Lev Vygotsky

Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (Russian: Лев Семёнович Выготский, IPA: [vɨˈɡotskʲɪj]; Belarusian: Леў Сямёнавіч Выгоцкі; November 17 [O.S. November 5] 1896 – June 11, 1934) was a Russian and Soviet psychologist, best known for his work on psychological development in children and creating the framework known as cultural-historical activity theory. After his early death, his books and research were banned in the Soviet Union until Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, with a first collection of major texts published in 1956.

His major ideas include:

Lev Simkhovich Vygodsky (his patronymic was later changed to Semyonovich and his surname to Vygotsky for unclear reasons) was born on November 17, 1896, in the town of Orsha in Mogilev Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Belarus) into a non-religious middle-class Jewish family of Simkha Leibovich (also known as Semyon Lvovich), a banker, and Tsetsilia Moiseevna.

Vygotsky was raised in the city of Gomel, where he was home-schooled until 1911 and then obtained a formal degree with distinction in a private Jewish gymnasium, which allowed him entrance to a university. In 1913, Vygotsky was admitted to the Moscow University by mere ballot through a "Jewish Lottery"; at the time, a three percent Jewish student quota was administered for entry in Moscow and Saint Petersburg Universities. He had an interest in the humanities and social sciences, but at the insistence of his parents he applied to the medical school at Moscow University. During the first semester of study, he transferred to the law school. In parallel, he attended lectures at Shanyavsky Moscow City People's University. Vygotsky's early interests were in the arts and, primarily, in the topics of the history of the Jewish people, the tradition, culture and Jewish identity.

In January 1924, Vygotsky took part in the Second All-Russian Psychoneurological Congress in Petrograd (soon thereafter renamed Leningrad). After the Congress, Vygotsky met with Alexander Luria and with his help received an invitation to become a research fellow at the Psychological Institute in Moscow which was under the direction of Konstantin Kornilov. Vygotsky moved to Moscow with his new wife, Roza Smekhova, with whom he would have two children. He began his career at the Psychological Institute as a "staff scientist, second class". He also became a secondary school teacher, covering a period marked by his interest in the processes of learning and the role of language in learning.

By the end of 1925, Vygotsky completed his dissertation, "The Psychology of Art," which was not published until the 1960s, and a book, "Pedagogical Psychology," which apparently drew on lecture notes he prepared in Gomel while he was a psychology instructor at local educational establishments. In the summer of 1925, he made his first and only trip abroad to a London congress on the education of the deaf. Upon return to the Soviet Union, he was hospitalized due to tuberculosis and would remain an invalid and out of work until the end of 1926. His dissertation was accepted as the prerequisite of a scholarly degree, which was awarded to Vygotsky in autumn 1925 in absentia.

After his release from the hospital, Vygotsky did theoretical and methodological work on the crisis in psychology, but never finished the draft of the manuscript and interrupted his work on it around mid-1927. The manuscript was published later with notable editorial interventions and distortions in 1982 and was presented by the editors as one of the most important of Vygotsky's works. In this early manuscript, Vygotsky argued for the formation of a general psychology that could unite the naturalist objectivist strands of psychological science with the more philosophical approaches of Marxist orientation. However, he also harshly criticized those of his colleagues who attempted to build a "Marxist Psychology" as an alternative to the naturalist and philosophical schools. He argued that if one wanted to build a truly Marxist psychology, there were no shortcuts to be found by merely looking for applicable quotes in the writings of Marx. Rather, one should look for a methodology that was in accordance with the Marxian spirit.

From 1926 to 1930, Vygotsky worked on a research program investigating the development of higher psychological functions, i.e. culturally-governed lower psychological functions such as voluntary attention, selective memory, object-oriented action, and decision making. During this period, he gathered a group of collaborators including Alexander Luria, Boris Varshava, Alexei Leontiev, Leonid Zankov, and several others. Vygotsky guided his students in researching this phenomenon from three different perspectives: