Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, vol. 48, no.

1,
January–February 2010, pp. 14–33.
© 2010 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.
ISSN 1061–0405/2010 $9.50 + 0.00.
DOI 10.2753/RPO1061-0405480101

E.Iu. Zavershneva

The Vygotsky Family Archive

(1912–1934)
New Findings

General description of the study of L.S. Vygotsky’s family

archive

The study of the archive began in 2006 as part of the project to prepare a new
release—the complete collected works of L.S. Vygotsky, which, according
to its managers’ concept, was to incorporate all of Vygotsky’s works that are
known to date. The distinctive feature of this project is that all the material
for the collected works is being prepared for publication only from archival
manuscripts or material published during his lifetime. The plan was to structure
the new edition of L.S. Vygotsky’s works chronologically, accompany them
with a detailed textual commentary1 and photographs from the archive, and
update the historical references; the afterword to each volume is to provide
a detailed analysis of L.S. Vygotsky’s ideas related to a certain period of his
writings and to show the continuity of these ideas in the context of his entire
scientific career. The main source for the collected works was L.S. Vygotsky’s

English translation © 2010 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text © 2008 “Vop-
rosy psikhologii.” “Zapisnye knizhki, zametki, nauchnye dnevniki L.S. Vygotskogo
(1912–1934): rezul’taty issledovaniia semeinogo arkhiva,” Voprosy psikhologii, 2001,
no. 1, pp. 132–45. A publication of the Russian Academy of Education.
The author thanks Gita L’vovna Vygodskaia and Elena Evgen’evna Kravtsova for
assistance in working with the archive and for valuable counsel.
Translated by Steven Shabad.

14
 JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2010  15

family archive. The tasks of our study were to conduct a full inventory of the
archive, to search for unknown manuscripts, to restore the authentic texts of
Vygotsky’s already published works, and to compile an outline of his complete
collected works. A large portion of these tasks has already been completed,
and the material for the new collection of his works has been turned over to
the International Vygotsky Society.
There has long been a need to look into the archival documents. One rea-
son is that the old collection of works, which to this day remains the basis
for republication of Vygotsky’s writings, is textologically unsatisfactory. It is
well known that the policy of active editorial intervention in the original text
led to a large number of unjustified semantic and de facto substitutions (and
even outright changes of meaning), which continue to be reprinted in new
editions. The level of textual analysis of L.S. Vygotsky’s writings also leaves
something to be desired (e.g., the inaccuracies in dating the works Defect
and Compensation [Defekt i kompensatsiia], The Problem of Consciousness
[Problema soznaniia], and others, the total absence of textual commentaries
in the six-volume collected works and other publications, except for The Psy-
chology of Art [Psikhologiia iskusstva], edited by V.V. Ivanov). In addition, a
lingering question is [whether] all of L.S. Vygotsky’s works were published.
René Van der Veer, in a foreword to the third volume of L.S. Vygotsky’s col-
lected works, released by Springer publishers, wrote:
It must be realized that reliable archives of Vygotsky’s writings open to
the general public or interested experts do not exist. There is no Vygotsky
Center that sends on demand facsimile copies of original manuscripts,
papers, and letters to interested researches. There is no Vygotsky Library
where we can consult copies of Vygotsky’s publications as well as those of
his contemporaries. What exists are the family archives which by nature are
accessible to only a very limited group of people and the private archives
of different people interested in Vygotsky. This situation poses a problem
to those who want to study Vygotsky’s work thoroughly. [12, p. 1]
It should be added to this comment that one of the most historically
interesting segments of the archive—notebooks, scholarly journals, notes,
and letters—remained practically untouched until 2006. Part of the reason
is that manuscripts and notes were kept in a haphazard manner; the volume
of these documents proved to be very substantial, and it took a painstak-
ing effort to assemble the complete texts from the separate fragments. In
addition, a number of documents are hard-to-read shorthand notes or half-
erased jottings in pencil. It should be noted, however, that all of the above
difficulties are normal conditions of archival work, especially if it involves
reading manuscripts.
16  JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY

It was obvious that the archive would reveal a multitude of new facts about
L.S. Vygotsky’s life, but even the preliminary results of the study surpassed all
expectations. Unknown manuscripts by Vygotsky were found, the bibliography
of his writings was augmented, and invaluable personal notes were system-
atized, beginning with notebooks from his youth (1912–16) and ending with
notes from the final months of his life (1933–34). In particular, discoveries
made in the archive included more than twenty previously unknown transcripts
of lectures that had not been part of the bibliography of his writings (including
the lectures “The Problem of Perception” [Problema vospriiatiia] of April 25,
1934, and “The Principal Problems of Preschool Age” [Osnovnye problemy
doshkol’nogo vozrasta] of May 7, 1934, which Vygotsky read a month or a
month and a half before his death); among rare publications during his lifetime,
a wonderfully preserved first issue of the journal Veresk, which the young Vy-
gotsky published in Gomel’, The Principles of Pedology [Osnovy pedologii],
which was published posthumously in 1934, and others. To date, the following
have been read and prepared for publication: the notes “The Tragicomedy of
Quests” [Tragikomediia iskanii], which deal with the Book of Ecclesiastes
and are the earliest known text by Vygotsky (1912), rough drafts of Hamlet
[Gamlet], theater and literary reviews from the Gomel’ period (found by G.L.
Vygodskaia and T.M. Lifanova as far back as the 1980s), unknown versions
of papers for the Second All-Russian Congress on Psychoneurology and the
Congress of the Social-Legal Protection of Minors (with these papers the
young teacher from Gomel’ made a triumphant entrance into psychology in
1924), articles on psychology and Marxism (the mid-1920s), the psychology
of ethnic minorities (1928–31) and many other items. In addition, the authen-
tic text of The Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology [Istoricheskii
smysl psikhologicheskogo krizisa]—from which in the citations of politically
incorrect authors (Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin, Karl Radek) references
to their authors were removed when it was published—and the conception
of the monograph The Principles of Defectology [Osnovy defektologii] and
other items were restored from handwritten rough drafts.
The preliminary results of the work also involved correcting the commonly
accepted view on periodizing Vygotsky’s scientific career. Archival discover-
ies are making it possible to look in a new way at the circumstances under
which he wrote his major works, such as Thinking and Speech [Myshlenie
i rech’], A Theory of Emotions [Uchenie ob emotsiiakh], and The Pedology
of the Adolescent [Pedologiia podrostka], and they are revealing Vygotsky’s
unrealized concepts, which have survived in the form of outlines of unwritten
books and future research.
The article will discuss the part of the archive that has been most thoroughly
studied to this point—the personal notes. Lengthy manuscripts, articles, and
 JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2010  17

publications during Vygotsky’s lifetime will be the subject of a separate article,

after all the results of the study are summarized.

General description of the segment of personal notes

Physical appearance of the notes and their condition

First of all, we should note that the archive has survived and is wonderfully pre-
served thanks to Vygotsky’s family. Roza Noevna Vygodskaia (née Smekhova,
the wife of Lev Semenovich) assembled and carefully kept everything—from
voluminous folders with various versions of lengthy texts (e.g., the typewrit-
ten text “The History of the Development of Higher Psychic Functions” in
several copies) to small scraps of paper with penciled notes. Gita L’vovna
Vygodskaia remains the chief custodian of the archive today and continues
to collect documents associated with her father. We are extremely grateful
to her for assisting us and for her valuable advice concerning the biography
of L.S. Vygotsky.
The condition of the personal notes as a whole is very good, although some-
what worse than that of the main texts; the reason for this is that they were
made on random sheets of paper, cards, on the reverse side of blank forms,
galleys, and even in the margins of newspapers, and they were not intended
either for publication or to be read by other people. All of the documents are
in small format (sometimes not more than 3 cm wide)—a result of Vygotsky’s
predilection for miniature notebooks and the actual paper shortage in those
days. As a rule, they have writing on both sides (often in free form, which
has to be reconstructed when the texts are prepared for publication) in a tight
but clear script, which changed noticeably by the end of the scholar’s life. We
should note that Vygotsky’s handwriting changed very dynamically: every year
or two it took on new characteristics, so approximate dating from a glance at
the handwriting proved to be a good tool during the initial systematization
of the documents. By 1933–34 the shorthand of the entries became extreme;
a large number of vowels disappeared from the text, and sometimes a phrase
(most often a well-known quotation) was coded by only the first letters of
words. In the 1934 entries the writing became shaky, and small, brownish
spots were identifiable on the paper, a reminder that the author of the notes
lived a few more months and died of a massive pulmonary hemorrhage caused
by chronic pulmonary tuberculosis. One can sense in these entries, more than
anywhere else, the immediate presence of Vygotsky—an impressive, open
irreproachable person not only in his scientific life but in his private life, and
at the same time a deeply tragic character who was cognizant of the brevity of
the life span allotted to him and the overwhelming nature of the task that he
18  JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY

intended to accomplish, if not alone, then with a small group of like-minded

colleagues. This global task was to create a single theory of the psychic,
specifically a general psychological theory of consciousness in which all
previous approaches would be “sublated” (to use Hegel’s term aufheben or
Aufhebung, to which Vygotsky himself often resorted), which in turn would
result in overcoming the crisis in psychology.
The indisputable scientific value of the archival notes lies not only in the
fact that they set forth Vygotsky’s ideas and plans that did not get published,
but also in the fact that they help to trace the process of his thinking. What
is most interesting are not even the little chains of reasoning but the leaps in
thought, the unexpected gaps in his arguments. In these instances Vygotsky
resembles a sharpshooter who hits his target while blindfolded: the path to
insight is just as dark for him as it is for an outside observer, and many inter-
mediate moves and even the assumptions themselves that he pushed away
later proved to be false and he would reject them. At that point, however, it
was more important to him to simply have a support point—of any kind.
In unsorted form, the notes took up approximately six or seven voluminous
cardboard folders, packed to the gills with small pieces of paper. There are
almost no unrecoverable losses in the documents, not counting the instances
in which the missing pages in the notes could not be found. A few entries
require ultraviolet photography in order to read the spoiled text (faded sheets)
or a handwriting expert’s examination to establish authorship.

Specific characteristics of working with Vygotsky’s notes

The circumstances that may have hampered Vygotsky’s work made the archive
researcher’s labor much easier. If all of these disparate notes had been typed
on ordinary white paper, it would have been extremely difficult to assemble
them, and even more difficult to date them accurately. Each sheet in the ar-
chive, however, has its own face, its own individuality. The first sorting of
the documents according to the type of paper immediately revealed the main
groups of documents, within which it was easier to become oriented. Then
subgroups were identified in each group, based on a combination of several
key criteria, technical and substantive, to wit:
1. the type and format of the paper;
2. the type of ink (or pencil);
3. the specific characteristics of the handwriting (slanted, rounded,
degree of shorthand, etc.);
4. the numbering of pages, the numbering of theses (position on the
page, parentheses, periods, type of figures, etc.);
 JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2010  19

