Editor's Note

This issue of Soviet Psychology — Vol. V, No. 1 — marks a new point in the development of English translations of Soviet psychology and psychiatry. Our original journal, published in Volumes I-IV as Soviet Psychology and Psychiatry, has given birth to two new journals: Soviet Psychology and Soviet Psychiatry. This will give International Arts and Sciences Press the opportunity to publish twice as much material from the fund of Soviet theory and research in the study of human behavior. The increased space in this new journal will allow for a broader coverage of Soviet work in psychology, as outlined in our last issue, the special Handbook of Soviet Psychology.     

In Honor of the President of the Congress: A. N. Leont'Yev-Lenin Prize Laureate

The editorial staff of the journal Voprosy psikhologii and the Soviet psychological community heartily congratulate Aleksey Nikolayevich Leont'yev on receiving the highest scientific award — the Lenin Prize — for his book Problemy razvitiya psikhiki [Problems of mental development].     

On the Content of Social Psychology

1. Attitude to the Discussion: A discussion of social psychology was opened in the pages of Voprosy psikhologii. [Translated in this journal, 1963, 1 (3), 32-38. — Ed.] This event has both a good and bad side. The good side is that, finally, the central organ of Soviet psychology has begun to speak about social psychology. Soviet psychologists will at last state their positive word about social psychology. The discussion will permit a more profound definition of the content of social psychology and will attract the attention of the Soviet public to the phenomena of social psychology. The bad side is that while much is said about the content of social psychology, the most urgent problems for Soviet social psychology is not so much one of its content as of the development of concrete methods and concrete investigations. A. V. Baranov's article [5] presents an incorrect understanding of the history and contemporary state of social psychology in the USSR.     

A Contribution to the Comparative Epidemiology of Schizophrenia in Urban and Rural Places

In psychiatry, epidemiology rests upon statistical studies of mental illness in the population. Much attention was given to this as early as the work of Esquirol, (1) and I. F. Riul' (2) in our country. Zemstvo psychiatrists contributed much in the field of psychiatric morbidity. (3-8) However, as a result of the lack of outpatient psychoneurological institutions in prerevolutionary Russia, these studies, like the majority of those currently being conducted by psychiatrists abroad, resolved fundamentally to isolated unidimensional selective surveys of particular groups in the population. The existence in the Soviet Union of a broad network of outpatient psychiatric institutions permits Soviet psychiatrists to go beyond single-factor selective surveys, to make a systematic study of mental illness in accordance with the data of current dispensary records, and to provide timely therapeutic and social prophylactic assistance to the ill, i.e., to conduct epidemiological research on a higher level of scientific methodology. A number of such studies has been published. (8-23) Therefore the statement by Lin and Standley, (24) who allege — in a monograph, The Role of Epidemiology in Psychiatry, published by the World Health Organization — the absence of epidemiological psychiatric studies in the Soviet Union, must be rejected as unfounded.     

The Soviet Sausage Renaissance

ABSTRACT  In Lithuania, the first country to secede from the Soviet Union, the term Soviet has been used in public space to refer to the vanished Soviet empire and to experiences of colonization and resistance. However, in 1998, the "Soviet" symbol was successfully revived in the Lithuanian consumer food market as a brand name for meat products—primarily sausages. In this article, I argue that the market is a political arena in which values, ideologies, identities, and history are being shaped. The marketing and consumption of "Soviet" sausages is a form of political engagement that negotiates current power relations and inequalities. The meanings and practices surrounding "Soviet" sausages tell an intriguing story about broader processes of change. The "Soviet" sausage renaissance in Lithuania implies a critique of the postsocialist neoliberal state and constitutes an attempt to create an alternative modernity that is both post-Soviet and European.     

Psychological Matters in the Symposium Cybernetics in the Service of Communism

The symposium Kibernetiku — na sluzhbu kommunizmu [Cybernetics in the Service of Communism J contains articles by Soviet experts on matters of application of modern cybernetics to the major fields of science and technology. The articles in this symposium are arranged in the following sections, a listing of which indicates the breadth of the problems covered: 1) The Gathering, Processing and Transmission of Information; 2) Cybernetics and Living Nature; 3) Cybernetics and the Humanities; 4) Cybernetics in Science and Technology. The symposium has a lengthy introduction by A. I. Berg titled "Cybernetics in the Service of Communism," which is programmatic in nature and contains an analysis of all the principal problems of cybernetics.     

