PUBLIC LECTURE: The Vygotsky Tragedy: The former USSR and modern Russia, the best and worst place for Marxism

Vygotsky’s attempt to build a dialectical psychology was substantially based on the Marxist theoretical culture. It would appear that the USSR would have been an ideal place for the development of this movement, but it proved more complicated than anticipated. Vygotsky’s premature death, like the death of his contemporary, the futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky who killed himself in 1930, also affected the continuation of this scientific school.

After a short renaissance in the nineteen sixties and seventies, the Vygotskian School in Russia went through a second major crisis in the 1990s. The climate of the new Russia turned out to be as unsuitable for development for the ideas of this Marxist thinker as the climate of the earlier years. But in the 21st century, tendencies in Russian psychology and international cooperation have given rise to a new expectation of a golden age for dialectical psychology.

Biographical note: Alexander Surmava was born in the USSR in 1950. In 1988, after many years of KGB persecution, he graduated from the Psychological Faculty of Moscow State University. While there, he put forward a new dialectical definition of the psyche and life based on ideas of Spinoza, Vygotsky and Il’enkov. Based on the same fundamental theoretical principles as Vygotsky’s and Leont’ev’s approach, it puts forward some new ideas which provides a possibility to overcome the difficulties and contradictions remaining in the classics of CHAT (Cultural Historic Activity Theory) and opens a perspective of building of materialistic psychological theory.

He is a member of the Vygotsky Institute in Moscow which is led by Vygotsky’s granddaughter, Elena Kravtsova.

Dr Surmava’s world speaking tour is sponsored by the Central Missouri State University and the University of California, San Diego and the Adelaide and Hobart branches of Psychologists for Peace, as well as the Victorian Peace Network. For more information go to: http://home.mira.net/~deller/ethicalpolitics/alexander-surmava/index.htm

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