The aftermath of the publication: paradise regained . . . or paradise lost?

As mentioned, the issue of the journal that followed the one with Rubinstein's publication of 1934 was the last one. The journal closed down. Psychology' lost its last specialized periodical publication outlet. That was definitely a bad sign to the professional community from those who made decisions on scientific policy in the Soviet Union. In 1935 the number of psychological publications in the Soviet Union kept slightly rising, but considerably dropped in 1936. Also in 1936, on July 4. the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union issued a well-known Decree of Union “On Pedological Perversions in the System of Narkomproses" that banned the entire discipline of “pedology” (i.e., the integrative science of the child) and related mass movement. In addition, this very official document prohibited the use of the method of testing in the country, as strange and incomprehensible as it might appear to some of the contemporary readers raised in the context of industrially developed countries of the West. This episode in the history of the USSR is somewhat controversial and seems to have two general interpretations.

According to the first interpretation, this episode is a quintessential example of the brutal intrusion of power (the regime of the Communist Party) into the internal affairs of academia and the beginning of the “dark ages” for the entire field of psychology' (and, generally, science) in the Soviet Union for the subsequent two decades, until the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, at least. This interpretation had some popularity in Western historiography in the 20th century and is quite popular in contemporary post-Communist Russian Federation where it is well known under the label of the “oppressed science” (alternatively, the “repressed science”). According to the alternative interpretation, the image propagated by the “oppressed science” is one-sided, naive and historically incorrect. In fact, as demonstrated by numerous studies in the history of Soviet science, its representatives and the entire social institute of theoretical and applied research — even despite the brutalities, political purges and tragedies in the biographies of a few individual scholars caused by the regime’s decisions and activities — proliferated and prospered. Introductory' reading on this counter-intuitive finding can be found in the contemporary classics on the history of Soviet science such as (Kojevnikov, 2004; Krementsov, 1997). The history of Soviet psychology truly corroborates this interpretation.

Unlike bad news, good news travels slow. The good news was that — largely owing to the intellectual effort of Sergei Rubinstein demonstrated in and propagated by his truly pioneering article of 1934 and the two university textbooks of 1935 and 1940 - Soviet psychology' eventually found and gradually mastered its own Marxist language that was apparently' approved by' the leading official Marxist philosophers in their function of the supervisors of the entire Soviet academia. We have no definitive documents or official declarations to this effect. Yet, the sequence of events that followed the turbulence of the mid-1930s speaks for itself. Consider just one example. In 1938 the first post-Decree of 1936 textbook on psychology' was published, and it was followed by' a number of other ones that came out in the late 1930s—early 1940s. These publications took place not only in Moscow, the capital of the state, but also in Kiev and Tbilisi, the capitals of Soviet republics (the Ukrainian and the Georgian SSR), in the languages of the national minorities within the USSR. This is an unambiguous indicator of the dramatically improved status of psychology as officially recognized and, even more importantly, supported by the regime academic discipline throughout the entire country within its “system of Narkomproses” (i.e. Narkomats of Enlightenment, somewhat equivalent to the Ministries of Education and Cultural Affairs) of the Soviet Republics. A series of other events and processes corroborate and confirm this conclusion (Yasnitsky, 2015a). Therefore, if only there was any “Golden Age” in the history of Soviet psychology it would not start until 1936 — even though this year is also well known as the beginning of the “Great Purges” (alias, the “Great Terror”) of 1936-1938 in the Soviet Union. The culmination of the disciplinary establishment of psychology' in the USSR took place a decade later with a truly glorious decision of the leadership of the state and the party: in 1946 psychology was officially pronounced a public school subject and triumphantly entered educational curricula throughout the entire country along with other, long and well-established academic subjects. Finally, the career of Sergei Rubinstein until the beginning of the Cold War period is perhaps the best illustration of the real meaning of the “Golden Age” of Soviet science.