A “second front” in Soviet genetics: The international dimension of the Lysenko controversy, 1944–1947

Concluding Remarks While the simple historical view has pictured the Lysenko controversy as an uninterrupted series of Lysenko's victories-beginning with the 1936 discussion, and culminating in the infamous August 1948 meeting of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, when genetics was officially abolished in the Soviet Union-it was certainly more complex, as recognized by such serious historians as David Joravsky and Mark Adams. As we have seen, the roles the competitors assumed in 1945–47 were the reverse of those they assumed in the 1930s: the geneticists managed to gain the offensive, and Lysenko was forced to defend his position.This episode suggests that the Communist Party leadership probably did not have a special bias against genetics, nor a particular preference toward Lysenko at that time. The actual decisions of the Party apparatus on particular science policies were based upon the current priorities of general foreign and domestic policies, rather than upon an orthodox Party line in esoteric scientific questions. It is clear and has been recognized by some historians that the Soviet scientific community was not a passive, monolithic object of the manipulation, control, and repression exercised by the Communist Party leadership; various groups within the Soviet scientific community actively exploited every opportunity provided by the Party's policies to achieve their own objectives.The Lysenko controversy illustrates the profound impact of international events on Soviet science and suggests that its history cannot be understood as a result of exclusively domestic affairs, but should be explicated within a broader framework of interaction between Soviet domestic and international policies and between the Soviet and Western scientific communities. As we have seen, one of the major causes of the geneticists' success in the postwar struggle with Lysenkoists was the shift of Soviet foreign policies toward internationalism stimulated by the wartime alliance between the Big Three. This suggests that the so-called death of genetics in the Soviet Union in August 1948 was also the result of another dramatic shift in the international situation: the climax of the Cold War confrontation between former allies in the summer of 1948, which marked the final division of postwar Europe and the world into two opposing camps, East and West.     

Some Manifestations of Categorization Processes in Perception

Study of the role of expectancy in cognitive activity has a long history in experimental psychology, extending back into the 19th century. Among German psychologists the idea of a "determining tendency" or "set" has long been influential. A variation of this same concept forms the foundation of the "Georgian" school of Soviet psychology founded by D. N. Uznadze (see Soviet Psychology, 1968-69, Vol. VII, No. 2 [Winter]).     

Ethnographic Note on Nation: Narratives and Symbols of the Early Post-socialist Nationalism in Lithuania

In the late 1980s and early 1990s Lithuania experienced the nationalist upheaval, which epitomized in the break up from the Soviet Union in 1990. Narratives and symbols were constitutive of the nationalist movement. “Nation” — the master symbol of that time — was reproduced in relation to the symbols of “the West,” and “the East,” as well as through the different values implied in “the West” and “the East” symbolism. Nationalist narratives reconstructed history and memory, reevaluated the present of the “reborn” nation, and drew the paths for the transition. Symbols and narratives were significant in mobilizing popular opinion, creating models for identity and action, and expressing moral and legitimate stances. They were a primary mechanism by which ideologies and cultural stances were shaped and maintained during the nationalist upheaval. In early 1990s the “nation” was redefined in the context of the Western tradition which was essential in communicating with the European countries and distancing from the former Soviet Union.     

Necrology

The editor of Soviet Psychology reports with regret that the following deaths of Soviet colleagues have been announced in 1966 in the pages of Voprosy psikhologii and Zhurnal vysshey nervnoy deyatel'nosti im. I. P. Pavlova.     

Mise en évidence des cellules inflammatoires dans le sperme

A high level of round cells in semen decreases the fertility capacity. These cells can be either immature germinal cells from testicular disorders characterized by teratospermia, or polymorphonuclear cells if they are peroxidase positive. However it often happens that neither teratospermia nor peroxidase reaction can explain the high proportion of round cells. For these semen we have used the nonspecific esterase staining to search for macrophages, plasma-cells and lymphocytes. These three types of cells were detected in certain non-leucospermic semen which reflects a chronic infection in development. Also these cells, macrophages, plasma-cells and lymphocytes were found in some leucospermic semen samples. If we considere the populations leucospermic and non leucospermic together, macrophages are correlated — with plasma-cells (r=0,65 — p=0,01) and with lymphocytes (r=0,56 — p=0,05). The correlation between plasma-cells and lymphocytes was more important (r=0,91 — p=0,001).     

