On the Vygotsky and Luria Group

The Vygotsky and Luria group is undoubtedly talented. But it represents the danger of positivism and of uncritical transfer of various Western European psychological theories that are especially fashionable now, especially those that are very influential in the West. In one period this was Freudianism; next came Gestalt psychology; then came cultural psychology, and, finally, the current stemming from Karl Bühler.     

L.S. Vygotsky: In Memoriam

On the night of 11 June, death took from the ranks of our country's outstanding scientists Professor Lev Semenovich Vygotsky. In him Soviet psychology has lost not only a great scientist and brilliant educator, not only a person with remarkable personal qualities, but also one of those people whose appearance in our science has been of tremendous importance for its development, whose life and death are as much a part of the history of psychological knowledge as of his personal biography. Indeed, the system of theoretical psychological ideas Vygotsky created requires an understanding of the biography of its creator to be fully grasped. Yet the opposite is also true: only analysis of this system can provide the real key to understanding the personality of the deceased.     

Bibliography of L. S. Vygotsky

In Russian: 1. Soznaniye kak problema psikhologii povedeniya [Consciousness as a problem of the psychology of behavior]. In Psikhologiya i marksizm. Leningrad-Moscow, 1925.     

L.S. Vygotsky and the Theater

The article presents the analysis of L.S. Vygotsky's works dedicated to the theater arts and is organized according Vygotsky's different life and work stages. Meanwhile special attention is paid to the Gomel period during which a large number of reviews were written by Vygotsky and published in “Nash ponedel'nik” and “Polesskaia pravda” newspapers. Biographical facts are widely used in this analysis and help to clarify Vygotsky's interest in art. It is shown that even at the beginning of his oeuvre, he was interested not only in a range of problems in art, but also psychological problems related to art perception and creativeness. Vygotsky's usage of structural concept ideas about the peculiar properties of literary text composition are also explored. Vygotsky analyzes the socio-psychological mechanisms of theatrical art effect. Furthermore, those areas which are widely used by Vygotsky in determining the characteristics of cast reincarnation are examined. Special emphasis is placed on the different elements of the actor techniques (speech, movement, emotional expression, acting personality and etc.). Materials are widely used in this study and help identify the socio-cultural context that defined Vygotsky's values at different stages of his work, related to his drama criticism and his formation as a professional psychologist.     

L.S. Vygotsky and Reform of Today's School

The name Lev Semenovich Vygotsky is by now very well known to scholars and scientists in many of the humanities, especially to psychologists and educators and even teachers in some countries. Although Vygotsky died almost sixty years ago, considerable interest may be observed at the present time in his theoretical views and in how these views influence the process of improving and even reforming modern education. What are the reasons for such a paradoxical circumstance? I submit that these reasons are to be found, first, in the profoundly hypothetical nature of Vygotsky's views; they have therefore required a long time to be empirically confirmed and substantiated. Second, there is a discrepancy between these views and the needs and requirements of education in preceding decades. It was only about ten years ago that our Russian education began to sense a general need for a new and substantial reform. One of the pillars of these reforms was Vygotsky's views, which concentrated the ideas of many other outstanding people in our education in the first third of this century (for example, the ideas of Blonskii, Shatskii, and others).     

L. S. Vygotsky and the Problem of Functional Localization

Forty years ago, in the middle of the 1920's, a young Soviet psychologist, still under thirty, came to the Clinic of Nervous Diseases, at first to observe, later to conduct his own independent research. His name was L. S. Vygotsky.     

L.S. Vygotsky and the Problem of Functional Localization

Forty years ago, in the middle of the 1920s, a young Soviet psychologist, still under thirty, came to the Clinic of Nervous Diseases, at first to observe, later to conduct his own independent research. His name was L.S. Vygotsky.     

Study of the Environment in the Pedological Works of L.S. Vygotsky: A Critical Study

Contemporary theoretical and empirical psychological research is often broken down into narrow areas, and develops within the very restricted framework of specific concepts. The accumulated empirical material requires the development of new concepts on a multidisciplinary basis.     

The Problem of Generalization in the Works of L. S. Vygotsky

An aspect of Vygotsky's psychological theory which is still meaningful as a genuine scientific problem today is the treatment he gave to the structure, function, and formation of generalization as a special means of reflecting reality in human consciousness. Many of the central propositions of the theory — concerning such questions as the role of symbols in the establishment of higher mental functions, the hierarchical structure of consciousness, and the connection between instruction and development — were refined, concentrated, and cast in a new light by the concept of generalization which Lev Semyonovich worked on so intensively in the last years of his life. The problem of generalization is the knot that ties together the fundamental strands of the whole conception. By carefully untying it one can avoid misunderstandings in evaluating some of Vygotsky's propositions, and, even more important, one can then correctly understand his fundamental ideas, which he clearly formulated but was not able to develop fully. The significance of these ideas is such that they belong in the arsenal of modern psychology to resolve burning theoretical and practical problems of the day.     

The Problem of Instruction and Development in the Works of L. S. Vygotsky

I. in the last few years interest has grown both in this country and abroad in the problem of instruction and the mental development of children. A clear sign of this was the recent XVIII International Congress of Psychology which met in Moscow, where the problem was discussed not only in special symposia by specialists in child psychology (J. Piaget, B. Inhelder, J. Bruner, P. Ya. Gal'perin, N. A. Menchinskaya, G. S. Kostyuk, R. Ojemann, N. F. Talyzina, J. Linhart, H. Aebli, etc.), but it also arose — and this is particularly interesting — at symposia not directly concerned with these matters. Examples of this were the following papers: A. D. Slonim, "The Environment of Post-Natal Development and Innate Behavioral Programs in Mammals"; D. Krech, "Heredity, Environment, the Brain, and Intellectual Activity"; M. Rosenzweig, "Anatomical and Chemical Changes in the Brain During Primary Learning"; A. Jacobson, "The Transfer of Learning by Injections of RNA Extracted from the Brains of Trained Animals"; R. Held, "Plasticity in Sensorimotor Coordination"; L. Lipsitt, "Learning in Human Newborns"; and many others. of course, the research presented at the symposia could not arrive at a unity of opinion. Instead, the various positions were more clearly formulated.