An Overview of Russian History (1860–Present)
The Pre-Revolutionary Period (1860–1917)
The Post-Soviet Period (1991–Beyond)
Pre-Revolutionary Psychology (1860–1917)
Revolution: The Development of Soviet Psychology (1917–1991)
Soviet Repression and Reactology
Dialectical Materialism, Pedology, and Psychotechnics
Post-Soviet Psychology: Picking Up the Pieces After Perestroika
In this chapter, we present an overview of the development of psychology as an independent scientific discipline in Russia. Particular emphasis is placed on ways in which Russian psychology is similar to and differs from psychology as it exists in Western Europe and the United States. For example, three key features that distinguish Russian psychology from Western psychology include: (1) the close relationship that continues to exist between psychology and philosophy in Russia compared with the division that exists between these two disciplines in the West, (2) the stronger and more overt influence of political and social changes on the practice of psychology in Russia, and (3) a strong thematic undercurrent existing in Russian psychology that emphasizes environmental influences over heredity.
Given the strong influence of political and social events on the practice of Russian psychology, this chapter begins with an overview of the history of Russia, beginning prior to the reign of Czar Peter the Great in the 18th century and Russia’s emergence as a world power and as an active member of the European community. Our coverage of the history of Russia continues through the 19th century with the expansion of Russian territories, the rising discontent of Russia’s citizens with the existing imperial monarchy of the czars, the abolition of Russia’s practice of serfdom, and increasing social trends of intellectualism, liberalism, and political radicalism. By 1917, events occurred that led to the rise of the Bolshevik Party, a group of political revolutionaries led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and dedicated to the social and economic principles of philosopher Karl Marx. Following the October Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks assumed political control of Russia and the country evolved into a new political entity as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
Our discussion continues, thereafter, with a history of communist Russia beginning with the political repression and isolationism that existed from the 1920s to the early 1950s under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin and his successor Joseph Stalin. Our coverage of the Soviet period concludes with Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempt in the 1980s to restructure Soviet socialism through his twin policies of Glasnost or “openness” and Perestroika or “restructuring”; these ultimately led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union and a period of social and political turbulence.
This general overview of the history of Russia is presented as a backdrop for the history of Russian psychology and emphasis is placed on the many ways in which unfolding political events in Russia shaped the practice of psychology as a scientific discipline. The history of Russian psychology prior to 1917 emphasizes the strong ties and close similarities between Russian psychology and psychology in Western Europe. Russian psychology, prior to 1917, was also strongly influenced by practitioners from the medical-scientific field of physiology. Two physiologists who profoundly impacted Russian and world psychology were Ivan Michailovich Sechenov (1829–1905), who proposed that all psychical phenomena could be explained through the concept of the reflex arc, and Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849–1936), whose research on digestive processes in dogs led to his concept of the conditioned reflex. The work of both of these individuals brought into Russian psychology a strong materialist focus that continues to the present.
Another prominent figure in Russian psychology was Vladimir Bekhterev (1857–1927) who, in addition to founding the Psychoneurological Institute of St. Petersburg and the Institute for Brain Research, developed a school of Russian psychology called “reflexology,” which focused on the method of associative reflexes and was similar to behaviorism in the United States.
The Soviet government’s increasing emphasis on Marxism as the only acceptable ideological basis for any scientific activity, including psychology, began to impact seriously the development of Russian psychology in the 1920s. As a consequence of this increasing focus on mechanistic materialism and the elimination of idealism, Russian psychology began to discredit any notions of consciousness and was in jeopardy of losing legitimate standing as a scientific discipline separate from medical physiology. Two prominent Russian psychologists who struggled to defend the psychology of consciousness were Georgy Chelpanov (1862–1936) and Konstantin Kornilov (1879–1957).
Beginning in the 1930s, pressure from the Soviet government for Russian psychological theory and practice to conform to Marxist ideology became increasingly rigid to the degree that no works in psychology could be published unless they directly cited and referenced the writings of Marx and Lenin, both of whom were philosophers and political ideologues but not psychologists. Dialectical materialism, a Marxian interpretation of reality that viewed matter as the subject of change and all change as the product of conflict between opposites arising from inherent internal contradictions, arose as the only acceptable organizing principle around which Russian psychology could be developed.
Two subfields of psychology that were particularly subject to active repression under communism were pedology, which focused primarily on child development, and psychotechnics, which was similar to American industrial–organizational psychology. Pedology and psychotechnics were of particular concern to Soviet ideologists due to the frequent use of aptitude tests and interest inventories, which the government criticized as tending to perpetuate artificial class differences.
Despite active governmental repression, Russian psychologists in the fields of pedology and psychotechnics were able to make significant contributions to Russian psychology. Included in this chapter is the work of Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934), who developed a stage theory of child development centered on the child’s exposure to her or his environment and its gradual assimilation into the child’s own mental activity. Vygotsky’s students Alexander Luria (1902–1977) and Aleksei Leontiev (1903–1979) expanded upon his work.
In 1950, a joint session of the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medicine was organized under direct order of Joseph Stalin. The session celebrated and idealized the contributions of Ivan Pavlov to Russian psychology and what followed was a period of “Pavlovian psychology.” Nikolai Bernstein (1896–1966) is discussed briefly in this chapter as one of the few Russian psychologists to challenge the Pavlovianization of Russian psychology. Bernstein proposed the study of feedback mechanisms in the physiology of body movements, an early precursor of cybernetics, as an alternative to Pavlovian doctrine.
The political and social destabilization of the USSR as a consequence of Perestroika and Glasnost led to its collapse, and to significant changes in Russian psychology. We conclude this chapter with a discussion of the impact of these changes on Russian psychology, such as the severe impairment of funding for research, a lack of stable infrastructure, a reopening to the influence of Western psychology, and an increasing focus on applied activities to address social–psychological problems arising from current conditions in Russian society, including alcoholism and depression, the adoption of a capitalist economy, and ethnic conflict.
When you finish studying this chapter, you will be prepared to:
In preceding chapters, our primary focus has been the historical development of a predominantly Western psychology. The pursuit of a scientific psychology, however, has never been restricted to the West and to limit the history of psychology to its development in America and Western Europe results in an incomplete portrait of the discipline. A richer understanding of the history and scope of psychology results from expanding our discussion to psychology in the East, beginning with one of the first Eastern countries to pursue systematic development of a scientific psychology, namely, Russia.
A particularly striking contrast between Western and Russian psychology lies in the deeper and more overt influence of politics on academic life and, indeed, on life in general, that is evident in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or the USSR (1917–1991). Likewise, politics has certainly influenced Western psychology in many ways as, for example, through immigration of German psychologists to the United States as a consequence of political developments during World War II, through bureaucratic or social policies restricting the pursuit of psychology by minority practitioners, and most directly through government funding of research. In Western psychology, however, the influence of politics can be described as simply that, an influence, while in Russian psychology politics played a much more pervasive role in shaping the discipline.
Due to the close relationship between Russian psychology and Russian politics, we begin this chapter on the history of Russian psychology with a general overview of the history of Russia. The era of Russian history relevant to psychology begins in the 1860s in what we call the Pre-Revolutionary Period (1860–1917), is followed by the Soviet Period (1917–1991), and concludes with the Post-Soviet Period (1991–beyond).
Prior to 1917, the Russian empire was an autocratic imperial monarchy ruled for over 300 years by the czars of the Romanov dynasty, a “part” of Europe and yet, at the same time, “apart from European culture,” exotic and remote. The segregation of Russia from Europe was partly rooted in religious differences. As recently as the early 18th century, “Europe” was a term largely used as a geographic expression while its inhabitants thought of and referred to themselves by yet another term, “Christendom.”
