Abstract
Our interpretive essay situates the life and thought of the famed psychologist-educator, Lev S. Vygotsky within the confines of the frequently deadly political and ideological struggles taking place in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s. We analyze from a psychological point of view Vygotsky's rise and fall in a situation of revolutionary social change, “class struggle,” “class hatred,” ideological warfare, deliberately induced mass starvation, and the development of a totalitarian state based on the systematic use of terror. Whereas most Western psychologists have given minimal attention to the political and educational purposes for which Vygotsky's psychology was created, we emphasize that his Marxist orientation had a central influence both on his scientific preoccupations and on the course of his life. His revolutionary identity was anchored in a highly dynamic community with shared goals possessing a semi-sacred quality. Consequently, he experienced his later exclusion from this community as a kind of social and spiritual death.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Bühler, K. (1927). Die Krise der Psychologie [The crisis of psychology]. Jena, Germany
Cole, M., & Scribner, S. (1974). Culture and thought: A psychosocial introduction. New York: Wiley.
Conquest, R. (1986). The harvest of sorrow. Soviet collectivization and the terror-famine. New York: Oxford University Press.
Crossman, R.H.S. (Ed.). (1950). The god that failed. Six studies in Communism. London: Hamilton.
Daniels, H. (Ed.). (1996). An introduction to Vygotsky. London: Routledge.
Davydov, V. (1981). The category of activity and mental reflection in the theory of A.N. Leontiev. Psychology, 21, 50–76.
Durkheim, E. (1926). Elementary forms of religious life (transl. by J.W. Swain). New York: Macmillan.
Figes, O. (1996). A people's tragedy: A history of the Russian revolution. New York: Viking.
Getzler, I. (1967). Martov: A political biography of a Russian social democrat. Cambridge University Press.
Hsu, F.L.K. (1981). Americans and Chinese: Passage to differences (3rd ed.). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.
Ivanov, V.V. (1968). Introduction. In L.S. Vygotsky, Psikhologia iskusstva [The psychology of art]. Moscow: Iskusstvo.
Ivic, I. (1989). Profiles of educators: Lev S. Vygotsky (1896–1934). Prospects XIX, 3, 427–36.
Joravsky, D. (1989). Russian psychology: A critical history. New York: Basil Blackwell.
Koestler, A. (1941). Darkness at noon. New York: Macmillan.
Koltsova, V.A., Oleinik, Y.N., Gilgen, A.R., & Gilgen, C.K. (Eds.). (1996). Post-Soviet perspectives on Russian psychology. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Kozulin, A. (1990). Vygotsky's psychology: A biography of ideas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kozulin, A. (1996). The concept of activity in Soviet psychology: Vygotsky, his disciples and critics. In H. Daniel (Ed.), An introduction to Vygotsky (pp. 99–122). London: Routledge.
Lenin, V.I. (1908/1947). Materialism and Empiriocriticism: Critical comments on a reactionary philosophy. Moscow: Politizdat.
Leontiev, A.A. (1983). Tvorcheskii put' A.N. Leontieva [The productive career of A.N. Leontiev]. In A.V. Zaporozhets, V.P. Zynchenko, O.V. Ovchinnikova, & O.K. Tikhomirov (Eds.), A.N. Leontiev i sovremennaya psikhologiia [A.N. Leontiev and modern psychology](pp. 6–39). Moscow: Moscow State University.
Leontiev, A.N. (1932). Studies on the cultural development of the child. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 40, 52–83.
Leontiev, A.N. (1935/1980). Ovladenie uchaschimisia nauchnymi poniatiiami kak problema pedagogicheskoi psikhologii [The acquisition of scientific concepts by school-children as a problem of educational psychology]. In Khrestomatiia povozrastnoi i pedagogicheskoi psikhologii, Vol. 1, pp. 173–186). Moscow: Moscow State University.
Leontiev, A.N. (1978). Activity, consciousness, and personality. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Lewin, M. (1995). Russia/USSR/Russia: The drive and drift of a superstate. New York: The New Press.
Luria, A.R. (1974). Ob istoricheskom razvitii poznavatel'nykh protsessov [Historical development of cognitive processes]. Moscow: Nauka.
Luria, A.R. (1976). Cognitive development: Its cultural and social foundations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Luria, A.R. (1979). The making of mind: A personal account of Soviet psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1950). Briefwechsel [Exchange of letters]. Berlin.
McNeal, R.H. (1988). Stalin: Man and ruler. New York: New York University Press.
Rieber, R.W., & Carton A.S. (Eds.). (1987, 1992). The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky (Vols. 1–2). New York: Plenum.
Rigby, T.H. (1966). Stalin. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Rubinstein, S.L. (1957). Bitie i soznanie [Being and consciousness]. Moscow.
Schedrovitsky, G.P. (1982). The Mozart of psychology: An imaginary exchange of views. In K. Levitin (Ed.), One is not born a personality (pp. 59–63). Moscow: Progress.
Scribner, S., & Cole, M. (1981). The psychological consequences of literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Solzhenitsyn, A.I. (1973). The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956: An experiment in literary investigation. New York: Harper and Row.
Soyfer, V.N. (1994). Lysenko and the tragedy of Soviet science. (L. Gruliow & R. Gruliow, Trans.). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Takooshian, H., & Trusov, V.P. (1992). Post-Soviet psychology. In U.P. Gielen, L.L. Adler, & N.A. Milgram (Eds.), Psychology in international perspective: 50 years of the International Council of Psychologists (pp. 54–69). Amsterdam: Swets and Zeitlinger.
Thielen, M. (1981). Kulturhistorische Schule [Culture-historical school]. In G. Rexilius & S. Grubitzsch (Eds.), Handbuch psychologischer Begriffe. Mensch und Gesellschaft in der Psychologie [Handbook of psychological concepts. Man and society in psychology] (pp. 600–610). Hamburg: Rowohlt.
Tulviste, P. (1991). Cultural-historical development of verbal thinking: A psychological study. Commack, NY: Nova Science Publishers.
Valsiner, J. (1988). Developmental psychology in the Soviet Union. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Van der Veer, R., & Valsiner, J. (1991). Understanding Vygotsky: A quest for synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1982). Sobranie sochinenii [Collected works]. (Vols. 1–2). Moscow: Pedagogika.
Vygotsky, L.S., & Luria, A.R. (1930/1993). Studies on the history of behavior: Ape, primitive, and child. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. (Edited and translated by Victor I. Golod & Jane E. Knox. Originally published in 1930).
Yaroshevsky, M.G. (1989). Lev Vygotsky. Moscow: Progress.
Yaroshevsky, M.G. (1990). A history of psychology. Moscow: Progress.
Yaroshevsky, M.G. (1996). Marxism in Soviet psychology: The social role of Russian science. In V.A. Koltsova, Y.N. Oleinik, A.R. Gilgen, & C.K. Gilgen (Eds.), Post-Soviet perspectives on Russian psychology (pp. 161–186). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Yudin, E. (1976). Deiatel'nost kak ob'iasnitel'nyi printsyp i kak predmet nauchnogo issledovaniia [Activity as an explanatory principle and as a subject of scientific study]. Voprosi Filosofii, 5, 65–78.
Zinchenko, P. (1939/1984). The problem of involuntary memory. Soviet Psychology, 22(2), 55–111.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gielen, U.P., Jeshmaridian, S.S. Lev S. Vygotsky: The Man and the Era. International Journal of Group Tensions 28, 273–301 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021837200385
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021837200385