Yet, this story would be not quite complete without mentioning another historical episode. This episode took place in 1969, nine years after Rubinsteins death. Aleksei N. Leontiev and the closest members of his circle — some would refer to it as a “clan” - gathered at Aleksandr Luria’s Moscow apartment in order to discuss the current issues in contemporary psychology and specifically the problems and the status of the “activity approach” (later known under the label of “activity theory”), which was the trademark of their own tradition in psychological research, allegedly with its roots in the works of Lev Vygotsky, their former associate, collaborator or teacher. Apart from Leontiev and Luria, Aleksandr Zaporozhets, Daniil El’konin and Piotr Gal’perin were present. The whole meeting and discussion was tape-recorded by Vladimir Zinchenko, their younger yet very promising and trusted colleague and the son of the late Piotr Zinchenko of Kharkiv (in Ukraine), yet another member of the geographically extended research group. The tapes were later transcribed and the texts of the discussion were published, even in the English translation.

Leontiev gave his “crown speech" as the undisputable leader of the “school” and the self-proclaimed official founder of Soviet Marxist psychology' firmly based on allegedly his “activity approach”. It was this very "approach”, its advantages and drawbacks that was the main topic of discussion. All present but Luria and Zinchenko responded to the presentation with their talks, but of most interest to us in this context is the critical performance of Gal’perin. He gave an historical overview of the whole line of development of this intellectual tradition starting with Vygotsky (whose pioneering work he praised as innovative and consistent, although at the same time cited as incomplete and unfinished) until the later studies of Leontiev and his associates of the 1930s through 1960s. Let us skip the numerous exciting and intriguing details for now. Somewhere half-way through his presentation Gal’perin — well known among those in audience and beyond for his sharp mind, ever critical intellectual stance and unbiased judgment - introduced an explosive argument that, according to Vladimir Zinchenko’s later memoirs (Zinchenko, 2003), had an effect of an atomic bomb for the entire theoretical construction of Leontiev’s and cost the speaker Leontiev’s good disposition ever since then. Gal'perin's direct speech is in order:

Everything has its time. There was a time when these studies did something very important. They were the first to demonstrate new facts; but the point was that they stopped with these facts, whereas it was necessary to go further and decipher this activity substantively, and this was not done. A number of studies of the role of the nature of the broader activity of which a specific psychological activity is a part (for example, an investigation of will, which was also done under the leadership of Aleksei Nikolaevich [Leontiev] and showed that, if a child is playing, he tolerates voluntary assignments, but if he is not playing, he does not tolerate them): revealed a cardinal fact. There is an activity that is called play activity, and there is an activity that is called learning activity. In some cases some things go better in play activity, and in others, the opposite is true: learning activity is better.

(Galperin, 1995, p. 23)

In this sequence Gal’perin refers to the famous interrelated studies that Leontiev’s students Manuilenko and Istomina did in the mid-1940s in Moscow immediately after WWII (Istomina. 1948; Manuilenko. 1948). Of the two, Istominas research is particularly notable for the stir it made across the state border of the USSR. Published in English translation (Istomina. 1975, 1978), this study virtually immediately made the author a scientific celebrity and became arguably one of the best known experimental psychological studies ever produced in the Soviet Union in the fields of developmental psychology' and psychology of memory. Indeed, this publication provoked a controversy and triggered roughly a dozen of Western replication studies. Yet, the reason for controversy' remained hidden from the eyes of Western scholars. Gal’perin elaborates on his arguments to Leontiev and suggests a few hints on the mystery of the controversy about Istomina’s research in the West:

But why does this happen? What is the mechanism of the fact that a child, say, begins to withstand all enticements in play, to which he must oppose his will? How does this happen? What occurs here? What is at work here? None of this was studied. But, strictly speaking, this would include what is called the transition to meaningful activity, and to study' of the latter. And, since this was not done, we slipped into a theory of facts, i.e., what happened was that this factor, that factor and that factor acquired significance. The only thing that remained of the entire rich content of intention was the utterly barren fact that such and such a factor was important. The nature of mental activity itself remained as unknown as before and hence, despite all the talk about the meaningful activity of the subject, to explain these mental processes we ended up turning to physiological processes. Is it not characteristic that all the investigations being carried out today under the direction of Aleksei Nikolaevich are oriented toward study of physiological processes: in perception, in emotions, studies of stress, etc.? The reason is that it is assumed that there are external conditions and there are mental processes. The mechanism of these mental processes is conceived as before in purely physiological terms. All of this is a deciphering of what I said then, that the concrete content of object-related activity, its operational side, was missing. Only now I should add, it was missing not only from theory: it was missing from experiments as well, because in experiments efforts were made to secure the external form of an object-related activity in which mental processes took place in one way or another.