Although the citizens of Russia, too, were Christian, they were never included in the Christian fraternity of the West with its center in Rome, and instead practiced a faith they termed “orthodoxy,” rooted in eighth-century Byzantium and the struggle over Christian doctrine that led to the separation of the Greek East from the Latin West. The Greek empire steadily declined in area and strength while the Latin West grew increasingly powerful and prosperous. The Greeks eventually reunited with Rome at the Council of Florence in 1439, leaving Russia, the primary remnant of a once proud Byzantine Empire, in the role of supplicant and subordinate to a European Christendom bent on the religious conversion of its neighbors (Malia, 1999). Russia found itself increasingly landlocked and isolated from industrial and economic development in Europe. Over the next three centuries, from the 1400s to the 1700s, Europe developed a negative image of Russia as a backward and poor “country-cousin” of little or no significance.
This image changed dramatically as a result of Peter the Great’s military triumph in the Great Northern War between Russia and Sweden between 1700 and 1721. Russia emerged as a world power under Peter’s rule and was suddenly opened to European influence, standing on almost equal footing with France, England, and Austria, and politically superior to a declining Spain and Holland.
Russia’s entry into the cliquish European community engendered different attitudes among Europe’s constituent countries, attitudes varying from the welcoming embrace of England and Prussia, to the cautious interest of Austria, to the blatant antagonism of France. But while enjoying its position as a newly fledged member of Europe, Russia’s unique strength lay in its presence as a “flank power” due to its location on the geographic periphery of Europe and the resulting freedom from the close vigilance of European neighbors (Malia, 1999).
While Russia, under Peter’s rule, began to “Europeanize,” it retained social and political features that distinguished Russia from its newly adopted European brethren. Most striking of these differences was its universal service system, which obligated members of the nobility to military duty to the czar while in turn placing the peasantry, or serfs, at the base of the system in what was essentially a state of slavery to the nobility. While serfdom had been similarly practiced in most of Western Europe, it had disappeared by the end of the thirteenth century, but in Russia, serfdom not only remained, it was strengthened.
The fortunes of Russia as a member of Europe waxed and waned in the centuries following the 25 years of Peter’s rule, but the overall trend was one of gradual expansion of Russia’s borders through military conquest, and particularly under the rule of Catherine the Great, the adoption of European art and culture. Following the French Revolution, however, Europe’s evolving value system was increasingly liberal and Russia’s status as an autocratic monarchy that openly practiced serfdom led to Russia’s appearance as something alien and somewhat anachronistic in the eyes of Europe (Malia, 1999). Along with an increase in liberalism in the 1800s, Europe experienced a growth both in intellectualism and in the size of its middle class. These trends brought with them an increase in political radicalism that filtered into Russia as well, particularly within Russian academia.
The atmosphere of Russian academic life during the 1860s was oddly similar to the atmosphere in college campuses across the United States a century later in the 1960s. In America of the 1960s, protests led primarily by students across many U.S. college campuses focused against the military draft, the war in Vietnam, and dominant social prescriptions concerning appropriate dress, behavior, and ideologies. The mid-1800s in Russia were similarly turbulent times; the serfs won their freedom in 1861; liberalism was sweeping through political, cultural, and scientific arenas of thought; and revolutionary thinkers were communicating to students a thirst for learning. Science played a particularly prominent role with intellectuals who embraced the belief that science was to lead humankind out of the darkness (Wells, 1956).
By 1905, discontent abounded throughout all classes within Russia including the peasant and worker class, the military and educated professionals, ethnic and religious minorities, and segments of the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy. The Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) in particular revealed both the corruption and the incompetence of the regime of Czar Nicholas II. What came to be known as the Revolution of 1905 began in January when military troops opened fire on peaceful demonstrators marching to the winter palace in St. Petersburg (which was then the Russian capital) to petition the czar for democratic and social reforms. The massacre, which was called “bloody Sunday,” triggered months of political unrest throughout Russia, ending in October when the czar granted basic civil liberties and established a parliament or Duma. In the following years, a second and third Duma were both quickly dissolved and the government ruthlessly suppressed any revolutionary activities.
Russian involvement in World War I, which began in 1914, brought the political situation in Russia quickly to a head as a result of Russian military defeats, famine, and inept government. Rioting and workers’ strikes occurred in both Petrograd (formerly called St. Petersburg) and Moscow and a discontented military was increasingly reluctant to put down these strikes. In mid-March of 1917, the czar tried unsuccessfully to dissolve the fourth Duma; insurgents seized Petrograd and the Duma appointed a provisional government under Prince Lvov, forcing Czar Nicholas to forfeit his throne.
The provisional government had limited support and was in conflict with the Petrograd Soviet or Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council, which controlled all troops, communications, and transportation. The provisional government also suffered increasing unpopularity due to its failure to address public demands to end Russian involvement in World War I, or to address demands for land redistribution from wealthy and aristocratic land owners to the property-less lower classes. In April 1917, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, leader of a small group of revolutionaries known as the Bolsheviks and dedicated to the principles of Karl Marx, returned to Russia from exile abroad.
In July, Kerensky replaced Prince Lvov as head of the provisional government but by September (October in the old-style Julian calendar), those who wanted to limit the power of the Soviet rallied under General Z. G. Kornilov, who attempted to seize the capital in a military coup. Kornilov’s attempt to seize power was stopped primarily through the efforts of the Bolsheviks and other socialists, and the Bolshevik leader, Lenin, urged the Bolsheviks to take power away from the provisional government. On October 24, the Bolsheviks seized control and set up Lenin as their party chairman. The “October Revolution” of 1917 marked the birth of Soviet Russia as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
The Petrograd Soviet approved the Bolshevik coup, immediately called for an end to Russian involvement in World War I, and began addressing issues of land redistribution. The Bolsheviks soon gained control of Moscow and other major Russian cities. What followed was a period of civil war between Bolshevik (Red) and anti-Bolshevik (White) forces that lasted until the early 1920s. A final Bolshevik victory was won at great cost to the Russian people in terms of the loss of countless lives as well as the negative impact on industry and agriculture.
Lenin took the helm of the new Bolshevik regime and remained in power until his death in 1924, at which time leadership was assumed by Lenin’s right-hand man, Joseph Stalin. The years between 1917 and 1921 were marred by civil war, famine, and the general destruction of industry. Social and political chaos characterized the time period and the country struggled to find some ideology or social program that would reestablish some sense of order. From its early inception, interpreters of Marx’s economic model believed that if a socialist economic system could be established, then natural forces within the system would lead to the elimination of class distinctions between such groups as educated professionals and “blue-collar” workers, thereby creating a utopian society. This view of socioeconomics was described as mechanistic Marxism, according to which positive change would arise spontaneously. Others, particularly Lenin and Stalin, were convinced that the Communist Party must serve as the “vanguard of the proletariat [working class]” and that Soviet citizens must play an active role in the creation of a socialist society (Gilgen & Gilgen, 1996). This active view of the process of social change advocated by Lenin and Stalin is known as dialectical Marxism. As power and control shifted within the Communist Party, the reformative approaches of mechanistic Marxism gave way to the revolutionary approaches of dialectical Marxism. In the words of historian Beryl Williams (2000, p. 143), “If the working class could not build socialism, then they had to be taught to do so.” As a consequence of Stalin’s belief in furthering the movement toward a socialist society through the active process of dialectical Marxism, the Soviet Union under Stalin’s regime became increasingly repressive and closed to outside political influence. Travel and communication with Western Europe, the United States and other noncommunist countries were restricted severely; the so-called “Iron Curtain” had lowered, enclosing the Soviet Union.
Following Stalin’s death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev came to power and set about criticizing Stalinist policies. In 1964, Leonid Brezhnev in turn replaced Khrushchev and led the Soviet Union until his death in 1983. The Brezhnev era was characterized by a regression to a more static and repressive state that continued under his successor Yuri Andropov and later Konstantin Chernenko. A reopening of the Soviet Union to world influence did not arise until Mikhail Gorbachev assumed leadership of the Soviet Union in 1985 and began to radically restructure Soviet socialism through his united policies of Glasnost or “openness,” and Perestroika or “restructuring.”
Gorbachev, however, underestimated the impact of Perestroika and, instead of the revolution within Soviet socialism that he envisioned, his policies put in place the seeds ultimately leading to the dismantling of the Soviet Union. Beginning in 1991, when Boris Yeltsin assumed power, Russia suffered from economic, political, and social strife. By December of 1991 the Communist Party was officially banned and the Soviet Union dissolved as a unified political entity.
In summary, the major principles that emerge from this brief account of Russian history include the following:
Prior to the dramatic events surrounding the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917, Russian scholars had long been at work developing a Russian scientific psychology. Indeed, prior to the revolution it would have been difficult to separate Russian from Western psychology. Essentially, the first Russian universities in Moscow and St. Petersburg would have been almost indistinguishable from their counterparts in such places as Vienna and Berlin, where psychology was also beginning to develop as a field of study separate from philosophy.
Pre-revolutionary Russian psychologists generally came from two different academic backgrounds: philosophy and medicine. The work produced by Russian psychologists during this period exhibited several important features including a tendency toward methodological pluralism, ideological tolerance, and strong interest in and ties to the work of their European counterparts (Kozulin, 1984). A great deal of effort was expended by Russian scholars in translating the work of leading Western psychologists into Russian and, by October of 1917, Russian psychologists had at their disposal a library of psychological texts very similar to what would have been available to Western psychologists. In addition, prior to the 1917 Revolution there was even an active interplay between Russian and Western scholars, with many Russian scholars traveling to Europe to complete at least part of their academic studies.
The year 1879 is considered to be the date of birth of psychology around the globe as an independent science, due to Wilhelm Wundt’s (1832–1920) introduction of the experimental method into psychology. The laboratory founded by Wundt became the nerve center of the world’s first professional community of this new breed of scientist-psychologist. Psychologists from different countries came to Leipzig to learn Wundt’s experimental method of research and then returned to their own countries and opened similar psychological laboratories. Historians have recorded 136 German, 14 American, 10 British, 6 Polish, 3 Russian, and 2 French scientists who studied under Wundt (Petrovsky & Yaroshevsky, 1987, p. 93). The establishment of new standards in psychological research along with active development of different forms of communication began within this growing global scientific community. Magazines on psychology were published, international psychological assemblies began to meet, and psychological societies began to form in Russia as well as in the West.
The Moscow Psychological Society was founded in 1885 and functioned as an interdisciplinary forum for philosophers and physicians with an interest in psychological problems (Kozulin, 1984). Soon thereafter, in 1889, the first Russian psychological journal, called Problems of Philosophy and Psychology, made its debut. Two of the most significant events in the early history of Russian psychology were the establishment of the Psycho-neurological Institute in St. Petersburg in 1907 and the Moscow Institute of Psychology in 1912, both of which became active training institutions for almost all Russian psychologists in the years that followed. Initially, Russian psychology was centered primarily on Moscow and St. Petersburg; however, it was not long before psychological laboratories were also established in Kazan (by Vladimir Bekhterev), Kiev (by Georgy Chelpanov), and Odessa (by Nikolai Lange).
A difference that began to emerge between Western and Russian psychology during the late 19th and early 20th centuries was in the relationship between philosophy and psychology. In Europe and the United States, while a few scholars such as William James and John Dewey pursued interests in both empirical philosophy and psychology, the overall trend was toward a widening division between the two disciplines. However, in Russian academic circles philosophy and psychology remained tightly linked to each other.
Another difference between Western and Russian psychology developed as Western (particularly American) psychology began to expand its scope beyond the academic setting into more applied fields. Pre-revolutionary Russian psychology and early Soviet psychology remained almost exclusively an academic discipline with only a few psychologist-practitioners who emerged mainly from the medical field (Kozulin, 1984). Although they could not be considered psychologist-practitioners, two of the earliest and most respected names in Russian psychology emerged from this same medical background, namely, the renowned physiologists Ivan M. Sechenov and Ivan P. Pavlov.
Ivan Sechenov (1829–1905) was born on August 1, 1829. After early training in the Military Engineering School in St. Petersburg and a year and a half in the army, Sechenov developed an interest in medicine and decided to attend the medical school of Moscow University where he completed his MD degree in June 1856. Sechenov then studied abroad where he came under the influence of European scientists, including DuBois Raymond and Claude Bernard in France and Johannes Müller and Herman von Helmholtz in Germany (Wells, 1956). After returning to Russia in 1860, Sechenov was appointed assistant professor of physiology in the Medico-Surgical Academy and began a series of lectures in physiology that strongly impacted the Russian academic world due to his emphasis on inhibitory features of the nervous system, which, prior to his work, was considered exclusively as an excitatory system.
Sechenov returned briefly to Claude Bernard’s laboratory in Paris in 1862 where he carried out experiments investigating the neural centers inhibiting reflex movements (Wells, 1956). He wrote of his Parisian work when he returned to Moscow and, after a brief struggle with czarist censors over the content, Sechenov was able to publish his work titled “Reflexes of the Brain” (1965). The work caused an immediate sensation within the Russian scientific community due to the strong challenge Sechenov presented to then accepted beliefs concerning the fundamental operations of the nervous system.
Sechenov’s aim in “Reflexes of the Brain” was to demonstrate that the soul, or psyche, was far from being an entity independent of the body and was in fact a function of the central nervous system, particularly of the brain. His work was the earliest instance of the materialist perspective that later dominated much of Russian psychology. Sechenov developed his argument around the concept of the reflex arc. The reflex arc, which was a concept already known and studied by physiologists, was the basic mode of sensory-motor activity. This reflex arc was thought to have a three-part structure: first was stimulation from the external environment via sensory receptors; second, the transmission of neural impulses to the spinal cord or to the brain; and, third, the transmission of neural signals outward again to muscles leading to activity (Wells, 1956).
Earlier research on the reflex arc, however, had been confined mostly to research on simple neuro-motor responses in lower animals. Sechenov’s radical thesis was that all forms of psychical phenomena, even complex and diverse human behaviors, could be explained through the concept of the reflex arc. Sechenov did not confine his thesis to psychical phenomena involving only motor activity but included thought as well. Although he had no means of demonstrating this experimentally, Sechenov postulated the existence of centers within the human brain that served to augment or inhibit the third or muscle-activity phase of the reflex arc. He further proposed that emotion was the result of an augmented muscular response while thought involved an inhibited muscular response. Another key element of Sechenov’s argument was the strong focus on external causation, his primary concern being to show that “the real cause of every human activity lies outside man” (Wells, 1956).
“Reflexes of the Brain” was such a novel and daring work that it rapidly became known all over Russia, although the article met with a less than favorable response from official governmental circles. Even prior to the Revolution of 1917, academic activities in Russia were subject to intense governmental scrutiny and control. In Sechenov’s case, intense criticism of his work began even prior to its publication and climaxed when the work was published in book form in 1866. The sale of the book was forbidden by the Petersburg Censorial Committee and this same committee asked the attorney general to bring criminal charges against Sechenov on the grounds that this extreme materialist book “undermines the moral foundations of society and thereby destroys the religious doctrine of eternal life” (Wells, 1956). Sechenov ultimately was saved by the overwhelming popularity of the book, which deterred the attorney general from prosecuting him.
Sechenov lived for 42 years following the publication of “Reflexes of the Brain” and spent much of that time as professor of physiology at Moscow University. Sechenov also taught without pay at the Women’s Pedagogical Society and at a school for factory workers as part of his lifelong struggle against the dominant social, economic, and political ideology that prohibited the education of women and the working class in czarist Russia.
Another eminent figure in Russian psychology, Ivan P. Pavlov, was dramatically influenced by the work of Sechenov and, in a telegram to a session of the Moscow Scientific Institute commemorating the tenth anniversary of Sechenov’s death, Pavlov wrote: “Sechenov’s teaching on the reflexes of the brain is, in my opinion, a sublime achievement of Russian science” (Wells, 1956).
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849–1936) was born in the Russian city of Ryazan, the son of a parish priest whose intellectualism and love of books instilled in Ivan Pavlov a love of learning and a deep respect for scholarship. After completing his early education at the Ryazan church school, Pavlov entered the local theological seminary.
Pavlov began his studies during the previously described vibrant period of Russian intellectual history in the 1860s. It was then that his interest turned to the natural sciences. While still at the seminary he encountered and was profoundly influenced by two books in particular: Ivan Sechenov’s Reflexes of the Brain (1866) and Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859).
Rejecting his earlier plans for a career in the priesthood, Pavlov left the seminary to enroll at the University of St. Petersburg where he completed his course of study with an outstanding record and received the degree of Candidate of Natural Sciences in 1875. The title of “Kandidat” in Russian academia was roughly equivalent to the American doctoral degree (Gindis, 1992). The next several years were difficult for Pavlov, mainly because universities at that time were tightly controlled by political appointees of the czarist regime and obtaining academic appointments was often more a matter of achieving political favor than doing solid science. A rigorous scientist, but not a politician, Pavlov spent four years drifting from laboratory to laboratory before attending the Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg and graduating with a gold medal award for research in 1879.
Pavlov then spent the next ten years in charge of the physiological laboratory attached to the medical clinic run by S. P. Botkin, a professor of internal medicine at St. Petersburg. While these years were rich in terms of the opportunity for Pavlov to develop his reputation and skill as a scientific researcher, they were not so rich in financial terms. At one point, he and his wife Serafima were so poor that he had to live at the laboratory while his wife lived with relatives. Pavlov finally achieved some measure of financial and academic security when he was appointed professor of pharmacology at the Military Medical Academy in 1890, and in 1891 when he was invited to organize and direct the department of physiology in the newly established Institute of Experimental Medicine. He remained head of this department for the next 45 years and it was there that he did the bulk of the experimental work for which he achieved world fame.
In 1904, Pavlov won the Nobel Prize for his research on digestive processes conducted at the Institute. Other tangible evidence of Pavlov’s growing success as an academician included his appointment as professor of physiology at the University of St. Petersburg in 1895 and his election to the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1907, the latter representing the pinnacle of Russian academic achievement.
The area of Pavlov’s research with the most immediate relevance to psychology was his introduction and systematic study of the concept of the conditioned reflex, which, interestingly, emerged as an accidental discovery during Pavlov’s work on digestive processes in dogs (see Chapter 10 for further treatment of basic and applied Pavlovian Conditioning). Utilizing skilled surgical techniques, Pavlov devised a method by which the dogs’ production of saliva could be observed, measured, and recorded. Although Pavlov’s initial focus was on the dog’s production of saliva as a direct response to the physiological stimulus of food placed in the dog’s mouth, an incidental and important finding in the course of his experiments was that occasionally saliva would flow before the food came in contact with the dog’s mouth, such as when the dog saw the food, or in the presence of the man who regularly fed the dogs. Pavlov reasoned that the dogs had somehow developed a connection between the unlearned response of salivation and previously neutral stimuli (e.g., the sight of food or of the caretaker) that the dogs had been conditioned to associate with the presence of food. Pavlov differentiated salivation in response to the physiological stimulation of direct contact of the dog’s mouth with food in contrast with salivation in response to a stimulus associated with the presence of food. He regarded the former to be an unlearned, innate, or unconditioned reflex and referred to the latter, learned response as a conditional reflex. In translating Pavlov’s work from Russian into English, W. H. Gantt used the term conditioned rather than conditional and thus conditioned reflex became the commonly accepted term.
Initially, when writing about the conditioned reflex, Pavlov focused on the mentalistic experience of the dog and wrote of the animal’s judgment, will, and desire in subjective and human terms, although he gradually dropped these references in favor of a more objective and descriptive approach (Wells, 1956). Thus, in effect, Pavlov had demonstrated that higher mental processes could be studied and discussed in purely physiological terms and without any reference to consciousness. The foundational idea emerging from this demonstration was that complex human and infrahuman behavior could be reduced and submitted to experimentation under laboratory conditions. This was a profound scientific development for experimental psychology in both Russia and the West.
Ironically, despite his indelible impact on the field of psychology, it was only late in his life that Pavlov referred to himself as an experimental psychologist. Indeed, his early opinion of psychology seemed to reflect that of his inspirational source, I. M. Sechenov, who stated that:
The new psychology will have as its basis, in place of the philosophizing whispered by the deceitful voice of consciousness, positive facts or points of departure that can be verified at any time by experiment. And it is only physiology that will be able to do this, for it alone holds the key to the truly scientific analysis of psychical phenomena.
(Sechenov, 1866, in Frolov, 1938, p. 6)
As complex as Pavlov’s relationship was to psychology, it was matched equally by his relationship with the Soviet government. His early struggles with tight governmental control under the czarist regime have already been discussed. Under the Soviet regime following the 1917 Revolution, Pavlov was no less conflicted. He was openly critical of the 1917 Revolution and the entire Soviet system, writing letters of protest to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, as well as boycotting Russian scientific meetings as a demonstration of his disapproval of the Soviet government. Despite his strong and public criticism of the Soviet government, Pavlov and his work were embraced by the political establishment; he received generous financial support and was allowed to conduct his research relatively free of government interference. While the Soviet regime may not have suited Pavlov, his work did suit the aims of the Soviet regime in controlling the development of psychology.
The social and political events sparked by the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 led to dramatic changes in the practice of psychology in the newly created Soviet Union. Russian or now Soviet psychology had reached a metaphoric fork in the road and the developing path of Soviet psychology separated it further and further from the practice of psychology in the West.
The impact of the change in Bolshevik political strategy from mechanistic Marxism to one of dialectical Marxism had a profound impact upon higher education. Initially, universities were thrown open to all students over age 16, and entrance exams and degrees were abolished in 1918 with both maneuvers reflecting the new regime’s intense desire for control and its dislike of what it perceived as bourgeois elitism or the controlling influence of the minority educated middle class (Williams, 2000). Tenure of academic staff was ended and anyone who had held an academic post for more than ten years was forced to undergo reelection by his or her students and junior colleagues. A new constitution regulating universities was passed in September of 1921 and ended university autonomy by putting the government in control of appointing rectors (i.e., presidents) to governing boards. Soviet leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin settled faculty strikes that followed such actions by expelling the strike leaders and promising better working conditions. Lenin and his fellow Soviet leaders were deeply suspicious of pre-revolutionary intellectuals, and any academics who did not demonstrate skills that could prove useful to the state could find themselves branded as enemies of the new regime.
Two separate branches of Russian science began to develop during the period of rebuilding that followed the end of the Civil War (1917–1922). One branch was formed by the Academy of Science and the universities that had managed to survive the events between 1917 and 1922. The pre-revolutionary scholars and academics employed by these institutions were still guided by primarily academic principles as opposed to political ideology. The new regime, however, was eager to raise a new generation of intellectuals committed to communist ideology to replace those “unreliable” scholars who did not share the Bolshevik ideal, and established new institutions to achieve this goal including the Communist Academy, the Institute of Red Professors, and the Academy of Communist Education, all of which functioned under the direct supervision of the Communist Party (Kozulin, 1984).
For a while, these two branches of Russian science seemed to coexist peacefully and pre-revolutionary Russian psychologists operating within this system remained free from political interference regardless of any reservations they may have expressed regarding the Bolshevik dictatorship.
Vladimir Bekhterev (1857–1927) was one of the pre-revolutionary Russian psychologists who managed to survive, at least initially, the transition to life under the new Bolshevik regime. It is interesting to explore the life and works of Vladimir Bekhterev, particularly in contrast with Ivan P. Pavlov. Strong parallels existed in the early lives of these two individuals, even though they went on to develop their professional careers along divergent, and at times adversarial, paths.
Both Pavlov and Bekhterev were born in small towns to lower-middle-class families; Pavlov’s father was a priest while Bekhterev’s was a police inspector. Both men studied in St. Petersburg and both pursued medical degrees. Bekhterev, like Pavlov, also traveled and studied in Europe, first in Flechsig’s laboratory in Leipzig, Germany, where he also attended Wundt’s seminars on psychology, and later in Paris where he did clinical work at the mental hospital, Sâlpetrière, while studying the treatment of hysteria and the use of hypnosis under Jean Martin Charcot (1825–1893). It was at this point that Bekhterev’s and Pavlov’s professional paths began to diverge from each other.
In 1881, at the age of 24, Bekhterev earned his doctorate and began to pursue actively his medical career, in contrast to Pavlov who never actually practiced medicine and who was 34 years old before earning his medical degree in 1879. Bekhterev also progressed more rapidly than Pavlov in the initial phase of his career in that it was only four years later, in 1885, that Bekhterev was invited to become chair of psychiatry at Kazan University.
While Pavlov was a specialist who began with an interest in the physiology of digestive processes and only later progressed to brain research, Bekhterev was interested in neurological problems from the beginning of his career. While working in Kazan, from 1885 to 1893, Bekhterev founded one of the first psychophysiological laboratories in Russia, established a hospital for nervous diseases, organized the Society of Neuropathologists and Psychiatrists, and established the journal Herald of Neurology (Kozulin, 1984). In 1888, his years of work analyzing the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system led to his publication of Conductive Paths of the Brain and Spinal Cord.
In 1893, Bekhterev left Kazan to work in St. Petersburg where he was appointed professor of mental and nervous diseases at the Military Medical Academy. In St. Petersburg, he organized a neurological hospital and launched the Russian Society of Normal and Pathological Psychology and a new journal, Review of Psychiatry, Neurology, and Experimental Psychology. Between 1903 and 1907 he published a seven-volume series titled Bases for Teaching about the Functioning of the Brain, which became an internationally respected encyclopedia of neuroscience (Kozulin, 1984). Bekhterev was well on the way to establishing himself as a major figure in Russian psychology.
As early as the 1880s, Bekhterev thought he had found an objective method for the study of human behavior through his investigation of reflexes. In his early research, he studied the localization of functions in the cortex via the observation of animal subjects following extirpation (i.e., removal) or electrical stimulation of various regions of the cortex. Later, Bekhterev progressed to the study of artificial associative reflexes. For example, electrical stimulation of the sole of a human’s foot was presented in association with other visual and auditory stimuli. After several paired trials, the reflex of the sole could then be evoked without the need of electrical stimulation exclusively through presentation of the previously neutral yet associated stimuli. While similar to Pavlov’s experiments with dogs in that the goal was induction of a physiologic response to associative stimuli, Bekhterev’s method had advantages over Pavlov’s in that no surgery was required and experiments could be done directly on human subjects. Conflict between Bekhterev and Pavlov quickly developed. Bekhterev questioned the validity of public recognition of Pavlov as the “founder” of the method of reflexes. Pavlov in turn questioned Bekhterev’s experimental methodology.
Despite the intense and heated conflict with Pavlov, Bekhterev remained committed to his belief that the method of associative reflexes would be a major tool for the behavioral sciences. Accordingly, he developed a general physiological–psychological theory, which he termed “reflexology.” In 1907, Bekhterev opened the Psychoneurological Institute in St. Petersburg, which was the first major center for the comprehensive study of complex human psychological phenomena in the world. His humanistic aim was to integrate knowledge in anatomy and physiology with an understanding of human individual and social behavior. This idea became one of the main lines along which the rest of the development of Russian psychology progressed from then until the present day. Bekhterev’s interpretation of psychology’s role in the comprehensive study of humans was very close to that of behaviorism in the United States. The initial popularity of Bekhterev’s reflexology was such that in some places the very term psychology was replaced in Russian college curricula by “reflexology” (Kozulin, 1984).
The Psychoneurological Institute was administered as a private university and was unprecedented in Russia for its democratic structure. In contrast to the majority of Russian universities, which were state-controlled, no political loyalty certificates were required at the institute and no nationality quotas (i.e., limits to numbers of students from certain ethnic groups such as the Jewish population) were observed (Kozulin, 1984). An interesting side effect of the vibrant atmosphere that developed in Russian academic life in the 1860s was the state’s recognition of the danger represented by the thriving atmosphere of political activism in academic circles. In the interest of reducing the number of students in metropolitan centers such as Moscow, and thus to diminish the danger of political unrest, nationality quotas were observed and students were often encouraged to take scholarships and study abroad. As a private institution, Bekhterev’s institute was free from enforcing such restrictions upon the student body.
The freedom experienced at the institute attracted hundreds of students and an eclectic selection of many of the most open-minded and gifted professors, and included historian Eugene Tarle, sociologist Maxim Kovalevsky, and psychologist Alexander Lazursky (Kozulin, 1984). The institute was widely popular as well as very productive. Applications of the method of associative reflexes proved useful in such diverse areas as the detection of functional versus simulated blindness and deafness, and the development of a behavioral therapy for alcoholism.
In the early 1900s, however, with increasing levels of political unrest, the police and the government were becoming more suspicious and repressive of activities on Russian college campuses. Bekhterev’s institute was a prime target for such fears, for example, in the following lines from a police dossier of “academician Bekhterev”:
Institute Assembly, more than 150 professors and lecturers, has obvious antigovern-mental attitudes…. In the tearoom of the institute a library of illegal literature was seized…. All political parties without exceptions have their members in the institute…. Huge crowd of students organized a meeting and were being dispersed by Cossacks when academician Bekhterev appeared in his general of medical corps uniform and ordered withdrawal of the forces.
(Kozulin, 1984, p. 55)
Bekhterev actively stood his ground against what he perceived as nationalistic oppression and openly published essays deploring the policy that confined Jews to ghettos and argued against nationalism quotas in universities. These and similar activities angered Bekhterev’s superiors and worsened his relations with the government, and he was discharged from the Military Medical Academy under the pretext that he had exceeded the term required for retirement. At the same time, the Minister of Education refused to approve Bekhterev’s nomination for the next term as director of the Psychoneurological Institute. However, by then it was 1917 and the eve of revolution. When the Bolsheviks seized power, Bekhterev, having experienced hardship under the old regime, initially welcomed the new regime with its promise of sweeping democratic reforms.
At first, his optimism seemed warranted as Bekhterev was allowed by the new regime to organize an Institute for Brain Research in which he could continue the studies he had begun at the Psychoneurological Institute, and he continued to publish, establish new journals, and lecture publicly. While the primary aim of the Institute for Brain Research was the further development of reflexological studies, Bekhterev wisely did not try to reduce all human behavior to a product of motor reflexes. The result, however, was that the Institute for Brain Research incorporated an eclectic range of methodologies and subject matter almost all of which were confusingly organized under the terminology of reflexology.
All of this came to an abrupt end, however, with Bekhterev’s death in 1927 under somewhat mysterious circumstances. Official statements varied; one stated he had died after consuming spoiled canned meat, while one obituary claimed a heart attack as the cause of death. Rumor made note of the fact that Bekhterev, still a practicing physician, had been a neurologist-consultant for Kremlin rulers and could potentially reveal to the general public negative information concerning the mental status of key Kremlin officials (Kozulin, 1984). With the growing trend toward ideological compliance with Marxist-Leninist principles in all academic pursuits that began at the end of the 1920s, Bekhterev’s eclectic theories were again a political target and his disciples were unable to remain committed to the central principles of his original theories.
Despite the ultimate demise of reflexology, Bekhterev left a rich legacy to Russian psychology including a half dozen research institutes and a generation of former students and colleagues influenced by his theories.
The effects of the October Revolution of 1917 did not immediately reach psychology, primarily because the efforts of the new political regime were concentrated initially on establishing mastery by military means. It was only following the Civil War in the early 1920s that the Bolshevik regime began to actively impact the practice of science, including psychology. The ideological basis for this activity came, in part, from Lenin’s publication of an article in 1922, “On the Significance of Militant Materialism,” in which Lenin proclaimed that Marxism was the only correct philosophy and ideology, and deviations from Marxism were seen by the ruling Communist Party as hostile acts against the state.
“Clean-ups” of those professors who chose not to follow strict Marxist principles began in the universities, and in 1922, by direct order of Lenin, a program of forced deportation of outstanding scientists and philosophers was begun. While forced emigration from Soviet Russia ended up saving their lives, these scientists were forever taken away from their motherland.
Georgy Chelpanov (1862–1936) was a tragic victim of the Soviet initiative to construct a purely Marxist psychology. Chelpanov’s role in Russian psychology closely parallels Wundt’s role in psychology outside of Russia in that they both came to be the organizers of the first and biggest scientific schools in their respective countries and provided the initial impetus for the development of psychology as an independent science.
Chelpanov studied philosophy at Novorossijsk University in Odessa and psychology in Germany under both Wilhelm Wundt and Carl Stumpf. In 1907, Chelpanov accepted a chair of philosophy and psychology at Moscow University where he began to champion actively the concept of psychology as an independent discipline connected with but not absorbed by philosophy or physiology (Kozulin, 1984). The successes of Sechenov, Bekhtherev, and Pavlov, unfortunately, endangered the future of Russian psychology as their focus on the physiology of involuntary and voluntary behaviors raised questions concerning the legitimacy of psychology as a separate scientific discipline.
While both Bekhterev and Pavlov accepted psychology’s right to exist as an independent scientific discipline, they both considered Wundt’s methodology of introspection as incompatible with objective methods of research. In contrast, Chelpanov, profoundly influenced by Wundt, claimed that the development of “common,” “theoretical” or “philosophical” psychology was necessary in addition to empirical psychology. At that time, Russian psychology still remained tightly bound to philosophy and Chelpanov believed that an integrated understanding of multifaceted psychic phenomena could only come from combining philosophy with empirical psychology. Chelpanov’s plan to create a scientific-educational institution reflected his interests not only in research, but also in the preparation of future generations of professional psychologists. To further this plan, Chelpanov founded the Moscow Institute of Psychology in 1912.
The Moscow Institute produced a small but impressive group of young researchers, among them two future directors of the institute, Konstantin Kornilov (1879–1957) and Anatoli Smirnov. The Moscow Institute of Psychology was equipped with the best psychological research equipment of its time and was the first building in Europe designed exclusively for such purposes. In the spirit of professional competition, when Wundt learned of the founding of the Moscow Institute, he arranged to have another floor added to his Leibnitz Institute (Umrikhin, 1994). In 1917, Chelpanov started to publish a new psychological journal titled Psychological Survey.
Chelpanov’s paper, “On Experimental Method in Psychology” (1901), openly criticized followers of both Pavlov and Bekhterev by stating that those who tried to discredit the notion of consciousness in an attempt to establish a purely objective psychology only deceived themselves. They could avoid mentalistic terminology and references to consciousness by replacing it with references to reflexes, but to be consistent, Chelpanov argued they should then abandon the very idea of psychological research and confine themselves to the framework of pure physiology (Kozulin, 1984). Despite the fact that he was criticizing two different major research programs led by increasingly influential scientists, Chelpanov was initially able to maintain his standing and reputation, and in 1921 was reappointed as head of the Moscow Institute of Psychology.
After the Soviet regime came into power and Marxist psychology became the only acceptable psychology, Chelpanov’s deviation from Marxist materialism began to negatively impact his career. The final confrontation between the evolving science of psychology and political communist doctrine came in 1923 when Georgy Chelpanov was not only fired as director of the Moscow Institute of Psychology, but his works were also “purged” from the institute he had founded and led for a decade. Chelpanov’s former students and colleagues did nothing to prevent or protest his dismissal. Interestingly, Chelpanov’s student, Konstantin Kornilov, had endeared himself to the Soviet regime by making an active public bid to reconcile the principles of empiricism with those of Marxist ideology, and was soon appointed the new director of the Moscow Institute of Psychology (Kozulin, 1984).
Konstantin Kornilov (1879–1957) tried to integrate the contents of introspective psychology and behaviorism intending to overcome the one-sidedness of each of these approaches. Actively promoting the concept of dialectic synthesis, borrowed from Marxist ideology, Kornilov described the psychology of consciousness as the thesis and behaviorism as its anti-thesis. In Marxist ideology, dialectic synthesis represented the principle that the new appears and develops as the negation of the old. For Kornilov the task of achieving a dialectic synthesis in psychology could be solved by “reactology,” the term Kornilov coined to describe the psychological theory he developed based on the study of human responses. The subject matter of reactology was the reaction of a human as a biosocial entity, which included both objective (external stimulus and response) as well as subjective (consciousness) components. External stimulus and response mechanisms were studied through objective methods while consciousness remained available solely through self-observation.
In 1923, Kornilov led the fight for the reconstruction of psychology on the basis of Marxism. After Kornilov’s active participation in the events leading to the firing of Chelpanov as director of the Institute of Psychology, Kornilov took over as the new director and changed the direction of the institute’s research activities toward the study of different types of reactions. Several scientists were displeased with the reforms implemented by Kornilov and left the institute in protest.
Payne (1968) has labeled the years from 1917 to 1930 the “Mechanistic Period” in Soviet psychology and during this time, in his view, Soviet psychologists were primarily focused on eliminating idealism with the result that a mechanistic materialism had emerged by the late 1920s. Dialectical materialism did not formally appear in psychology until the 1930s. In its most idealized form, dialectical materialism is defined as the following: a Marxian interpretation of reality that views matter as the sole subject of change and all change as the product of a constant conflict between opposites, arising from the internal contradictions inherent in all events, ideas, and movements.
In the time period between the 1920s and 1960s, Soviet psychology became an increasingly repressed science. Psychologists were deprived of work, arrested, and physically humiliated. Psychology also suffered as natural developmental trends in the discipline were altered radically under the powerful pressure of communism. Increasing pressure was placed on researchers to develop a psychological theory and practice that conformed to Marxist ideology and from the 1920s until the collapse of the USSR in 1991, no works in psychology could be published unless they cited and referenced the writings of Marx and Lenin!
One of the first victims of direct government repression was none other than the leader of Marxist psychology of the 1920s, Kornilov himself. Criticism of Kornilov’s reactology was raised based on the theory’s eclecticism and was started by Kornilov’s young co-workers. Dreadful consequences were not long in coming; Kornilov was fired from his position as director of the institute and as editor-in-chief of the journal Psychology (Umrikhin, 1991). His scientific teachings were purged and, in the beginning of the 1930s, the few psychological journals still in existence in Russia—Psychology, Pedology, and Soviet Psychotechnics—began to close one by one. The Communist Party assumed the role of determining the criteria for scientific truth in psychology as well as in other disciplines.
The next repressive action toward psychology was the decision of the Communist Party to abolish pedology—a special subdiscipline of scientific psychology in Russia, which focused on a wide variety of psychological phenomena related to child development. Pedology was a vibrant field in Russian psychology in the early 20th century and encompassed such concepts as the diagnosis and correction of mental development, individual and age-related features of psychic phenomena, the psychology of learning, and the impact of family upbringing upon human development. The Communist Party’s decision to abolish pedology particularly impacted those researchers who were considered to be the most active leaders within this subfield of psychology, including Blonsky, Vygotsky, and Zalkind, as well as many others. The name Vygotsky, in particular, became an unvoiced taboo for many years.
Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) graduated from Moscow University in 1917 and joined the Moscow Institute of Psychology in 1924. He continued to work at the institute and at other research institutions, such as the Academy of Communist Education, until his untimely death in 1934.
Vygotsky was relatively unknown in the circles of Russian psychology until his appearance as a participant in the Second Russian Psychoneurological Congress in 1924. At the Congress, Vygotsky attracted attention by choosing to speak on a challenging and controversial subject, namely, the relationship between reflexes and consciousness.
Targeting the theories of the leaders of reflexology, Vygotsky argued that while reflexes provide the foundation for behavior, they provide no insight concerning the “building” that is constructed on this foundation (Kozulin, 1984). He pointed out that in searching for universal building blocks of human and infrahuman behavior, proponents of reflex theory overlooked the very phenomenon that makes humans unique, namely, consciousness. Vygotsky concluded that this was a mistake and that scientific psychology cannot ignore the existence of consciousness. This stance challenged the positions of almost all leading Soviet behavioral psychologists including followers of Pavlov, and Bekhterev who rejected consciousness as an “idealist superstition” (Kozulin, 1984).
Vygotsky further developed his theory in his 1925 article, “Consciousness as a Problem in the Psychology of Behavior.” He started with the claim that consciousness must be examined as a structure of cognitive functions such as thinking, feeling, and volition. The conscious mind thus functions as a regulatory and structuring mechanism of human experiences and behaviors.
Another key element of Vygotsky’s theory was his thesis that establishing a scientific psychology required resolution of the problem of interaction between the “lower” mental functions, such as elementary perception, memory, and attention, and those “higher” mental functions, such as thought, that are uniquely human. Most of Vygotsky’s contemporaries sought to resolve the gap between lower and higher mental functions by presenting them as differing quantitatively. Vygotsky disagreed, and he argued forcefully that the difference between lower and higher mental functions was qualitative and not quantitative in nature.
According to Vygotsky, a newborn child exhibits only lower or so-called “natural” psychic functions such as perception, memory, and attention; however, unlike animals, humans then absorb the world of culture. Vygotsky proposed a special experimental method for the study of higher mental processes, which he called the “method of dual stimulation,” and which he used to carry out a series of experiments on mental processes such as active attention and voluntary recall. His findings showed that the meaning of a word changes during the course of a child’s development and plays a different role both in how the word appears to reflect reality and in how the word mediates mental activity at various stages of development (Luria, 1969). Vygotsky used this approach to study objectively the formation of higher mental functions and their disintegration in pathological brain states, such as in mental illnesses like schizophrenia (Luria, 1969).
Through the activities of Vygotsky, and later his students, Luria and Leontiev, processes that formerly had at best only been described were now explainable as the products of complex development, during which a child’s exposure to the world around her or him is gradually assimilated to constitute the child’s own mental activity. Their work dramatically impacted the Russian field of educational psychology.
A student and later a colleague of Vygotsky, Alexander Luria (1902–1977) was acutely interested in psychoanalysis and advocated its acceptance in Soviet psychology on an equal footing with psychological theories based on the politically correct teachings of Marxism-Leninism. Despite his failure to achieve this goal, Luria was able to conduct research that brought him world acclaim.
Luria’s research concerned affective complexes (i.e., feelings and associated physiological and behavioral indices of an emotional state) that an individual would be unaware of or would intentionally strive to hide. Such affective complexes had been previously studied by Carl Jung utilizing word association methodology. Luria added the recording of muscle-motor activity to the use of the method of word association, thus greatly increasing the sensitivity of the associative method. Luria’s methodology, which involved electrophysiological recordings of such measures as heart rate, respiratory rate, and the galvanic skin response as indices of hidden affective complexes, was widely used later in the criminal justice system, especially in the United States, as the “lie detector” test (Homskaya, 2001; Luria, 1982).
Luria and Vygotsky worked closely together on the study of cultural-historical concepts. One of their studies was conducted in Middle Asia—Uzbekistan and Kirgizia—and was a cross-cultural study of various subcategories of the population, including people who lived in remote settlements and people who were educated and had been exposed to European culture. The results showed significant differences in the majority of learning processes, including perception, memory, and thinking, depending on the cultural conditions under which the various subjects developed (Luria, 1974; Vygotsky & Luria, 1930/1992). In general, Luria and Vygotsky found that enriched environments enhanced the above psychological processes while barren and monotonous environments degraded such processes.
Due to the political situation at the time, Luria’s and Vygotsky’s research on cultural differences between population groups was abruptly stopped and the results of their studies remained unpublished for more than four decades. Luria, under the direction of Vygotsky, began to research the problem of brain organization of higher psychic functions. This research was stimulated by Russia’s participation in the events of World War II, when Luria and Vygotsky saw hundreds of wounded soldiers with a variety of injuries to the central nervous system.
Another famous student of Vygotsky was Blyuma Zeigarnik (1900–1988), whose achievements have already been described in Chapter 11, Gestalt Psychology. In addition to her discovery of the Zeigarnik Effect, Zeigarnik studied psychopathology under the direction of Vygotsky and the breadth of her research on the subject of psychopathology is a testimony to her role as one of the founders of this area of research in Russian psychology (Zeigarnik, 1986). While Vygotsky taught and inspired a number of famous Russian psychologists, perhaps one of his most famous and influential students was Aleksei Leontiev.
After working with Vygotsky and Luria to develop further the central ideas of their culturohistorical theory of human development, Aleksei Nikolayevich Leontiev (1902–1979) moved to Harkov, Ukraine, and began to develop his own separate school within Russian psychology. Adhering to the general principles taken from Vygotsky, Leontiev began to take the sociohistorical explanation of human psychic activity in a new direction by introducing the concept of activity as the primary explanatory principle of psychology. This principle described the mode of relationship between the subject and the environment. Activity was proposed as a universal process exhibited not only by human psychic phenomena but also those of infra-humans.
Leontiev’s doctoral dissertation (1940) was devoted to the problem of unity of different types of psychic phenomena, their stages of development, and the biological mechanisms of the evolution of psychic phenomena. His major conclusion concerned the relationship of external and internal activity through the latter’s existence as the result of the “interiorization” of the former, that is, we become in large measure our environments. Leontiev’s activity theory became one of the main theoretical foundations for research in almost all branches of Russian psychology.
Later, Petr Yakovlevich Galperin (1902–1988) described in detail the mechanism of interiorization of external actions into internal actions. Aside from its theoretical significance, Galperin’s approach became one of the most operational and “technological” approaches in Russian psychology for the effective application of pedology.
Soon after pedology became a victim of communist repression another applied branch of Russian psychology was also destroyed, namely, psychotechnics. The applied fields of pedology and psychotechnics were of particular concern to Soviet ideologists due to their frequent use of aptitude tests and interest inventories, many of which were taken or borrowed from American and English psychologists focused in the area of mental testing. The primary criticism of mental testing was that it “tended artificially to perpetuate class differences by stamping certain children as incapable of benefiting equally with others from the opportunities available in the Soviet Union” (Viteles, 1938, p. 90). In 1936, the field of pedology and the use of mental testing were both banned, and the Soviet government shut down the research centers of leading psychotechnicians.
Similar to American industrial–organizational psychology, psychotechnics studied a wide range of psychological factors affecting human labor, ranging from professional selection and human adaptation to machinery to social problems of industrial organizations. As part of the persecution of this branch of psychology, the leader of Soviet psychotechnics, Isaac Shpilrein (1891–late 1930s) was arrested and executed (Gilgen & Gilgen, 1996).
Further political repression of psychology began in the late 1940s following Russian and Allied victory in World War II. This time government repression developed in response to the fact that millions of Soviet soldiers returning from the West had seen with their own eyes that what the Soviet government had described as a “rotting” Western bourgeois society was in actuality providing Western Europeans with a much higher standard of living than was experienced in Soviet society. The “Iron Curtain” was created to protect Soviet culture and citizens from exposure to such outside influences and a campaign began promoting the advantages and achievements of the Soviet system, including those within science. Soviet scientists were deterred from expressing interest in the activities of science outside of the Soviet Union and particularly aggressive repression was placed on the work of Jewish scientists.
