History of Psychology 2010, Vol. 13, No.

2, 138 159

2010 American Psychological Association 1093-4510/10/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0019270

RUSSIAN PSYCHOLOGY AT THE TURN OF THE 21ST CENTURY AND POST-SOVIET REFORMS IN THE HUMANITIES DISCIPLINES
Julia Vassilieva
Monash University The author traces the changes in Russian psychology in the past 25 years and links these changes to the earlier Russian legacy of Lev Vygotsky (1896 1934) and Aleksei N. Leontiev (19031979). The move into the 21st century coincided for Russian psychology as well as for the Russian society at large with the reforms of perestroika, leading to greater openness in the academic sphere. In particular, Russian psychology was able to connect in a more free and fundamental way with its own heritage and with various developments around the world. The author discusses how these factors affected continuity and innovation with regard to the 2 dominant theoretical perspectives in Russian psychologythe cultural historical theory of Vygotsky and the theory of activity, initially developed by Leontiev. The author argues that while there are now original and substantial shifts within Russian psychologynamely toward the new paradigm characterized by various researchers as organic psychology, nonclassical psychology, or even post-non-classical psychologythe issues of agency and meaning, which were central for the previous generation of Russian psychologists, such as Vygotsky, Leontiev, Luria, Zaporozhets, Rubinstein, and others, continue to inform the development of the discipline in the 21st century. Keywords: Russian psychology, cultural historical theory, activity theory, nonclassical paradigm, social constructionism

For Russian psychology, as well as for Russian society as a whole, the transition from the 20th to the 21st century was marked by the broad scale reforms of perestroika and glasnost. Initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev, these reforms were aimed at democratization of Russian society and the introduction of a free-market economy. The changes, many of which are still very difcult to judge in terms of either positive or negative results, affected all aspects of post-Soviet society: political, ideological, economic, and cultural. Signicant shifts and transformations were experienced by Russian academia at the organizational and scholarship levels. It is well known that in the Soviet period, science was forced to make an unwanted but overpowering alliance with ideology (e.g., Joravsky, 1970). The
Julia Vassilieva gained her BA in psychology from Moscow State University and her professional doctorate in counseling psychology from Swinburne University, Australia. She is currently completing her PhD on narrative psychology at Monash University, Australia. Her research interests include history of Russian and Western psychology, narrative theories and methods in psychology and literary studies, and psychology and culture. I wish to express gratitude to Wade Pickren for his interest, support, and help in preparation of this article for publication. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Julia Vassilieva, Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia. E-mail: julias@arbsys.com

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history of scholarship in the USSR supports Foucaults (1980) thesis about the power and knowledge nexus, namely, that knowledge is both produced and used by power to further its control over subjects. As Nikolas Rose (1998) has shown in his Foucault-inspired analysis of the history of the psy disciplines, which he denes as all those disciplines which since about the middle of the 19th century have designated themselves with the prex psypsychology, psychiatry, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis (p. 11), such disciplines are critical in shaping a particular subjectivity on the one hand and are inextricably linked to power on the other:
The history of these disciplines is part of the history of the ways in which human beings have regulated others and regulated themselves in the light of certain games of truth. But, on the other hand, this regulatory role of psy is linked to questions of the organization of political power that have been quite central to shaping our contemporary experience. The history of psy, that is to say, is intrinsically linked to the history of government. (Rose, 1998, p. 11)

As a part of the humanities, the development of psychology during the Soviet era was severely affected by ideological pressure. The pressure was particularly strong given that many of the issues central for the disciplinethe development of consciousness and the psyche, the relationship between individual and society, the educational and developmental aspectswere directly linked with the ideological position of the Soviet state. The politics of glasnost, encompassing openness and freedom of speech, removed some of this pressure and helped create the conditions for an unprecedented development of the Russian humanities. Perhaps the rst and most unambiguous benet for psychology of glasnost was the change affecting translation and publication of psychological and philosophical literature. The period of glasnost facilitated the publication and free circulation of texts that were previously unpublished because of censorship or available only to limited readerships. These publications encompassed the Russian psychological heritage, as well as the vast array of Western psychological sources. Even though some of Lev Vygotskys pivotal texts were published before, it was only in 19821984 that Vygotskys writings (a vast bulk of which were previously unknown to the broader audience) were published in six volumes. Such fundamental oeuvres as the philosophical heritage of P. Florensky, V. Solovev, V. Rosanov, and D. Andreev came to light.1 This was followed by republication and translation of previously censored Western psychological literature. For example, psychoanalysis enjoyed immense popularity in Russia in the beginning of the 20th century and even during the rst few years after the October Revolution of 1917, when many works of Freud and his followers were translated and published, but beginning in the 1930s, such publications stopped (Etkind, 1997). It was only in the 1980s that Russian audiences regained access to the development of psychoanalytic thought over the preceding half-century, including
1 For example, P. A. Florensky, Collected Writings in 4 Volumes (Moscow: Misl, 1999); V. S. Solovev, Collected Writings in 4 Volumes (Moscow: Misl, 1988 1990); D. L. Andreev, The Rose of the World (Moscow: Prometei, 1991); V. V. Rosanov, Selected Writings in 2 Volumes (Moscow: Pravda, 1990).

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translation of two volumes of Lacans writings.2 In the 1990s, a number of psychoanalytic institutes were opened in different locations in Russia: rst, the Eastern European Institute of Psychoanalysis in St Petersburg (1991), then the Institute of Psychoanalysis in Moscow (19951997), followed by the Institute of Practical Psychology and Psychoanalysis (1997), and the Institute of Psychoanalysis and Social Management (2005) in the same city. The process was supported and reinforced by a presidential decree issued by Boris Yeltsin titled On the Revival and Development of Philosophical, Clinical and Applied Psychoanalysis in 1996.3 In addition, denitive works in philosophy, literary criticism, anthropology, and cultural studies, such as the writings of Heidegger, Jaspers, Derrida, Barthes, and Foucault, nally became available to Russian readers.4 On the organizational level, the explosion in publication was paralleled by the emergence of a great variety of psychological training centers, schools, institutes, and departments all over the territory of the former USSR. If before perestroika there were only four departments of psychology in the whole country (Moscow, Leningrad, Tbilisi, and Kiev), now in Moscow alone there are more than 50 places offering various psychological training and qualications. They embrace different theoretical orientations and follow various practical models. Such developments were facilitated by the renewed contacts between Russian scholars and their Western colleagues. The visits of the leaders of humanistic and existential psychology, Carl Rogers in 1986 and Victor Frankl in 1987, gave a huge boost to the development and institutional organization of humanistic psychology in Russia, leading to the establishment of the Soviet Association of Humanistic Psychology in 1990, on the basis of which the High School of Humanistic Psychotherapy was founded in 1994. The initiative was supported by the Association of Sciences of the USSR through the project Humanistic Psychology: History, Methodology and Perspectives.5 Other approaches were just as eagerly embraced by the Russian psychological community; training in a variety of approaches that had not previously been taught in Russiafrom gestalt to family therapy, and from psychodrama to
J. Lacan, Le Seminare, Les Ecrits Techniques de Freud, Livre I. Translated by M. Titova (Moskva: Gnosis/Logos, 1998); J. Lacan, Le Seminare, Le Moi dans la Theorie de Freud et dans la Technique de la Psychanalyse, Livre II. Translated by M. Titova (Moskva: Gnosis/Logos, 1999). 3 Psychoanalyse.RU. Available at http://www.psychonalyse.ru 4 For example, M. Foucaults selected works were translated and published under the title Will to Truth (selected writings; Volia k Istine, translated by S. Tabachnikova, Moscow: Kastal, 1994); The Archeology of Knowledge (1969) was translated in 1996 (Archeologia Znania, Kiev: NikaCentre); Madness and Civilization (1961) was translated in 1997 (Istorija Bezumija v Klassicheskuy Epochu, translated by I. Staf, St. Petersburg: University Book). R. Barthes, An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative (1966), was translated in 1987 (Vvedenie v Structurnyi Analys Povestvovatelnich Tekstov, translated by G. I. Kosikov, Moscow: MGU); Barthess selected works on semiotics and poetics were translated in 1989 (Izbrannie Raboty. Semiotica. Poetica, translated by G. I. Kosikov, Moscow: Progress). J. Derrida, On the Name (1995), was translated in 1998 (Esse ob Imeni, St. Petersburg: Aleteia); The Postcard: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond (1972) was translated in 1999 (O Pochtovoi Otkritke ot Socrata do Freida I ne Tolko, translated by G. Michalkovich, Minsk: Sovremienniy Literator); and Of Grammatology (1967) was translated in 2000 (O Grammatologii, translated by N. Avtonomova, Moscow: Ad Marginem). 5 The history of development of existentially humanistic psychology in the post-Soviet era. HPSY.RUExistential and Humanistic Psychology. Available at http://hpsy.ru/eng/
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neurolinguistic programming became freely available. At the same time, the training institutions often offered counseling or psychotherapeutic services, which had been practically nonexistent before perestroika, when psychological intervention beyond academia was limited to its use in an applied fashionin educational or industrial settings. The combination of these three fundamental changesfree access to the previously censored Russian and Western psychological and philosophical heritage, deregulation in the educational sector, and the emergence of a rich psychological practice created unprecedented conditions for further developments in Russian psychology. They also simultaneously posed two major challenges for Russian scholars: First, they needed to nd a position with regard to the whole variety of Western psychological schools; second, they needed to reect critically on their own heritage, that is, the development of the discipline during the Soviet period. These are the tasks that colored the development of Russian psychology in the past 20-odd years. They are most obvious within the fundamental domain of Russian psychological scholarship general psychology, which is the main focus of the present article. In particular, I focus on the recent developments within the two most inuential theoretical models in general psychology: Lev Vygotskys cultural historical theory and Aleksei N. Leontievs theory of activity. The history of these theories also brings into sharp relief how ideology, politics, and power shaped scientic development and academic organization in the USSR. The tightening of party control over science in the 1930s led to an effective banning of Vygotskys cultural historical theory, and it was only after Stalins death and the subsequent thaw during Khrushchevs rule that the rehabilitation of Vygotskys heritage began, reaching its culmination during and after perestroika. A. N. Leontievs activity theory followed a diametrically opposite trajectory: It rose steadily to dominance from the mid-1930s to the end of the 1970s, when the rst indications of critique started to emerge, but it was only after the collapse of the Soviet state that full-scale criticism became possible, reaching in some cases to calls for rejections of the theory of activity altogether. It is not difcult to see now why these psychological theories became implicated in the ideological struggle: Both theories strove to address the issue that was central for psychologythe genesis and functioning of consciousness, the central issue for the Soviet ideological programit was the production of the consciousness of a new type on which the progress toward communism was predicated. Vygotskys CulturalHistorical Theory and Its Inuence on Contemporary Russian Psychology Lev Vygotsky had a short but momentous scientic career, which coincided with a turbulent period in the history of Russian society and science. Vygotsky was born in 1896, graduated from Moscow University in 1917the year of the October Revolution and establishment of the Soviet state changed his course of study from medicine, law, and literature to psychology in the early 1920s, and died in 1934 at the age of 37 from tuberculosis amid Stalins growing reign of terror. Having entered the psychological scene in 1924 with a critique of reexological psychology, in the next 10 years Vygotsky produced the most extraordi-

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nary body of work: Psychology of Art (1925), The Problem of the Cultural Development of the Child (1928), The Instrumental Method in Psychology (1930), The History of the Development of the Higher Psychological Processes (1930 1931), Tool and Sign in the Development of Child (1934), and Thought and Language (1934). These works marked a gradual progress toward the elaboration of the main tenets of Vygotskys cultural historical theory: the thesis regarding the mediated nature of higher psychological processes, the role of cultural toolssigns and wordsas mediators, the notion of interiorization, the concept of the zone of proximal development implying the notion of an adult as another mediator. His theorizing reected a number of inuences, heterogeneous and sometimes seemingly contradictory. As a devoted student of literature, philosophy, and aesthetics, Vygotsky in his theorizing placed a heavy premium on the role of semiotic aspects of culture. He attentively followed various psychological developments around the globe and drew freely on the work of such international contemporaries as Kurt Koffka, Sigmund Freud, Karl and Charlotte Buhler, William Stern, Pierre Janet, Jean Piaget, William James, James Mark Baldwin, and others. At the same time, he was striving passionately to create a true Marxist psychology. However, the overall direction of his research did not nd support on the ideological front, and from the early 1930s Vygotskys work was increasingly criticized. Vygotskys emphasis on semiotic mechanisms and their role in the development of consciousness and higher mental processes was the main focus of critique. Giving precedence to signs and cultural mechanisms versus practical activity provided grounds for an accusation of the cultural historical theory of idealisma serious charge, as Soviet science was supposed to be encompassed by the Marxist principle of materialism. Vygotsky was further attacked for cosmopolitanism, referring to the interconnectedness of his work with various psychological schools around the world. Finally, his interest in intellectual testing, despite his well-known critique of conventional intellectual tests, was labeled reactionary. From the ofcial Soviet position, using tests always served to preserve the status quo and represented the less educated as intellectually inferior, thus running against one of the main Bolshevik dogmas to portray the proletariat as the avant-garde of historical development. In 1936, these attacks culminated in the issuance of a special Decree of the Communist Party condemning pedology, the interdisciplinary study of educational psychology that emphasized testing. The decree effectively outlawed the cultural historical theory for the next 20 years (Bakhurst, 1996).6 After 1956, following Stalins death, Vygotskys works were allowed to once again enter into the ofcial psychological discourse. Thought and Language, previously published posthumously in 1936, became the rst of Vygotskys books to be republished in 1956, but it took nearly 30 years for Vygotskys collected works in six volumes to nally be published in 19821984. As Jerome Bruner noted, in an uncanny coincidence Thought and Language was republished in the same year1956 from which historians of science date the birth of the Cognitive Revolution. Bruner speculated that at the time
6 The most notorious criticism of Vygotskys approach along these lines was delivered by the following authors: Talankin (1931), Feofanov (1931), and Razmyslov (1934). For an extended discussion of this criticism, see Chapter 16 in Van der Veer and Valsiner (1991) and Bakhurst (1996).

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something was altering the intellectual atmosphere, something that Vygotsky had helped foment (Bruner, 1986, p. 72). As Michael Cole (2004) further observed, the American translation of Vygotskys work, starting with the MIT Press publication of Thought and Language in 1962, and followed by Mind and Society in 1978 (a collection of excerpts and essays arranged by Luria and Cole and translated by the latter) resulted in the so-called Vygotsky boom that came as a surprise to both Cole and the publisher. However, it was only with the publication of Vygotskys collected works, rst in Russian, and their subsequent translation into English in 19871999, that Vygotskys heritage could be seen in its totality both in Russia and abroadas a metapsychology that encompassed the phylogeny, cultural history, ontogeny, and moment-to-moment dynamics of human functioning as a lifelong process of becoming (Cole, 2004, p. xi). The atmosphere of openness created by perestroika reforms not only made the publication of previously forbidden materials possible, it also helped create more favorable conditions for an impartial, nonideologically motivated analysis (e.g., Kozulin, 1990; Wertsch, 1985). Arguably the most comprehensive historical analysis of Vygotskys oeuvre was delivered by Van der Veer and Valsiner (1991) in their monograph Understanding Vygotsky: A Quest for Synthesis. Among other issues, these authors delineated four themes along which we can see Vygotskys major contributions to psychology: his insistence on dialectical synthesis, his consistent developmental perspective, his antireductionist stand, and his development of a new methodology. These themes have lost none of their currency and in fact could greatly benet psychology today. Van der Veer and Valsiner identied as one of the aspects of major deciency in contemporary psychology its conservatism in the methodological area in the fundamental way psychology approaches its objects of investigation, even though outcries about crises in psychologys traditional methodology can be heard from time to time (Van der Veer & Valsiner, 1991, p. 399). Vygotskys understanding of methodology in a broad senseas an epistemological and gnoseological foundation of psychology has attracted signicant research interest and generated a wide-range academic debate in Russian psychology over the past 25 years. One of the rst works in this direction was A. Puzyreys (1986) groundbreaking monograph CulturalHistorical Theory of L. S. Vygotsky and Contemporary Psychology. According to Puzyrey, the state of crisis in psychology diagnosed by Vygotsky in his denitive study Historical Meaning of Crisis in Psychology (1927) has remained throughout the 20th century. Following Vygotsky, Puzyrey argued that the crisis stems from fundamental aws in the methodological assumptions that psychology endorses. Puzyrey drew attention to the fact that academic psychology chose to follow the classical methodology of the natural sciences, which, he argued, is not suited for the studying of psychological phenomena. The fundamental assumption of natural science methodology is that the object of its research exists independently of the knowledge about it and the procedures employed to acquire such knowledge. Neither the act of acquiring knowledge, experiment, nor the factual content of knowledge itself can and should affect or change the laws regulating the functioning of the object under consideration. Knowledge within the natural science paradigm always remains external with regard to the object of investigation. Puzyrey argued

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persuasively that such an assumption cannot be transferred onto phenomena studied in psychology, which represent what he terms a nonclassical situation. Unlike the natural sciences, where knowledge and procedures are applied to study and describe an object that exists independently of them, in psychology such knowledge and procedures become constitutive with regards to the very laws that regulate the operation of its objectthe living human being. Therefore, they should be understood as specic means and devices that organize or transform the psychological apparatus or affect their mode of functioning. The nonclassical situation that psychology faces stems from the following paradox: The knowledge that is acquired in the process of a psychological inquiry becomes incorporated into the very object it studies. According to Puzyrey (1986), this is what was understood by Vygotsky and surmised in his notion of psychotechnic action. The use of the notion of psychotechnics by Vygotsky needs to be claried. Historically, it can be traced back to the work of Henry Pieron and Hugo Munsterberg on applied psychology. In his inuential book Psychology and Industrial Efciency, Munsterberg (1913) dened applied psychology as a tech nical science delivering psychological means in achieving certain industrial or business ends. Vygotsky reconceptualized the notion of psychotechnics, expanding its meaning to broader ways of inuencing and regulating human behavior and psychological processes, and referring rst and foremost to the developing character of such processes. Although he found Munsterbergs emphasis on practical aspects of psychology to be of enormous value, he rejected the latters elaboration of applied techniques as such. What Vygotsky saw in Munsterbergs project was the need to elaborate psychological methodology as not only based on but embedded in practice, as the only possible solution to the crisis in psychology. He wrote about Munsterbergs psychotechnics: despite the fact that it has compromised itself more than once, that its practical meaning is very close to zero and the theory often ludicrous, its methodological meaning is enormous. The principle and philosophy of practice is once againthe stone which the builders rejected and which became the head stone of the corner. Here we have the whole meaning of the crisis (Vygotsky, 2004, p. 304).7 Vygotsky insisted that the relationship between psychological theory and practice should be recongured, so that practice, which was at the periphery, should move to the center. He wrote,
A psychology which is called upon to conrm the truth of its thinking in practice, which attempts not so much to explain the mind but to understand and master it, gives the practical disciplines a fundamentally different place in the whole structure of the science than the former psychology did. . . . Practice pervades the deepest foundations of the scientic operation and reforms it from beginning to the end. Practice sets the tasks and serves as the supreme judge of theory, as its truth criterion. It dictates how to construct the concepts and how to formulate the laws. (Vygotsky, 2004, p. 304)
The phrase the stone which the builders rejected and which became the head stone of the corner from Psalm 18, Verse 22, was used by Vygotsky as an epigraph to the essay Historical Meaning of Crisis in Psychology.
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Clearly, Vygotskys emphasis on practice was grounded in Marxist materialism, but his specic take on practice differed signicantly from the ofcial Soviet reading of Marx. Vygotskys understanding of practice had much less in common with the dominant Soviet ideological concept of labor, and focused not on the objective in the subject object relationship, but on subjective. Ultimately, Vygotsky was interested in how practice penetrates, shapes, and forms the subjective plane, and how it is inextricably linked with agency and development. In this context, Vygotsky understood psychotechnics as an essence of practice, and, as such, his understanding of psychotechnics was markedly different from its connotation in the psychological and sociological discourses in Soviet Russia. Psychotechnics, as it was used in Soviet industry in 1920s and 1930s, referred to techniques of training that could mold and reshape the laborer to meet the demands for skilled workers in the expanding economy (Bauer, 1952). For Vygotsky, psychotechnics had a much broader meaningit equally encompasses cognitive development, concept formation, and self-control to name a few psychological functions. Psychotechnics surmises their practical, developmental, and mediated character. Thus, as Puzyrey comments, practice is seen by Vygotsky not as external to psychology or limited to the use of psychology in an applied fashion, but as psychologys internal body of functioning, its mode of operation. Only within this (practical) mode can we correctly understand and orient psychological methodology. In Puzyreys view, such methodology should be based on the following assumption: Neither the phenomena nor the laws that regulate them can be assumed to exist before or independently of a psychotechnic action; it is only through such action that they come into being. When we come to the point of studying psychological phenomena, we are always dealing with transformed forms, transformed by the use of signs and by the psychologists own intervention (Puzyrey, 1986). The important consequence of this for Puzyrey is that psychology can only study phenomena in the process of their development or becoming the principle implied by Vygotskys genetic method. When the process of formation, or becoming, is over, we can only discern the fossilized form. This fossilized form is the end of the thread that links the present to the past (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 64). Within this paradigm, development is not posited as a natural or organic process. From the point of view of cultural historical theory, development occurs as a result of applying special systems of psychotechnic actions to oneself, a process that necessarily includes the use of signs or sets of signications in which the historically accumulated experience is crystallized in a cultural form. Such development happens not in a linear cumulative way, but through the tact of transformation (Puzyrey, 1986). The principle of development understood in such a way encompasses, according to Puzyrey, all the areas of Vygotskys cultural historical theory and can be stretched to the point of developmental imperative, or creating a human being of a new typenot only fully self-actualizing, but constantly overcoming the limits of such self-actualization. Puzyrey argues that an impetus to such understanding is contained in Vygotskys Psychology of Art. Vygotsky understood works of art as specic psychological tools, which presuppose as a condition of their existence a project of a possible man, whose self-realization and self-

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development exceed anything we can nd in actuality. Following the path of Vygotskys Psychology of Art, Puzyrey suggested this area of psychology to be considered as a laboratory where such a possible man can be constructed. Such a project would be even more ambitious than the one formulated by humanistic psychology, which suggested that peak experiences in human functioning should be taken as the norm (Puzyrey, 1986). Such a reading of Vygotsky presented signicant challenges for Russian academic psychology in the 1980s when it was just emerging from the period of stagnation, and such a view has not been accepted unquestionably even now. However, it stimulated discussion of some issues critical for psychology and with time has been taken up by a number of researchers. In a recent denitive monograph, Methodological Analysis in Psychology, one of the leading authorities on methodological issues in psychology, F. Vasiluk, rearticulated and reinforced such psychotechnic understanding of the cultural historical theory and delivered an analysis of the current situation in Russian psychology in light of Vygotskys ideas (Vasiluk, 2003). Following Vygotskys emphasis on the centrality of psychological practice for the functioning of the discipline, Vasiluk highlights the signicance of the emergence of practice of psychology as an independent eld in postcommunist Russia. He argues that before, while psychology functioned in an applied capacity, its relationships to other disciplines were not only characterized as subordinate and regulated by demands and expectations for concrete recommendations and guidelines, but it also represented the relationships of a science positioned externally with regard to the philosophically, methodologically, and scientically different areas of practice. The emergence of psychological practice within psychological science itself in the form of psychotherapy and counseling has radically changed this situation, creating in the words of Vasiluk, a living body within the psychological discipline proper, driving its development by posing and addressing fundamental methodological problems (Vasiluk, 2003). Vasiluk further outlines the critical dimensions along which he envisions the formation of a new psychology, psychotechnic in essence: the values, the audience, the subject of knowledge, the role of contact, the process and procedures of research, the knowledge, the object of theory, and the relation between the object and the method. He insists that a psychotechnically based psychology should not endorse only a single value of scientic truth; instead, it should make its choice in the context of all major values of truth, goodness, beauty, divinity, and usefulness, among others. Whereas the majority of psychological works in Russia until very recently had been written for academic psychologists, the new psychology has as its primary audience the practicing psychologist, who is positioned not outside but inside the psychological action. Unlike the classical, positivistically oriented psychology where psychologists make every effort to occupy a neutral position of objectivity in the process of research, the results of which always aim at being independent of the researchers views and involvement, the psychotechnic knowledge can only be obtained from a nonindifferent position, oriented to help, compassion, and empathy, orientations that are themselves encompassed by culturally and historically specic value systems. Moreover, whereas in the classical paradigm the researcher always has a dominant position above his or her subjects, in the psychotechnic paradigm, the

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subjects or clients turn into active collaborators. In fact, such a process of knowledge can only occur from the dialogical position. Furthermore, the procedures that are most adequate to the acquisition of such knowledge should not be rigid, unidirectional experimental programs, but exible, not wholly determined and wholly programmed ways of interacting with the subjects. Such interaction should also allow for the utilization of knowledge by subjects and facilitate their self-reection, self-development, and growth. The character of knowledge that is most conducive to the dynamics of the psychotechnic process is the knowledge from inside, emotionally experienced as well as cognitively reected. The object of the theory consequently is not something that can have the status of objective reality given and existing before and independently of human activity; on the contrary, the object is exactly this human practice, taken from inside, as personally meaningful, as my practice. Finally, the relation between the method and the object in the psychotechnic system is opposite the one advocated by the natural sciences. If in the latter the method tries to become transparent and recede into the background, revealing the phenomenon as it is in its natural form, independently of the method, in the former method it is positioned at the center, as the explicit conditions that are central to the development of the phenomenon under consideration and, in fact, constitutive with regard to it. The method, the researcher, and the subject in their mutual practice form an indivisible unit of analysis in this case, its minimal monad (Vasiluk, 2003). It is also of paramount importance, Vasiluk insists, that the new psychology posits a human being as holistic and treats him/her as such. For him, such a holistic approach can be implemented if we accept the inextricable links between consciousness, practice, and culture as a context for studying psychological phenomena. Vygotskys cultural historical theory provides an ideal basis for such a paradigm. As Vasiluk notes, Vygotsky understood consciousness itself as cultural and practical at the same time, in terms of its genesis, structure, and functioning. Vasiluk highlights that historical for Vygotsky meant genesis of consciousness, but not in terms of its natural development. The specicity of Vygotskys historicity lay in its articial character, forged in the process of mutual cooperative activity, mediated by cultural tools and signs. Finally, Vasiluk urges this new psychology to become a real force in society and rise to the level of tasks with which people deal. He insists that the new psychology should rmly position itself in the domain of the humanities, and by doing so acknowledge its link with the cultural and semiotic sphere. Furthermore, argues Vasiluk, psychologists should accept responsibility for the powerful effect that their actions can have on people with whom they engage in their practice: In our profession we are responsible, concludes Vasiluk in his monograph, whether people who choose to consult us will be searching in their souls for Oedipus or Christ (Vasiluk, 2003, p. 226). (The strong religious connotations that are discernible in Vasiluks theorizing indicate another important shift in the contemporary Russian psychology. Following the collapse of communism, in parallel with a restoration of the religious dimension in the Russian society, religious ideas started to be referenced, utilized, and developed in psychology; e.g., Bratus, 1994). However, what is at stake here for Vasiluk, even more than the value orientation of psychological practice, is the issue of constructed versus given character of psychological phenomena. Similar methodological issues in the humanities, and in psychology in particular, have been at the center of attention of another prominent Russian methodologist,

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Vadim Rozin (2000, 2001, 2003, 2004). He distinguishes two types of discourses that have dominated the development of psychology as a discipline: The rst is based on the model of natural science and engineering practice, and the second one is sensitive to the nature of phenomena studied in the humanities. He argues that in contrast to the natural sciences, knowledge in the humanities should always acknowledge the position of the researcher and the fact that such knowledge becomes constitutive toward its object. Such a situation follows from the cultural, semiotic, and self-reexive character of the phenomena under consideration. Within this general strategy of knowledge in the humanities, he distinguishes a special form of knowledge that is developed within psychological practice, such as counseling or therapy. Such knowledge may only be productive if it can be used in the process of solving some important problems within this practice: help, understanding, compassion, and so forth. Such knowledge is determined not by the immanent laws of psychological theory, but by the dynamics of interaction. Rozin (2004) denes such knowledge as knowledge-event, which can take place only through an encounter with another personality (p. 133). The testimony of the growing strength of these various methodological developments in Russian psychology today is the establishment of the journal Postneklassiceskaya psikhologija [Post-non-classical psychology], which has been published by Moscow State University since 2004. The advocates of post-non-classical psychology extend methodological implications of Vygotskys cultural historical theory, while also acknowledging correspondence with such developments in Western psychology as the narrative movement, particularly the work of Jerome Bruner (1986, 1990), Theodore Sarbin (1986), and Michael White (White, 2007; White & Epston, 1990), all of whom were at least partially inspired by Vygotsky, as well as by social constructionism, particularly the work of Kenneth Gergen (1999, 2001, 2009). Such dialogue between contemporary Russian scholars and their counterparts in the West testies to the new state of psychological scholarship in Russia, where psychology is able to reconnect with its heritage, as well as with developments in theory and practice abroad. In a way, the development of the ideas sowed by Vygotsky in the rst third of the 20th century, such as the role of signication or social constructionism, which was articially interrupted in Russia because of ideological restrictions, was continued in the West through the work of scholars like Bruner and Gergen in the 1960s when Russian psychology was in a state of stagnation. Now, Russian psychologists are able to reconnect with this broken thread. In doing so, they also observe that the appropriation of Vygotskys ideas in the West often remains only partial, precisely because of the limited access to the primary texts that characterized the eld for so long. On the other hand, these rather problematic lessons from the history of science reinforce an acute self-reective attitude among Russians psychologists, which can be instructive for their counterparts in the West who are often reluctant to engage in critical analysis of their discipline. A. N. Leontievs Activity Theory and Its Reexamination in Contemporary Russian Psychology Whereas over the past 25 years, Vygotskys cultural historical theory has been increasingly gaining prominence in Russia and internationally, it was the theory of activity developed by A. N. Leontiev that came to dominate Soviet psychology for much of the 20th century. The independent status of A. N.

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Leontievs theory of activity and Vygotskys cultural historical theory is an object of ongoing debates in Russian psychology. The canonical assumption of Soviet psychology that there was a succession between Vygotskys cultural historical theory and A. N. Leontievs theory of activity came under scrutiny in the wake of perestroika reforms. It has become acknowledged that although there are numerous theoretical links between Leontievs and Vygotskys works, there are also profound differences. Some scholars believe that interconnectedness outweighs the differences (D. Leontiev, 2003) and that in fact we can treat Vygotskys and Leontievs approaches as aspects of one paradigm. This view has culminated in the introduction of the notion of cultural historical activity theory, or CHAT, which has not, however, acquired a conventional meaning or become wide spread (Cole, 1996; Stetsenko, 2005). Other psychologists argue that these two theories represent two unique perspectives (Kozulin, 1990; Van der Veer & Valsiner, 1991; Vasiluk, 2003). These theories are linked historically. A. N. Leontiev was a student of Vygotsky, and was profoundly inuenced by his theorizing. However, the former eventually emerged as an independent gure, developing his own program of research and attracting a cohort of followers. Later in his career, A. N. Leontiev served as head of the Psychology Department at the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University from 1950 to 1966. He then became the founding dean of the newly established Faculty of Psychology at the Moscow State University, where he worked until his death in 1979, thereby acquiring a powerful organizational and theoretical control over the development of the discipline. The contradictions between A. N. Leontiev and Vygotsky started to emerge in the early 1930s, not long before Vygotskys death in 1934; this was the period that became critical for Soviet psychology. Beginning in 1929, Stalin started to tighten ideological control in various areas of art and science. Different psychological groups were forced to demonstrate their delity to the Marxist ideal of objective science. Soon, all independent psychological developments were suppressed, and the ideological machine of the Soviet state compelled psychologists to derive psychological categories directly from the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Even before this campaign reached its full swing, A. N. Leontiev decided to leave Moscow with a group of collaborators, including Alexandr Zaporozhets and Lidia Bozhovich, for the Ukrainian city of Kharkov, where they eventually established a program of developmental research, moving signicantly away from the cultural historical paradigm elaborated by Vygotsky (Yasnitsky & Ferrari, 2008). As Kozulin (1996) notes, Ideological caution, honest scientic disagreement, and also a misunderstanding of certain of Vygotskys ideas all were intricately interwoven in the phenomenon that later became known as Leontievs theory of activity (p. 113). The fundamental disagreement between the Kharkovites and Vygotskys position concerned the relationships among consciousness, activity, and reality. In particular, A. N. Leontievs group began to argue that Vygotsky overinated the role of signication. Consequently, they played down the role of a sign as the chief mediator in favor of practical activity. Indicatively, it is precisely this central issue concerning the relations among consciousness, activity, and reality and the role of signication that became the major focus of

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critique, revision, and expansion 70 years later when it became possible to examine the theory of activity from ideologically neutral positions. A. N. Leontiev (1947) rst outlined the theory of activity in his Essay in the Development of Mind, followed by the highly inuential Problems of the Development of Mind (1959/1981). His most comprehensive expression was in Activity, Consciousness, and Personality (1975). Following the translation of the volume into English in 1978, the theory has generated limited but steady interest in the West (e.g., Engestrom, 1999; Kaptelin & Nardi, 2006; Wertsch, 1979). (Some terminological problems must be acknowledged here. The difculty of translating as activity the Russian term Dejitelnost is as notorious as it is unavoidable. In Russian, the word comes from the same root as delo deed and is closely associated with postupokact or causeand as such implies a higher degree of agency than the English word activity. Semantically, the German Taetigkeit is closer to the original Russian meaning.8) A. N. Leontiev positioned the category of activity as both a core and as an explanatory principle of all aspects of psychological life. In this theory, perception, attention, memory, imagination, cognition, and emotions derive from activity, while they are simultaneously treated as actions of a particular type. Furthermore, consciousness and personality are posited as derivative of praxis, as well. Such a scope of application was allowed by the broad denition of activity elaborated by A. N. Leontiev:
Activity is a molar, not an additive unit of the life of the physical, material subject. In a narrower sense, That is, at the psychological level, it is a unit of life, mediated by psychic reection, the real function of which is that it orients the subject in the objective world. In other words, activity is not a reaction and not a totality of reactions but a system that has structure, its own internal transitions and transformations, its own development. (Leontiev, 1978, p. 50)

A. N. Leontievs attempt to formulate an overarching physiological paradigm encompassed by the idea of human praxis can be seen as a counterpart to the Marxist philosophical understanding of man and its function within society, where labor is posited as a denitive mode of operation of the former and productive forces as a major determining factor of the latter. The strong ideological underpinning no doubt contributed signicantly to the rise of the theory of activity to the status of the ofcial Soviet psychological doctrine, which it occupied until the end of the 1980s. For example, the volume A. N. Leontiev and Contemporary Psychology (Zaporozhets, Zincenko, Ovchinnikova, & Tichomirov, 1983) reaf rmed the dominance of the activity paradigm at the time in all the areas of general psychology and beyond. In their contributions to the volume, the leading Russian psychologists such as B. Bratus, V. Stolin, V. Vilunas, U. Gippenreitor, V. Liaudis, S. Smirnov, N. Talyzina, and V. Munipov argued that the theory of activity can constructively encompass research on personality, self, motivation, attention, memory, perception, and educational and organizational psychology. The obvious limitations of the theory of activity, namely that it cannot adequately address such phenomena as human interaction, creativity, culture,
8 See A. N. Leontievs (1978) discussion of this issue in Chapter 3 of Activity, Consciousness, and Personality.

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consciousness, semiotization, and spiritual life, were not acknowledged until the reforms of perestroika were well underway. The strong demand for applied knowledge and growth of the psychotherapeutic movement in Russia at that time also brought to the fore another limitation of the theory of activity, the fact that it was elaborated overwhelmingly on the abstract philosophical plane. This made its application in any setting clinical, organizational or educational highly problematic. Indicatively, it was the leading philosophical journal in Russia, Voprosy Filosophii, which held in 2001 a discussion regarding the status of the theory of activity at the beginning of the 21st century. The broad range of publications attested to two almost diametrically opposite positions among the scholars: Whereas some (Svirev, 2001; Gromyko, 2001) afrmed that activity theory is not only functioning well, but has an enormous potential for further development, pending modications, others argued that the activity theme has lost its previous popularity both within philosophy and psychology (Lektorskij, 2001, p. 56). Taking this criticism one step further, Lazarev (2001) stated, The activity approach which was elaborated several decades ago to solve a crisis in psychology, today nds itself in a state of crisis (p. 33). Similar debates have been going on within the psychology discipline proper since the 1990s. Whereas some scholars have held to the view that psychological phenomena are entirely reducible and explainable through the category of activity (e.g., Tichomirov, 1993), others (e.g., Smirnov, 1993) have argued that activity represents only one of the ways of describing and explaining psychological reality. This critique has led to the formation of two opposite positions: According to one, the major tenets of activity theory should be preserved, but some modications should be made in different areas (personality, cognition, meaning); according to another, it is precisely these fundamental assumptions that should be radically critiqued and dismantled. The developments of these two lines in the past 15 years are exemplied by the work of four leading Russian psychologists: Asmolov and D. Leontiev on the one hand and Rozin and Zincenko on the other. The rst position is well represented by Alexandr Asmolov and Dmitry Leontiev, both afliated with the Department of Psychology at Moscow State University (incidentally, D. Leontiev belongs to the third generation of psychologists in A. N. Leontievs family, the history of this family reecting as it were the fate of the theory of activity itself). Both Asmolov and D. Leontiev made a sustained attempt to readdress two major issues in general psychology, personality psychology and the problem of meaning, within the overarching activity paradigm. Asmolov (2001) strives to expand the model of personality functioning offered by the activity theory. Whereas the subject assumed within the canonical theory of activity was the social historical subject rather than psychological individual, Asmolovs tries to shift the emphasis toward the latter pole. A.N. Leontiev dened personality as a hierarchical structure of motives, anchoring personality rmly in the overall dynamics of actions: The structure of personality represents in itself a relatively stable conguration of principal motivational lines arranged hierarchically within itself (A. N. Leontiev, 1978, p. 221). Asmolov adheres to the main principles of A. N. Leontievs approach, positing activity as such a reality within which both psychological development

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and personality can be explained. Furthermore, similarly to A. N. Leontiev, he denes the main mechanism of personality development as orientation among various mutual activities, choice, and self-determination. However, Asmolovs denition of personality extends A. N. Leontievs model by trying to address contextual determinants:
The evolution of the mode of life, the development of psyche in bio-genesis, sociogenesis and person-genesis lead to the emergence of personality as a specic element of the system, responsible for the orientation in the world of social relations. The development of personality does not center around the individual on its own, assimilating inuences of the surrounding milieu, but around the rst mutual acts of behavior, which transform the microsocial situation of personality development. (Asmolov, 2001, pp. 112113)9

Asmolov, therefore, rearticulates and problematizes the subjectworld dichotomy. In this context, he further introduces the notion of mans world (mir celoveka): Neither the world on its own, nor the man on its own become the basis of social activity as the nature of human existence. The understanding of man through the notion of mans world changes radically the face of psychological science (Asmolov, 2001, pp. 66 68). As such, Asmolovs notion of mans world represents an important step in overcoming one of the deciencies within the canonical activity paradigm: the separation of an individual on the one hand and the world on the other, including historical, cultural, and situation-specic variables. Whereas the canonical activity paradigm posited objective world as a higher level philosophical abstraction, au par with a social individuum, who was understood as a subject of grand historical narrative, Asmolov makes an attempt to reintroduce a breathing, living human being as a subject of psychology. From a similar position of extending activity theory, D. Leontiev (2003) reconceptualized the category of meaning. He pointed out that within the traditional activity paradigm, the problem of meaning has been addressed in a narrow realm of activity. The mechanism accounting for the production of meaning had been elaborated by A. N. Leontiev within the three-level model of activity where activity corresponds to motive, actions relate to aims, and operations are determined by the conditions under which activity unfolds. The meaning of an action was thought to arise out of the relationship between motives and goals of actions:
No matter whether these motives are or are not perceived by the subject, they signal themselves in the form of his experiencing an interest, a desire, or a passion; their function, taken from the aspect of consciousness, is that they evaluate the life signicance for the subject of objective circumstances and his actions in these circumstances, giving them personal sense that does not directly correspond to their understood objective meaning. (A. N. Leontiev, 1978, p. 150)10

As D. Leontiev acknowledged, the category of activity, as elaborated by A. N. Leontiev, represented a theoretical abstraction extracted from the wholeness of real life. He suggested that it is time to expand the scope of research on meaning and return to the world at large as the real context of an individuals life. To this
9 10

English translation by the present author. English translation by the present author.

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end, D. Leontiev introduced the notion of world of life, and insisted that such a notion should be central for the ontology of psychological phenomena, including the category of meaning. D. Leontiev further incorporates in his framework culture as a eld of collective meanings and art as a mechanism of meaning formation, correcting an important deciency within the traditional activity paradigm: lack of attention to the semiotic sphere. Both Asmolovs concept of mans world and D. Leontievs notion of world of life can be compared with Bourdieus (1990) notion of habitus, which similarly attempts to bridge the subjective objective antinomy of the social sciences. On the other hand, both D. Leontievs and Asmolovs interventions resonate with phenomenological and existential approaches, thus echoing the tradition of Russian ethical philosophy. An earlier attempt to reintroduce this theme into the psychological context in Russia was made in 1958 by Rubinstein in his unnished book The Man and the World (celovek i Mir) (Rubinstein, 1997). Although this theme can be treated as reappearing rather than entirely new, its importance cannot be overestimated. Taking the critique of activity paradigm further, Rozin (2004) noted that the introduction of such notions responds to the dilemma critical for contemporary Russian psychology: either take into consideration the achievements in other areas of the humanities, such as cultural studies, sociology, semiotics, and challenge the traditional psychological focus on the isolated human being, or by keeping it intact, jeopardize the further development of psychology as a discipline given that it is becoming obvious that it is starting to lose ground in the study of the human being to the above-mentioned approaches in the humanities. Rozin (2004) himself introduces the notion of psychological reality to address this problem (p. 17). He denes psychological reality as a system of events connected by a particular rule or logic. Various psychological realities are determined on the one hand by particular semiotic factors (language, knowledge, schemes), and on the other, they represent felt, experienced phenomena. Rozin delineates such realities as reality of self, reality of dreams, reality of art. But overall, Rozins project is different in its scope, impulse, and direction to the ones undertaken by Asmolov and D. Leontiev; Rozins aim is not to extend the theory of activity, but to radically challenge it. He began by reecting on the historical conditions and needs that gave rise to activity theory and argued that it was introduced in psychology to provide a framework for the raising, constructing, and molding of a new socialist type of mentality and personality. According to Rozin, it is the failure of the socialist experiment to produce this new type of personality that has become one of the main grounds of the contemporary critique of the activity theory. Rozin noted that instead of a uniform Soviet approach to education, there are various pedagogical systems practiced now in Russia: religious schools, esoteric schools, schools that endorse the ideals of classical knowledge, or on the contrary, embrace values of consumerism. Furthermore, instead of the unidirectional line of control from top to bottom so characteristic of the Soviet pedagogical system, the ideas of pedagogical cooperation and participation have become increasingly popular. The understanding of development itself has changed; more and more often it is understood not in line with the natural science model, but through the framework of the humanities. Finally, Rozin highlighted the role that culture plays in

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contemporary life. It is time to realize, he argued, that culture does not lag behind the various processes in society by reecting them; on the contrary, culture itself has become one of the major determinants of such processes (Rozin, 2004). Activity theory has also been vigorously criticized by V. P. Zincenko. A prominent gure in the Russian humanities, a member of the Russian Academy of Science since 1992, whose long career went from pioneering organizational and labor psychology in the 1960s in Russia to the establishment of the Institute for the Study of Man in the 1990s, Zincenko also belongs to a psychological dynasty. His father, P. I. Zincenko, worked closely with A. N. Leontiev and was recognized as the leading authority in the study of memory. After having worked within the theory of activity paradigm for several decades, in 1997 Zincenko turned to reexamine this paradigm in the most radical and uncompromising manner in his monograph Osip Mandelstams Staff and Mamardasvilis Pipe. The monograph examined the role that ideological pressure played in imposing trivially appropriated Marxist dogma to such issues as consciousness, personality, and development in psychology. Zincenko (1997) showed that activity theory was formulated at such a level as to provide a mediating link between the Marxist philosophy and empirical psychological description. Such an interdisciplinary approach facilitated Marxist assumptions in psychology. That is, man was understood rst and foremost as a subject of activity and a product of social relations. This position was further elaborated in a number of assumptions about primacy: the primacy of external over internal, the primacy of activity over consciousness, the primacy of the social over the individual, and the primacy of interiorization over exteriorization. According to Zincenko, such assumptions reected the unrelenting struggle against idealism that was a leading theme for Soviet philosophy and, consequently, for Soviet psychology. As a result, the latter fell prey to the assumption of rigid determinism of psyche and behavior. Consequently, it could not even approach such phenomena as free will, free deeds, and free personality (Zincenko, 1997). Zincenko asserted that the belief that the phenomena of consciousness, personality, and development could be explained through the category of activity led to critical distortions in Soviet psychology. Given that consciousness was understood as born out of and within activity, as well as mediated by activity, its independent existence was vigorously denied. The theory of activity bent over backward to acknowledge the regulatory role of consciousness in activity but at the same time not to recognize it as an independent force apart from activity. Consciousness as such was never acknowledged. To challenge these assumptions, Zincenko turned to the heritage of the poet Osip Mandelstam and philosopher Merab Mamardasvili.11 He made an extensive use of their ideas to understand consciousness, personality, and psychological
11 Osip Mandelstam (18911938), a celebrated Russian poet and essayist, one of the most distinctive voices of the Silver Age (as the period of beginning of the 20th century is often called in philology), who perished in Stalins camps. Merab Mamardashvili (1930 1990), an eminent Russian philosopher of Georgian origin, whose works explored the relationship between consciousness and language, challenging the notion of truth and objectivity and introducing the concept of the nonclassical ideal of rationality.

