Rubinstein's sources: Marxist and other

Rubinstein’s paper was very timely in terms of the pressing demands of the Soviet psychological community in search of its mandatory Marxist foundations at the time of crisis and rapid social and cultural changes. Yet, it was also timely in a very different sense. The paper was almost an immediate reaction to an important publication of Karl Marx’s work. The work is probably less known and less popular than the authors monumental three-volume Capital (Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, 1867—1883) or the programmatic The Manifesto of the Communist Party (Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei, 1848). Nevertheless, the importance this highly influential work for the intellectuals and philosophers around the world can be hardly overestimated. The “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844”, prepared by the Soviet researchers at the Moscow’s Marx - Engels — Lenin Institute and first published in 1932 in Berlin (followed by another publication, also in German, in the Soviet Union in 1933), shed light on the earlier thought of young Marx on his way to the later foundational classic Marxian works. These publications of the manuscripts of 1844 provided intellectuals with very promising insights into the ways how Marx’s early “humanistic” ideas could be applied in a wide range of contexts, for instance, as a methodological basis of social, human and even natural sciences. Therefore, not surprisingly, slightly over half of the footnotes of Rubinstein's paper refer to this very inspirational early work of Marx that he drafted at the age of 26. At this very age, Rubinstein had already defended his doctoral dissertation and just returned to his home city of Odessa in Imperial Russia, amidst WWI. Now, at the age of 44, a holder of a doctorate in philosophy in Imperial Marburg and a professor of psychology in Soviet Leningrad, Rubinstein debuted with his first psychological publication.

Another third of the remaining number of references in Rubinstein’s paper go back to the monumental classics: the first volume of Karl Marx’s Capital. Then, in 1932 two other important works of young Marx were also published in the same edition of the Marx-Engels Collected Works (Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe, the so-called MEGA1, not to be confused with the ongoing publication project MEGA2 launched in 1975): “Theses on Feuerbach” (Thesen über Feuerbach, drafted in 1845, first published in 1888) and "The German Ideology” (Die deutsche Ideologie,

composed in the spring of 1846, first published in this very edition of 1932). Both works also found their way to Rubinstein's article, although neither of them with their relatively modest three references gave such a remarkable performance in Rubinstein’s text as the “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844”. In any case, these new publications made quite a difference and had quite a revolutionizing impact on the social and methodological thought of the day. In addition, there is also a reference to Engels’ “Dialectics of Nature” (Dialektik der Natur, an unfinished 1883 work on the philosophy of natural sciences first published in a bilingual German-Russian edition in Moscow in 1925), which concludes the list of all references to Karl Marx’s and Friedrich Engels’ works. In total, slightly less than three quarters of all cited sources in this text belong to the publications of the founders of Marxism. Then, in addition Rubinstein cited Lenin three times.

Finally, on various occasions the author refered to the publications of contemporary psychologists, mostly in foreign languages. These include: Karl Buhler’s “Bericht über die XII Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie” (1932) and “Die Krise der Psychologie” (1929), a Russian translation ofTheodor Valentiner’s report about the X International psychological congress (1933, originally published same year in the Zeitschrift für Angewandte Psychologie'), a Russian text by Rubinstein's compatriot Nikolai Grot of 1897, another Russian translation —John B. Watson’s “Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist” (1924, Russian publication of 1926), Henri Bergson’s “Evolution créatrice” (1911) and Henri Wallons “Le problème biologique de la conscience” (1929), Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg’s posthumously published “Zur Geschichte des Wortes ‘Person’” (1908), David Katz’s “Hunger und Appetit” (1932), Édouard Claparède’s “La psychologie fonctionnelle” (1933), and, finally, Kurt Lewin’s “Vorsatz, Wille und Bedürfnis” (1926). Some of these authors — virtually all of them stellar scholars of their times and lands — are well known until now, some are still remembered by the historians of science only, and some are either well forgotten or even have ever hardly been known to the wider psychological community. Yet, what this list of names and titles shows is the distinct Rubinstein trade-mark erudition, profound knowledge of academic literature in all main languages of science of his time, equal familiarity with the classics and the most contemporary publications of the day, and devotion to systematic knowledge and perpetual learning well beyond the confines of geographical and disciplinary boarders. This characteristic of Rubinstein the thinker and the scholar would remain with him until the very end of his intellectual career and life itself.

One might speculate on the reasons and the causes of the publication of Rubinstein's article in 1934, but in fact the truth might be very simple. It seems Sergei Rubinstein was the main asset of the Soviet scholarly community of psychologists and virtually the only person up to the task. Indeed, Rubinstein’s general erudition, profound knowledge of German philosophy and intellectual movements of the time (a part of which Marxian thought undeniably was), his experience of successful post-graduate doctoral training in Germany, therefore, absolute fluency in German and ability to penetrate into the intricacies of Marx’s original texts (the first Russian translation of the early works of Marx including his “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844” would not appear until a Soviet publication of 1956) — all that made him a natural first-rate candidate for the job. And he splendidly did the job.