At the same time Ivan Pavlov, already long deceased, was labeled an “outstanding Soviet scientist.” In 1950, a pivotal joint session of the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medicine was organized under the direct order of Joseph Stalin and was dedicated to the issues of Pavlov’s physiological studies. The purpose of the “Pavlov Session” was to develop propagandist ideology within psychology as well as to serve as a forum for the accusation of “deviant” psychologists. Russian psychology barely survived this period of Pavlovianization and it took immense efforts by Russian psychologists to protect the right of psychology to exist as a science separate from physiology.
Nikolai Bernstein (1896–1966) emerged as one of the few Russian psychologists who tried to challenge the Pavlovianization of Russian psychology. In place of Pavlovian doctrine, Bernstein proposed the study of feedback mechanisms in the physiology of body movements, an early precursor of the movement later known as cybernetics (Gilgen & Gilgen, 1996). Bernstein’s proposed alternative to Pavlovian theory did not survive the Pavlov Session of 1950, partly because Bernstein himself was a Jew and therefore a target of the rising anti-Semitism evident in the Soviet Union following World War II.
As a result of Nikita Khrushchev’s campaign against Stalinist policies following Stalin’s death in 1953, psychology and Russian science in general were to some extent liberated. The years under the leadership of Brezhnev, and later Andropov and Chernenko (1964–1985), were characterized by a sociopolitical regression to a more static and repressive state. A reopening of Soviet psychology to the influence of the world did not arise until Mikhail Gorbachev assumed leadership of the Soviet Union in 1985 and began to restructure radically Soviet socialism through his united policies of Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring). Of particular relevance to psychology was the fact that in 1990 Gorbachev declared the Soviet Academy of Sciences to be a self-governing organization, freeing it from the stranglehold of government control. In general, both Glasnost and Perestroika inspired Soviet psychologists to open up the process of professional exchange between themselves and Western psychologists. Increasingly, however, their efforts were hampered by a lack of funding and insufficient infrastructure to support active scientific exchange, such as inadequate computer access and networking capabilities as well as inefficient and unsafe transportation systems.
As Gilgen and Gilgen (1996) point out, articles published in the United States in 1992 summarized the intense difficulties facing Russian scientists. For example, the journals Nature and Science featured articles titled “Russian Science Faces Economic Crisis,” “Cut Off from Mainstream, Ukrainian Science Drifts,” “Problems Delay Emergence of Moscow Research Centre,” “Internal Politics Block Proposal by Russians to Create Foundation for Basic Research,” “A European Plan [to help] Gathers Support,” “Small Quick Grants Proposed as Lifeline.”
A further blow to psychology came in 1995 when Boris Yeltsin’s government created the Ministry of Science and Technology Policy to oversee the Russian Academy of Science as well as other branches of academia. Of particular importance were legal deliberations taking place in the Duma (the lower chamber of the Russian parliament, similar to the U.S. House of Representatives) concerning the relative hierarchy of Russia’s various scientific organizations. In these deliberations, the definition of what constituted a science was vague and failed to include any of the social sciences or humanities.
The most immediate impact of the above changes in governmental policy to Russian psychology includes the severe impairment of funding for the discipline, the relative destabilization of the institutional infrastructure required to support the work of the discipline, increased openness to Western psychology, increasing need for and reliance on communication technologies such as e-mail and the Internet, and an increasing focus on applied fields within psychology. This latter focus on applied activities has developed in direct response to social–psychological problems arising from conditions in Russian society. Particular areas of interest include the treatment of alcoholism and depression, facilitating adaptation from a socialist to a capitalist economy, and ethnic conflict.
A scientist in Russia has always been more than a scientist in the strictest sense of the word; he or she has always been a benchmark of morality, a carrier of culture, and a source of enlightenment. Science throughout Russian, Soviet, and again Russian history has always been ideological. Therefore, the transition from one ideology to another has been essentially reflected in science, especially social sciences like psychology. For example, during the Soviet era the scientific achievements of Ivan Petrovich Pavlov were overly exaggerated while now he is much more popular abroad than he is in his native land of Russia.
Russian scientists have avidly consumed the wealth of information from the West that became accessible upon the 1991 collapse of the totalitarian Soviet system along with the USSR’s policy of isolationism. Foreign literature on psychology has again become available in Russia both in original and translated forms. Russian psychologists once again have the opportunity to meet with their colleagues from abroad and participate in collaborative research.
In this chapter, we presented an overview of the development of Russian psychology with particular emphasis on differences and similarities between Russian psychology and the psychology of Western Europe and the United States. Three key features were explored, distinguishing Russian psychology from Western psychology include: (1) the close relationship that continues to exist between Russian psychology and philosophy compared with the division that exists between these two disciplines in the West, (2) the stronger and more overt influence of political and social changes on the practice of psychology in Russia, and (3) Russian psychology’s strong emphasis on environmental influences over heredity.
We opened this chapter with an overview of the history of Russia beginning prior to the reign of Czar Peter the Great in the 18th century, and continued through the 19th century with the expansion of Russian territories; the rising discontent of Russia’s citizens with the existing imperial monarchy of the czars; the abolition of Russia’s practice of serfdom; and increasing social trends of intellectualism, liberalism, and political radicalism. We then briefly explored events that led to the rise of the Bolshevik Party and the October Revolution of 1917, which heralded Russia’s evolution into a new political entity as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
We continued our discussion with a history of communist Russia, beginning with the political repression and isolationism that existed from the 1920s to the early 1950s under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin and his successor Joseph Stalin. Our coverage of the Soviet period concluded with Mikhail Gorbachev’s political policies of Glasnost and Perestroika which, in the 1980s, ultimately led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union and a period of social and political unrest that continues to the present time.
Throughout this general overview of the history of Russia we emphasized the many ways in which unfolding political events in Russia shaped the practice of psychology as a scientific discipline. The history of Russian psychology prior to 1917 was closely tied to and not very different from psychology as it existed in Western Europe. Russian psychology prior to 1917 was also strongly influenced by practitioners from the medical-scientific field of physiology. The work of two physiologists, Ivan Michailovich Sechenov and Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, brought into Russian psychology a strong materialist focus that continues to the present.
Vladimir Bekhterev and his development of “reflexology” were then described. Bekhterev’s career was impacted heavily by the repressive influence of the Soviet government following the Bolshevik Revolution.
Beginning in the 1920s, as the Soviet government increased its emphasis on Marxism as the only acceptable ideological basis for any scientific activity, Russian psychology increasingly focused on mechanistic materialism and the elimination of idealism and began to discredit any notions of consciousness. Russian psychology was in jeopardy of losing legitimate standing as a scientific discipline separate from medical physiology. Dialectical materialism arose as an acceptable organizing principle around which Russian psychology could be developed. Two prominent Russian psychologists who struggled to defend the psychology of consciousness were Georgy Chelpanov and Konstantin Kornilov.
Two subfields of psychology, pedology and psychotechnics, were particularly subject to Soviet repression due to their frequent use of aptitude tests and interest inventories, which the government criticized as tending to perpetuate artificial class differences. Despite active government repression, Russian psychologists in the fields of pedology and psychotechnics were able to make significant contributions to Russian psychology, some of which were described herein including the work of Lev Vygotsky and his students Alexander Luria and Aleksei Leontiev.
In 1950, a joint session of the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medicine celebrated and idealized the contributions of Ivan Pavlov to Russian psychology and ushered in an era of “Pavlovian Psychology.” Nikolai Bernstein was one of the few Russian psychologists to challenge the Pavlovianization of Russian psychology.
We concluded this chapter with a discussion of Perestroika and Glasnost and the resultant collapse of the USSR, which has impacted Russian psychology in ways that present both challenges as well as opportunities in the continued development of Russian psychology.