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In: Vygotsky and Leontiev ISBN: 978-1-63482-901-4
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Chapter 4
VYGOTSKY & LEONTIEV:

UNDOING SOME KNOTS OF SOVIET PSYCHOLOGY
Rhayane Lourenço da Silva, MSc*

and Silvana Calvo Tuleski, PhD
Department of Psychology, State University of Maringá (UEM)
Paraná, Brazil
ABSTRACT
The distinct views and interpretations between Vygotsky and Leontiev path engendered inside
academia a controversy about a rupture among them. We have brought up critics appointed by
authors that stand up for this rupture. They understand that such widespread explanations bring
wrong interpretations for both Vygotsky‘s work and Leontiev‘s work. The handling that is given
to Vygotsky and Leontiev relation is similar with the process of mischaracterization of Vygotsky‘s
work by his interpreters. They remove the historicity of Vygotsky‘s ideas and with this they empty
the content of his texts, trying to dissociate him of Marxism. We comprehend that the attempts of
mischaracterization of Vygotsky‘s work from his Marxist base end up spreading an equally
problematic doubtful reading of Leontiev‘s work. Inasmuch as they try to isolate Vygotsky from
his context and his bases trying to claim him under different levels of eclecticism, they try at the
same time to degrade Leontiev‘s work, accusing him of ideological betrayal and degrading his
Copyright 2015. Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
work to a Marxism caricature. From a polemic exposition that is used by Leontiev‘s interpreters,
we identified a couple of historical moments of greater relevance to be explored with the goal
being undo some history knots of Soviet Psychology: early 1930‘s when Leontiev was invited to
work in Kharkov and the 1950‘s when psychological science was greater attacked by the
ideological impositions of Stalinism. Leontiev‘s interpreters at the same time try to deny the
existence of the so-called troika and they declare that Leontiev led to the breakup of his relation
with Vygotsky when he was in Kharkov in the early 1930‘s. Thus, they feed the idea of a political
treason that was hidden in the myth of the troika existence stating that Leontiev‘s psychology was
the official psychology of Stalinism. In order to problematize such statements, we make a
historical analysis of this period.
*
Corresponding author: Department of Psychology. E-mail: rhayanelou@gmail.com.
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AN: 1023424 ; Calvo Tuleski, Silvana.; Vygotsky and Leontiev : The Construction of a Marxist Psychology
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104 Rhayane Lourenço da Silva and Silvana Calvo Tuleski
Keywords: L. S. Vygotsky, A. N. Leontiev, Marxist psychology, history of the Soviet Union

INTRODUCTION
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The history of Soviet Psychology is related to the joint work of Vygotsky, Luria and
Leontiev. The relation between these authors, especially between Vygotsky and Leontiev, is a
very controversial subject in the scientific community. Their connection is a target for
criticism that tries to detach the political and scientific (and even personal) course of these
authors. This chapter will seek to identify the main ideas of interpreters who defend the
division between Vygotsky and Leontiev, and will then present our thesis that this
controversy is related to the attempts to disassociate Vygotsky from Marxism, which reveals
attempts to distort characteristics of Leontiev`s work, reducing it to a Stalinist caricature of
Marxism. Therefore, we will recapitulate some relevant moments that mark the history, which
entangle the studies of these authors and which are the subjects of interpreter‘s discussion,
seeking to undo some consolidated and disseminated knots created by them.
In the early 1920s, Alexei Nikolaevich Leontiev entered Moscow State University, home
to the Institute of Psychology (also called the Moscow Institute of Psychology), which was
founded in 1912 by Georgi Ivanovich Chelpanov. On October 1, 1924, Leontiev began
officially working as a lab assistant at the Institute. It was on the same year that Vygotsky was
invited to be a contributor to this Institute after his brilliant speech on January 6, 1924, at the
Second All-Russian Psychoneurological Congress in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg), where
his lecture emphasized The Methods of Reflexological and Psychological Investigation
(Blanck, 2003; Van der Veer & Valsiner, 2006; Leontiev, 2004a).
At that time the Institute was under the direction of the reactologist Konstantin
Nikolaevich Kornilov, former student and substitute of Chelpanov. The Institute was going
through a reorganizing period, after a falling-out amongst the members of the school of
Chelpanov led by its former disciples Kornilov and Blonski. Both wrote books against the
idealistic psychology advocated by Chelpanov (Shuare, 1990). After the revolution of 1917,
psychology in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) received support to develop
itself, to overcome its traditional academic framework of neutrality, and to contribute to the
practical tasks of the nascent socialist society. Marta O. Shuare (1990) explains that the intent
of building a new psychology originated from a polemic prior to the October Revolution,
which gathered momentum in a struggle of ideas in the first years of the Soviet psychology:
It was actually, the result of a rough (sometimes relentless and unjust) and prolonged
confrontation of concepts, interpretations, schemes in which extremes (dialectical-
mechanism; materialism-idealism) acting as a magnetic pole, attracted scientists of that
time, making them momentarily lose their guiding compass, but that, after all, led them to
find a basis from which to formulate the fundamental propositions for creating a new
psychology … the history of early years of soviet psychology is the history of attempts to
give psychology the status of true science, whose methodological principles should
derive naturally from the postulates of dialectical and historical materialism. (p. 26)
Kornilov was an important figure in this process, even though he had also been an
―exponent of mechanistic materialism for the understanding of psychism‖ (p. 40). After
contributing to enhance the process of separation between the members of the Institute of
Psychology of Chelpanov in 1921, in 1923 in the First Psychoneurological Congress
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Vygotsky & Leontiev: Undoing Some Knots of Soviet Psychology 105
throughout Russia, he proposed a program for the reconstruction of psychology, whose main
postulate was the need for psychological science to be based on the philosophical system of
Marxism. Kornilov was the first to point out the thesis of psychism as a highly organized
property of matter and as Shuare (1990) comments ―with this, it rises above, in principle, the
ordinary mechanistic reduction and recognizes psychic phenomena as an actual place, as that
which occupies any other property of matter‖ (p. 40). The words of Luria (1992) themselves,
reminiscent of that time, demonstrate a contradiction of facts and enlighten us about how
Kornilov led this initial process of building a psychology on the basis of Marxism:
Although his [Kornilov‘s] approach, which he called ―reactology,‖ was naive,

naturalistic and mechanistic, it seemed to contain an alternative to the openly idealistic
psychology of Chelpanov. Thus, in 1923, Chelpanov gave up the director of the institute
position and Kornilov was nominated the new director … Either way, the goal of
rebuilding psychology on a materialistic basis, explicitly placed by Kornilov, was at that
time a step forward. It made it possible to give the Institute‘s work a more productive
direction and enlist hordes of young scholars to assist in the necessary reconstruction of
psychology. (p. 34)
In this reorganization period of the Institute, a lab was created under the direction of
Alexander Romanovich Luria, who‘s assistant was A.N. Leontiev. Yet in 1924, Luria,
Leontiev and Vygotsky began a relationship and soon Vygotsky became the intellectual
leadership of the group, converging on the creation of the so-called School of Historical-
Cultural Psychology.
The close relationship of these three scientists, as well as its later developments, is
understood in different ways between Vygotsky‗s researchers and those who write about the
history of Soviet psychology. The distinct views and interpretations gave birth, in the
academic environment, to a polemic division between these authors, especially between
Vygotsky and Leontiev. This chapter will seek to raise the main criticisms of the authors that
defend the separation between Vygotsky and Leontiev, arguing that such widespread
explanations bring misinterpretations of both the work of Vygotsky and the work of Leontiev,
therefore making it worthy of debate.
The treatment that is given to the relationship between Vygotsky and Leontiev identifies
itself with the process explained by Tuleski (2008) in the previous chapters of this book. A
process of mischaracterization of Vygotsky‘s work through its interpreters, who when they
withdrew the historicity of Vygotsky‗s ideas, they emptied the content of his texts. It is
noteworthy that the boundaries of some broken translations of Vygotsky‘s work, as pointed
out by the author, could already have been overcome by the full Russian translations recently
published, both in Brazil and throughout the entire West. However, the translation problems
are non-isolated facts, Duarte (2001) and Tuleski (2008) show that they are intertwined in a
process of distortion of Vygotsky‘s work, dissociating it from Marxism which unfolds in
eclectic interpretations, especially through interactionist and constructivist bias.
We understand that the attempts to mischaracterize Vygotsky‗s work and his Marxist
foundations eventually spread an equally problematic and dubious interpretation of
Leontiev‗s work. Therefore, as far as their attempts to isolate Vygotsky from his context and
his foundations, to claim it in studies under several different levels of eclecticism, they try at
the same to diminish Leontiev‘s work by accusing him of betraying his ideals and classifying
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him as Stalinist; works which Duarte (2001) coins a ―ridiculous caricature of Marxism‖ (p.
164)
As already pointed out in previous chapters of this book, there is a spread of the
misguided idea of ideological imposition after the Russian Revolution of 1917 that would
have forced scientists to adopt dialectical materialism in their work. As a result, the scientists
call into question whether Vygotsky really was a Marxist or if he adopted Marxism by
ideological imposition. In fact, there were very serious imposed ideologies on science in the
Soviet Union with the rise of Stalin, but it is historic aggression that uses it to nullify any
production of that period (as is sometimes done to Leontiev‗s work).
Vygotsky‘s writings were even banned from the Soviet Union in 1930. Many will use
this fact to dissociate Vygotsky from Marxism without understanding the existing
contradictions in the Soviet Union under Stalin‘s government. Unconcerned about the
direction of history they simply equate Marx to Stalin, or the socialist fight to the Stalinist
dictatorship. It is unfortunate because the contradictions of the direction taken by the Soviet
socialist revolution under the Stalinist regime (contradictions related to its own capitalist
block) are anchored in an attempt to purify Vygotsky from those who are infected by
Stalinism, as Leontiev was accused of. Clarifying these extremely complex issues is only
possible from a basis of history understood in its non-linear movement, but filled with
contradictions, posed by the struggle between classes, which did not end with the Revolution
of 1917.
VYGOTSKY AND LEONTIEV: RUPTURE OR CONTINUITY?

The authors that develop arguments for the understanding of a division between
Vygotsky and Leontiev are the following researchers: the Israeli Alex Kozulin, the Dutchman
René Van der Veer and the Estonian Jaan Valsiner (collaborative researcher in Europe,
United States, Australia and even Brazil), the Argentinian Guillermo Blanck and the Cuban
Fernando González Rey. It is noteworthy that these interpreters disseminate their texts to the
West but priority is given to their publications in Spanish or Portuguese, outlining the
discussion in their texts (whether articles, chapters of book or full works) that are more
widespread in Brazil and Latin America.
We will make a presentation of the propositions of the authors who advocate for a
division between Vygotsky and Leontiev, in a way that organizes a common synthesis
between all of the ideas exposed by them. In general, to tackle the issue,, they made
interpretations about certain facts, or even about theoretical elements of the work of Vygotsky
and Leontiev, to explain the development of the relationship between Vygotsky, Luria and
Leontiev.
Van der Veer & Valsiner (2009) affirm that ―Vygotsky‘s view on a large research group
working for a common cause never existed‖ (p. 315) because Vygotsky was forced to move
several times to a new institute, to work with new collaborators and also because his students,
after graduating, were sent to work in different cities across the USSR, as presented in the
excerpt:
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The closing of the Academy of Communist Education and the resulting transfer of
some of Vygotsky‘s collaborators (Bozovich, Leontiev, Luria, Zaporozhets) to Kharkov
also compromised the research program. (p. 325)
Thus, for Van der Veer & Valsiner (2009) ―it was not the Troika‖ (p. 203) that built
Historical-Cultural Psychology, which was led by Vygotsky in collaboration with Luria and
Leontiev. They affirm, in fact, that Vygotsky and Luria took about four or five years,
beginning in 1924, to start working together and co-authoring in a productive way, because
until 1930 Luria was deeply influenced by Freudian theory. In Leontiev‘s case, according to
these authors, even though he had written a work about memory confirming the trials of
Vygotsky‘s ideas (prefaced by him in 1931), there is no record of any other publication in
collaboration with Vygotsky, as stated by as well as his name ―not appearing as co-founder of
historical-cultural theory at the time. In fact when critics attacked the basic ideas of historical-
cultural theory in the 1920s and 1930s, they always spoke about the theory developed by
Vygotsky and Luria‖ (Van der Veer & Valsiner, 2009, p. 204). However, it is noteworthy that
Leontiev at that time was a subordinate collaborator in Luria‘s lab and did not have public
accreditation as a researcher.
Van der Veer & Valsiner (2009) considered that the credit of Troika‗s existence would be
a projection of current reviews on Historical-Cultural Psychology, its authors, and the value it
had in its time. They considered it an accepted distortion that Historical-Cultural Psychology
was one of the most prominent theories of that time, and that even the authors, of this
supposed Troika, were considered prominent psychologists by their contemporaries. They
argue that the historical-cultural theory was not accepted by many scientists and faced
criticism from the beginning: ―the growing (ideological) opposition caused a situation in
which Vygotsky ended up with very few colleagues that were sympathetic to his theory and
had to rely largely on the work done by a small group of young devoted students‖ (Van der
Veer & Valsiner, 2009, p. 204). However, this exposure forces us to question the idea that the
Troika could only be treated as evaluations and ―current projections,‖ since Luria (1992)
himself affirms the existence of the Troika in his autobiography:
When Vygotsky arrived in Moscow, I was still experimenting with the combined
motor method together with Leontiev, an old Chelpanov student with whom I have
associated with ever since. Recognizing his unique skills, Leontiev and I rejoiced when
we were able to include him in our study group, which we called ―Troika.‖ (Luria, 1992,
p. 44)
With this data, the affirmation from Van der Veer & Valsiner (2009) that the idea of
troika is a projection of current evaluations (without further explanation), it becomes partial
and difficult to be understood by the reader. In Blanck (2003, p. 19) we find the statement that
―there are doubts‖ about this report from Luria‘s autobiography, however it does not give the
reader further explanations about what underlies such doubts, as if Luria‗s recollection was
simply distorted:
It is likely that Luria and Leontiev helped Vygotsky to establish himself, however we
affirm without hesitation that such meetings took at least a year. As Borges said, memory
is more inventive than evocative. (Blanck, 2003, p. 19)
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In the introduction written by Leontiev (2004a, p. 438), for the collection of Vygotsky‘s
works published in Russian, the author does not use the term the Troika, but naturally affirms
that the first collaborators of Vygotsky in his psychological studies at the Moscow Institute of
Psychology were Luria and Leontiev.

