotsky believed that "Leontiev underestimated the higher processes and showed a low level of theoretical generalization" (pp.138-139). Vygotsky believed that "the transitions between the cognizing and the practical intellect" had to be studied as part of the study of consciousness. "As soon as we understand the dynamics of meanings, we will understand all the rest as effects that follow from a cause and vice versa; separating the action from the dimension of meanings, we lose the meaning of the action, its goal-directed nature, etc." (Zavershneva's paraphrase, p.139). Vygotsky claimed that Leontiev "lacked discipline, lost the focus of the research, and ignored the systemic principle"—he was backsliding, returning to the functional analysis that Vygotsky had left behind in 1930 (p.139).

But Leontiev's approach allowed him to make his career between 1930-1950. Zavershneva archly notes that except for the 1956 collection, Vygotsky's works were not made available until after Leontiev's death (p.139).

Chapter 7. Translating Vygotsky: Some problems of transnational Vygotskian science (Rene van der Veer and Anton Yasnitsky)
Van der Veer's sometime collaborator Jaan Valsiner has examined problems in English translations of Vygotsky, as has Nikolai Veresov. Here, the authors review some of these problems as well as adding others.

Interestingly, they point out that Leontiev in 1954 was concerned about the rehabilitation of Vygotsky, so he approached a French scholar about publishing some of Vygotsky's articles in French—a way to speed up publication at home. The effort did not pay off, but a volume of Vygotsky's works was published in Russian in 1956 (p.146). In fact, the authors include an anecdote in which prominent Soviet psychologists (including Leontiev and Luria) gave an interview to a French journalist to get their message out, then corrected "mistakes" in Russian (p.148).

The authors then turn to the question of translation errors. They describe six categories:

1. inaccuracies
2. suppression of terms or passages
3. suppression of names
4. unidentified or suppressed citations
5. insertions
6. multiple retranslations (p.162)

Under unidentified/suppressed citations, the authors note citations of Trotsky (p.167).

Under multiple retranslations, the authors tell a fascinating and unsettling story. In the late 1960s/early 1970s, Luria gave Michael Cole a typewritten English translation of "Tool and sign," which he and Vygotsky had authored sometime around 1930. Cole created a "cut-and-paste" version of it for Mind in Society (1978).  In 1984, an "apparently complete version" came out in Russian. In 1994, Luria's typewritten English translation was published in The Vygotsky Reader. But the editors, Van der Veer & Valsiner, compared the English and Russian versions and discovered that the Russian version "missed several important pieces (such as illustrations) but was nevertheless longer," and "it contained a number of non-verbatim—but semantically identical—repetitions of text fragments! The editors referred to rumors that the Russian text, as strange as might look, was in fact translated from English" (p.169, my emphasis).

But it gets stranger. In 2005, a former student of Luria claimed that he had participated in a "benign forgery" of the text (p.169). According to him, in the late 1960s, Luria "invited him to participate in the preparation of the collected works of Vygotsky." Luria explained that they couldn't find Vygotsky's original manuscript. Would he translate this English version? "Apparently, this English translation survived and was subsequently handed from Luria to Cole, and then, by the latter, to Van der Veer and Valsiner" (p.170). But the authors argue that the repetitions of passages were due to a second translator who translated parts of the same passages. Then the whole thing was put together by the editor of the Russian Vygotsky collection (p.170).

One final twist. In 1999, the final volume of the six-volume Vygotsky collection in English was published. In it was "Tool and sign," which had been translated from the Russian text that in turn had been translated from the English text that Luria had presumably prepared from the original manuscript (p.170).

Chapter 8. Did Uzbeks have illusions? The Luria-Koffka controversy of 1932 (Eli Lamdan and Anton Yasnitsky)
Famously, Luria sent Vygotsky a telegram during his expedition to Central Asia, reporting on his psychological testing: "The Uzbeks have no illusions!" Supposedly this was a dangerous telegram. Yet, the authors note, there is no documentary proof that such a telegram existed—it's a good story, but an undocumented one (p.175).

The story also suggests that the study was suppressed for political reasons until the early 1970s, when Luria took the manuscript out of a drawer and published it (p.176). Yet, the authors suggest, there may have been much more to this story. They note that Luria published an English-language account of the expedition in 1934, apparently coauthored by an uncredited Kurt Koffka (p.176). This manuscript suggests that Koffka came away with an entirely different reading (p.177). Koffka essentially argued that Uzbeks who did not regard the test as a test of their abilities saw the illusions; those who were suspicious looked at the patterns longer before making their judgments (p.187). Based on Vygotsky and Luria's correspondence, they learned of Koffka's conclusions immediately once his article was published (p.187).