Activity: Structure,Genesis, and Units of Analysis

One of the most remarkable events in Soviet psychology in the second half of the '70s was the discussion of the problem of the relationship between communication and activity [8,13,18,19,21,23]. We considered the following approach to the problem, which we here present in its most general form, the most constructive: Communication and activity are undoubtedly interrelated; but communication (in contrast to perception, memory, etc.) is not usefully regarded as simply one type of activity as it is analyzed in terms of Leont'ev's paradigm activity—action—operation, motive—goal—condition. This approach to the problem is useful primarily for advancing the theory of activity: it points sharply to the very essential point, insufficiently developed in the theory of activity, that analysis of social environments and the mechanisms of human activity is both collective and individual.     

Editor's Preface

The occasion of the XVIIIth International Congress of Psychology in Moscow this summer is an event of importance for Soviet psychology and for world psychology. Accordingly, we have prepared this special issue of Soviet Psychology and Psychiatry to serve as a guide to Soviet psychology. I hope that this guide will be especially useful to Western psychologists participating in the Moscow Congress, and that it will be useful to a broader public as well.     

Editorial

Since this is the first issue of Soviet Psychology for which I am officially the editor, a few words concerning my approach to presenting Soviet psychological research to my Englishspeaking colleagues appear timely.

It should be clear to all that a quarterly journal of modest proportions cannot thoroughly cover all developments in a largeand active branch of Soviet science. Great selectivity has been, and will be, exercised.     

Foreword

This issue of Soviet Psychology has been compiled by L. Mecacci and J. Brozek, who have also written an introduction to the topic of Soviet psychophysiology.     

Hsüa robusta,a new land plant from the Lower Devonian of Yunnan,China

A new psilophytic plant, Hsüa robusta, is found in the Xujiachong Formation (Emsian) of the Lower Devonian from the Qüjing (= Kütsing) district of Yunnan, China. This plant is tentatively referred to the Cooksoniaceae of Rhyniales. Hsüa gen. nov. Type species: Hsüa robusta (Li et Cai) C. S. Li. Diagnosis: Plants erect and then creeping. Main axes dividing pseudomonopodially and bearing dichotomous lateral branches which somewhat differentiate into vegeta, tire and fertile ones, with dichotomous root-like and rhizophore-like appendages. Sporangia terminal, round to reniform or wide reniform, dehiscing along distal margin into two equal halves. Spores homosporous, trilete. Stomata anomocytic. Protostele centrarch. Hsüia robusta (Li et Cai) C. S. Li, comb. nov. Cooksonia zhanyiensis Li et Cai, Acta Geologica Sinica, 52 (1) 1978, p. 10, pl. II, fig. 6.——Taeniocrada robusta Li et Cai,ib. p. 10, pl. II, fig. 7—14. Diagnosis: Characters same as in generic diagnosis. Main axes 6—10 mm wide and at least 24 cm long, with vascular strands 1.2—2.4 mm acr oss. Fertile branches 3—4 times equally or unequally dichotomous, 10—1.5 mm in width and up to 11 cm in length, possessing a vascular bundle of 0.5 mm in its greatest diameter. Branches circinately coiled in apical regions. Axial tubercles, root-like and rhizophore— like appendages arising from the main axes usually anterior to the lateral branches. Axial tubercle round with a diameter of 2.2—2.4 mm, having a vascular bundle about l mm across. Rootlike branches 3 times bifurcate, 1—0.3 mm wide and up to 1.5 cm long, with a vascular bundle about 0.1 mm across. Rhizophore-like appendages forked, 3—1.7 mm in width, possessing a vascular bundle of 0.7 mm in its greatest diameter. Root-like protuberances sometimes arising from rhilzophore-like branches. Epidermal cells of axes generally elongate, measuring 60—290μby 25—60 μ. Stomata mainly fusiform, 90—110 μ long and 50—60μ wide, consisting of a pair of guard cells enclosing a pore 6—15μ in length and 1—3μ in width. Cuticle of guard cells quite thick. Stomatal density about 5 per mm². Sporangia 0.8—4.2 mm high, 1.0—8.2 mm across, usually having a dehiscent distal border which measures 50—100μ broad. Demarcation between sporangium and its stalk quite clear. Epidermal cells of basal part of sporangial walls elongate, about 100 μ long and 30μ wide, but those of distal part isodiametrally polygonal, about 50μ in diameter. Stomata, radially arranged scattering over sporangial walls, generally round about 50μ in diameter and 50 per sporangium. Spores round, 18—36μ (average 27μ) indiameter, and smooth. Tracheids of protoxylem about 10μ across; those of metaxylem about 30μ across, with scalariform thickening. This plant is similar to Renalia hueberi Gensel in general morphology, but differs from the latter in possessing root-like and rhizophore-like branches. The generic name is derived from Prof. Hsü Jen. This paper is a thesis for M. Sc.     

