Administrative Reform: Psychology Faculties

At the end of 1965 an event occurred that will significantly affect the development of Soviet psychology: on December 6, 1965, V. N. Stoletov, Minister for Higher and Specialized Secondary Education of the RSFSR, issued a decree changing the Psychology Departments [otdeleniy] of Moscow and Leningrad Universities into separate Schools [fakul'tety] of Psychology, and establishing their structure. Students will be admitted to the Schools of Psychology beginning September 1, 1966.     

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.     

The 90th Anniversary of B.V. Zeigarnik (1900-1988)

9 November 1990 marked the 90th anniversary of Bliuma Vol'fovna Zeigarnik, Doctor of Psychology, professor at Moscow University, outstanding Soviet psychologist who enjoyed wide recognition abroad, an author of basic works on clinical psychology, and a researcher who in 1927 discovered a phenomenon (the "Zeigarnik effect") on which, even today, comprehensive books are written and international symposia are held.     

Directory of Soviet Scientists Engaged in Psychological and Psychophysiological Research

For purposes of space, and because the International Congress deals primarily with problems of psychology and psychophysiology, we have not included in this listing scientists engaged in purely psychiatric research. (Such a listing will appear in the next issue of this Journal.) The list includes all authors of relevant articles published in 1964 and 1965 in the journals Voprosy psikhologii (designated as V), Zhurnal vysshey nervnoy deyatel'nosti im. I. P. Pavlova (P), and Zhurnal nevropatologii i psikhiatrii im. S. S. Korsakova (K), and in all past issues of Soviet Psychology and Psychiatry (S) (1962-1965). Also included are authors of relevant books published in the period 1962-1965. The list has been augmented by information provided by members of the Advisory Board of this Journal, and by the trip reports listed in "Reviews in English of Recent Soviet Psychology: A Bibliography" (this issue). As we stated in regard to the Directory of Institutions, above, no doubt this compendium contains gaps and inaccuracies, for which we beg the indulgence of our readers and our Soviet colleagues. We have done the best we could with the material available to us.     

Introduction

In this and the next issue of Soviet Psychology, the international readership will have an opportunity to gain access to the work of Russian developmental psychologist Mikhail Basov, whose relevance for developmental psychology in Russia and, later, the Soviet Union has been profound (see Valsiner, 1988, chap. 5). Basov's intellectual development paralleled that of his contemporary Lev Vygotsky, whose ideas are currently increasingly mentioned in the international discourse of psychologists and educators, and whose synthesis of ideas from various sources in international social sciences continues to command respect (see Kozulin, 1990; van der Veer and Valsiner, 1991).     

Investigations on Educational and Child Psychology in Armenia

The leading Soviet psychology journal, Problems of Psychology, which is a major source of articles for this journal, regularly contains summary articles on research. Sometimes these reviews summarize a particular topic of research (e.g., programmed instruction); sometimes, as in the case of this article on Armenian psychology, the review covers research from a particular locale.     

Psychology at Leningrad State University

The articles in this issue of Soviet Psychology are all selected from a small publication of the psychology department at Leningrad University, Problems of General, Social, and Engineering Psychology, No. 2 (Leningrad University Press, 1968).     

XVIIITH International Congress of Psychology,Moscow, USSR,August 4-11, 1966. Information and Program

The XVIIIth International Congress of Psychology has been organized by the Society of Psychologists of the USSR, under the auspices of the International Union of Scientific Psychology and the Soviet Steering Committee, under the chairmanship of P. N. Fedosseyev. The Steering Committee was established by the USSR Ministry of Higher Education, the USSR Academy of Sciences, and the RSFSR Ministry of Education. The President of the Congress is A. N. Leont'yev. The Organizing Committee of the Congress is chaired by A. A. Smirnov; and the Program Committee is chaired by A. R. Luriya, with the assistance of P. Fraisse (Paris), acting on behalf of the International Union of Scientific Psychology.     