Luria and Vygotsky evidently saw the findings as proof that the Uzbeks were being transformed into the New Men of the Soviet state, despite their limitations (p.191). But in a Soviet Union trying to integrate its ethnic minorities, the findings suggested chauvinism—primitive people being lifted by more advanced ones (p.191). More than that, the propagandist "victory" of the Soviet experiment, declared at the XVII Congress of the Party in January/February 1934, killed hopes of the publication (p.193).

Why? The authors argue that Luria and Vygotsky had a vulgar Marxist understanding in which the relations of production determine psychological makeup (p.194). That is, they embraced economic determinism—which became seriously out of tune with the understanding of the Party (p.195).

One other question: Why were Uzbeks suspicious? We could read between the lines in Luria's own account of the expedition, but the authors add that the region had experienced rebellions and unrest shortly before Luria's expedition and "the arrival of a large group of Soviet officials and international researchers accompanied by a convoy of secret police forces was perceived as an utterly alarming and even potentially life-threatening experience by the local populations" (p.199). Luria seemed oblivious to the potential effects on his research, which sounds like Luria, all right.

Chapter 9. A transnational history of "the beginning of a beautiful friendship" The birth of the cultural-historical Gestalt psychology of Alexander Luria, Kurt Lewin, Lev Vygotsky, and others (Anton Yasnitsky)
Here, Yasnitsky notes the many connections between the Vygotsky-Luria Circle and Kurt Lewin, the Gestalt psychologist. Lewin influenced Vygotsky during his last period (p.203) and many of Lewin's students went on to study with Vygotsky, Luria, and Leontiev.

The most startling claim here, unfortunately quite underdeveloped, is that "the 'Vygotskian-Lewinian' trend in Soviet psychology—although preserved in some very general sense—was considerably mutated and transformed" and "The mutant and hybrid that emerged as a result of all these transformations" was ... activity theory (p.225).

There's one more chapter, the Epilogue, but let's skip it. I do want to point out Appendix A, a bibliography of all Vygotsky's known published works.

So—that's a long review. But it could have been much longer. This book was fascinating, thought-provoking, and worth mining if you're interested in Vygotsky or his colleagues. As noted, I am still cautious of some of its claims. And reading parts, especially the chapters on the archives, has led me to think about the Vygotsky-Leontiev relationship in directions that the authors may not have expected. But overall, I highly recommend it.

Reading :: Russian Psychology

Russian Psychology: A Critical History
By David Joravsky

In my recent readings on Soviet psychology, I kept seeing references to this 1989 book by historian David Joravsky, so I finally picked it up. It's 474 pages, not including footnotes. Fortunately, Joravsky has a wry and cynical writing style that keeps things interesting.

At the time of writing, the USSR was in its death throes (it collapsed just two years later), and Soviet writers were still portraying Soviet psychology as outstripping the West. Joravsky, in contrast, doesn't pull his punches. In the Preface, he levels the charge that in the early 1930s, Soviet orthodoxy forced diverse psychologists to "fuse into one, new, distinctively Soviet, truly Marxist psychology, which could be concretely described only in a negative way: it would not be like any of the existing schools, which were hopelessly 'bougeouis'." And

Soviet psychologists shrank to fit within that framework, leaving grand theory to official ideologists and concentrating on empirical studies that might not be objectionable to the officials. Vygotsky's disciples retreated to the mental effects of brain damage and to child development studies rather like Piaget's, though constrained to deny the similarity. Their claim of a unique 'historico-cultural' approach was and remains an empty slogan. They could not give it substance without entering minefields of invidious comparisons between group mentalities, such as 'primitive' v. 'civilized,' or 'lesser' nationalities v. 'great' ones. (p.xvi)

Further, he notes that when the Bolsheviks "forcibly advanced workers and peasants into positions of authority ... issues of intellectual substance were entangled with lines of authority and opposition, within a political culture that tended more and more toward the equation of intellectual rectitude with place in the hierarchy of power" (p.xviii).

With that marker set, let's venture into the book itself. Joravsky begins with a general discussion of psychological science and ideologies (Ch.1) and social science and ideologies (Ch.2) before getting into the history of psychology in Russia, which begins pre-Revolution with Sechenov (Ch.3). Rather than reviewing the entire discussion, I'll focus on points related to the history of activity theory.

For instance, Joravsky discusses how Chelpanov, who organized a graduate program in psychology at Moscow University, was later characterized by Stalinists as an "idealist"—a misleading label, since Chelpanov was eclectic and tolerated diverse ontologies and approaches (pp.108-109). His graduate student Kornilov, the son of a provincial bookkeeper who became a village teacher before entering his undergraduate studies (1905) and graduate studies (1910; see p.113), would in 1923 depose him as director of the Institute of Experimental Psychology (p.224). (Note: Kornilov was the same age as Stalin and Trotsky; p.222.)

In the early 1920s, Chelpanov's eclecticism was tolerated—in fact, Freud and Piaget were translated and discussed frequently throughout the early 1920s, with authors (such as Luria) exploring how to harmonize them with Marxism (p.217). But by the late 1920s, "genuine discussion of Freudianism was swamped by one-sided denunciations," and by the mid-1930s, other Western psychologists (such as Piaget) got the same treatment (p.217).

The 1923 congress of psychoneurologists was a pivotal point. At this congress, Kornilov appealed for a Marxist psychology; Chelpanov objected in print. In the fallout, Chelpanov was dismissed from the directorship, replaced by Kornilov (p.224). Recounting the second congress in 1924, Red Virgin Soil praised "venerable scientists such as Bechterev, who were pictured as trying sincerely to accommodate their theories with Marxism, and ... young scientists on the way to dialectical materialism, even if they were hesitating to make the decisive commitment. L.S. Vygotsky was offered as the prime example of that young, interested but hesitant type" (p.225). Chelpanov was meanwhile "pictured as the chief 'idealist' opponent of Marxism in psychology" (p.225).

Ironically, Kornilov, like Chelpanov, was an eclecticist (p.229). Vygotsky regarded Kornilov's dream of a synthetic Marxist psychology as being "at odds with messy history" (p.229).

Meanwhile, the philosophical debate between mechanists and dialecticians raged through the 1920s. As Joravsky sums it up: "In the 1920s the ideological establishment turned against positivist versions of Marxism, in favor of a neo-Hegelian version, and then turned against it too" (p.230). The Deborinites (dialecticians) ignored both Kornilov and Vygotsky, and in fact "had nothing substantial to say about any school of psychology" (p.232). This gave psychologists some maneuvering room. Joravsky notes that in Vygotsky and Luria's book outlining their historio-cultural approach to psychology, they "borrowed heavily and quite respectfully from such Western authorities as Piaget and Freud, showing that the Westerners' discoveries blended nicely with a much smaller amount of findings by Soviet psychologists, and with a very light dusting of references to Marx and Engels" (p.233). The authors "still had an irenic attitude toward 'bougeois' psychologists," and "to the furious Stalinists of the 1930s that evidence of professional legitimacy was evidence of pseudo-Marxism" (p.233).

Joravsky notes that Freud's "claim of a unified vision was too obviously in competition" with that of the "Bolshevik ideological bureaucracy"—even though Marxist thinkers such as Vygotsky and Luria "tried to turn the competition into complementarity" (p.235).

But, contra Joravsky, note that in 1927 Vygotsky denigrated Luria's use of Freud. This is one of the question marks in Joravsky's book for me. The other is just a few pages later, when he attributes Freudianism: A Critical Sketch to Bakhtin (p.238)—it was published under Voloshinov's name—and notes in a footnote that "Bakhtin published some of his work under that name" (p.505). Well, no: Voloshinov was a real person, a member of the Bakhtin Circle. Many have claimed that Bakhtin ghostwrote the books of Voloshinov and Medvedev, a claim that Bakhtin neither confirmed nor denied in the 1970s. (Bakhtin, Voloshinov, and Medvedev published four books in 1927-1929.)

Back to the history. Joravsky notes Luria's winding journey, beginning in studies of personality and ending in the safe area of defectology (p.246), and points out how Luria's autobiography erases his Jewishness (p.247)—an ethnic background that endangered his career due to Russian prejudices.

Luria's autobiography is unquestionably accurate in noting that his research interests were shaped for fifty years by 'the central themes that guided my initial efforts' during the Civil War. He merely neglects to specify one of those 'central themes': political caution, a scientist's effort to avoid ideological conflict, and a consequent retreat from field after field of research interests as ideological authorities extended their interest to and in them. (p.248)

Later Joravsky notes that Luria followed a lifelong pattern established in the 1930s:

He went on with his autonomous work in neuropsychology to the extent that he could do so in submissive cooperation with Stalinist authorities. He was closer than he imagined to the mentality of a peasant—not the illiterate type who sharply distinguished between his tsar and the tsar of a superior people; the type with enough understanding of superior people to tell what follows from their words. (p.369) 

Joravsky also takes up Vygotsky. His account of Vygotsky's early life (p.255) is vague and short—recall that this book was published in 1989, before many of the biographies reviewed on this blog. Vygotsky debuted on the broader psychological stage in 1924 at the Second Psychoneurological Congress (p.259 — recall that Chelpanov was replaced by Kornilov shortly after the first Congress in 1923). Here, Vygotsky used Marx's passage on the spider and the architect to argue that psychological reductionism was not required by Marxism (p.259). As Joravsky notes, Luria and others were already using subjective methods, but Vygotsky showed them how to defend these methods and justify their disagreements with reflexology (p.261). Perhaps, Joravsky says, Kornilov deserves credit for recognizing Vygotsky's rhetorical abilities (p.261). Vygotsky also had this advantage: "Vygotsky was the only one [of the psychologists with whom he worked] who had thoroughly absorbed Marxism" (p.261). Yet his talents also included prevarication:

Vygotsky went further than mere withholding of troublesome detail. He prevaricated on occasion. It is startling to compare his semi-private writing on 'the psychological crisis' with the rah-rah review of Soviet psychology that he published in a 1928 volume celebrating the social science during the first decade of Soviet power. (p.265)

Joravsky goes on to criticize Vygotsky's work:

When he came to cognitive psychology, he did preliminary theorizing far more than experimental research. And when he came to preach 'historico-cultural' psychology, his theorizing was quite thin and derivative. He ostentatiously put the 'historico-cultural' slogan at the center of his program for psychology, yet he worked at the subject only belatedly and briefly. His first published venture was little more than a survey that he and Luria brought out in 1930, mostly reviewing theories of Western psychologists: Studies in the History of Behavior: Ape, Primitive, Child. Stalinists immediately attacked the scheme of behavioral evolution that it presented as 'essentially bourgeois.' Vygotsky's defensive and aggressive responses—restricting his freewheeling thought, attacking 'bourgeois' elements in Piaget—belong to the Stalinist 1930s. The point here, respecting the 1920s, is that even then, in a relatively liberal atmosphere, Vygotsky resembled most other Soviet psychologists in his paradoxical combination of insistence that social psychology be the center of the discipline and his evasion of serious work at the center. Even this extraordinarily venturesome thinker tended to stand clear of an area charged with ideological and political passion, while solemnly calling on Soviet psychologists to make it their focus. (pp.266-267)

Indeed, Vygotsky was interested in developing Marxism as a general methodology and philosophy of science (p.361) and seemed most interested in "an awkward layering of metapsychology over an authoritarian pragmatism" (p.363).

Re the attacks on Vygotsky and Luria's 1930 book: in June 1931, the "Institute's party cell" rebuked "'the "apolitical culturist" ... psychology of Vygotsky and Luria" as well as the reflexologies of Kornilov and Bekhterev (p.358). Vygotsky and Luria's 1931-1932 study of Uzbekis was similarly received poorly, and for similar reasons: it was read as applying primitive or childish qualities to Soviet peoples (pp.364-367). Stalinism could not tolerate "anything like a serious cultural-historical approach to psychology"—although studies of children and disturbed adults were tolerable (p.367). By 1932, Vygotsky's optimism was gone; he couldn't even quote Trotsky and Kautsky, since those names were no longer to be uttered positively (p.364). Similarly, "Luria retreated from historico-cultural psychology to intense study of mental disorder in brain-damaged patients" (p.368); he also adopted the Stalinist style of writing after 1931 (p.369). Joravsky notes with astonishment that when Luria finally published the Uzbeki study, forty years later, "he retained the swagger of the Stalinist style" and "stolidly ignored the forty-year delay" (p.369—but I personally think that this retention is due to Luria simply publishing the manuscript without revision). Finally, Leontiev focused on child development and "avoided other possibilities of historico-cultural inquiry" (p.369).

By 1938, Vygotsky was dead, his nascent field of pedology had been denounced (see p.347), and Stalin had published "his celebrated essay on dialectical and historical materialism... [which was] too inane for any use but tub-thumping celebration of the great author" (p.326). "Developing almost entirely as a part of pedagogy, psychology became a purely descriptive science" (p.353).

Joravsky's account goes on from there, but let's call a halt. In terms of the cultural-historical school, Joravsky mainly notes Luria's tactics for survival and Rubinshtein's distaste for the school.

Overall, I did find this book to be rewarding, but flawed. Joravsky's cynicism is healthy, but sometimes I think it leads him to undervalue or superficially evaluate the works of the cultural-historical school. And the two question marks, indicated above, undermine my faith in some of the other facts Joravsky recounts. I'll use this book, but with some caution. If you're interested in the history of Soviet psychology, I certainly recommend reading it.