Noted Figures in the History of Soviet Psychology: Pictures and Brief Biographies

Presented below are Soviet evaluations of the careers and contributions of noted figures in the history of Soviet psychology. The passages are drawn from the Pedagogical Dictionary [Pedagogicheskiy slovar'; Moscow: Acad. Pedag. Sci. RSFSR, 1960] and Pedagogical Encyclopedia [Pedagogicheskaya entziklopediya; Moscow: Acad. Pedag. Sci., 1964-1965], unless otherwise indicated.     

Activity: Structure,Genesis, and Unit of Analysis

One of the most notable phenomena in Soviet psychology since the late '70s has been discussion of the relationship between communication and activity [8,13,18,19,21,23]. I consider the following formulation of the problem, given here in its most general form, the most constructive: communication and activity are indubitably interrelated, but communication (in contrast to perception, memory, etc.) cannot, in any constructive way, be regarded as a type of activity and analyzed within the framework of Leont 'ev's paradigm (activity—action—operation; motive—goal—condition). This formulation of the problem is useful primarily in terms of the further progress of the theory of activity: it quite incisively focuses on one essential point that has been inadequately dealt with in the theory of activity, namely, an analysis of the social means and mechanisms of human activity, both collective and individual.     

The unknown tradition: Continuity and innovation in Soviet ethnography

Conclusion In this article we have not attempted to cover the entire problematic or history of Russian-Soviet ethnography. Instead, we tried to explain the significance of the arguments about social theory and demonstrate why Soviet ethnography must be viewed as part of an intellectual tradition fundamentally different from the Western. At the same time, we believe that the theoretical tradition that took shape in the 1920s and the attempts to revive and further it, inconclusive as they may be, are of great potential significance to Western anthropologists.Among the topics left out of consideration was, for example, the traditional and successful collaboration between ethnography and folklore studies culminating in the structural analysis of Russian fairy tales by Vladimir Ya. Propp. We also did not discuss the study of religion, which in the 1930s–1950s was often disguised as folklore studies, and which in the Soviet context was obviously limited by the doctrine dictating the approach to it as a disappearing form of social consciousness, an embarrassing survival of the past. Another subject left out is the study of material culture and everyday life, which continues the pre-revolutionary Russian tradition. The same may be said about a more recent Soviet revival of interest in ethnicity in so far as it can be traced to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century concern with cultural and ethnic divisions. This interest, of course, has much to do with the practical tasks of integrating over 100 nations, nationalities and various other ethnic groups into one Soviet People.The formation of the Soviet people, which Lenin believed to be an inevitable result of education, and which Stalin spurred using massive violence, is viewed not only as both desirable and inevitable but as an actual reality. The coming into being of the Soviet people was proclaimed by Leonid Brezhnev a decade ago. The theory of ethnicity, as well as the whole problem of interethnic relations are so closely connected to the sensitive issues of nationality policy that even field ethnographers often see and report the desirable rather than the actual situation. The Soviet data, therefore, can be used only with great caution.It is perhaps relevant to note the change that occurred in the Soviet attitude toward psychology. At one time practically banned (along with Freud) in favor of the sociological approach, social psychology, psycholinguistics, and ethnopsychology (a Soviet term) today are legitimate, though often doctrinally limited areas of inquiry. Soviet ethnographers agree that the reflection in people's consciousness of their membership in an ethnos as ethnic self-awareness serves as the final proof of the objective existence of that ethnos.Both in terms of the problems considered to fall within its scope and in terms of the approach to these problems, Soviet ethnography today comes closer to Shternberg's conception than to the view which prevailed after the All-Russian Archaeological-Ethnographic Conference of 1932 described earlier. Bromley claims that the conception of ethnography most widely shared among Soviet scientists today is of a science that deals with the characteristics of the daily life and belief systems of a people which distinguish them