Van der Veer & Valsiner (2009), even claimed that the Troika would not only be a myth
propagated as a result of current projections, but also that ―the idea of the three heroic and
inseparable musketeers fighting against traditional psychology is therefore a romantic
reconstruction promoted by Leontiev and Luria‖ (p. 204). It affirmed ―the myth of the Troika
served the function of obscuring the differences of opinion and the very real personal
conflicts [emphasis added] that would develop between Vygotsky and Leontiev (and, to some
degree, with Luria) at a later stage‖ (p. 204). What were these personal conflicts? What did
the authors understand that interested Luria and Leontiev to obscure the alleged differences
with Vygotsky? We do not know because the authors leave this hidden within the text. We
also believe that the authors purposefully do it to foster the notion that Luria and Leontiev had
an ideological adherence to Stalinism.
Kozulin (2002, p. 112) also put spin on statements about the Troika stating that a
theoretical continuity between Vygotsky and Leontiev is untrue, a myth ―the myth of
succession among the schools of psychology of Vygotsky and Leontiev,‖ which was
consolidated because of the fact that Leontiev subsequently had earned the position of
Vygotsky‘s official interpreter. Kozulin (2002) does not explain which facts substantiate his
analysis of the information in which Leontiev assumed that position, saying only that its
process was facilitated by the Lenin Prize that Leontiev received in 1963 because of his book
Problems of Development of Mind, an event that according to the author himself, gave status
to the official psychological doctrine. González Rey (2000; 2007b) also states without further
detail that Leontiev‘s psychological activity theory sort of became the official psychology of
the USSR and ―official heir to the work of Vygotsky‖ (2007b, p. 98), and argues that
throughout his doctorate in Moscow he perceived Leontiev‘s activity theory as an imposition:
there was a Marxist psychology and that was the Activity Theory, and everything
that had moved away from it was a deviation from the Marxist understanding of psyche.
As with any theory that becomes hegemonic, the Activity Theory became a dogma and in
this way deeply restricted the development of Soviet Psychology. (González Rey, 2007b)
However, it is difficult to determine the common link between factual information and
the perceptions of these authors, since they do not clearly explain what influences their
statements in the texts we had access to, which mainly refers to their assessments as
unquestionable statements. Furthermore, these statements about Leontiev, as an official
psychology doctrine or official psychology, are quite dubious because all data indicates that
the official doctrine focused on assumptions of I. P. Pavlov‘s physiology of higher nervous
activity throughout the Stalinist period, particularly after the 1950s and even after Stalin‘s
death. Luria and Leontiev, as we shall see, criticized this doctrine, especially in the large
academic sessions of the 1950s and 1960s.
Blanck (2003) also makes similar assertions as does Van der Veer & Valsiner (2009) and
Kozulin (2002) about the formation of the troika. Blanck (2003) organized an annotated
edition of Educational Psychology, a work written by Vygotsky‘s between 1923 and 1924, in
which the preface accuses that an existence of legends does not allow for a clear
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understanding of the life and work of Vygotsky. One of these legends concerns Vygotsky‘s
biography in which the construction of a ―monolithic socio-historical‖ psychology is distorted
(Kozulin, 2002, p. 17) by the troika, comprised of Luria, Vygotsky e Leontiev. Claiming that
it was in the 1950s that ―it began to be widespread, that is the hagiographic legend of the
troika created by Leontiev, who had never spoken about his past—a true support to the
Stalinist scientific policy‖ (Blanck, 2003, p. 23). However, Blanck (2003) does not explain
what this policy does or how and when Leontiev supported the Stalinist scientific policy. Is it
also cause for doubt if we consider the autobiographical text from Luria, as it would have
been ―primarily‖ Leontiev who created this myth, considering that Luria also defended it
himself? Is it a way for all these authors to point at the problems in relation to Leontiev in
particular? Everything indicates this is so.
Blanck (2003, p. 31), having accused Leontiev of directing his theory to change in a way
that corroborates with the ―official Stalinist fundamentalism,‖ argues that Leontiev diverged
from Vygotsky‘s theory due to the attacks of the Stalinist regime on Vygotsky in the early
1930s. Such attacks were full of verbal and written insults, threats to inquisitorial
interrogations, culminating in the decrease of Vygotsky‘s main areas of work, Defectology
and Pedagogy, the last one being banned after his death by a decree in 1936, and as a
consequence banned Vygotsky‘s work in the USSR.
The context of the late 1920s and early 1930s is the main backdrop for the controversy
dealt with by interpreters. They deny the existence of the Troika as a collaborative and
cohesive group and focus on this period of time to build arguments of a definitive division
between Vygotsky, Luria and Leontiev, led by Leontiev who was considered an Stalinist
traitor. Not coincidentally this is the same time period as the rise of Stalin in the Soviet
government.
We stress that the period mentioned above was extremely troubled, marked by a turning
point in the sciences, arts and culture, and must be dealt with in a search for facts that express
the historical movement in its contradictions, and not in a linear way. As the report from
Leontiev‘s son clarifies, A. A. Leontiev (2005), it created scientific schools claiming only to
be uniquely Marxist, leading to the repression of important theorists. The School of Unified
Labor founded under Lunacharski‘s efforts, under the theoretical basis developed by
Vygotsky and Blonski, simply ceased to exist. Renowned theory and practice of pedagogy
underwent defamation. In philosophy, Stalin made all necessary efforts to emphasize the
struggle against those named materialistic mechanists and against the Deborin group (which
was destroyed) labeled ―Menshevik idealists‖ (A. A. Leontiev, 2005, p. 31).
A frame was drawn in psychology in which Kornilov was stripped from the title of
director of the Institute of Psychology and practically all of the psychological theories were
attacked. One resolution from the Institute of Psychology published on June 6th 1931, was
written by a group of members of the institute who were affiliated with the Soviet Communist
Party, who determined a critical review process for all psychological production, attacking the
reactology of Kornilov, who was replaced from his position of director at the Institute of
Psychology by A. B. Zanlkind. This resolution affirmed that petty-bourgeois schools of
thought, existing in Western Psychology, had been condemned for its abstract character and
its historical nature, and was therefore essentially reactionary. The resolution accused that
―remnants of antisocialist and subversive ideas continue to be present in the writings of
several alleged Soviet scientists, notably supporters of former professors Chelpanov and
Vygotsky, Gustav Shept‖ (Van der Veer & Valsiner, 2009, p. 405). According to this
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resolution, it was of the most importance ―to destroy and annihilate these remnants of
idealistic bourgeois theories which were a reflection on the strength of counter-revolutionary
elements of the country against socialist construction‖ (Van der Veer & Valsiner, 2009, p.
405).
The resolution proposed measures to clean psychology from these counter-revolutionary
elements: 1) general examination of the content of textbooks used in universities and
institutes; 2) more attention to the formation of trustworthy communist staff at the
universities, requiring that a certain share of the researchers writing dissertations be members
of the Party; 3) ideological commitments of the employees should be completely examined
and the nomination of chiefs of staff should require permission from the ―competent Party
center;‖ and 4) requirement that students work during some period in a collective factory or
on a farm (Van der Veer & Valsiner, 2009).
This led to the suppression of Kornilov‘s reactology, Bekheterev‘s reflexology,
Borovski‘s behaviorism and the Historical-Cultural Psychology of Vygotsky:
all fell under bitter ideological attack. Grounds for destroying the cultural-historical
school were found first in the release in 1930 of the book by Vygotsky and Luria, Studies
on the History of Behavior: Ape, Primitive and Child [Etiudi po istorii povedeniia.
(Obez‘iana. Primitiv. Rebenok)], a book that Vygotsky, by the way, showed little respect
for in letters, calling it ―The Ape,‖ and again in letters, criticizing it rather harshly.
Second, grounds for destroying it were found in the expeditions by A.R. Luria to
Uzbekistan, which took place on the initiative of Vygotsky in 1931 and 1932. In one of
the ―critical‖ articles (1934) about the ―cultural-historical‖ conception it was described
as, ―This pseudoscientific reactionary, anti-Marxist, and class-hostile theory‖
(Razmyslov, 1934; quoted from Luria, 1994, p. 67). Elsewhere, Vygotsky‘s group was
accused of ―idealistic revisions to historical materialism and its concretization in
psychology‖ (quoted from Petrovskii and Iaroshevskii, 1994, p. 142). Even the pinnacle
of academia, S.L. Rubinshtein, in The Foundations of Psychology [Osnovy psikhologii]
wrote, ―A prominent place in Soviet psychology belongs to Vygotsky, who together with
Lurie [sic], Leontiev and others developed the theory of the cultural development of
higher mental functions created by him, the mistakes of which have been covered in the
press more than once‖ (Rubinshtein, 1935, p. 37).‖ (A. A. Leontiev, 2005, p. 29-30)
The critics in the early 1930s could not spare Leontiev, who had his book The
Development of Memory, prefaced in conjunction with Vygotsky, censured. Vygotsky
mentions Leontiev‘s book in a letter from July 31st, 1930, giving it rave reviews:
―A mountain brought forth a mouse‖— this is how you see your book. I know the
kind of lamenting you speak of for the ideas that are not embodied in the book, that stand
outside it and await their embodiment in the future. But I would turn this comparison
around—and it would be closer to the truth: your book is a mountain brought forth by a
mouse. This is so. When I recall what it started from, what it grew out of, how the card
was first used for remembering, how for the first time, the indistinct, undifferentiated
haze of the main idea gave rise to the new approach to memory embodied in your book.
Our writings are imperfect, but the truth contained within them is great [...] Is this book
truly a mountain? I answer unconditionally in the affirmative. This is my conviction. As
Luther said, Hier stehe ich—I stand on this, and woe to he who [gap in text] your book.
And you must realize this, because this is not a personal issue of your own, it is not a
personal question [illegible]; it is not a personal issue at all, but a question of thinking, a
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philosophical question, an event of enormous significance in the sphere of scientific

thinking about human psychology. (Vygotsky, personal communication, July 31st, 1930)
The first edition of Leontiev‘s book reached editors hands in 1930 but it was withheld,
only being authorized for publication on May 23rd, 1931 (A. A. Leontiev, 2005). The second
version ―was incidentally executed because the author admits his ‗deviations from the main
methodological path.‘ One of them ‗objectively contains an element of ideological order‘, and
the other ‗objectively contains an element of mechanistic order‘‖ (A. A. Leontiev, 2005, p.
31). Thus demonstrating a subordinate attitude towards the censorship of that period.
Within this context in the early 1930s, the institutions where Leontiev worked began to
close down, sometimes due to political scandals:
the same editorial was simultaneously featured in two central newspapers about the
Institute of Cinematography with the threatening headline ―Nest of Idealists and
Trotskyists.‖ One of the consequences of this article was that A.N. was forced to leave
the Institute of Cinematography in 1930. The bulwark of the Vygotsky school—the
Academy of Communist Education—also fell into disfavor in 1930; its School of Social
Sciences was proclaimed ―Trotskyist,‖ and in 1931 it was ―exiled‖ to Leningrad and
renamed as an institute.. (A. A. Leontiev, 2005, p. 31)
Leontiev was forced to leave his position at the Institute of Cinematography in 1930, he
was fired from the Academy of Communist Education on September 1st, 1931, and the
psychology lab of this academy, directed by Vygotsky, was closed in 1932. During this
period psychology was simply not taught anymore at the University of Moscow, depriving
him of work opportunities (A. A. Leontiev, 2005).
In Kharkov, Ukraine, the capital at that time, the Ukrainian Psychoneurological Academy
was founded, inviting several researchers from all over USSR, between them were the names
of: Vygotsky, Luria, Leontiev, Zaporojets and Bozhovich. Van der Veer & Valsiner (2009, p.
205) consider that ―in the increasingly intolerant intellectual environment of Moscow, the
establishment of the Ukrainian Psychoneurological Academy in Kharkov in 1930 was a most
welcomed event.‖
Leontiev consolidated a group at the Academy in Kharkov. Vygotsky and Luria were
employed by this Academy, and Luria took over the leadership of the Psychology section,
Leontiev took over the Child Psychology section and Vygotsky the Department of genetic
psychology of the State Institute of Staff Training of the People‘s Health Committee of the
Ukrainian Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Luria and Leontiev moved to Kharkov at the end of 1931 and spent 20 days of the month
in Kharkov and the rest with their families in Moscow, as the Ukrainian Academy only had
one room available in a shared apartment for each scientist and his family (Van der Ver &
Valsiner, 2009). Luria worked in Kharkov for about three years and Leontiev for almost five:
He [Leontiev] not only led a section and was an active member of the Ukrainian
Psychoneurological Academy, but also—after Luria‘s permanent departure —took over
the administration of the entire psychology division from him (even earlier, in 1932, he
was deputy division director). Additionally, he was director of the psychology
department of the Medical-Pedagogical Institute of the Ukrainian People‘s Health
Commissariat, and later director of the psychology department of the Kharkov
Pedagogical Institute and the Research Institute of Pedagogy (subsequently named the
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All-Ukrainian Institute of Scientific Pedagogy). Among the positions held by A.N. in