The Solution of Thinking Problems as a Probability Process

From the editors: On 2-7 September 1984, the 23rd International Congress of Psychologists was held in Acapulco, Mexico. Professor A. A. Bodalev, Dean of the Faculty of Psychology, represented the psychologists of Moscow State University at the Congress. He participated in a forum on "Study of social cognition," presenting a report the text of which we here offer to readers of this journal.     

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.     

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.     

On the Subject Matter of Social Psychology

Psychology and sociology (in that they have to do with social consciousness) study general problems of human consciousness. Both sciences investigate, in the final analysis, the same thing, inasmuch as all human consciousness is socially conditioned, and this is the meaning of all consciousness of the social. Soviet psychology has long since adopted this thesis.     

Editor's Note

As readers of Soviet Psychology are aware, it has been my policy over the years to present historical materials that are pertinent to understanding contemporary Soviet and world psychology. By and large, I have come upon such materials through discussions with Soviet scholars or by following the lead in relevant articles. When I first read Jaan Valsiner's lucid and informative book Developmental Psychology in the Soviet Union, I was immediately struck by the gold mine of materials to which Professor Valsiner had succeeded in gaining access. First among these was the work of Mikhail Basov, to whom Valsiner devoted an especially illuminating chapter in his monograph.     

Introduction

In the last issue of this journal (Vol. X, No. 4, Summer 1972), devoted in large part to a summary account of the Fourth Congress of the Soviet Psychological Society, it was evident that a good deal of effort is currently being directed at the development of social psychology in the USSR.     

In Lieu of an Introduction

Nikolai Veresov: Tatiana, in this volume of our journal we publish a selection of your articles. Two of your other articles were published in Soviet Psychology in the 1970s. Introducing you to the readers of that journal, James Wertsch (1978) wrote: "The author … is one of the leading young investigators from the Luria school of neurolinguistics. She has studied and conducted extensive research both with Luria and with A. A. Leontiev, a major figure in Soviet psycholinguistics. Her analysis of inner speech as a mechanism in speech production reveals the strong influence that L. S. Vygotsky has had on Soviet psychology."¹ But first of all, I suppose our readers would be interested in learning more about your life, about events that preceded your scientific achievements. Could you please tell us briefly about your childhood and your family? How did your parents influence your course of life and your occupational choice? What did they do?     

Editor's Introduction

On May 8-11 of this year [1962] an Ail-Union Conference was held in Moscow on philosophical problems of psychology and of the physiology of higher nervous activity. The conference was participated in by approximately 1,000 persons from 40 Soviet cities, including some 200 heads of scientific institutions and department, sector, laboratory and university department heads.     

The 24Th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Tasks of Soviet Psychology

Congresses of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union are central events for Soviet society, for they adopt general lines of attack on the problems Soviet leaders view as centrally important. This brief statement concerning psychology makes very clear the role that psychology is asked to play in such areas as increasing labor productivity and improving the techniques of upbringing for the nation's youth.     

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.     

The Mechanism of Sensory Processes in Signal Detection by Schizophrenics (an Addendum on Methods)

The following note on methods was supplied by Professor Korzh for Soviet Psychology, but arrived too late for inclusion in the article itself, which will be found on page 39 of the Fall 1973 issue (Vol. XII, No. 1). The translation is by Douglas M. Bowden, M.D., of the University of Washington, Seattle.     

Inner Speech And The Processes of Grammatical Generation of Utterances

The present article contains no ultimate truths. As indicated in the title, the author's aim is to present, on the basis of presently available data, a few hypotheses concerning socalled "inner speech" in order to provide a foundation for experimental investigations. These hypotheses have as their premise the general conception of processes of speech generation that is current in contemporary Soviet psychology, in particular, in L. S. Vygotsky's school, as well as in another school of Soviet physiology of higher nervous activity associated with the name of N. A. Bernshteyn. However, these hypotheses are not, in principle, incompatible with certain other theories of verbal activity (verbal behavior); indeed, as will be evident later, they are partially based on material accumulated with the aid of these theories.