ethnically (i.e., culturally), and the origins (ethnogenesis) and history of the ethnic units defined by these characteristics. It embraces the history of culture of all peoples in the past as well as the present. To this end it makes use of data not only of the historical sciences, but of the natural sciences (e.g., biology, ecology, geography) as these relate to formation and functioning of ethnos.Broadly speaking, there are three major characteristics that determine the present status of Soviet ethnography:First, there is an open acknowledgement of the validity of pre-revolutionary Russian tradition. One facet of this is a modest rivival of the Shternberg school that combined rigorous requirements for fieldwork (not unlike Boas) with ethnographers' active participation in the lives of the investigated peoples, and a broadly historical dynamic approach to culture.Second, after a period of isolation, the best work in ethnography, as illustrated in the case of kinship studies, is strongly influenced by Western social anthropology. The language and concerns of these studies can be much easier understood in the West than, perhaps, any other Soviet writings. But one should not lose sight of the fact that basic assumptions, such as the general view of evolution, are not the same as in the West.Third, the main struggle in Soviet ethnography now is not against bourgeois theories. More and more it is centered around the inadequacy of the Soviet theoretical heritage itself.The gains in kinship studies, the tacit return to the forcibly broken tradition of the 1920s in conceptualization of culture (Bogoraz, Bukharin) visible in the work of Markarian, and the possibility to question and reject particular hypotheses advanced by Morgan, Engels, or the early Soviet fundamentalists make Soviet ethnography a rich and exciting field. This impression is not diminished by the fact that the thorough theoretical revision of orthodoxy promised by PIDO Two in 1968 never materialized. The intellectual currents that produced it still exist and now and then surface, waiting for a time when the deological climate improves.An important thing to remember is that many theoretical positions in the Soviet Union are arrived at by thrashing out the issues in oral discussions until consensus is gradually formed, not by boldly proclaiming a new approach in an individual paper. Olderogge's rejection of Morgan's Hawaiian hypothesis, as well as the whole project of PIDO Two are but two examples of consensus formed before they were published. We suspect that some work is being done, of which the short conference resumés (unavailable in the West) are often the only and cryptic witnesses.The administrative control over Soviet ethnography remains in the hands of the fundamentalists, who associate true Marxism with doctrine and whose main task is to defend the hypotheses incorporated in official ideology. They are opposed by a vital group of scholars, who gain their inspiration from a general philosophical approach and method of conceptualization they find in classical Marxism. The division into these two camps is not at all clearcut; many people intermittently align themselves with one or the other. And of course, the strong current of Russian intellectual tradition (never demythologized) with its search for an integral and simultaneously ethical social theory brings many of them together.But the discussions persist, and it appears that for non-fundamentalists Marxism provides only a method (and even this is understood in a variety of ways), a theory of cognition, the most general language of theory. No particular hypothesis is sacred. Since the method is not reducible to ethnographic theory, it does not in itself guarantee success. The theory has to be judged on its own merit, not by appeal to the classics. These seem to be the unspoken points underlying the debate today.What is at stake is not only the right of scientists to develop various perspectives on society, culture, and evolution. Whether or not the participants themselves would put it this way, it affects the very nature of theory in social sciences. The rallying point for the non-fundamentalists, regardless of their areas of research or their views on particular problems, is the tacit rejection of theory as doctrine. The revolt is against theory as quasireligion, as the Absolute which is simultaneously a scientific and an ethical doctrine that pits us who know the Truth against them who do not: and this may be nothing less than the beginning of a fundamental break with the Russian intellectual tradition.Dr. Jovan Howe is working on a book on Soviet archaeology.Vladimir Plotkin is a Visiting Professor in Russian and Eastern European Studies at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington.