Reading :: A History of Marxist Psychology

A History of Marxist Psychology: The Golden Age of Soviet Science
Edited by Anton Yasnitsky

Anton Yasnitsky has edited yet another collection on Soviet-era psychology. Unlike his previous offerings, this one is not specifically Vygotsky-centered, nor is it as aggressively revisionist—although you'll still find challenges to received wisdom. Instead, these chapters tend to wander more widely, examining the  works by Leontiev and Rubinsten, the history of Soviet psychiatry and pedology, Luria's powerbroking, and the uptake of Soviet psychology in contemporary Brazil. 

Let's start with Radzikhovskii's "Reminiscence about Future Marxist Psychology," in which the author tells the story of how he cam to ghostwrite A.N. Leontiev's introduction to Vygotsky's Collected Works. According to the author, he was working under Davydov at the time, was asked to write the introduction, and was mildly surprised when the introduction was published under Leontiev's name in 1982 (pp.26-27). The explanation he got was that only Leontiev, the most devout student of Vygotsky, could have written this introductory chapter, but he was not feeling well. "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 ... as the whole situation was perceived as absolutely normal by all sides involved, and totally fitting the dominant scientific ethos in Soviet scientific practice at the time" (p.27). In fact, "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" (p.27). Yet he later learned from Zinchenko's retrospective writings that Leontiev had consistently delayed the project, with one roadblock being that the collection could not go out without his introductory chapter, a chapter he consistently delayed writing (p.28)! 

Radzikhovskii offers this anecdote partly to explain the way psychology worked in the Soviet Union in the 1980s and how it developed in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union (p.28). Remarkably, he says, Marxist sources were de rigeur in 1980s psychology and then disappeared almost completely in the 1990s (p.29). This phenomenon, he says, is easily explained: "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 to the real people in the concrete settings of the their [sic] socialist social environment in the Soviet Union" (p.29). Thus, during perestroika, the main goal became to make psychology "accountable for and capable of solving the problems of the real individuals ... in their effort to solve their mundane problems" (p.29). However, one one hand, "all Soviet grand psychological theories and lesser-scale projects were invariably referred to as 'Marxist' ones," and on the other, revising these fundamental theories would be understood as subversive, and "thus, the revision of the Marxist fundamentals was not apparently an option. It was way easier—and way more pleasant and self-satisfying to the Soviet scholars in the times of the rapidly disintegrating state and official ideology—to denounce any Marxism altogether. This was triumphantly accomplished roughly by the end of the decade of the 1980s" (p.30). 

Radzikhovskii turns to Leontiev's troubled relationship to Vygotsky's legacy, noting that Leontiev's notion of psychological activity is based on the Marxist socioeconomic notion of labor (p.48). "From this standpoint, a description of psychological processes as those involved in activity means, therefore, to deprive psychology of its genuinely psychological meaning and to establish a very different field of knowledge that might be referred to as 'praxeology' or the 'science of activity'. When I first expressed this idea in Russian more than 30 years ago (Radzikhovskii, 1988) I could have hardly anticipated how true it would eventually turn out at the end of the second decade of the 21st century" —and here, he cites my own chapter reviewing activity theory's march from psychology to de facto sociology (p.48). 

Reviewing Bozhovich's criticism of Leontiev, he affirms that "First, Leontiev's writings abound with quasi-Marxist abstract speculations, 'the arguments of istmat [historical materialism]', instead of systematic psychological theoretical work," and second, "Leontiev's excessive istmat speculations, in her [Bozhovich's] view, reflected the fundamental deficiency of well-developed distinct methodology of scientific research and the studies of 'psychological activity' conducted on its basis" (p.49). 

In the second chapter, "Sergei Rubinstein as the Founder of Soviet Marxist Psychology," Anton Yasnitsky strongly argues that "Sergei Rubsinstein (1889-1960) was definitely and undeniably the founder of Soviet Marxist psychology" (p.58). That is, "the unified project of the Soviet Marxist psychology emerged in Rubinstein's works and was forever strongly associated with his name and contribution"—yet "this gigantic figure and the creator of Soviet psychological Marxism is virtually unknown in the West to this very day," with few of his works translated into English and a few more into German (p.59). Yasnitsky begins to rectify this situation with this chapter, which overviews Rubinstein's life and scholarly works.

Gregory Dufaud's chapter overviews the overlooked history of psychiatry in the USSR, while Andy Byford does the same with the occupation of pedology. In the latter chapter, Byford discusses how the entirety of pedology's leadership was accused of deviation, halting the mobilization of pedological research and making it an occupation rather than a science from 1931-on (p.117). By 1935, a number of politically sensitive incidents led to commissions, leading to the infamous 1936 decree—in which the role of pedology was demonized, but the individuals themselves were simply reassigned (p.123). 

Gisele Toassa and coauthors address the history of psychology and Marxism in 1970s Brazil, discussing how liberation theology led to Freire's contributions, which in turn led to liberation psychology (p.134). By 1975, copies of Vygotsky's works made their way from Italy, followed closely by Bakhtin's (p.135). 

In the chapter "Alexander Luria: Marxist Psychologist and Transnational Scientific Broker," Alexandre Metraux provides a personal account of how he interacted with Luria and saw Luria interacting with other scientific elite—and in doing so, I think, answers Yasnitsky's question of why the Vygotsky school is so much more well known than Rubinstein. Among other things, Metraux traces the origins of Luria's autobiography and notes some of the details that Luria fudged. He also discusses how Luria aggressively promoted Vygotsky's work, partly because he genuinely wanted to honor Vygotsky, but also "in order to consolidate his own approach (and that of those of his colleagues who referred to Vygotsky without being among the very close followers) against other, competing approaches of Soviet psychologists" (p.171). That is, "Luria also used the 'posthumous Vygotsky' as a significant instrument in his own interest," just as (in Luria's telling) Vygotsky used his circle as instruments (p.171). In one example, Luria translated his and Leontiev's preface to Vygotsky's book in German so that East German readers—who generally could not read Russian, yet felt the strong impact of Soviet approaches to psychology—would see Vygotsky as "the most significant and still highly relevant figure of Soviet psychology or even as the leading Marxist psychologist of the USSR" (p.172). Through such efforts of Vygotsky promotion in the West, Luria and Leontiev could advocate for their own research agenda as well as a way to defend against Pavlovians at home (p.173). 

Sometimes this elevation of Vygotsky "looks like having bordered on obsession," as when Luria agreed to write an autobiographical chapter, then tried to include a biography of Vygotsky in it (p.174). Interestingly, Luria's autobiography The Making of Mind was composed in English, growing from an interview he gave to a director of scientific films (p.176). Mike Cole wrote the epilogue to that autobiography, which noted the difficulties Luria faced in the 1930s-1950s. Obviously the Soviet copyright agency did not approve of the epilogue, although it approved of the core manuscript, and it asked Zinchenko to intercede (p.184). 

There are other chapters, well worth reading as well, but I'll stop here. This volume does a nice job of selecting many authors who actually lived these events and are able to draw on deep experience to discuss them. If you're interested in Soviet psychology, activity theory, Vygotsky, Luria, or just how ideas are picked up and travel, definitely take a look.