Kharkov was the rather exotic post of professor at the P.P. Postyshev Kharkov Palace of
Pioneers and Children of October. (A.A. Leontiev, 2005, p. 33)
The same Muscovites members surrounding Vygotsky (Bozhovich, Zaporojets), among

others who already lived in the city (Galperin, Zinchenko [father], Lukhov e Asnin),
participated in the Kharkov group. It focused on the studies of ―practical activity and
consciousness‖ (Golder, 2004, p. 23).
Vygotsky did not lead this group although he frequently traveled to give lectures and
seminars in Kharkov. As part of the Muscovite group in Kharkov, ―he was dedicated to (very
important) activities in Leningrad, where he strengthened his bond with Elkonin (who was
from this city) and configured in practice a new version of the original group, with new
members‖ (Golder, 2004, p. 23). Blanck (2003) states that in 1932 Vygotsky‘s situation in
Moscow became unbearable considering the criticism he had suffered since at least 1931, a
scenario that, in Blanck‘s (2003) understanding, forced Vygotsky to make the decision to
increase the activities of his workload outside the city, moving between Leningrad (Herzen
Institute of Education), Kharkov, and Moscow. But Blanck (2003) points out that the reason
is unknown as to why Vygotsky did not concentrate his activities in Kharkov with Luria and
Leontiev, opting for long trips ―at risk of tuberculosis between Moscow, Kharkov, and
Leningrad, cities that are very distant and, at that time, had dangerous means transportation‖
(Blanck, 2003, p. 22). In fact, the reasons could be many, political or even personal. But what
does the path that Blanck (2003) takes in his narrative suggest? Further he says, ―we do not
know the exact reason for this decision but we know what happened in Kharkov. His group
disintegrated in that city and with it also ended the ‗historical mission‘ that messianically he
had set for himself‖ (Blanck, 2003, p. 23). With this passage, Blanck (2003) is led to an
interpretation that Vygotsky‘s choice of not focusing his activities in Kharkov together with
Luria, Leontiev, and others, may be related to problems with the group in Kharkov, but he
does not make explicit the facts that support his interpretation.
In reference to the separation of the Kharkov group and Leontiev‘s research, the authors
reaffirm the understanding of the division between Vygotsky and Leontiev. Kozulin (2002)
understands that the Kharkov group took a revisionist stance, theoretically elaborated by
Leontiev, which started to put “practical actions (materials) in the foreground while
simultaneously demoting the role of signs as mediators of human activity”[emphasis added]
(p. 111). But what are the reasons that led the group to a change focus in relation to
Vygotsky‘s work? Kozulin (2002), who only provides his affirmations to the reader, does not
address this issue. This allows us to question if what Kozulin (2000) intended to affirm about
such a change of approach would not actually be distancing them, not from the Kharkov
group in relation to Vygotsky, but from the interpretation that Kozulin himself makes of
Vygotsky‘s work, where Kozulin emphasizes in Vygotsky‘s work the role of signs in order to
distance them away from the tangible activity. Considering the studies, we do not agree that
there is a dichotomy between practical activity (material), on one side, and signs (non-
material) on the other, that which supports an understanding of signs or language as
something empty of objectivity.
Kozulin (2002) points out methodological problems in Leontiev‘s activity theory. He
states that for Vygotsky, the activity would be a general explanatory principle finds that ―its
materialization in specific types, culturally linked to the semiotic mediation, in the doctrine of
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Kharkovites, activity takes a dual role – that of the general principle and of the concrete
mechanism of mediation‖ (Kozulin, 2002, p. 131). When dealing with the methodological
issue of Vygotsky‘s work, it is understood that for him activity would be ―an upgrade of
culture on the individual behavior embodied in the symbolic function of gesture, games, and
linguistic systems” [emphasis added] (Kozulin, 2002, p. 120). As for Kozulin (2002) activity
would be the explanatory principle of the object of Vygotsky‘s psychology that, in turn,
would be the higher psychological functions.
Vygotsky‘s theory considers the higher mental functions as an object of study, the
semiotic systems as mediators, and the activity as explanatory principle – in Leontiev‘s
theory, the activity, sometimes as activity and sometimes as action, plays all roles from
the object to the explanatory principle. (Kozulin, 2002, p. 131)
In this section the author also mentions that the semiotic systems would be mediators. We
understand that it is the mediation between the object of study and its explanatory principle.
This for Vygotsky would be the methodological concept of the unit of analysis that articulates
effectively the object and the explanatory principle. The units of analysis are ―parts of the
whole that can preserve the essential contradictions of it‖ (Delari Jr., 2010, p. 8).
Being impossible to exhaust the totality of human consciousness as much as the

totality of social relations, of which its development is function, would be for the
investigator to elect units of analysis that allow studying such complexity in condensed
and concentrated manner. (Delari Jr., 2010, p. 8)
Kozulin (2002) is not incorrect in his assertions about Vygotsky but it is evident that the
interpretation he makes of Leontiev transforms his theory into a major simplification of
psychology through activity. We disagree with this interpretation because we defend that the
activity category in Leontiev‘s version brings back the specificity of human activity already
addressed by Marx, which shows the character of the social nature of psychism overcoming
the dichotomy between mind and body in a process that links objectivity and subjectivity in
conscious activity.
Returning to the criticism about Leontiev and the Kharkov group, Van der Ver &
Valsiner (2009), state that “it was in Kharkov that the cultural-historical school began to
disintegrate” [emphasis added] (p. 205). Thus indicating that Leontiev developed ―his own
concept of cognitive development in response to ideological criticism‖ in Kharkov (p. 315).
They do not even mention exactly what would be the concept of development and how it
would differ from Vygotsky. They state that in his obituary in 1934, in a text he wrote when
Vygotsky died, Leontiev distanced himself publicly from Vygotsky‘s ideas for the first time,
even creating another title for the name of his theory:
he emphasized that the mediation processes are based on material and social
activities [emphasis added], and renamed cultural-historical psychology as ―social-
historical theory.‖ (Van der Veer & Valsiner, 2009, p. 316)
We shall see later that this idea of creation, of a new theoretical title, is just a play on
words used to create arguments in defense of the division between Vygotsky and Leontiev.
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Blanck (2003), in the same line of reasoning of Van der Veer & Valsiner (2009) and even
of Kozulin (2002), interprets that it is a fact that the separation solidified in Kharkov. This
includes the understanding that Leontiev was the leader of this break and that the reason
would not fundamentally be a deviation from the internal path from his line of research, as
Kozulin (2002, p. 31) emphasizes, but a problem generated due to questions of ―external
history,‖ or in other words, the fabric of Stalinist politics:
Everything indicates that Leontiev changed his conceptions too quickly [emphasis
added] during the growing atmosphere of the ideological interrogation of Vygotsky,
when he was accused of ―not being Marxist‖ … Leontiev‘s change occurred in a way that
was in total agreement with the official Stalinist fundamentalism – the displacement of
the importance from “sign” to “tool” and from “communication” to “work” [emphasis
added]. (Blanck, 2003, p. 31)
González Rey (2003) also makes an statement to declare Leontiev‘s theory as the
expression of Stalinism effects on Soviet psychology: in its ―tendency to psychically objectify
[emphasis added], and focus itself on micro social levels, it ignores the macro-social levels
and the ways in which they will intervene in the development of social and individual
subjectivity‖ (p. 84). Pointing out further that ―behind the emphasis on the historical-social
nature of psychic processes, lies a narrow view that does not consider the complex subjective
processes developed in social spaces. The scheme of dominant activity defined as ―objectal
activity‖ is essentially an interactive individualistic model‖ (González Rey, 2007b, p. 100-
101). Here it is evident in González Rey‘s interpretation that he understands Leontiev‘s study
of activity produces a dichotomy between the individual and society that favors the individual
figure.
Surprisingly it is possible to see that this is the exact opposite analysis to the criticisms
expressed by Van der Veer & Valsiner (2009), which as we seen condemns Leontiev‘s work,
in that the mediation processes ―bases itself on material and social activities (p. 316). This
overly valued the processes that Gonzalez Rey (2003) calls macro, or in other words,
emphasis on combining the social processes with the process of material activity. For Van der
Veer & Valsiner (2009) these processes are equal (material and social activities) or
equivalent, and do not imply, as does González Rey (2003), a necessity to identify the
―micro‖ (p. 84). This is an example that shows the contradiction of authors who defend the
theoretical division between Vygotsky and Leontiev, thus making it often impossible to
understand their interpretations of the actual content of Leontiev‘s work.

Van der Ver & Valsiner (2009) also accuse Leontiev of remaining ―faithful to the official
ideology‖ (p. 316):
It becomes clear to replace the emphasis of Vygotsky on signs as a means of

mediation between objects of experience and mental functions, for, the idea that physical
action (work) should mediate the subject and the outside world [emphasis added],
Leontiev remained true to the official ideology. According to the ideological guardians,
work (physical activity) should precede speech. (Van der Ver & Valsiner, 2009, p. 316)
These authors limit themselves by synonymously treating the work category with
action/physical activity, disregarding the centrality of this category for the Marxist philosophy
of the understanding of the social being. Moreover, it is evident that Van der Ver & Valsiner
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(2009) do not understand that signs are critical in the mediation between humans and objects
of the material world. They cannot be separated from their actual activity, or practice,
hovering only in the field of a supposedly empty language of objectivity. How should the
relation between subjectivity and objectivity, individual and society, be understood? These
are fundamental issues for Historical-Cultural Psychology. These problems are not adequately
explained in the writings of the authors mentioned here. They only have meaning according
to the attacks that make Leontiev defend their interpretations of Vygotsky‘s work.
Kozulin (2002) accuses, but not as explicitly as Van der Ver & Valsiner, Blanck e
González Rey of asserting that Leontiev‘s activity theory is a phenomenon of the intricate
entanglement between the ―ideological security, honest scientific disagreement, and also the
misunderstanding of some of Vygotsky‘s ideas‖ (Kozulin, 2002, p. 127). He criticizes
Leontiev‘s use of the concept of human activity in general, using categories of the Marxist
philosophy–citing the production, appropriation, objectification and ―de-objectification‖ (p.
133)–because for the interpreters the presumed subject of these categories would be the
―historical-social subject‖ (p. 132) and not the ―psychological-individual‖ (p. 132). In
contradiction to this is the ―concrete relations with reality‖ according to Kozulin (2002, p.
132), which would have been found by Leontiev precisely in those concrete actions and
practical operations of the individual.
The intermediate link between the two facets of the activity - which Vygotsky
identified as culture in general and semiotic systems in particular [emphasis added] –
was lost because of the rejection by Vygotsky‘s opposition. (Kozulin, 2002, p. 133)
If this is so, does Kozulin reaffirm the contradiction between individual and social and
historical subject? In this case the psychological-individual individual could not, then, be
explained from the categories of the Marxist philosophy. How could these interpretations of
these categories not be explained as being general or social as opposed to individual? We
believe that this author‘s exposition suggests that it is the insurmountable gap between the
individual and society, valuing the clearly idealistic and subjectivistic conception.
González Rey constructs his critique of A. N. Leontiev not only based on the alleged
adequacy of its foundations in the Stalinist regime, but also from a place that understands
activity theory as a whole, in the history of development of Soviet psychology. He claims
―mechanistic Marxism‖ (p. 350) was a recurring trend in Soviet psychology that the author
understood as ―a mere application of Marxist categories to other fields of knowledge—
oriented as „materialization‟ of the psyche [emphasis added]‖ (González Rey 2007b, p. 350).
González Rey (2007a) points out that one of the aspects that characterized the mechanistic
thinking in Soviet psychology was the attempt to ―explain the psyche through the casual
action of „objective‟ processes [emphasis added], thus obstructing it to be seen as a complex
system, irreducible to the processes involved in its determination‖ (p. 352).
They assert that Soviet psychology maintained a contradictory path in relation to the
problems with objectivity and subjectivity and between affective and cognitive, due to:
imaginary objectivists that restricted the ideological point of view [emphasis added],
which appeared not just to be defined by the political pressure of Stalinism, but by the
worldview of its protagonists. Although the pioneers of that psychology had not
appropriated themselves to Marxism in a dogmatic way, but in a creative way, it was very
difficult to go beyond the many impregnated principles of that time, or into the
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imagination of the soviet society in general, and one of the most entrenched principles at
that time was the dominant character of beings about consciousness, which being
misunderstood, led to the secondary character of consciousness in relation to beings
[emphasis added]. (González Rey, 2007c, p. 58)
The development of psychology based on the Marxist principles according to González

Rey (2007a) ―more often emphasized the materialism than the dialectics which led, many
times in the history of Soviet psychology, to the rectification of the concrete categories as the
ultimate expression of the Marxist character of psychology [emphasis added]‖ (p. 351). The
author exemplifies such moments: 1) with reflexology, the result from a strong cultural
tradition, dominant in the natural sciences, in which a primacy of physiological processes
occur as cause for the more complex psychological processes; 2) another moment would be
represented by Konstantin N. Kornilov‘s attempt to mechanically apply the Marxism
categories to psychology; 3) a third moment presented by the author is the development of the
Activity Theory by Leontiev, in which according to González Rey (2007a) ―represented a
new moment with the intent to objectify the psychic‖ (p. 353) and to ―explain the psyche
through people‘s external operations with objects‖ (p. 353) which for the author ―inaugurated
‗objectal‘ reductionism in the understanding of psyche‖ (p. 353).
He explains that Leontiev‘s activity theory converted itself into a type of official
psychology from the 1960s to the late 1970s, becoming a ―reference from which to value the
‗Marxist‘ character of psychological production ― (González Rey, 2000, p. 134). He affirms
that in this context there was a return to a methodological positivism reinforcing the use of
experiment in psychological research, which would be in perfect agreement to the orientation
of the studies of cognitive and sensory processes within the framework of activity theory. He
fails to illustrate facts that clarify the meaning of his arguments, leaving the reader with the
possibility to question if the use of experiments could be, by itself, considered a positivist
reductionism, as González Rey suggests. Vygotsky, the author who the highlighted
commentators in this chapter sympathize with the most, has a plethora of experimental studies
with his collaborators using experiments as a mean for theoretical research. Still so, he directs
his criticism towards activity theory.
This theory represented a new phase of an old trend that Soviet psychology, through
the ideological context in which it developed, can never overcome: its emphasis was on
identifying the materiality of psyche in objective, biological, and social ways. It never
allows Soviet psychologists to make a theoretical construction of a different ontological
vision of psyche based on the definition of its cultural character. (González Rey, 2000, p.
135)
Thus our task is to question: Why does this author defend the construction of a different
ontological vision and what might such a view consist of? It is evident that the ontology of
the social being through the work category, as radically proposed by Marx, would be
inadequate in Rey‘s point of view. We are dealing with criticisms made toward Vygotsky by
a researcher who is clearly divorced from Marxist philosophy. Lacerda Júnior (2010) explains
González Rey treating him as ―a theorist that splits materialism and dialectics and who
defines the best direction for the psychology, as only looking at the dialectical … this scission
culminates in a hypertrophy of subjectivity, as do all the contemporary postmodern theories‖
(p. 218).
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González Rey (2003) argues that Leontiev‘s activity theory expresses categorically the
―tension between the needs for the development of its own psychology and the tendencies to
reify the object as a materialistic dimension of psyche [emphasis added]‖ (p. 83).
Valsiner & Van der Veer, Alex Kozulin and Fernando González Rey show a match in the
interpretation of problems that they consider to exist in Leontiev‘s theory under the shield of
Stalinism in psychology, which would also be central to the divergence from Vygotsky‘s
theory. Let‘s see how they deal with the problem. Van der Veer & Valsiner claim that the
given distancing from Leontiev in relation to Vygotsky, are because his acts have emphasized
that the mediation processes is based on material and social activities. Kozulin (2002) states
that
insistence on “concrete relations with reality” became a crucial factor of

disagreement between Kharkovites and Vygotsky … that the thesis of “concrete
relations with reality” fits much better in the Soviet dialectical-materialist beliefs of the
1930s than the much more complex model of historical-cultural suggested by Vygotsky
[emphasis added]. (Kozulin, 2002, p. 127)
González Rey (1993) points out that when the Marxist character of psychology of the
activity category was identified as “concrete activity” [emphasis added] (p. 167), then it
became a super-category in Soviet psychology, for many years, which had the consequence of
weakening other categories considered fundamental to social psychology, such as personality
and communication. It justifies the ideological character that would have such a theoretical
stance from Leontiev when explaining that the scenario started changing in relation to these
categories in the 1970s:
For a period of nearly thirty years the communication category did not express itself
either on a theoretical level or when applied to Soviet psychology. It strongly appeared in
different areas of psychology, applied in the 1970s, with a strong impulse towards its
theoretical and methodological significance to a psychology in the work of B. F. Lomov.
In the framework of activity theory they found a strong expression applied to the
investigation of cognitive processes and pedagogical psychology, the last one mentioned
being sustained by the internalization principle. However other spheres of psychology
such as social, work, and its own health psychology, were particularly weak, which was
not casual. (González Rey, 1993, p. 167)
Remembering that, on the other hand, Blanck (2003) also considered that problems
would exist in a Stalinist psychology, in which Leontiev incurred, as we mentioned before
“the important displacement of „signs‟ for „tools‟ and „communication‟ for „work‟”
[emphasis added] (p. 31).
If we look at the common threads between these authors we will see that they make the
same accusation of Leontiev‘s activity theory: were they are convinced that Leontiev‘s
emphasis tended towards the opposite side of what they advocated for? We say this in a way
in which Leontiev is, first and foremost, a historical materialist and therefore incompatible
with the very impregnated criticisms of idealism that come from the commentators discussed
here. Leontiev would have emphasized the external character of concrete categories with the
consequent result of having discredited other categories that would have actually revealed the
psychology in the way these authors interpreted it. They accuse Leontiev‘s activity theory of
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having a superficiality of ideological character. They understand then that the activity
category and its dimensions (action and operation) incur in a simplifications of psyche that
would only be revealed and apprehended through concepts, allegedly ignored by Leontiev,
such as signs, communication, culture, and semiotic systems. They try to criticize Leontiev in
a very similar way as Vygotsky received criticisms from the Kornilov group and others,
which attempted to adapt psychology to Marxist categories, similar to a patchwork quilt. The
authors accuse Leontiev of mistakenly choosing psychological reductionism instead of a
bunch of Marxist categories, or objective categories, and so forth. However, unlike Vygotsky
(1927/2004), they do not address the problems pointing to the limitations of a project of
scientific and general psychology that sought to collectively develop through the historical
method of Marx.
On the other hand we understand that this project faced major obstacles with the fall of
the USSR, the advance of neoliberal politics, and the postmodern concepts, which live
together with distinct concepts and foundations, in the name of apparent consensus or false
theoretical harmony, defended as a diversity of ideas that have equal value. We also
understand that much of the controversy introduced by the interpreters of Vygotsky and
Leontiev have the adaptation or rejection of either Soviet author at its core. This is due to
their more or less obvious ability, according to their object of research, to suit the conceptions
currently predominant. To question the interpreters assertions, we will do an historical
analysis using the two historical moments mentioned above; The early 1930s when there was
the invitation to work in Kharkov and the 1950s in which psychological science was being
increasingly attacked by the ideological impositions of Stalinism.
THE CONTEXT OF THE JOB OFFER IN KHARKOV

Vygotsky and his collaborators were already criticized at the Institute of Psychology even
before Kornilov‘s departure in 1931 and the ramifications of Stalinist policy in science. They
were accused of being idealists by Kornilov who ―blamed Vygotsky for having moved
Marxist psychology away from and closer to idealistic concepts (wanting to attack [the
concept of] desire‖ (A.A. Leontiev, 2005, p. 28). Thus, in 1930 they left the Institute of
Psychology (A. A. Leontiev, 2005), but stayed at the N.K. Krupskaia Academy of
Communist Education, in which they were collaborators from 1927 to 1928 (Cole, 1992).
Cole (1992) and Rivière (2002) showed that in 1930 the group unsuccessfully struggled to
find a department in which they could work together and continue with their studies in
Psychology in the way that they wanted. Under political scandal many of the institutions, in
which they were collaborators, were closed in that period and exhaustively accused of
―nesting Trotsky idealists.‖
A.N. was forced to leave the Institute of Cinematography in 1930. The bulwark of
the Vygotsky school—the Academy of Communist Education—also fell into disfavor in
1930; its School of Social Sciences was proclaimed ―Trotskyist,‖ and in 1931 it was
―exiled‖ to Leningrad and renamed as an institute […] At Moscow University, beginning
in 1931, psychology was not taught at all. So there was no place for Leontiev to work.
(A.A. Leontiev, 2005, p. 32)
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It was in this context and at this time that Vygotsky, Luria, and Leontiev received an
invitation to work in Kharkov, Ukraine, in a division of psychology created at the Ukrainian
Psychoneurological Institute. At the end of 1931 they were all working in Kharkov. At first,
Luria and Leontiev stayed for most of the month, in a collective apartment in Kharkov, while
Vygotsky frequently traveled there, also to Leningrad and Moscow. Luria remained in
Kharkov to work for about three years (until 1934) while Leontiev remained there for almost
five.
In the early 1930s it became a fertile basis for our work, when we received an
invitation to establish a department of psychology at the Ukrainian Psychoneurological
Academy in Kharkov. I started dividing my time between Kharkov and Moscow while
Vygotsky divided his between Moscow, Leningrad and Kharkov. It was in Kharkov that I
started to create the new methods for the psychological analysis of consequences of
localized brain lesions. But my time was still very occupied by other work. I lived this
dual existence until 1936 when I began to devote myself to medical school full time.
(Luria, 1992, p. 136)
Rivière (2002) is one of the authors that emphasizes that the move to Kharkov is related
to the period of pressure of the early 1930s that made it impossible to work in Moscow:
A response to the increase of the ideological pressure by members of the Historical-

Cultural School was the attempt to establish a Psychology department that would bring
together the essential fields of the work they were doing. Once they could not find an
institution in Moscow that would accept their proposal as a group, they began to contact
the Psychoneurological Institute at the University of Jarkov, to form a Psychology
department. Vygotsky, Luria, Leontiev, Zaporozhets, and Bozhovich moved there.
However only the last three stay in Jarkov where subsequently they would maintain a
department of Psychology that would imply a continuation (especially from the
interpretations and innovations of Leontiev) of Vygotsky teachings. Luria soon returned
to Moscow and Vygotsky continued his activities in Jarkov, Moscow and at the Hertzern
Pedagogical Institute of Leningrad, until his death in 1934. (Rivière, 2002, p. 71)
Luria (1992), in his autobiography describes the move to Kharkov as a fruitful period for
the development of his work:
In the early 1930s, it became a fertile basis for our work, when we received the
invitation to establish a department of psychology at the Ukrainian Psychoneurological

Academy in Kharkov. I started diving my time between Kharkov and Moscow while
Vygotsky divided his between Moscow, Leningrad, and Kharkov. It was in Kharkov that
I started to create new methods for the psychological analysis of the consequences of
localized brain lesions. But my time was still very occupied by other work. I lived this
dual existence until 1936 when I began to devote myself to medical school full time.
(Luria, 1992, p. 136)
The unsuccessful effort by the group in 1930, in trying to establish a department with its
own research program in Moscow, also failed in Kharkov. The group had not been united for
a long time. Luria and Vygotsky exchanged work in other cities and even Luria, who came to
live in Kharkov, returned to live in Moscow. Leontiev, Zaporozhets, and Bozovich remained.
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P.I. Zinchenko and P.Y. Galperin soon came to join the group. However ―the dream of an
unified department never came to fruition‖ (Cole, 1992, p. 216).
There were some gaps in the moving process to Kharkov. First it is unknown why
Vygotsky did not move to Kharkov with Luria and Leontiev. This fact is exploited as one of
the elements of the scenario, drawn by those that propagate the idea of a disconnect between
Vygotsky and Leontiev in this period, that result in a second point, which is the theoretical
division led by Leontiev in the research group in Kharkov.
In regard to the interpreters refusal to recognize the existence of the troika, we highlight
the comments from an interview with Vygotsky‘s daughter, Zoia Prestes, (2010), who affirms
in a very convincing way, that it existed:
The troika existed; they used to meet in our house. At that time we were living in one
room – Lev Semionovitch did not have a big house, so now I live in a big house, but at
that time it was only one room and the whole family of four people lived in it. The
meetings were held there and everything happened right in front of my eyes. I would fell
asleep listening to their conversations, I would go to bed at eight thirty, close my eyes
and everything seemed boring and uninteresting. But then the troika transformed itself
into the ‗vosmiorka‘ [octet]. (G. Vigodskaia, personal communication, 2010)
However in Vygotsky‘s biography, written by Guita Vigodskaia and Linfanova, in a

chapter titled ―With Daughter‘s Eyes,‖ a view of conflict between Vygotsky and Leontiev
was brought up by Vigodskaia. She describes an episode in which Luria had shown a letter to
Vygotsky that he had received from Leontiev, referring to the work in Kharkov, a fact that
caused tension:
it said something like Vygotsky is an outdated phase, it is Psychology‘s yesterday,

