From Vygotsky to Vygotskian psychology: Introduction to the history of the Kharkov School (original) (raw)

2008, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences

Around the end of the 1920s, Vygotsky introduced his integrative framework for psychological research to the Soviet Union. This framework was not abandoned and forgotten until its rediscovery in Russia and America in the 1950s, as some claim. In fact, even after his untimely death in 1934, Vygotsky remained the spiritual leader of a group of his former students and collaborators, who became known as the Kharkov School. This paper reconstructs the early intellectual history of Vygotskian psychology, as it emerged, around the time of Vygotsky's death, in the research program of the Kharkov School. INTRODUCTION: VYGOTSKIAN PSYCHOLOGY AND THE KHARKOV SCHOOL Not only was Lev Vygotsky an extremely talented and versatile psychologist, he was also a gifted teacher, fostering a generation of younger scholars who continued his wide-ranging research, even after his untimely death in 1934. From the 1920s through the early 1930s, Vygotsky, his closest collaborators-Alexander Luria and Aleksei N. Leontiev-and their associates, conducted a wide range of psychological studies on verbal thinking and practical intellect in children, the development of memory and attention, concept formation, educational psychology, the psychology of art, human developmental pathology, neuropsychology, and the ethno-cultural study of minorities. Behind this seemingly eclectic array of studies initiated by Vygotsky stands a profound, highly ambitious theoretical and methodological framework (Vygotsky, 1927/1997). For a variety of reasons, Vygotskian psychology after Vygotsky developed in several directions that no longer readily reveal their common source. For example, there is no immediately apparent link between Luria's early cross-cultural Central Asian expeditions and his neuropsychology; Leontiev's theorizing on activity, consciousness, and personality; Zaporozhets' psychology of perception, movement, or emotion; Zinchenko's psychology of involuntary remembering; Elkonin's research on the psychology of play and learning; Galperin's quest to define the object of distinctly psychological research; or Bozhovich's psychology of personality development (Minick, 1997). Furthermore, while the names of Luria and Leontiev are quite familiar in the West, outside Russia little is known about other students of Vygotsky and their work. James Wertsch (1994) is right to say that "This lacuna in our knowledge is clearly our loss."