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development in a radically new way. In particular, Zincenko argued for the recognition of consciousness as an independent force beyond activity. Zincenko developed his critique of Soviet psychology as applicable beyond the academic context, that is, in its relation to society and culture. To do so, he traced how ideological dogmas were translated into the language of psychology and articulated as theoretical models. He then went on to show how they were applied in the production, construction, and molding of human beings of a particular type, the notorious homo sovieticus:
Every effort was made to destroy or not to allow the links, which are natural for human beings, to emerge between activity and consciousness on the one hand, and consciousness and personality on the other; to deprive consciousness of its inherent generative qualities. The situation in psychology was just a pale shadow of what was happening with the collective consciousness of people in real life. (Zincenko, 1997, p. 174)12

Zincenko further pointed out the paradoxical situation surrounding the oper ation of the theory of activity in Soviet Russia. That is, the theory, which by its very denition aimed at studying agency and which should nd its ultimate expression in free deeds, was operating in a society where free deeds were punishable. Against this background, Zincenko outlined his new approach, which he called, organic psychology, and which, he argued, should be able to deal with the problems of freedom, death, fate, ethics, and values. He began, however, by deconstructing the dichotomy of objective and subjective in psychology and claimed that not only in ontology, but in gnoseology as well, the opposition of objective and subjective represents a grave mistake (Zincenko, 1997, p. 10).13 He argued that the border between objective and subjective, internal and external, body and soul should be thought of as permeable rather than solid. For Zincenko, both ideal and real forms represent living congurations. Drawing on the major tenets of Vygotskys cultural historical theory, Zincenko showed that the trans formation of the ideal form into the real one occurs through mediation by psychological tools, among which Vygotsky privileged signs and words, while Zincenko included symbol and myth, as well. Zincenko argued that such cultural tools do not represent petried, solidied embodiments of human actions; rather, they should be treated as living practices themselves. The important methodological implication that has followed from this logic is that the process of analysis of psychological phenomena should not be detrimental to their living, developing nature. Zincenko further introduced a new developmental model to account for the emergence of consciousness, personality, and sense of agency. In the impetus of this generative progression, Zincenko positioned live movements and nondiffer entiated forms of activity, out of which behavior and activity in the traditional sense are born. In their turn, behavior and activity generate consciousness, which further gives rise to free actions and deeds. Finally, the latter evolve into personality, which then can generate new forms of behavior. This generative progression, which he calls a genome of cultural historical development, is
12 13

English translation by the present author. English translation by the present author.

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organized along the vertical of spiritual development. The latter is dened as a search, as work, as a practical activity, as an experience through which the subject allows for self-development, personal growth, and the nding of truth (Zincenko, 1997, p. 148). This development progresses along seven levels, from the level of activity mediated by signs to the level of spiritual functioning of a suprahuman being (dukho-chelovek). As such, Zincenkos intervention makes a passionate attempt to reinstate categories banished from the ofcial Soviet psychology: deeds, responsibility, soul, ideal, spirituality, individualism, man, and God. Conclusion Overall, it seems that the main change in Russian psychology over the past 25 years has been a general move toward an elaboration of a new paradigm that has been variously characterized as organic psychology, nonclassical psychology, or post-non-classical psychology. The contours of this paradigm are becoming evident in both the ontological and epistemological domains. The cardinal shift with regard to ontology is to posit man not in isolation from the real context of his existence but as an inextricable part of it. This is evident in the introduction of such notions as mans world, the world of life, psychological reality, and the problematization and destabilization of rigid dichotomies of ideal and real, subjective and objective, external and internal, interiorization and exteriorization. This move is paralleled by an even more ambitious attempt to forge a new methodology, one adequate to the study of the unique nature of psychological phenomena and their impact on culture. This is represented in the elaboration of the psychotechnic paradigm. There is no doubt that on the whole such a development would have been impossible without the radical changes in the Russian society and academia that have taken place over the last quarter of a century. However, the vectors of this development also attest to the continuity of traditions in Russian psychology and philosophy. Russian scholars have drawn on the rich heritage of Russian psychological scienceVygotsky, A. N. Leontiev, Luria, Zaporozhets, Rubinstein, and others and the philosophical input of the earlier 20th century thinkers such as Florensky, Solovev, and Bakhtin for whom the issues of agency and meaning, just as for the current generation of Russian psychologists, were central. However, it may be suggested that the valorization of the themes of meaning and agency and problematization of the relation between psychology and society were also paradoxically heightened by the period of totalitarian rule. It is against the danger of destruction of meaning-making by ideological dogma, against the continuous threat to freedom, and against the use and misuse of psychology in the process of producing consciousness of a new type of the notorious homo sovieticusthat the urge to preserve and keep such values has been most strongly felt. Moreover, it is perhaps this experience of survival against the odds and careful self-reection and self-analysis into which Russian psychology engaged after the collapse of the Soviet system that represents the most valuable lesson that can be learned. The dynamics between power, politics, ideology, culture, and the humanities that the history of Russian psychology has demonstrated so vividly is by no means limited to that country alone. Soviet psychological scholarship was not an exception, but was rather a paradigmatic case, which made the lines of such inuences

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particularly visible. No doubt, psychologys position in the post-Soviet era is being regured in the context of a free-market economy, anticollectivist cultural politics, and an overriding value of consumerism. Although such analysis is beyond the scope of the present article, there is a rm basis to believe that a tradition that has survived dramatic highs and lows in the 20th century will be capable of dealing with the new pressures and challenges of the 21st without losing its originality.
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Received February 3, 2009 Revision received January 6, 2010 Accepted February 9, 2010 y

History of Psychology Call for Papers: Psychology, Politics, and Public Policy
History of Psychology invites manuscripts for a special issue on the historical intersections of psychology, public policy, and politics. The goal of the special issue is to examine the ways in which public policy and politics have been inuenced by the discipline and profession of Psychology and how, in turn, the discipline and profession have been shaped by public policy and politics. Psychology is used here to indicate the discipline and profession of psychology, as well as the use of psychological insights and expertise by the public. We are open to any public policy domain (e.g., mental health and healthcare; public health and disaster relief; education and welfare; transportation and safety; defense and law enforcement) and interested in papers that engage politics broadly conceived. We particularly welcome articles that address policy and psychology issues in diverse national contexts beyond the United States of America. The submission deadline is September 15, 2010. The main text of each manuscript, exclusive of gures, tables, references, or appendixes, should not exceed 35 double-spaced pages (approximately 7,500 words). Initial inquiries regarding the special issue may be sent to Wade Pickren wpickren@psych.ryerson.ca). Papers should be submitted through the regular submission portal for History of Psychology (http://www.apa.org/journals/hop/submission.html) with a cover letter indicating that the paper is to be considered for the special section.