and proposed that Aleksandr Romanovich should work without Vygotsky. Aleksandr
Romanovich initially agreed but then apparently he thought better of it and went to my
father (who was not in very good health at the time) and showed him the letter. Vygotsky
suffered a lot about it, taking Leontiev‘s attitude not only as a personal betrayal but also
as a betrayal to their work together, and so he wrote him an aggressive letter …
(Vigotskaia & Linfanova cited by Leontiev & Leontiev, 2009, p. 290)
The son and grandson of Leontiev consider the statement of Vygotsky‘s daughter a myth
and that ―there was no clear or veiled evidence of an animosity or competition between
Vygotsky and Leontiev‖ (Leontiev & Leontiev, 2009, p. 291). Also pointing out, from a
theoretical point of view, that
today there is still no single opinion about the extent to which there is a continuity
between Vygotsky and Leontiev‘s theories … Vygotsky‘s ideas could have been
developed in other directions, different activity theories, but no one managed to do this
on a scale that could, at the very least, be compared to the focus of the activity.
Therefore, we question weather it was the ―correct‖ way that Leontiev assimilated and
developed Vygotsky‘s ideas, that does not make sense. (Leontiev & Leontiev, 2009, p.
293)
At the time when Guita wrote about the episode of the letter from Vygotsky to Leontiev,
which was dated August 1933 (denouncing the conflict involving the episode described in the
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letter from Leontiev to Luria), she did not have access to the letter sent by Leontiev to
Vygotsky, that would have triggered his response, at a time when the letter was considered
missing. However on February 5th, 2002, Leontiev‘s son received a letter from Leontiev to
Vygotsky dated from February 5th, 1932, that was found by Elena, Luria‘s adoptive daughter,
who discovered it in the family archives. This letter was considered to be the missing letter
that should, according to the Leontiev‘s son and grandson, fill the gap described by Guita.
Zoia Prestes translated this letter into Portuguese and published in an article in Tunes &
Prestes (2009), along with Vygotsky‘s letter mentioned in Guita‘s biography.
Still Vygotsky‘s daughter reaffirmed in a 2010 interview with Zoia Prestes, who wrote
her father‘s biography, about the incident of the letter that resulted in the disagreement with
Leontiev:
I cannot comment on Leontiev‘s letter, but what I wrote is true. He [Leontiev]

stopped going to our house in 1933 … But it is true everything that I wrote, I did not
write anything that has not been confirmed. I spoke about this to my mother and asked
her: ―Mom, what happened?‖ and she told me that this story happened, that he wrote a
letter to Luria saying that Vygotsky was the ―yesterday.‖ So Luria without thinking
replied to him but then he thought better of it and ran to Vygotsky (who was sick at that
time) and told him everything. Of course it did not cheer up Vygotsky, but the dots had
been placed on the ―i‘s.‖ (Guita Vigodskaia in an interview to Zoia Prestes, 2010)
The letter from Vygotsky to Leontiev ends at the exact point at which Leontiev‘s letter
begins: at the point that referred to the main content, a decision from Leontiev that would
change the fate of relationship between them, or so it seems. Leontiev begins the letter in an
objective way reporting a big decision:
Tomorrow I leave for Kharkov, I bought the tickets, I sent the telegram; tomorrow is
the deadline for my ―self-determination‖ in the complex and painful situation that was
constructed here and there. An enormous amount of questions of vital importance and
immeasurable complexity must be resolved tomorrow. It is clear to me that if the knots
are not able to be undone, then in extreme situations they should be cut. It is precisely
this extreme situation that is happening now. So I will cut them off. (Leontiev, personal
communication, February 5th, 1932)
We do not know exactly what the ―complex and painful‖ situation is that Leontiev is
talking about, but it seems to be a context that involves not only personal but political
conflict. It could possibly involve not only his decision about the work in Kharkov, but also
about the conditions that drew to this decision. The context, as we have seen, is of tension and
repression in the field of science culminating in accusations and polarizations with dictatorial
measures. Vygotsky had already received criticism that called his work anti-Marxist when
this letter was written. Certainly part of this conflict refers to the fact that Vygotsky had
become a target for accusations and alarming criticism. It also indicates that such decision
could be considered a distancing or division, but the meaning is not clear although it is
evident by the way the sender describes this scission, the undoing of these ―knots‖ was costly
feat and an extreme measure. A contradiction objected by the reader because it practically
seems to be a compulsory decision, and at the same time, Leontiev also talks about a ―self-
determination,‖ However, in difficult times we know that the language skills serve to reveal
and conceal at the same time.
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Later in this letter, Leontiev demonstrates the existence of an ―internal‖ crisis within the
group but then immediately points out the ―external‖ circumstances that he focused on:
Even you now understand, that we, as a group of people linked by ideas, are
experiencing a huge crisis. Such crises, or internal conflicts like this, are not solved
simply and painlessly. More often they are solved with one shot. The external
circumstances, the huge pressure of them over all of us, the uninterrupted situation ―102-
104‖ [?], the buckets of cold water everywhere, the scissors between the movement of
thought and the side of external organized work, the delay of concrete work and therefore
the expansion (the errors of some of us = A.R. [Luria]!) of ideas, all crumpled, imploded
and destroyed our common work. Our own very system of ideas is in great danger (in
front of me now is a document – the standard psychology program that has been
developed for the entire USSR by a group formed by Ved[ionov], Chvarts, Akimov,
Sapir etc., by the group of A.R. [Luria]. The i[nstitu]te works according to our plans.
This is the alienation of our ideas. It is the beginning of the total fall, of the loss of
substance from the system. So I consider it my duty to shout out about it, to make noise. I
present this question to you not by chance; for a long time I was in doubt. I think I did the
right thing. (Leontiev, personal communication, February 5th, 1932)
Eventually, Leontiev recovers an excerpt from the previously mentioned letter, written to
him by Vygotsky on July 23rd, 1929. The time period of that letter was 1929 when Vygotsky
was correcting the text, prepared together with A.R. Luria, called Studies on the History of
Behavior, which he called The Monkey. As stated in that letter to Leontiev, he saw problems
in the content of the text, mentioning errors, psychoanalytic elements, and Piagetian elements
that should be thrown out of the system and explains that ―this is not the mistake of A.R.
Luria personally but of the entire context of our thought‖ (Vygotsky in a letter to Leontiev on
July 23rd, 1929). Leontiev, mentioning such a letter, legitimizes their attitude and duty to
―shout‖ and ―make noise.‖ The following is also an interesting quote to be highlighted and
recaptured here, as to activate the reader‘s imagination regarding the tension in 1929 and the
process that triggered the groups exit from the Institute of Psychology:
Then, establishes a strict monastic regime of thought; an isolation of ideas, if you

will. The same should be required of the others. Explaining that working with cultural
Psychology is no joke, nor is it intervals of work or even along a series of other works; it
is also not a place for ones own doubts of each new person. Externally, this follows the
same organizational system … I firmly trust in its initiative and in the role of the
preservation of it. (Vygotsky, cited by Leontiev in a letter to Vygotsky, February 5th,

1932)
The letter that Vygotsky wrote to Leontiev is dated August 2th, 1933, that is, more than
one year after Leontiev‘s letter. However after the letter from Leontiev to Vygotsky and
before the cited letter, there is a mention of Vygotsky from Leontiev in another letter to Luria
on July 13th, 1932. He mentions Leontiev in an affirmative way, reporting about work of
tracing different paths in his experiments on practical intellect, but he does not criticize him,
on the contrary.
And you are on the right path, as am I and as is A.N. [Leontiev]; he does not grasp,
in part even deliberately, the new distinction in the experiments, but he is drawing that
distinction in his research on practical intellect from connections with speech and
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changes in them, on changes from the end to the beginning—which is what systemic
dynamics is. (Vygotsky, personal communication, July 13th, 1932)
The letter that Vygotsky wrote to Leontiev on August 2th, 1933, which is mentioned by
his daughter Guita, begins to point out that the conversation between them did not happen
how it appears, after Leontiev‘s letter to him in February of 1932.
Dear Aleksei Nikolaevich! I kept intending to forward a letter through A.R. [Luria],
but we never saw each other before his departure. Hence the delay. I have felt on more
than one occasion that we are standing, as it were, on the brink of some sort of very
important discussion for which both of us, it seems, are still unprepared and therefore we
have a poor understanding of what it should consist. But we have now seen the summer
lightning of this many times, including in your last letter. For this reason, I cannot but
respond to it with the same sort of summer lightning, something akin to a (vague)
premonition of a future conversation. (Vygotsky, personal communication, August 2th,
1933)
Vygotsky seems to criticize Leontiev‘s decision to leave but also does it in a self-
criticizing tone, as a result of an ―internal failure‖ of both, or even of the group.
Your external fate will apparently be decided in the fall—for a number of years. And
at the same time—ours (and my own) fate in part, the fate of our cause. However
subjectively you might endure your ―exile‖ to Kharkov,170 whatever joys it might offer
in compensation (in the past and even more so in the future), your final departure—
objectively, in terms of its real inner meaning—is an internal, grave, and perhaps
irreparable setback for us, a setback stemming from our delusions and outright neglect of
the task entrusted to us. It seems that what occurred once will never recur either in your
biography or mine, or in the history of our psychology. Still, I am trying to understand all
this in a Spinoza-like fashion—with sorrow, but as something necessary. In my own
thoughts, I proceed from this as from an existing fact. One‘s inward destiny cannot but be
decided in association with one‘s outward destiny, but it is not, of course, decided by it
completely. For that reason, it is not clear to me, it is hazy, my view of it is obscured, and
it worries me with the greatest worry I have experienced in recent years. But given that
your inner position, as you write, has now crystallized in a personal and scientific sense,
the outward decision is also predetermined to a certain degree.. (Vygotsky, personal
communication, August 2th, 1933)
After that Vygotsky makes a statement in the letter that caught our attention for
demonstrating that Leontiev‘s decision is related to tension in the group, bringing back a
question that would involve Luria:
You are right about trying to get rid of it, first of all, the need to behave in a dual
way … So I consider it correct, although I evaluate everything that happened to
A[leksandr] R[omanovich] in a different way (in an unsuccessful plan). (Vygotsky,
personal communication, August 2th, 1933)
We can infer that they talk about criticism, censure and tensions generated by the
intercultural researches of Luria in Uzbekistan in 1931 and 1932, in which Vygotsky was also
criticized beside Luria with the publication of Studies on the History of Behavior. Cole (1992)
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for example mentions an uncertainty about Luria‘s stance during the period of pressure during
the Soviet psychology of the early 1930s:
The attitude of Alexander Romanovich and his colleagues regarding this controversy
is not clear. At first they may have seen it as a continuation of the debate about the course
of Soviet science, which already existed since the beginning of their careers. Certainly
they did not abandon the positions they had adopted even though there is evidence that
they were not insensitive to what was seen as severe criticism. (Cole, 1992, 215)
Finally Vygotsky‘s letter ends in a farewell tone, as if to show support and respect to
Leontiev‘s work and decisions:
I know and consider it proper that inwardly you have traversed the (final) road to
maturity over the past two years. From the bottom of my heart, as I would wish good luck
to a most intimate friend at some decisive moment, I wish you strength, courage, and
clarity of mind as you stand before this decision with regard to your path in life. Most
important, make this decision freely. Your letter breaks off on that note, and so I shall
break off mine on that note too—albeit without any external reason. I firmly, firmly
shake your hand. With all my heart, yours, L. Vygotsky (Vygotsky, personal
communication, August 2th, 1933)
Even the letter finishing in a farewell tone signifies a departure from working together, it
is not clear in history if this meant a theoretical break or the end of the their work together.
There is a letter after that from Vygotsky to Leontiev dated from May 10th, 1934, that
indicates collaboration between them or even a carefully outlined plan that would define a
joint work. The letter seems to be written in code, we do not know if it represents a common
practice from the censorship period that they lived. Leontiev questions the ―battle‖ for the
program in Kharkov and also mentions a conference, which possibly meant the All-Ukraine
Conference of Neurologists and Psychiatrists, which would be held in Kharkov in June from
18th to 24th of 1934. It is noteworthy to remember that Vygotsky died on June 11th, 1934
and therefore did not participate in this conference nor did he have the time to ―officially‖ put
into practice the joint work mentioned in the letter:
for the time being we are operating under the old [plan] and will officially begin our
work on the third or fourth[?]. I think that ultimately we can either gain a lot or lose a lot
from this undertaking. For now I would like to proceed in the direction you and I agreed
upon, firmly adhering to our inner intentions to ensure complete linkage between our
studies. How did the battles for the program go? [Did you submit] the major points for
the congress,185 and when will it be held and what reports will be adopted? I shake your
hand. Greetings. Sincerely yours, LV. (Vygotsky, personal communication, May 10th,
1934)
In one report, Zaporozhets‘s wife–Tamara–, reveals that Vygotsky had significant

activity in the organization of the work in Kharkov:
Not finding any moral or financial support there, a small group of Moscow scholars
(Luria, Leontiev, Bozhovich, and Zaporozhets) went, as they then said, ―on a long
business trip,‖—they moved to Kharkov to the psychoneurological center newly
established by Professor Rokhlin at the psychiatric hospital. This center was the base of
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the new Academy of Psychoneurology. Vygotsky organized the work in Kharkov. Twice
he came to go over work completed and discuss further research. We settled in a large
apartment that Professor Rokhlin had rented for the Moscow commune. We really did
live there all together for some time—Luria, Bozhovich, and Leontiev (A.A. Leontiev,
2005, p. 33).
However, Mario Golder, who was the doctoral advisor to Leontiev in the 1970s, wrote a
draft of a scientific biography of Leontiev and stated that, in fact, Vygotsky did not have
―active participation‖ in the Kharkov group, because he had refocused on work in Leningrad
at the Herzen Institute. Still, Golder (2004) presents Leontiev as ―totally identifying with the
ideas of Vygotsky‖ (p. 23) and those of Vygotsky with Leontiev in this period. For this brings
to light Leontiev‘s notes about an internal meeting on October 12th, 1933, which reports:
In the information the issues are presented: ―Who is the subject of development?
Where is man? The world? Where do the real relations between man and his world
appear?‖ After that Vygotsky‘s response appears: ―Here is the cause – the essential
function, vital – the reason, the affection. In developing man, affection is developed, they
discover life.‖ To which Leontiev replies: ―What knowledge develops? … Here we have
a complex relationship. The true relationship with the world, its development is the
development of the generalizing-meaning; communication. Communication is always
generalization. It is necessary to look for an explanation to parts of the whole, that is, the
meaning of the changes in consciousness; beyond consciousness that is the actual
relations of the subject. (Golder, 2004, p. 24)
In an introduction about Vygotsky‘s work published in a collection in Russia, Leontiev

(2004a) claims in Vygotsky‘s work the importance of this point, over ―the reason, the
affection‖ that appears in his annotation from 1933:
LS. Vygotsky, who for 20 years tried to apply the concept of practical activity to
Psychology, starts in the [19]30s, a new trajectory of his investigations to bring
consideration to the analysis of motivational and emotional levels as the central task,
because through it, mental processes, the consciousness, activity would be determined. At
the end of the book Thought and Language he writes: ―Thought is still not the last
instance … The thought itself does not originate from another thought but from the
motivating sphere of our consciousness … Behind the thought we find the affective and
volitional tendency. Only it can give the answer to the last ‗why‘ of the analysis of
thought.‖ (Leontiev, 2004a, p. 469)
In Kharkov, in the 1930s, work on the themes of ―image and process‖ and the ―study of
the instrument‖ were developed and Leontiev showed to be very motivated by the study of
instruments united to the theme of meaning: ―The author used to say: ‗To master the
instrument and the meaning is to dominate the operational process‘‖ (Golder, 2004, p. 25).
When Vygotsky died on June 11th, 1934, Guita Vigodskaia reported an interesting event
that demonstrates an unresolved situation involving the troika, going back to the incident
mentioned in the letter: Luria and Leontiev were forbid to participate in the traditional funeral
ceremony for Vygotsky:
At Lev Semionovitch‘s funeral, Luria was next to me and I was with Chif (who was
taking care of me), Lev Semionovitch‘s student, and suddenly Luria passed by us went to
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the coffin and stood guard. He did not stay much longer and it seems that it was Zankov
(I cannot quite remember) who took Luria off guard. But, as for Leontiev, they did not let
him get close. All the Muscovites students knew it. What he wrote in the letter that was
found was, may God judge him. (G. Vigodskaia, personal communication, Zoia Prestes,
2010)
Leontiev wrote an obituary for Vygotsky, in 1934, giving compliments about him as a
person and as a researcher, and as well as reaffirming the fundamental elements of
Vygotsky‘s theory. He also makes statements that highlight the activity category in
Vygotsky‘s work, although it wasn‘t until 1935 that Leontiev would develop research
involving the theme of activity (Golder, 2004):
The treatment [the interpretation] of Vygotsky‘s mediated structure of psychological

and mental human processes as a human activity became a cornerstone, the foundation
for all the development of his psychological scientific theory – the social-historical
theory (―cultural‖ - as opposed to ―natural,‖ of course) in the development of human
psyche. This created an opportunity for a breakthrough in concrete investigations facing
the unavoidable axial circle of ancient traditions of naturalistic psychological ideas; it
was the first decisive step towards a new Psychology. (Leontiev, 1934, pf. 5)
In this passage, we see Leontiev approaching the historical-social theory as ―cultural‖

opposed to ―natural,‖ which demonstrates the emphasis, the relevance of cultural as human
production (instruments, human objects created by instruments, the language itself and human
practices mediated by language). Leontiev emphasizes that the dialectical relationship
between culture and nature is fundamental in Vygotsky‘s work and was also in Leontiev‘s
work. However, let‘s remember that Van der Ver & Valsiner (2009) point out that it was in
this obituary that Leontiev publicly stepped away from Vygotsky, and in particular, mention
this exact excerpt, but omit the parentheses from Leontiev, which emphasize the dialectical
relationship between culture and nature. The authors accuse Leontiev of having renamed
Vygotsky‘s theory social-historical. However, the essence of the term remains when we read
the whole paragraph. We also know that Vygotsky was repeatedly criticized for his cultural
conception or cultural instrumentation, which has been evaluated as ―abstract‖ concepts or
even idealistic in his theory. It is possible that Leontiev thought about the use of the term
culture with some caution at that time. Although it is true that the central issue appears to be
present, and also that there is no other subject of culture than the social being, or society
itself.
Going forward, Leontiev (1934) seeks to demonstrate the fertility of this theme in
Vygotsky‘s work for the understanding of human development:
With each new experimental research [investigation] everything, more and more,
reveals the fruitfulness of this idea. Already the first systematic study, [investigation] of
the superior genesis – mediated [mediated] – of the human psychological processes, has
allowed us to formulate the fundamental [main] laws of its development. The first of
these laws is that the emergence of the mediated structure [mediated] of the human
mental process is the product of his activity as a public man [social man]. Initially, social
and externally mediated, it is only later converted into the psychological-individual and
internal, maintaining the principle of a single structure. The second general law is that the
process of development and activity transition ―from the outside to the inside‖ must be
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associated to a change in the whole structure [stroenie] of psyche; a place at the current
part of psychic functions has now been replaced by complex neoformations –
psychological functional systems, made up of genetically multifunctional connections
that were created in the actual historical process. The relationship between higher mental
functions was once a real relationship between people, ―the psychological nature of man -
a set of social relations, pulled into and converted to individual functions, the dynamic
parts of its structure [strukturao]‖ – in this way, such an idea was expressed in the work
of L.S. Vygotsky. (Leontiev, 1934, pf. 6)
Leontiev emphasizes an aspect of Vygotsky‘s work that remained present in his own
work: the unity between the external and internal processes, between the individual and the
society, inter-psychological, and intra-psychological.
The analysis of the concrete ways of the formation of human psyche in the complex
process of ―internalization‖ of effective relations of man with reality - relations whose
essence lies on material and is mediated by society relations - leads us to the third
fundamental law of development, the opening of the place and role of speech, partially
requiring the emergence of conscious activity, intellect, and man‘s willingness. Its actual
(effective) content appears in its entirely only in light of studies (investigations) dedicated
to the analysis of internal operations with signs - analysis of the development of meaning
and structure, in the movement by which it implements the activity of generalization of
human consciousness. These studies related to last and most brilliant cycle of Vygotsky‘s
work, that interrupted this scientific activity, led to a new range of theoretical positions -
positions that form the basis for the study of a systemic and semantic [having sense]
structure of consciousness. (Leontiev, 1934, pf. 7)
Although we can assume a direction or even a caution on the part of Leontiev in this
context of repression in field of science, in which Vygotsky had been highly criticized and
misunderstood, we also see a defense for Vygotsky by Leontiev. This defense seems to
respond to the type of criticism that Vygotsky received for working with Western authors and
Leontiev‘s emphasis on Vygotsky‘s active role in the ―fight against the old Psychology:‖
The scientific creations of Vygotsky, as represented in his biography, seem almost

unbelievable; they do not fit into such life interrupted by tuberculosis. And just being
aware of the expression of intellectual power of his creation and of Vygotsky‘s strength,
can be understood in his busy life. Here in the period of a little more than a decade there
has also been the fight against the old Psychology of Chelpanov, and first studied
behaviorism, in captive ideas which have kept well for a long time in his mates and
finally the main thing – the most intense, not for an interrupted minute, febrile,
unprecedented for that amount of work, of the creation of his own psychological ideas,
constant, practice of its verification in concrete investigations and simultaneously intense
propaganda of these ideas in educational activities, whenever possible and when he had
enough strength. (Leontiev, 1934, pf. 11)
Vygotsky‘s collaborators also made a shift in defense of his theories by means of

publications that address the themes discussed by Vygotsky, dedications, lectures, and so
forth. (Van der Ver & Valsiner, 2009). However, these attempts to continue to spread
Vygotsky‘s ideas were soon banished. After Vygotsky‘s death science has become even more
repressed and the attempts to dissect the authors work intensified in order to discern what fit
or did not fit with the Party‘s ideals, cunningly denying everything that somehow could be or
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seemed to be against the Marxism-Leninism of Stalin. The whole Soviet Union started
experiencing a period of intense terror, which added millions of prisoners and hundreds of
executions due to absurd accusations. All of the old Bolshevik guard was destroyed,
neutralized or literally executed between 1936 and 1939 and about 70% of the members of
the central committee were arrested (Paulo Netto, 1981). This is why we try to (re)set the
scene of the letters and the decisions made by the members of the troika, so as not to abstract
them from the socio-political-economic context that produced them.
LARGE ACADEMIC SESSIONS AND THE “PAVLOVINIZATION” OF

SOVIET PSYCHOLOGY
In the years after the World War II science and art were a target for control, censorship,
and persecution, a little different from the 1930s in which the greatest fear was focused on the
elimination of the politicians and military officials that could present an opposition to Stalin.
This post war period was when Psychology achieved a more direct mode, especially after the
1950s.
Already, in 1947, with the criticism to the work of the renowned psychologist S.L.
Rubinstein, there is evidence of the so-called process of ―Pavlovinization‖ of Psychology in
which the main rule was to ―investigate and explain psyche through the philosophy of higher
nervous activity‖ (Almeida, 2008, p. 124). The Institute of Philosophy at the USSR Academy
of Sciences and the chair of Logic and Psychology at the Academy of Social Sciences
organized a ―critical‖ debate about Rubinstein‘s book The Principles of General Psychology
published in 1940, even though he had received a state award for philosophy in 1942 and a
second one in 1946. The conclusion of this debate resulted in Rubinstein being replaced from
all the positions he was occupying. Criticism surrounded the notions of psychophysical unity,
the relations between the psyche and the world, which should be addressed in order to
maintain the resistance to hereditary factors, already announced in 1936 with a decree on
pedological errors. Critics concluded that the way to approach the determination of
individual‘s human behavior through the social environment (social relations of class) in a
society without classes, would be solved through the philosophical theory of reflection of
character of psyche linked to the philosophical theory of Pávlov (Shuare, 1990). The direction
of the ―Pavlovinization‖ was driven by medicine, already its five-year plan from 1946 to
1950, provided, especially in themes of higher nervous activity and in the field of psychiatry
(pathogens and therapeutic), the strengthening of Pavlov‘s doctrine.
In 1948, the journal Questions of Philosophy [Voprosy Filosofii] published ―Criticisms of
Leontiev: in favor of a firm adherence to Bolshevism in psychological issues,‖ by M.N.
Maslina. The criticism was about his publication in 1947 entitled ―An Outline of the
Evolution of the Psyche,‖ a work published by the Military Institute where he was a professor
at the time and also while he was professor at Moscow University. This work was the result
of his doctoral theses championed in 1940, of which an entire volume would be lost during
the war.
The publication begins by stating that the ―ideological struggle against theories,
pseudoscientific influences, and reactionary influence of the bourgeois order, that exist in
Psychology, are not yet sufficiently developed. The Soviet psychologists have not yet
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submitted themselves to an energetic criticism‖ (Maslina, 2004). He criticizes the idealist

concept from where the bourgeois psychology is based and how it reveals itself on the
bourgeois side to propagate individualism. This document stated that the problem of
psychical evolution is one of the most important contemporary problems and highlights the
need to study the characteristics of the Soviet man. His new qualities prove important in
contributing to the government in the task of education, citing the decree from August 14th,
1946 that address this issue: ―to properly educate the youth, to respond to their demands, to
guide the next generation to a sound trust in its activities, without the fear of failure and a
willingness to overcome all obstacles‖ (Maslina, 2004, p. 136). It stated that psychologists
were not fulfilling the necessary reformulation of the latest ―resolutions from the Central
Committee of the Communist Party on ideological issues,‖ philosophy conferences, music,
and the great Soviet Academic session of Agricultural Sciences, which determined the course
of Soviet biology.
In general the document lists propositions for Psychology putting itself ―to serve the
Party in its great work of communist education‖ (Maslina, 2004, p. 137), the need to
overcome the study of universal man, considered abstract, and to the study of the Soviet man,
also proposing a process of control and repression of Psychological Science:
apply with resolution the principle of accession and Bolshevik participation when
highlighting the anti-scientific, idealistic, and metaphysic basis of bourgeois Psychology.
It is necessary to remember that, from the use of this method it is possible to eliminate
works of Soviet psychologists in all manifestations of objectivism, of political neutrality,
and impartiality, as well as trace any servitude and docility toward foreign ―psychological
science,‖ manifestations that unfortunately persist up until the present. (Maslina, 2004, p.
137)
The objective of Psychology should be to ―eliminate all traces of capitalism from Soviet
people‘s consciousness‖ (Maslina, 2004, p. 137-138). However, this was considered, based
on the understanding that in practice the foundation of capital‘s economic structure would be
overcome. The appeasement of contradictions in the situation of Soviet economy is evident
(for example, dealt with in a repressive way by Stalin with forced collectivization in the
country) which since the beginning was based on the contradiction between revolutionary
aspirations of the proletariat, still very small and incipient, the large peasant base, and its
―fertile land‖ for the development of capital. This interest, which even included immediate
attention to the distribution of the aristocracy‘s land to the peasants, created new private
property in the bourgeois revolution model (Deutscher, 1967).