5. persistent quotations, turns of phrase typical of a given period,

repeated aphorisms, apothegms, and frequently used Latin, German,
and French expressions;
6. the mention of names of coworkers, colleagues, pupils, references
to events known from biographical literature on Vygotsky; polemics
with his chief scholarly opponents at a given point in time;
7. the subject of the entry and its link to the central themes of the given
period, as reflected in Vygotsky’s published and unpublished texts,
and citations of his own writings; and
8. the link among the main themes of notes within the given group (a
bundle of problems) and between groups.
Both the technical and substantive criteria (except for item 4, of course)
were used not only to assemble the texts but also to date them, since Vygotsky
did not often put dates on such entries. One precisely dated text within the group
served as a reference point for working with the remainder, and the method of
cross-dating of fragments was used on the basis of obvious similarities between
texts in terms of a combination of several criteria within a group or between
the groups. Blank forms with dates printed on them (e.g., library or publica-
tion cards, invitations, invoices) set a lower bound in terms of timing, just as
quotations from works with an established time for when they were written
or published. A list was compiled of the main abbreviations typical of various
years, and a detailed periodization of Vygotsky’s scientific career was created,
indicating the solid nucleus of his research program (the main principles) and
a protective belt (secondary theses, research procedures, techniques, etc.), with
problematic theses, vulnerable places in the theory, a list of anomalies (facts
requiring a new explanation) that generated progressive changes in the research
program, and indicating Vygotsky’s chief opponents, with whom debates (in
person or remotely) substantially influenced the dynamics of his thought. These
key features were used as chronological markers, but in a number of cases it
turned out that the commonly accepted view regarding the time when a topic
came up in Vygotsky’s writings, which had been based on his published works,
needed to be corrected itself—as a rule, the date shifted toward an earlier period.
When working with spoiled, oily, or faded documents or documents worn away
at the fold, they were read with side lighting (for penciled entries), held up to
the light (for oily paper), photographed or scanned with subsequent computer
processing of the images (enhancing contrast, suppressing background noise),
and subjected to other techniques.
At the time of writing of this article, all the notes had been systematized,
half of the texts had been completely read and prepared for publication, and
the rest of the work is to be completed within two years.
20  JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY

The most important archival documents:

Series of notes, notebooks and notepads, individual entries,
and letters

The notes cover almost the entire lifetime of Vygotsky, beginning in 1912.
However, not all the periods in his biography are represented equally in them:
the vast majority of the material dates to 1931–34. Especially prominent—
quantitatively and substantively—is the year 1932, which became a watershed
year, a major step forward from the systemic approach proclaimed at the end
of 1930 (in the paper “On Psychological Systems” [O psikhologicheskikh
sistemakh] [7]) to the hypothesis of the semantic structure of consciousness,
as well as the last two years of Vygotsky’s life, when he worked with incred-
ible intensity and was full of plans for the future. With respect to the earlier
years, the greatest number of entries pertained to 1925–26 (for the “nonpsy-
chological” period, 1915–16).
The breakdown into groups, as has already been mentioned, was based
on a whole host of criteria, but it has more of a practical value, related to
systematizing the archive, and it also allows a chronological framework to be
preserved in the discussion of this subject. A separate study was conducted on
both the links between groups and the historical continuity and dynamics in
the consideration of the key psychological problems that run through all the
periods of Vygotsky’s writings. These issues go far beyond the framework of
a journal article, so we will confine ourselves here to a preliminary descrip-
tion of the series and of the most important documents that make essential
additions or revisions to Vygotsky’s scientific career.
Three individual archival documents were published in 2007 with a fore-
word and historical and theoretical commentaries: they were a notebook for
October 1932 with highly valuable entries, containing outlines of an unwritten
book on the problem of consciousness; material from an internal conference
and polemics with A.N. Leontiev [3], and notes on the nature of affect and
the psychophysical problem [11]. We plan to publish the entire body of Vy-
gotsky’s personal entries, which we have deciphered, in a separate edition
and to supply them with a textual commentary and all the necessary historical
references and clarifications to the text of the notes.
The names of the notes quoted below repeat the first line of the archival
document, the author’s spelling has been preserved, and all the underlinings
belong to L.S. Vygotsky. The use of words that deviate from current linguistic
standards has been preserved. Conjectural emendations by the editor are given
in square brackets; illegible words are in angular brackets, and a hypothetical
version is offered.
 JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2010  21

Notes dated 1912–1930

Notebooks and notepads

Notebooks 1–3 reveal little-known pages of Vygotsky’s writings from 1912

to 1915.
1. “The Tragicomedy of Quests”—a notebook marked “1912”—consists
of jottings for a (presumably) lengthy text devoted to an interpretation of the
Book of Ecclesiastes. Vygotsky planned to present a philosophical and psy-
chological exegesis of Ecclesiastes as an “eternal symbol,” a story that recurs
in each person’s spiritual quests, a kind of existential odyssey. He defined
three periods in the life of Ecclesiastes and showed that the main tragedy of
human life, which is experienced as the impossibility of achieving fullness
of being, arises because “the entire world must be justified” in order for one
to live in it (Vygotsky quotes Dostoevsky here). But we are compelled to ex-
ist in a sundered, polar world, whose contradictions are irreconcilable; “we
entreat, knowing in advance that it will not be given to us; we knock at the
door of cognition, which has been shut forever, knowing in advance that it
will not open to us; we seek, knowing in advance that we shall never find,”
the sixteen-year-old author writes. The Book of Ecclesiastes, however, which
is full of mystery, shows that the answer can be found: despite the fact that
“no one has yet unraveled life,” one can reconcile oneself to it as long as
one seeks not the temporary but the eternal, and to its inaccessible fullness
and wholeness, which is projected onto the level of earthly life as a struggle
of opposites. The text was written in prereform orthography, and the quoted
writers include Belinsky, Dostoevsky, Balmont, and Steinthal. The notes,
both in tone and in substance (the tragedy of existence in a sundered world,
yearning for the absolute), definitely echo Vygotsky’s work “The Tragedy of
Hamlet” [Tragediia o Gamlete].
2. Notebooks with jottings (rough drafts) for a lengthy text that discusses
the historical experience of the Jewish people and the possibility of creating
a separate state of Israel. Vygotsky criticizes the ideas of radical anti-Semitic
and pro-Jewish political trends (specifically, Seimism, nationalism, autono-
mism, etc.). The document is dated 1915, and it uses prereform orthography.
At least half of the text is taken up by extensive quotations from the works
of philosophers, politicians, journalists, and writers who dealt in their writ-
ings with the Jewish question (Y. Halevi, H.N. Bialik, N.A. Berdiaev, S.M.
Dubnov, D.S. Pasmanik). The text largely resembles an abstract, but the end
of the fifth notebook contains a fragment of stunning depth and insight that
discusses the tragedy of the Jewish people during World War I, at the height
22  JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY

of which Vygotsky wrote these lines, as though he had a premonition of the

future events of the Holocaust. The Jewish people bear the imprint of a tragic
history and at the same time divine providence, he notes. On the last page of
the fifth notebook Vygotsky pasted a clipping from the newspaper Russkoe
slovo into the text:
I will conclude by citing a small episode from this war, w[hi]ch in the light
of great events rises to the height of a generalizing symbol:
“Brother against Brother.
“In one of the last battles on the San River a Jewish soldier fatally
bayoneted an Austrian rifleman and was himself wounded at the same
time. When he was brought to the infirmary, he refused to come out of the
railroad car. He asked the sisters of mercy and the doctor not to touch him
and met every question with silence. A rabbi was called in, and the dying
man told him: “When I bayoneted the enemy in the chest, he cried out
as he was falling: ‘Shma, Isroel!’ (Listen, Israel)—words that Jews utter
before their death or at an instant of horrible danger. I decided then that
although I had fought out of duty and a soldier’s conscience, I can’t live
anymore.’” (Rus. Sl.).
This symbolic incident revealed all aspects of Jew. hist., w[hi]ch were
refracted through it as through a focus and shine in the light of great events.
Two Jews (‘he who says Shma Isroel is a Jew,’ says the Talmud—and in the
madness of one and in that pain it is obvious that both are Jews—J[e]wry lives
here in that pain)—in this unresolvable tragedy, like the blind tools of dark
forces—one has been killed, the other has descended into madness—from
the coffin and from madness (from beyond the bounds of the conventional)
proclaim the meaning of this tragic meaninglessness.*
3. A notebook without a date, pertaining to a lengthy work on the writings
of F.M. Dostoevsky, begins on page 33 and has no end (the first notebook
of the manuscript and those that followed were not found). The paper is of
the same type as “The Tragicomedy of Quests,” and prereform orthography
is used (the entries, hypothetically, could have been made in 1914–16). The
main topic is Dostoevsky’s attitude toward the Jewish question, as well as
Jewish literary characters in his works. Vygotsky rebuts the widespread
view that a trait of Dostoevsky was “common anti-Semitism,” and shows
his deep insight into the crux of the matter, which only at a first and cursory
glance looks like national extremism on Dostoevsky’s part. Analyzing the
scene of Svidrigailov’s suicide in the novel Crime and Punishment, Vy-
gotsky writes:

*L.S. Vygotsky, “Mysli i nastroeniia (Stroki k Khanuke),” Novyi put’, nos. 48–49,
col. 49–52.
 JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2010  23

. . . why is it that after Svidrigailov’s nightmare it is specifically a Jew who

turned out to be an ‘official eyewitness’ of his death? Or is this a matter of
chance? Or is it a continuation of the nightmare? <. . .>
There is a latent, inexplicable, symbolic meaning in this picture, the
reality of which verges on the fantastical. <. . .> a brilliant brushstroke of
awesome, incredible power that makes the whole picture look strange and
fills it with symbolic meaning.
And in any case it is an unforgettable brushstroke: a real and at the
same time fantastical, nightmarish, delirious picture, filled with a strange,
mysterious, predawn light, sinks into a milky, dense haze, and merging
with this haze and already inseparable from it is a strange, incredible (and
at the same time real) “little man wrapped in a gray soldier’s greatcoat with
a copper Achilles helmet on his head,” and merging with the sorrow of the
dying night is “the age-old peevish sorrow” on his face, that sorrowful,
alarmed, frightened . . . “zis not ze place!” ringing out and ringing out, and
the sorrowful Jewish eyes growing bigger and bigger.
Vygotsky shows how Dostoevsky gathers together, all the typical—from
the man in the street’s perspective—traits of the Jewish character and appear-
ance in order to create out of them a symbolic image, purified of any random
features, of a personage who has some mystical, distinctive attitude toward
death and fate. Unfortunately, the manuscript contains only an excerpt from
the second part of the paper, and it is extremely difficult to make a judgment
about its closing comments. One might surmise that this text is a preparatory
version of a little-known article by Vygotsky, “Jews and the Jewish Question
in the Works of F.M. Dostoevsky” [Evrei i evreyskii vopros v proizvedeniiakh
F.M. Dostoevskogo], which was first published in 1997 in the newspaper Vesti
[Israel] [2] (according to the information of B.S. Kotik-Friedgut).
4. A notepad dated summer 1925. A tiny book with a gold edge is a journal
of Vygotsky’s trip abroad. This was his only foreign trip, to participate in a
London congress devoted to the problems of deaf-mute children. Previously
we had only fragmentary information about that trip, but now it has been sub-
stantially supplemented. The notepad was given to Vygotsky by his fiancée—
not yet wife—Roza Noevna Smekhova in 1921; in her hand is a quatrain by
Anna Akhmatova on the flyleaf, and under it is a phrase in the hand of Lev
Semenovich that immediately calls to mind the declaration by Kitty and Levin
(in Anna Karenina) that Vygotsky quotes in Thinking and Speech [6, p. 334].
This phrase contains only first letters, it is addressed to his wife and dated July
15, 1925: G.T.V.S.M. (Russian: “Gokha, ty vsedgda so mnoi”), which means
“Gokha, you’re always with me” (“Gokha” was a “secret” family nickname of
Vygotsky’s wife Roza Noevna). Much of the notepad is taken up by personal
entries. Despite the fact that every day Vygotsky spent in London and Berlin
24  JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY

was mapped out down to the minute (he spoke at the conferences, met with
psychologists, defectologists, and educators), he constantly thought about his
family, and missed his wife and daughter, who was born in early May of that
year. The foreign trip, wrote Vygotsky, had become one of the most important
events of his life, and he saw in his journey his entire past life and his future
with extraordinary acuity:
In another country, in the air (airplane), at sea—you feel a strange detach-
ment from everything. A review of your whole life, an examination of your
soul. Suddenly you look at your whole life as a spectator, as though it were
the minute before your death.
How agonizing.—
<. . .> In my life it is a sign of enormous future tribulations.
Am I afraid. Of course I am afraid, I feel fear, but I am keeping it under
control.
I still have my strength and authority.
Let be. [brief quotation from Hamlet—E.Z.]
<. . .> My journey has been amazing and its meaning is much more
important and greater than its practical aspect.
The personal, however, is closely intertwined with the nonpersonal. Vygotsky,
realizing what has been preordained for him by fate, writes about it simply,
without false modesty, sincerely tying his fate to Russia:
. . . This is enormous access to the main underwater currents of life. This
journ. is “a judgment on myself.” It is a life fractionated into instants, but
also sub specie aeternitatis.2
In essence Russia is the first country in the world. The Revolution [is]
our greatest cause. Only 1 p[ers]on in this room knows the secret of the
true education of d.-f. [deaf-mutes—E.Z.], and that p[ers]on is me. Not b[e]
c[au]se I am more educated than others, but I was sent by Russia and I am
speaking for the Revolution.
These words, said to himself, one on one, in a miraculously preserved
notepad, confirm that Vygotsky’s attitude toward what was happening in the
country at the time was not for show (let alone made to order) but deeply
personal.
A notepad also contains information about events that Vygotsky visited in
England, the Netherlands, and Germany; the addresses and telephone numbers
of colleagues from various European countries; copied material from library
catalogs; impressions from a visit to the British Museum; and so on.
This notebook proved to be the most difficult one to process—its pages are
heavily soaked with oil, the penciled material faded, and several fragments
 JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2010  25

apparently can no longer be restored. Nevertheless, about 80 percent of the

text has been successfully read.
5. A notepad without a name, dated the first half of 1926. It is a long text,
containing valuable entries that shed light on one of the most difficult periods to
analyze in Vygotsky’s scientific career—the development of a cultural-histor-
ical theory in the strict sense of the word. The notepad begins with entries that
supplement The Psychology of Art and “The Tragedy of Hamlet” (an analysis
of specific fables, references to a critical article by A.K. Voronskii about I.
Babel’s book Red Cavalry [Konarmiia], etc.) and sympathetically discusses
Adler’s idea of overcompensation: “This is the central set of ideas to [which]
I adhere in the ps[ychology] of ar[t] rather than from Fr[eu]d or the formalists.
Essentially this is a philos[ophical,] cognit[ive] type of dialectical principle.”
We should note that around the time Vygotsky wrote several articles in which
he analyzed A. Adler’s ideas and their significance for modern psychology
and defectology [1, 5, 10]. The Adlerian thesis of overcompensation may
have been a kind of “anomaly” (I. Lakatos’s term), which required a better
explanation from Vygotsky and thereby contributed to a progressive change
in his research program.
Among Vygotsky’s opponents were J. Watson, W. James, W. Stern, H.
Bergson, G.I. Chelpanov, and G.V. Plekhanov; those who were mentioned were
Iu.N. Tynianov, K.S. Stanislavsky, N.I. Bukharin, K.N. Kornilov, and others.
The notepad’s central theme, however, were reflections on the relationship
between thought and language (in which the influence of A.A. Potebnia is
noticeable), on the meaning of words (!—L.S. Vygotsky does not develop this
topic until the 1930s), on consciousness as an internalized system of social
relationships (K. Marx is often quoted), about consciousness as an internal
dialogue (L.S. Vygotsky cites L.V. Shcherba).3 Here is an excerpt from the
notepad, in which Vygotsky writes about the leading role of language in the
formation of consciousness and plans a series of articles (or chapters in a
book) dealing with thought and language:
2. The difference between a voc[al] and ling[uistic] reaction is not based on
the symbolic aspect, which is equally present in both: cond[itioned] voc. and
ling. stimuli both are symbolic[,] uncond[itioned] both are nonsymbolic.
The difference is not at all based on the relation between things. Language
is not the relation between a sound and the denoted thing. It is the relation
between the speaker and the listener, the relation between people directed
toward an object, it is an interpsychic reaction that establishes the unity
of two organisms in the same orientation toward an object. Linguistics
fetishizes words, the psychologist exposes the fact that behind the visible
relations between things lie relations between people (cf.[,] Marx fetish
26  JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY

of goods). It signifies a unity of reaction of 2 people or 2 reactions, not of

two stimuli.
3. Consciousness = speeches per se, . . . consc. speech is always a dialogue
(Shcherba). Consciousness is a dialogue with oneself. Just the fact that a
child first listens and understands and then learns speech-based conscious-
ness indicates that 1. consciousness springs from experience, 2. speaking
with oneself = acting consciously, the child puts himself in someone else’s
place, relates to himself as to another person, imitates another who is speak-
ing to him, and replaces the other in rel[ation] to himself <. . .>.
5. The meaning of a word . . . is not the thing that it replaces but a dialogue
(the listening-speaking function in oneself), the relation between people
[is] speech; between things, a symbol; between each of the speakers and a
word (thing), empathy. One article should end by formulating a problem
for the next one. Epigraphs for the whole book, I—Zoon politikon,4 II—
Freud[,] language and consciousness, III—Lipps—empath[y] makes social
organisms. The title of the whole book [is “]Zoon politikon. The Key to
Human Psychology.[”]
At the end of the notepad are theses developed in The Historical Meaning of
the Crisis in Psychology, including citations of V.N. Ivanovskii and a commen-
tary on the indirect method that scientific psychology should rely on, as well as
extracts from the journal Pod znamenem marksizma (PZM) for 1925–26, which
actively discussed the psychophysical problem and the question of the status of
psychic phenomena. Vygotsky rebuts a number of writers, in particular, Iu.V.
Frankfurt and G.V. Plekhanov. The handwriting in places is uneven and unclear,
and personal notations attest to the fact that Vygotsky had just experienced a
severe exacerbation of his tuberculosis and possibly a crisis in his worldview
similar to the crisis of 1917–18, which he mentions in a personal correspondence
with his Gomel’ friends. The next breakthrough toward a new theory occurred
literally on the threshold of death (again, the Hamlet theme in Vygotsky’s life).
On the eve of his release from the hospital Vygotsky wrote:
I have absorbed so many impressions of death during the six months spent
in this building, where death was as routine and common a phenomenon as
breakfast and the doctor’s rounds, that I feel drawn toward death the way
a tired person is drawn toward sleep.
Before departure
5.18.26
Instead of fatigue and torpor, however, a powerful, new upsurge of activity
began. The range of topics covered in the notepad is extremely broad: we see
Vygotsky launching an offensive on all fronts and the formulations of a new
theory sounding clearer and clearer: “So these are the distinguishing features
 JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2010  27

of language: it is an artificially created stimulus (cf. technique), it is a tool of

behavior, it presupposes two subjects and one object. Linguistic behav[ior]
differs from nonling[uistic] behavior the way labor differs from animal ad-
aptations.” This quotation contains both the question of man’s specific differ-
ences, a decisive one for psychology, and a future outline of the instrumental
act, which was clearly defined later in the paper “The Instrumental Method”
[Instrumental’nyi metod] [4]. In effect we have proof that as early as 1926
Vygotsky formulated the principles of the cultural-historical approach, whose
first theses were not put forth for discussion until December 1927–January
1928 in the paper “The Development of the Difficult Child and the Study of
Him” [Razvitie trudnogo rebenka i ego izuchenie] (First All-Russian Pedologi-
cal Congress) [9]. The premises of the approach, of course, are contained in
all of Vygotsky’s early works, but it was only in 1926 that they were brought
together and a solid nucleus thereby created for the theory, that is, a series of
postulates on which the entire research program rests, and which were later
clarified and given new formulations. In 1930 they were supplemented with
the systemic principle, and in 1932, with the principle of the semantic structure
of consciousness. We propose precisely this criterion for the beginning of
the cultural-historical theory in the strict sense of the word: the synthesis of
two ideas, which until 1926 were being elaborated without a clearly defined
link between them (the principle of semiotic mediation, which subsequently
underwent significant changes and receded to the background of the theory,
and the idea of the cultural development of the psyche). It was previously
assumed that the critical phase, the transitional year, was 1927; Vygotsky’s
correspondence with his colleagues suggested that experimental research in
the new methodology of dual stimulation was already under way in the sum-
mer of 1927, but was not being published. Now we know that the theoretical
principles of this research were formulated a year earlier.

Specific entries

1. A series of entries on the Jewish question on notebook sheets. Mainly con-

tains extracts from other authors (D.S. Merezhkovskii, A.O. Smirnova-Rosset,
F.M. Dostoevsky), lists of Hebraisms in the Russian language, outlines for
specific articles (“The Problem of the New Jewry” [Problema novoevreistva],
“The Jewish Socialist Movement” [Evreiskoe sotsialisticheskoe dvizhenie],
and others). Tentatively dated 1915, with prereform orthography.
2. Several poems written by L.S. Vygotsky in various years (1915, 1921).
In form, the poems are syllabotonic quatrains; in style, they are close to the
poetry of symbolism.
28  JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY

3. A series of notes on The Psychology of Art on narrow strips of paper.

Preparatory texts for chapters on proverbs, sayings, riddles, and lists of Rus-
sian proverbs. No date, approximately 1925.
4. Notes on S. Freud’s work Moses and Monotheism with an undetermined
date of writing, no later than 1926 (possibly 1925). In content they are close
to The Psychology of Art, cf. thesis (15): “Art is a technical instrument for the
transform. of emotions.” The text is divided into three sections—the theme of
Moses, the theme of the characters in Shakespeare’s tragedies, and footnotes.
A. Adler and O. Rank are mentioned in addition to S. Freud. The story of
Moses, who returned with the tablets of the covenant to find his people in
sin, is considered in terms of Michelangelo’s famous statue that is now in
the San Pietro in Vincoli Basilica in Rome. Vygotsky categorically disagrees
with Freud’s interpretation of this masterpiece:
It is not the M[oses] of the Bible and tradition (an affective man). It is not
the historical Moses—MA [Michelangelo—E.Z.] reworked the motif of the
smashed tablets—he does not allow them to be smashed out of anger, but he
smashes his anger on them.—This adds something new—superhuman: the
enormous body mass and the powerful muscularity are a corporeal expres-
sion for the highest psychic action th[at] is possible for man. My theory of
ar[t]. A unipolar expenditure of energy. A transfigured Moses.

5. A short entry, “NB. Will (the central idea),” made on the upper part of a
sheet of Osborne Hotel notepaper (2, Gordon Place, London, W.C.1). Exact
dating of the fragment is difficult. As was already mentioned, Vygotsky was in
London in 1925, but this does not mean that the entry was made the same year.
In terms of the subject, there is a direct link to the work The History of the Devel-
opment of Higher Psychic Functions [Istoriia razvitiia vysshikh psikhicheskikh
funktsii] and subsequent attempts to link affect (the motivational-emotional
tendency) to thought (the principle of unity of intellect and affect). The terms
of the first sentence are often found in the works of 1924–25, and the idea of
the social organization of brain centers is directly addressed in 1934. There are
no grounds for ruling out 1925 itself, although a clear formulation of the idea of
“the internalization of social relations” apparently does not appear in the notes
until 1926 (in our judgment, this entry could have been made in 1926–28). The
entry is of great value, since it anticipates the ideas that typify the last period of
Vygotsky’s writings. We also see that he made will a separate topic, whereas the
development of these ideas began in published works much later. The aphorism
quoted in shorthand, nature [sic] parendo vincitur (the full version translates
as “Nature cannot be conquered but by obeying it”), belongs to F. Bacon and
is actively used in the notes starting in 1928 (e.g., in the entries “3.04.1928,”
 JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2010  29

“NB! The Lightning Bolts of Spinoza’s Thought” [NB! Molnii Spinozovskoi

mysli] [11] and elsewhere). Here is the first part of the note.
NB
Will (the central idea) must be derived from not the cosubordination
and mutual regulation of centers (cortex, subcortex) and processes
(dom[inant], subdom.) but from soc. relations internalized and embodied
in the act[iv]ity of the centers with use of natur., organic subordination
(sublated category, actuating mechanism, parendo vincitur). What kind of
relations are these?
Commands of subordination.
Cf. Blondel: the mechanism of will and maximum obedience match.
[pencil notation in left margin—E. Z.] Nietzsche: affect of command.
6. A similar topic is addressed in another document—“The Instrumental
Method and Will” [Instrumental’nyi metod i volia], which is dated, accord-
ing to the content, around 1928 (not later than 1930). Here we see typical
formulations of 1928–29, similar to the theses of the paper “The Instrumental
Method,” which are characterized by a fairly rigid and, in part, mechanistic
interpretation of cultural development, from which Vygotsky departed after
1930. The instrumental act here plays the role of an Archimedean point, be-
cause by finding it one can turn the world upside down.
NB! 1. Why the I.M. [instrumental method—E.Z.] is important for school-
ing, for an abnormal child, etc.
We find in the instr. function of using a symbol the common root of every-
thing cult[.] (= higher intellect.) development. Whoever lacks an aptitude
for instr. function also lacks an aptitude for arithm., language, writing,
mnemonics, and so on and so forth. We identify this X, this function, as
will, i.e., intellect that has achieved a level of development such that it is
turned toward itself.
Cf. Spinoza. Int[.] et vol. iden.5
What makes this entry valuable is primarily the fact that it contains a
definition of will in an explicit form (whereas it is not explicit even in The
History of the Development of Higher Psychic Functions), which is given
through the processes of thought, but the kind that proves capable for the
first time of contemplating itself (reflexion). Clearly, other processes as well,
specifically attention and even practical action, will be of a volitional and
intellectual nature (see, e.g., ch. 12 of The History of the Development of
Higher Psychic Functions). Will and thought are placed at the center of the
psychological system, which also rests on the omnipotence of semiotic oper-
ation. Another archival entry from 1930 (“Giftedness”) reflects in aphoristic
30  JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY

form the psychotechnical optimism of the young Vygotsky: “Everything can

be replaced—Binet: this is the guarantee of unlimited development.” Two
years later the interpretation of the process of development would already
have changed noticeably. You can only master what you have, Vygotsky
would write later in Thought and Language [6, pp. 217–20]. Obviously the
psyche is not infinitely malleable to outside intervention, and the semiotic
operation comes to a groundwork that has been prepared in a certain way
and, having become rooted in it, proceeds differently each time, depend-
ing on the nature of the groundwork. In creating his theory of interaction
between nature and culture, heredity and the environment, Vygotsky, as is
well known, subsequently introduced the notion of the zone of proximal
development, which defines the extent of an accessible instrumental act that
is attainable by means of an instrumental act.
7. Notes about the name of his own theory (“NB! We are missing a name”)
are especially interesting because to this day we have virtually no testimony
about how Vygotsky named his theory. In a document dated during the time he
was working on the manuscript of The History of the Development of Higher
Psychic Functions (i.e., approximately 1930–31) we read:
NB! We are missing a name, a designation. It should not be a signboard
(intuitivism). Not instrum., not cultural, not signif[icative], not struct., etc.
Not only because of the blend with oth[er] theories but also because of the
int[e]rnal lack of clarity, e.g., the idea of analogy with instr. = only scaf-
folding, dissimilarity is more essential. Culture: but where is culture itself
from (it is nonprimordial, and this is hidden). So:
1) for the method the designation
meth. of d[ou]ble stimulation.
2) for theory as a whole
а) psychol. of higher functions, i.e.
b) histor. psychology or
с) histor. theory of higher psychol. f[u]nctions.
Because the central concept for us is concept of
higher function:
it contains a theory
а) of its development, b) of its psychol. nature; с) of the method of its
investigation.
In discussing the name, Vygotsky dwells on option 2c, but it should not be
forgotten that he is describing here his own approach of the 1930–31 period,
that is, he is analyzing it on the eve of major changes. After a year, already
the concept of psychic function was gradually losing its role as a guiding
instrument, a leading term, although it remained in the conceptual framework
of the theory.
 JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2010  31

