Российская психология в пространстве мировой науки - Ирина Анатольевна Мироненко
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Alternative ideas of Leontiev's predecessors and theories of the AT school in Russian psychology contemporary to Leontiev remain obscure for the international scientific community. This state-of-the-art can be explained by considering the historical situation in which the term "Activity Theory" entered into international science. This term entered into the international mainstream from the works of A. N. Leontiev. Since the late 1950s A. N. Leontiev's works were repeatedly republished in the USSR in translations into English, Danish, Spanish, German, Finnish, and other languages. Activity Theory" is the usual translation of the "Theory of Dejatelnost" which Leontiev developed. The theory of Leontiev as he himself acknowledged was based on theoretical reasoning of his great predecessors: S. L. Rubinstein and L. S. Vygotsky. That is why in the context of international science the term AT actually turned out to comprise the whole trend dominating Soviet psychology for the greater part of the XXth c, based on ideas of the procreative role of vital activity of a living being for psyche formation.
Here we use the term "Activity Theory" to denote this trend, to fit the content of the concept established in the international literature.
Theoretical foundations of the Activity Theory
Russian AT is often supposed to be confined to a set of methods for the analysis of interaction of an individual with his environment. But it is a theoretical and methodological approach, rooted in the history of psychology and well-developed at the level of philosophical methodology (Mironenko, 2008, 2013).
One of the key figures of Russian AT, Sergey L. Rubinstein wrote:
At the heart of every significant philosophical conception, as the origin of its creation, there can be found some basic tendency, some integrative moment of truth, some basic motive and interest of thought" (Rubinstein, 1997, p. 138).
The lack of understanding of this creative motive leads to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. So, what was this motive for the creation of Russian AT? To answer this question, first of all, let's consider the situation in which the Russian AT was created, because it is there that this "basic motive and interest of thought" comes from.
Russian AT was born in 1920-s in post-revolutionary Russia, where a great experiment, aimed to test Marxist theory in practice, was carried out. At that time Russia saw a wonderful splash of creative activity in culture and science. It was the time of Blok, Kandinsky Malevich, Mayakovsky Meyerhold, etc. The rise of psychology was caused by a huge demand of practical work and the need for a new scientific methodology based on Marxism. Many scientists such as Bekhterev, Vygotsky and Luria sincerely believed that Russia was standing at the edge of social and cultural rebirth, and tried to take an active part in the creating of a new life. Great expectations of the Soviet government were laid on psychological practice. Two great unrealizable tasks were put forward, both concerning ideology as well as economical life of the country: to increase labor productivity[14] and to bring up a new human type – the one of proletarian culture. The Soviet government gave an unprecedented support to the development of psychology in Russia. In 1918 (just after the devastating First World War, after the period of Civil war which followed the October revolution 1917) Bekhterev addressed the government asking for organization of the Institute for Research on the Brain and Mental Activity (Институт по изучению мозга и психической деятельности) on the basis of St. Petersburg Psychoneurological Research Institute. Soon the Institute was opened, equipped with the best possible apparatus in Europe, and its director until his death was Vladimir Bekhterev)[15]. At the beginning of 1920-s one by one psychological departments and laboratories were being opened throughout the country. In 1921 Soviet government issued a special regulation to support the laboratory headed by LP. Pavlov. Applied psychology (pedology and psychotechnics) was rapidly developing. (Basov, 1928; Blonsky 1934; Kornilov, 1924; Lazursky 1918; Vygotsky, 1931; etc.)
This situation accounted for the radical and even arrogant nature of the new Marxist psychology. In contrast to static concepts and implicit theories of immutable human nature, domineering in Western psychology, Russian AT, driven by the idea of managing human evolution in order to prove the "bolshevik understanding" of Marxist theory that dominated Soviet discourses after 1920s, focused on the understanding of human as an infinitely changing creature. Culture in humans was considered as first of all the ability to change under the influence of social surroundings, the speed and extent of changes making humans unique among other animals. This entailed a primary focus of ruptures and discontinuities in evolution, first of all, on the principle difference between human and animal (Mironenko, 2009b; 2010). The unity of nature and culture in humans was considered as not only based on affinities, but also on contradictions, and investigations mainly focused on these contradictions, as they were supposed to account for the dialectics of change and development, both cultural and biological.
As repeatedly has been noted in the literature (Castro and Lafuente, 2007; Marsella 2012, Moghaddam 1987, Rose 2008), the 20th с Western psychology developed based on assessments of personality of a human belonging to contemporary Western culture and practices of culturing traits, sought after in Western culture. These psychological characteristics acquired the status of universality in mainstream psychology. Due to the stereotype of taking a western citizen for a human in general, mainstream psychology is dominated by an implicit tendency to blurring boundaries