Lukács (1963/1967) provides some notes of Stalin‘s economic elaborations that can
clarify how these allegations were constructed in the field of science:
in Stalin‘s last economic work he ―found out‖ what had ―escaped‖ from Marx,
Engels, and Lenin, so that the whole economic formation can be synthesized in a simple
proposition. Such a simple proposition that even the most limited and uneducated
employee would be able to understand and use to condemn any work of science in its
deviations to the ―right‖ or ―left.‖ Marx, Engels, and Lenin knew that the economic
formations form mobile and complex systems, whose essence can only be defined
through an exact consideration of all its important determinations, of its two reciprocal
interactions, proportions etc. The ―fundamental laws‖ of Stalin therefore express mere
unoriginality that does not clarify anything, but gives certain circles the illusion of
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knowing everything in advance. In this sense, Stalin‘s essay on Linguistics is vulgarized,

whereby the decomposition of an economic formation also determines the decomposition
of its ideology. (Lukács, 1963/1967, p. 37-38)
Being more direct towards the driving criticisms of Leontiev‘s work, Maslina‘s (2004)
document summarizes seven ―critical‖ notes of Leontiev‘s work:
1) The work is written in a ―heavy and excessively obscure language‖ (p. 142). The
topics are approached in a very schematic way, especially of human consciousness, as
well as the economic topic, which is not treated clearly. ―He writes that the worker
<<sells his work>>. This opinion is not more than a reiteration of its own bourgeois
political economy, exposed a long time ago by Marx‖ (p. 142).
2) ―Professor Leontiev overestimates the role of the technical division of labor in the
formation of conscience‖ (p. 138). It does not provide a solid explanation about the link
between individual consciousness and the process of historical development because it
does not highlight that in the unity between material activity and intellectual activity, it is
the material activity that is decisive:
When referring to the unity formed by ―internal mental activity‖ and the material
activity, and when referring to the integrated unity through practical activity and the
reflection of man‘s consciousness who performs this activity, it does not highlight, at the
same time, the fact that this unity, demonstrates itself as fundamental and decisive to the
material activity of man, his social existence. (p. 139)
3) His theory obscures the problem of class character from the consciousness of the
workers with his proposals on ―objective sense,‖ perception, the cortical area of words,
and the reintegration of consciousness, among others.
4) In his work ―he uses very little of Lenin and Stalin‘s scientifically correct opinions
about consciousness … he even benefits from comrade Stalin‘s comments on precisely
the subject and study, especially those contained in his work Anarchism or Socialism?‖
(p. 140).
5) The theme ―the new Soviet man‖ does not occupy a central space in his work, he
cannot satisfactorily treat the ―primordial theme in all social sciences, including
Psychology‖ (p. 140), showing ―the true spiritual wealth of the new Soviet man and the
high moral category developed in the dominant living conditions of the socialist
community‖ (p. 140).
6) An apolitical and objectivist approach to his work do not drive criticisms against
of the reactionary nature of bourgeois Psychology:
the book is full of references to the ―big,‖ ―famous,‖ ―celebrated‖ bourgeois men of
science. The professor calls the readers attention directly to the work of these authors and
consequently moves away from the work that has been done in our country. Thus, for
example, when explaining in detail the ―material substratum of the mind,‖ it does not
give the deserved attention to the teachings of I.P. Pavlov, that is, precisely physiological
basis of the mind, without which is impossible to treat the problem presented in a
scientific manner … It is in agreement with these flaws, it also does not stress the
meaning of conditioning as a scientific support of problems in Psychology. (Maslina,
2004, p. 141)
The critical exposition concludes that ―all these facts clearly indicate that we are
dedicating ourselves to analyze a work in which the author does not rely on the Leninist
principles of partisanship‖ (Maslina, 2004, p. 142). Thus, he points out that Leontiev ―should
make a general review of his work in order to eliminate an entire series of erroneous and
insufficient considerations shed on it‖ (Maslina, 2004, p. 142).
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We have no evidence that changes were made in this work after the publication of this
critique. Otherwise we know the text was incorporated in his collection in the book The
Development of Mind published for the first time in 1959, having three more editions later
(1964, 1972, and 1981) in which new material was added.

In the same period a movement of ―ideologization of the natural sciences‖ was
consolidated with great imposition to natural-scientific research in general, a fact that would
have major consequences on the course of Psychology. Löwy (2000) explains reductionism,
allegedly justified by Marxism, which existed on the impositions of the Stalinist politics in
the USSR in respect to the natural sciences:
The idea that the existing natural sciences would have a bourgeois character is not
familiar to the classics thought of Marxism: it is a theoretical innovation of Stalinism that
could be called an inverse positivism: while positivism wants to ―neutralize‖ the social
and political sciences, Stalinism aims to ―politicize‖ the nature of science; both having in
common the misunderstanding of the specificity of human sciences and its
methodological distinction in relation to natural sciences. (Löwy, 2000, p. 168-169)
Löwy (2000) clarifies that the most complete version of this was the well-known
Lysenko Case. The debate revolved around the denunciation of the genetic theory that was
being developed abroad and in fact had already began in 1936, with the accusations that
Soviet scientists were ―Trotskyist saboteurs that crawled on the last reactionary proposals of
foreign scholars‖ (p. 169), which culminated in the arrest of several scientists and in the exile
of geneticist Vavilov in 1940.
Facing the intense debate about genetics at that time, both in the USSR and the West, the
Institute of Medical Genetics of Moscow was conducting genetic research. These
investigations gave an opportunity to Luria and F.Y. Yudovich to conduct research with
identical twins from all over the USSR, ―in order to separate the contributions from heredity
and environment regarding any particular human characteristic‖ (Luria, 1992, p. 87).
As Löwy (2000) explains, the 1930s, Lysenko and his collaborators were the minority at
the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences. But with the support from the Party and from
Stalin‘s government, the Lysenko Case, which had remained within the limits of the USSR,
gained importance during the Cold War. The triumph of Lysenko happened after the big
Session of July 1948 at the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the USSR, resulting
in an ideological imposition of Soviet genetics. T.N. Zaslávskaia denounced genetics as
―misconceived, anti-materialistic, mechanistic, ‗bourgeois,‘ and so forth, and declared that

Michurin-Lysenko agrobiology is ideologically pure and adequate expression of the character
of the proletariat regime‖ (Shuare, 1990, p. 157). The struggle between ―two worlds‖ in the
Cold War justified the fight between the ―two biologies,‖ one ideological bourgeois and the
other communist. This guideline began to be adopted by Communist Parties around the
world. It was no longer a scientific debate but an ―ideological denunciation‖ of ―class
character‖ of the biological sciences. Only in 1964 would Mendelian genetics be re-enabled
in the USSR (Löwy, 2000). It is important to emphasize, that it is not by coincidence, that the
1948 session that solidified the triumph of the Lysenko Case, was the same year that Leontiev
was criticized about his work An Outline of the Evolution of the Psyche. A work that, was
against the genetic conception of Lysenko, which just sought to approach the evolution of
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animal life as opposed to the history of humanity, showing that human development goes
beyond the limits of the laws of animal biology, possessing its own laws.1
As a repercussion of the Session of 1948 and the impositions towards scientific research,
there were other academic sessions. On June 28th, 1950 there was the joint session between
the Academy of Science and the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR, which attracted
over 1,500 people, from 56 cities, among them biologists, psychologists, physicians,
philosophers, and so forth. This session was dedicated to the problems of I.P. Pavlov‘s
physiological theory.
The session was led by Kostantin M. Bikov – unofficial direct representative of

Stalin (Director of the General Physiological Department at the Institute of Experimental
Medicine) – and by Professor Anatoli G. Ivanov-Smolenski, both former students of
Pavlov. The session ran as follows: it was opened by Sergei I. Vavilov (President of the
USSR Academy of Sciences), followed by Ivan P. Razenkov (Vice-President of the
USSR Academy of Medical Sciences), and after, the lectures from Bikov, Ivanov-
Smolenski, and Ezras A. Asratian. Followed by the speeches (kritika), those accused of
errors that could defend (samokritika) themselves, and later a response from the accusers
as well as a closing session with Final Resolution. (Almeida, 2008, p. 121)
This session included the denunciation of the theorists that were developing new
directions to Pavlov‘s theory and higher nervous activity physiology. In Psychology, only
Teplov, Kolbanovski, Rubinstein and Luria were accused, the latter did not have his defense
publicly read at the conference and was only published in a report (Almeida, 2008).
At this event Stalin‘s work Marxism and Problems of Linguistics was treated as a model
of the scientific creation and Pavlov‘s as an official theory of physiological theory,
suppressing any line of research that would take another course. A series of measures were
used in this session to validate the pavlovinization of science:
application of such theory to medicine, pedagogy, physical education and … to

agronomy; the review of the curriculum so that that the physiology programs and all
medical disciplines establish themselves on the basis of Pavlov‘s theory; the editing of
the new physiology and pathological physiology textbooks with this same orientation,
etc. (Shuare, 1990, p. 159)
Shuare (1990) explains that this was a process of vulgarization of Pavlov‘s theory
because when putting it as the only physiological theory it produces the simplification of it,
which began to be imposed to ―solve‖ problems of the relation between the brain and psyche.
This also indicates that for both Psychology and for physiology, Pavlov‘s affirmations
brought many limitations, especially in the understanding of the nature of psyche and the
active character of subject.
In 1952 there was a session focused on Psychology, convened by the Academy of
Pedagogical Sciences of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic (RSFSR) and by the
Moscow Institute of Psychology, with the participation of representatives from nine Soviet
1
In the middle of the Cold War, the USSR was able to rebuild itself and become the second world power in the
early 1950s, with the quick advance of the coal, steel, oil, electricity industry. It also entered the arms race (A-
bomb production in 1951 and H-bomb production in 1953), having then a great potential for defense (Paulo
Netto, 1981). However, Soviet agriculture directed by the ―socialist biology‖ of T. Lysenko in opposition to
the ―capitalist biology‖ caused disastrous damage to the agriculture (Reis Filho, 2003).
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Republics. The session was organized by the current director of the Psychology Institute,
Anatoli Smirnov, who was in fact involved in a complicated situation because he could not
admit to a solution for the changes imposed and demanded of Psychology and science in that
period (Almeida, 2008; Shuare, 1996).

In any case Pavlov‘s higher nervous activity theory was consider the true and only
natural-scientific basis for materialist Psychology (Shuare, 1990). Some guidelines were
deliberate for Psychology to comply with the central task of elaborating the theory of psyche
and restructuring its concepts on the basis of Pavlovian theory and on the basis of the
philosophy of dialectical and historical materialism:
(1) Investigate man‘s conscience role in light of ―Stalin‘s genius work on

linguistics;‖ (2) the formation and development of cognitive activity on the basis of the
Marxist-Leninist theory of reflection and of the Pavlovian theory of analytic-synthetic
activity of the cerebral cortex; (3) study the psychological development of the child, the
laws of assimilation, knowledge and habits, and its evolutionary characteristics bringing
to light the Pavlovian theory of the system of signs, and its interactions; (4) study the
formation and development of psychological traits of personality in the communist
education and socialist production conditions; (5) investigate the individual differences
on the basis of Pavlov‘s theory about types of higher nervous activity and (6) expose the
reactionary idealistic contemporary Psychology, etc. (Shuare, 1990)
Shuare (1990) explains that the group, composed of Leontiev, Galperin, Zaporozhets, and
Elkonin, insisted on the explanation that the complex psychological process depends on
different conditions of activity. Leontiev intervened saying:
It is necessary to examine the psyche as a product of the development of the links

which man creates to the surrounding reality of their actions. It is necessary to assume
that man‘s activity is what really expresses the unity of man and his environment, or in
other words, the conditions in which he lives … The laws by which the psychic processes
are formed and educated, and the laws by which they constitute or update one or another
image in your brain are the laws of work of the brain, the physiological laws of higher
nervous activity. However the system of these processes that reflect the objective world
serves to the implementation of the multiple relations of man with the reality that
surrounds him … Here other laws act, internal laws of the psychological life of man, of
the formation of his conscience, and of the psychological traits of his personality.
(Leontiev quoted by Shuare, 1990, p. 163)
Visualize then, with the session of 1952, a net that tries to reduce Psychology to
Pavlovian physiology and a group of psychologists who seeks to claim that psychological
laws have their own logic and are distinct from physiological laws, although both act in man.
Leontiev, as shown earlier, had been criticized at the end of 1940s for criticisms opposed to
the same guidelines as outlined in the 1952 session. Still, in this intervention he did not shy
away from showing the importance in the activity theory, in which the action is the essential
characteristic of the activity, specifically human activity. For Leontiev, actions oriented to an
end are what characterize social activity, the activity specifically human, from Psychology‘s
point of view. In a text from 1940 on ―The Genesis of Activity,‖ Leontiev had already defined
what he called action:
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How do we define what is action? Actions that we truly find for the first time in man
are a directed process to a conscious goal. The special trait of this process is that the
conscious goal, to which the process is directed, might not be the same thing, and it is not
the same thing that satisfies the need that motivates the action. (Leontiev, 1940/2005, p.
62)
We know that, these interventions happened in the mentioned group, Rubinstein, an

important academic representative of Soviet Psychology, ended up being forced to apologize
facing the criticism received years before the 1952 session. He said on that occasion that the
higher psychical activity is the higher nervous activity. While this should not result in the
reduction of Psychology to physiology, Shuare (1990) points it out to be an unconvincing
justification, especially because it is a statement from a great theorist like that of Rubinstein.
Everything indicates that there was pressure on the scientists, which was difficult to be
understood by contemporary authors, especially when there is no recuperation of the multiple
relations that make up the historical scenario of that period. We understand that only from this
context it is possible to move forward beyond the ―superficial lucubration‖ of decisions made
by theorists at that time, theorist who performed theoretical and political debates that
endangered their own lives and the lives of their families.
In any case, the session determined measures to ensure that the guidelines would be
followed in the field of Psychology. A scientific council of Psychology was created before the
Presidium of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences to coordinate works of Psychology for
the institutes and academic chairs of Psychology. This same Presidium proceeded to call
regular meetings for psychologists to discuss important theoretical problems and reports on
completed works (Shuare, 1990).
In 1951, Leontiev (1951/1957) published a work with T.V. Rozonava entitled ―The
Formation of Associative Connections: an Experimental Investigation,‖ in the journal Soviet
Pedagogy [Sovietskaia Pedagogika], in which it is possible to identify the consequences of
the Pavlovian orientation in Psychology. The authors begin the text with Pavlov‘s definition
about the term association, however the method described in the work and the conclusions are
not linked to the conditional reflex theory. On the contrary, it proves to be very close to
Vygotsky‘s experimental model with schizophrenics, revealing a text that was altered so it
would be accepted by the censorship at that time (Almeida, 2008). Tuleski (2011) explains,
based on Luria‘s (1992) autobiography, that he also used this routine in his texts, a type of
―dual language,‖ to circumvent the Stalinist censorship before the imposition of the Pavlovian
physiology. He also explains that Luria reviewed these publications in the 1960s and 1970s,
eliminating the Pavlovian jargon of many of his texts and restoring Vygotskyan concepts.
THE DEATH OF STALIN, NEW DIRECTIONS...