Letters

Other items found in the archive that date to the 1912–30 period included let-
ters from A.Ia. Bykhovskii, V.B. Shklovsky, I.G. Ehrenburg, V.N. Ivanovskii,
K.N. Kornilov, and A.R. Luria. The most interesting documents are two letters
from Kornilov, at that time a well-known scholar and director of the Institute
of Experimental Psychology, which were addressed to young, category 2
employee L.S. Vygotsky. Kornilov was obviously well aware of how gifted
Vygotsky was, and his letters do not contain even a trace of a “superior atti-
tude”: he openly and sincerely expresses his delight with “The Psychology of
Art” (we remind the reader that this manuscript was Vygotsky’s dissertation,
which was to be defended at the Institute of Experimental Psychology). One
of the letters mentioned here was received by L.S. Vygotsky already in the
hospital (in April 1926). Kornilov somewhat overstated the similarity between
his own positions and the scientific views of Vygotsky—a year later Vygotsky
had already begun to criticize Kornilov’s reactology. Here are several excerpts
from the letter of October 12, 1925:
If I had not read your dissertation (and I just this minute finished it), I would
have addressed you with the customary word “much-esteemed,” but now
I feel like saying it in a way that my whole essence is calling for—“dear.”
And this is why. <. . .>
Your application of the principle of unipolar expenditure of energy to
the domain of emotions is exceptionally good; I did not think of such an
interpretation of the application of this principle.6 But what especially
astounded me was the simultaneity of the issue of explosive reactions that
you and I raised. While you arrived at these explosive reactions purely out
of theoretical musings about art, I, as you know, arrived at this issue on a
purely experimental basis, as a direct continuation of an investigation of
the most complicated type of reactions. <. . .>
It is this match in results based on completely different methods that
astounded me: this is the best proof of the ideological proximity between
us. And for the first time it crystallized in some clear way in my conscious-
ness that if we were able to work together for another few years, we would
undoubtedly represent an exceptionally close-knit team ideologically. And
for some reason it struck me that no one other than you, with your creative
nature, could organically fit into this team while retaining the whole wealth
of his individuality. That is why it is painful for me in the extreme to feel
your temporary pullout from our team, due to your illness. We will hope
that it is temporary and you will get well soon. I regret very much that we
will not be able to arrange a public defense of your dissertation, so as to
point out to everyone its exceptional importance. But I think that only now
32  JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY

that your illness has gotten worse, we will run all the formalities through the
collegiums and other bodies. When you regain your strength, we will arrange,
regardless of any formalities, a public discussion of your work. Our turn will
come, but for the time being we will give you a chance to exercise all your
rights related to your work, which you have an unconditional right to do.
I spent a week on your work, learning from you how to interpret the esthetic
reaction and how it should be given from the perspective of our position. You
have done this superbly, and I am infinitely happy that I have such a strong
comrade to work with, and it is this happiness that has entitled me to address
you with the word “dear,” which I hope you will not object to.
With deep and sincere respect for you
K. Kornilov.
P.S. No need for a reply, since you should not have any stress right now.
We will talk afterward.

All that we can add is we have before us another document that records the
circumstances of the extramural defense of the dissertation “The Psychology
of Art.” The rest speaks for itself.
Taking part in the processing of the above-mentioned texts were L.E.
Tuzovskaia (manuscript “The Tragicomedy of Quests,” notepad from 1926)
and M.E. Osipov (letters). The author expresses gratitude to them for their
assistance in working with the documents.
To be continued.

Notes

1. The tasks of the textological commentary include describing the physical

appearance of the manuscripts to be published (type of paper, type of ink, specific
characteristics of handwriting, condition, numbering of pages, abbreviations, nota-
tions and corrections, etc.), their location (private or state archive), the storage history
(change of owners of the manuscript), highlighting substantive editorial substitutions
made in the original text, and others.
2. Under the aspect of eternity (Lat.).
3. It should be noted with regard to the latter thesis that the question of whether
Bakhtin’s works were directly quoted or whether Vygotsky was acquainted with him
remains unresolved—we did not find in any of the notes either a mention of Bakhtin’s
name or citations of his writings. However, when the authentic text of the well-known
article “The Psyche, Consciousness, and the Unconscious” was restored it turned out
that the editors had cut out a citation of the work by V.N. Voloshinov Marxism and the
Philosophy of Language [Marksizm i filosofiia iazyka] (the precise authorship of this text
has yet to be established, but there is no question that Bakhtin took part in writing it).
4. “Political animal”—the ancient definition of a person, in which “political” means
everything that relates to the polis as a rational way of organizing human society.
5. Intellect and will are one and the same (Lat.).
6. Vygotsky writes about this principle twice in “The Psychology of Art”: “Two
 JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2010  33

opinions exist among psychologists as to whether emotion intensifies or weakens

under the influence of affective notions. . . . If the principle of unipolar expenditure
of energy, introduced by Prof. Kornilov into the interpretation of intellectual pro-
cesses, is applied to this question, it will become absolutely clear that in feelings,
as in acts of thought, any intensification of the discharge in the center results in a
weakening of the discharge in peripheral organs.” “This delay and weakening of
intra-organic and external manifestations of emotion is what should be viewed,
it seems to me, as a specific instance of the general law of unipolar expenditure
of energy with regard to emotions, the essence of which boils down to the fact
that the expenditure of energy from emotion is made primarily at one of the two
poles—either in the periphery or in the center—and an increase in activity at one
pole immediately results in a weakening of it at the other. I think it is only from this
standpoint that one can view art as well, which seems to stir up extremely powerful
feelings in us, but these feelings at the same time are not expressed in anything.
This mysterious distinction of artistic feeling from the ordinary kind, it seems to
me, should be interpreted in the sense that it is the same feeling, but resolved by
the extremely intensified activity of fantasy” [8, pp. 51, 233–34].

References

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Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1995.
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go.” Vesti (Israel), March 13, 1997, pp. 24–26; March 20, 1997, pp. 24–26.
3. Vygotskii, L.S. “Zapisnaia knizhka. Oktiabr’ 1932 goda.” Text preparation and
commentary by E.Iu. Zavershneva, released by G.L. Vygodskaia. Novoe litera-
turnoe obozrenie, 2007, no. 3 (85), pp. 91–99.
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1982.
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Pedagogika, 1982.
8. Vygotskii, L.S. Psikhologiia iskusstva. Minsk: Sovremennoe slovo, 1998.
9. Vygotskii, L.S. Razvitie trudnogo rebenka i ego izuchenie. Osnovy defektologii.
Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1995.
10. Vygotskii, L.S. Slepoi rebenok. Osnovy defektologii. Moscow: Prosveshchenie,
1995.
11. Zavershneva, E.Iu. “K publikatsii zametok L.S. Vygotskogo.” Metodologiia i
istoriia psikhologii, 2007, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 15–24.
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