(Galperin, 1995, pp. 23-24)

And now the speaker is ready to pronounce his final judgment. It does not quite look like an acquittal:

But this external object-related activity, especially a child’s meaningful activity, say, learning or at play, did not become an object of study. It was not a direct object of study, and hence its relation to the corresponding mental activity was a relation of a condition summarily assumed. And no matter how hard it is to acknowledge it, the objective situation is that we can think anything we want about ourselves, but essentially we did not change the old psychology. We introduced new factors, we derived new facts, but we did not introduce new developments of these facts. Now it is time to ponder what we are going to do from here on in. If we continue this line of investigation, which lasted through the fifties and all of the sixties, we shall, in the end, come back to where we have already been, i.e., to a totally eviscerated concept of activity that commits no one to anything at all.

(Galperin, 1995, p. 24)

And then, as if those in the audience did not understand where all this leads and what kind of conclusion the speaker most directly drives at, Gal’perin refers to Rubinstein and, by doing so, he performs a coup de grâce, merciful killing or a control shot directly into Leontiev’s head - whichever phrasing of the metaphor one prefers:

So you get the same situation that Sergei Leonidovich [Rubinstein] proclaimed: on the one hand, consciousness, and on the other, activity. How can one conceive of this? Its most illustrious formula is “the unity of consciousness and activity.” There is consciousness, and there is activity, and there is their unity as something desirable. Strictly speaking, the implication is that here there is no unity.

(Galperin, 1995, p. 30)

What has just happened, one might ask? Well, this is very simple: Gal’perin has just pronounced (and quite correctly so!) Aleksei N. Leontiev — the Dean, the Member of Academies, the President and Vice-President, the Soviet psychologist, the Marxist philosopher, etc. etc. and, most importantly, the alleged co-founder of “cultural-historical psychology”, the leading Soviet Marxist theoretician in psychology and the founder of the dominant “scientific school” of “activity theory” - a mere behaviorist.

This last episode serves as a perfect illustration of virtually the entire history of Soviet psychology. Rubinstein indeed “was, until his death in 1960, the most influential writer on psychological theory in the Soviet Union" (Payne, 1968, p. 2). Soviet psychological research developed under the slogans of Marxist theory and published with numerous quotes from the founders of Marxism-Leninism. Rubinstein always remained the figure of great authority even in the worst times in his scholarly career during the early Cold War. The ideas that he somewhat briefly sketched in his paper of 1934 were further developed in his books (1935, 1940, 1946) and were openly accessible to all scholars and students throughout the Soviet Union. By unanimous consensus of virtually all leading Soviet psychologists and their followers “activity” was declared the main object of psychological research and countless pronouncements to this effect can be found in Soviet publications in psycholog)'. Furthermore, Rubinstein’s ideas on activity, consciousness and personality' were seemingly picked up and realized in Aleksei N. Leontievs “own” declaratively Marxist activity theory that remained a dominant intellectual trend in the Soviet Union for quite a while. Even now Leontiev is considered as one of the leading Marxist psychologists in the world, at least by many of those international scholars who are familiar with his work. And yet, as it follows from the materials of internal discussions within the narrowest circle of top-rank members of Leontiev’s circle, the whole enterprise boils down to an array of abstract quasi-philosophical Marxist pronouncements in published works of a theoretical and empirical nature, on the one hand, and a range of experimental empirical studies totally devoid of the Marxist research method indicated in Rubinstein’s programmatic writings. True, the consciousness and activity fell apart. Even worse, ideology (in the sense of cultural norms and social values) was totally ignored and forgotten in psychological research in the Soviet Union. What was left instead can be best described in terms of a quasi-Marxist behaviorist psychology.

And this is perhaps the most disappointing and tragic discovery ever made by an historian of Soviet psychology.