On March 5th, 1953, Stalin died, a fact that reverberated with reactions of desperate
mourning all over the world, especially in the USSR, despite of all contradictions, executions,
and suffering experienced by these people under the Stalinist government. With Stalin‘s death
the Party‘s leadership lost its strength and there was a bitter struggle between the two
opposing political groups within the party, one of which defended to keep the Stalinist
politics with Beria as their leaders and the other group that defended changes under the
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leadership of Kruschev. Thanks to the approval from the inactive direction outlined after the
leader‘s death, Kruschev managed to assume Secretary General of the Communist Part. Beria
was shot in June 1953 (in what was known as the last USSR execution) and some changes
began to happen. Between 1953 and 1956 about 750 thousand bureaucrats were fired,
political prisoners were freed and forced to work in the labor camps–the GULAGS–which
were indefinitely closed in January 1960. This period became known as the ―de-Stalinization‖
or ―defrost‖ (Paulo Netto, 1981).2
In this period, Rubinstein returned to work after he was taken off the scene because of the
criticism he received in 1947 and later in major academic sessions in 1950s. After 1954
psychologists returned to make their trips to international events beginning with the
International Congress of Psychology held in Montreal. A specific journal for Psychology
was also created after 1955, named The Problems of Psychology [Voprossy Psikhologii]
(Almeida, 2008).
At the Communist Party‘s twentieth Congress on February 24th, 1956, Kruschev read his
secret report formally denouncing the Stalinist autocracy, denouncing what the 22nd
Congress reaffirmed five years later. This fact marked the deterrence from any regression of
the defrost process. Even though this period represents a period of change, it is noteworthy
that the fight against the Stalinist autocracy was not democratic, but ―from top to bottom, with
the population as spectators‖ (Paulo Netto, 1981, p. 46).
In this context of reforms, Psychology could release itself from the control and
censorship that hovered once before. The Pavlovian vocabulary was still present in the texts
but that was not the obstacle for the expansion of research themes and ways of working.
Works of significant importance were published and an international status for Soviet
Psychology began to take hold (Almeida, 2008).
There was a ―rehabilitation‖ of Vygotsky‘s works that with Luria and Leontiev‘s efforts,
began to be published again starting in 1956 with the release of The Collected Works of
Vygotsky in six volumes, with one of them prefaced by Luria and Leontiev. In 1965,
Psychology of Art was finally published, prefaced by Leontiev. This book is the result of
Vygotsky‘s work between the years of 1915 and 1922. In the introduction written by
Leontiev, he explains the value and contemporary relevance of Vygotsky‘s work, he observed
that as any scientific work, this one did not express an eternal and unshakable truth. Leontiev
points out that some postulates would need to be interpreted from the perspective of current
psychological postulates of activity and human consciousness. It is highlighted that when
Vygotsky wrote this work he used vocabulary from other branches of psychology because his
social-historical theory of psychism had not been developed at the time. He comments that for
this reason, quotations from authors, whose general concepts are distinct, are abundant in
Vygotsky‘s text.
Almeida (2008) mentions that in this period there were publications of Soviet Psychology
in both English and Spanish
representing different moments and routes of Soviet Psychology, since its most often
linked to the production of Pavlov until the most clearly original moments at the
beginning of 1960s. Many copyrighted books were also published, such as the ones
elaborated by Luria, Alexander Sokolov, Zeigarnik, Uznadze, and Smirnov. These
2
The Brazilian translation to the acronym known as GULAG is ―General Administration of Correctional Work
Camps and Colonies‖ and refers to the forced labor camps for criminals and political prisoners.
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various books were edited as a result from the attempts established by the scientific
communities from United States and from the USSR to minimize or give other
parameters to the relations established between the countries during the Cold War.
(Almeida, 2008, p. 135)
In 1959, Leontiev published the text collection, in book form, entitled Problems of the
Development of Mind, incorporating subjects from his doctoral theses such as the text ―An
Outline of the Evolution of the Psyche,‖ among other texts produced in previous decades.
Tuleski (2011) points out that between the 1960s and 1970s, Luria started to publish and
organize book collections in which he reviewed the Pavlovian jargon, which was used in the
previous period in which censorship and ―Pavlovinization‖ were present. It also explains that
the author used the practice of publishing, sometimes, two texts about the same content, but
with one including the Pavlovian language and the other having Vygotskyan language to
circumvent the censorship. She also adds that there were many texts that could not be
reviewed due to lack of time and thus remained with the Pavlovian language, which may
confuse readers that do not recompose the history of his production and interpretation of his
texts in an abstract way.
In 1962, there was a Psychology session organized by the Institute of Philosophy of the
USSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, by the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, and by
the Higher and Medium Education Ministry of the USSR, to debate ―the philosophical
problems of the physiology of higher nervous activity and Psychology‖ (Shuare, 1996, p.
166). The session admitted to the impositions and deformations created by the Stalinist order
and an incorrect attitude towards psychology, scientific specificity that was denied by the
decisions for the sessions of the 1950s. However, the natural-scientific Pavlovian basis
determined in those sessions remained, here, as the correct decision. About a thousand
researchers attended this session and several reports were read (Shuare, 1996).
Leontiev and Pánov read the report ―The Human Psychology and the Technical
Progress,‖ in which they affirmed that the image of the object is the specific product of
perceptive human activity. They explained that this process could not be reduced to the
establishment of conditioned reflexes and the signalizing principles of Pavlov.
The authors emphasized the importance of the new concepts from physiology
(Anojin and Bernstein) and the meaning of the historical-cultural theory of Vygotsky to
Psychology. Furthermore, the reports contain a brief description of the basic concepts of
activity theory and the results achieved by many researchers (Galperin, Talízina, Elkonin,
Davidov) in the study of the problems of internalization and externalization processes
that confirm the common character of the structure of internal and external activity.
(Shuare, 1996, p. 169)
Shuare (1996) points out that with this report researchers placed new tasks on physiology.
Unlike before, when Psychology had to adequate itself to physiology, now physiology would
need to investigate the specific functional processes of the human brain that allow the
achievement of higher psychological processes through the interaction between man and
reality, in which the appropriation of human skills developed by previous generations occur.
However, the non-Pavlovian physiological approaches were strongly criticized in this session,
as what happened with the Bernstein case. A process of scientific debate was now possible,
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but the struggle against the naturalistic and biological approach, which was established in
Soviet science, had just begun, but was yet to be won.
The year of 1966 was an important milestone in Psychology because it was when the
Psychology faculty at the University of Moscow was established. The opening of the first
classes at the college of Psychology marked the transformation of Psychology into an
autonomous science. Shuare (1996) and Almeida (2008) point to a growing diversity of
research topics and also an onslaught from Vygotsky‘s followers, who exceled at their
production in this period. Leontiev‘s book collection The Development of Mind received two
more editions in these decades, one in 1964 and another 1972. In 1974, Leontiev signed the
preface of one of his last works Activity, Consciousness and Personality, published for the
first time in 1975, having a second edition in 1977. It is considered a synthesis of scientific
ideas of the last period. In 1978, Leontiev received the Lomonosov Prize (name after the
founder of Moscow University) for this work, one of the most important awards in the
academic world (Golder, 2004). In 1979 he wrote his last work The Image of the World,
guiding the specifically human quality of the subjective image of objective reality.
From the above, with the analysis of the historical periods that we approached, and even
with the page limits of a publication like this, we seek to demonstrate the knots in the
interpreter‘s notes related to the trajectory of Vygotsky and Leontiev, when removed from its
context. We started from the tortuous context of the invitation to work in Kharkov, facing the
criticism suffered by Vygotsky and Luria in a process of public condemnation that rejected all
present psychological theories. Recovered letters exchanged between Vygotsky and Leontiev
in light of the living context, so the reader can go beyond the obscure assumptions (without
effective explanations) of the facts presented by the interpreters. We formulate the idea that
Leontiev was the official psychology of the Stalinist regime showing his attempts to
circumvent censorship and combat the reduction of psychology to physiology. Thus the
debate about Vygotsky and Leontiev should be restored to a different level, including the
challenges to build a psychology capable of capturing the social nature of psychism in the
process of building a socialist society, which took an averse direction. And although the
search for capturing the dynamics of historical contradictions that arose around Leontiev were
not depleted in this work, it is important to understand it from its own method of real analysis
defended by these authors, and by history.
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In: Vygotsky and Leontiev ISBN: 978-1-63482-901-4

VYGOTSKY & LEONTIEV:

Rhayane Lourenço da Silva, MSc*

Keywords: L. S. Vygotsky, A. N. Leontiev, Marxist psychology, history of the Soviet Union

Although his [Kornilov‘s] approach, which he called ―reactology,‖ was naive,

VYGOTSKY AND LEONTIEV: RUPTURE OR CONTINUITY?

Psychology were Luria and Leontiev.

philosophical question, an event of enormous significance in the sphere of scientific

Ukrainian Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

All-Ukrainian Institute of Scientific Pedagogy). Among the positions held by A.N. in

The same Muscovites members surrounding Vygotsky (Bozhovich, Zaporojets), among

Being impossible to exhaust the totality of human consciousness as much as the

understand their interpretations of the actual content of Leontiev‘s work.

It becomes clear to replace the emphasis of Vygotsky on signs as a means of

The development of psychology based on the Marxist principles according to González

insistence on “concrete relations with reality” became a crucial factor of

THE CONTEXT OF THE JOB OFFER IN KHARKOV

A response to the increase of the ideological pressure by members of the Historical-

invitation to establish a department of psychology at the Ukrainian Psychoneurological

However in Vygotsky‘s biography, written by Guita Vigodskaia and Linfanova, in a

it said something like Vygotsky is an outdated phase, it is Psychology‘s yesterday,

theoretical point of view, that

I cannot comment on Leontiev‘s letter, but what I wrote is true. He [Leontiev]

Then, establishes a strict monastic regime of thought; an isolation of ideas, if you

preservation of it. (Vygotsky, cited by Leontiev in a letter to Vygotsky, February 5th,

In one report, Zaporozhets‘s wife–Tamara–, reveals that Vygotsky had significant

In an introduction about Vygotsky‘s work published in a collection in Russia, Leontiev

The treatment [the interpretation] of Vygotsky‘s mediated structure of psychological

In this passage, we see Leontiev approaching the historical-social theory as ―cultural‖

The scientific creations of Vygotsky, as represented in his biography, seem almost

Vygotsky‘s collaborators also made a shift in defense of his theories by means of

LARGE ACADEMIC SESSIONS AND THE “PAVLOVINIZATION” OF

submitted themselves to an energetic criticism‖ (Maslina, 2004). He criticizes the idealist

property in the bourgeois revolution model (Deutscher, 1967).

knowing everything in advance. In this sense, Stalin‘s essay on Linguistics is vulgarized,

(1964, 1972, and 1981) in which new material was added.

―misconceived, anti-materialistic, mechanistic, ‗bourgeois,‘ and so forth, and declared that

The session was led by Kostantin M. Bikov – unofficial direct representative of

application of such theory to medicine, pedagogy, physical education and … to

period (Almeida, 2008; Shuare, 1996).

(1) Investigate man‘s conscience role in light of ―Stalin‘s genius work on

It is necessary to examine the psyche as a product of the development of the links

We know that, these interventions happened in the mentioned group, Rubinstein, an

THE DEATH OF STALIN, NEW DIRECTIONS...

I Seminário em método e metodologia em pesquisa na abordagem da psicologia

(1917-1967). Revista civilização brasileira, 3(1).

Leontiev, A. N. (1940/2005). A gênese da atividade. [The genesis of Activity]. Journal of

adventures of Karl Marx against Baron Munchhausen].São Paulo, SP: Cortez.

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