Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky  (1896-1934)

Lev Vygotskij was born in 1896 in Orcha, Belorussia, and educated in Moscow, where he graduated from law school in 1917. But alongside with these studies he he also studied literature, philosopohy and psychology, and in 1925 he submitted his Ph.D. thesis Psichologiya iskusstva (The Psychology of Art) at the Mosccow Institute of Psychology. This book, however, was not published until 1965. The only book, that was published during his lifetime, was Pedagogicheskaya psichologiya (Educational Psychology), 1926, which was the result of lectures he held at the Pedagogical Institute in Gomel, Belorussia. He also got a position as a researcher at the Institute of Psycholgy at Moscow University. He also founded an institute for disabled children.In 1931-32 he planned to go to Central Asia (Uzbekistan) to develop education among the peasants, many of whom were illiterate, but due to his illness this could not be realised. His lectures in Petersburg in 1933 on the importance of children´s play and his theory of "zona blizhajshej razvitiya" (the nearest zone of development) attracted great interest.
       His last work, Myshlenie i rech´ (Language and Thought), was dictated from his death-bed and published shortly after his death in 1934. That very year Vygotskij died of tuberculosis, only 37 years old.
       In 1936 Vygotsky´s pedology was declared "lzhenauka" (false science) and his works were banned for about 30 years. A collection of his  works (Sobranie sochinenij) was printed in an edition of 6 volumes in Moscow 1982-84, but Pedagogcheskaya psichologiya was not included here. It was edited and published by Valerij Davydov in 1991 and in a new edition with yet more texts in 1996.
       During the latest two decades Vygotsky´s works have aroused a great interest
       For Gunilla Lindqvist´s book  Vygotskij och skolan (Vygotsky and School, Studentlitteratur, Lund, 1999) I  have translated the following chapters from Pedagogicheskaya Psikhologiya ("Educational Psychology"):
       "Biologicheskij i social´nyj faktory vospitaniya" (Biological and educational factors in Education), "Instinkty kak predmet, mekhanizm i sredstvo vospitaniya"(The instincts as the subject, mechanism, and means of education), "Zakreplenie i vosproizvedenie reakcij"  (Reinforcement and recollection of reactions), "Myshlenie kak osobo slozhnaja forma povedeniya" (Thinking as an especially complex form of behavior), "Esteticheskoe vospitanie" (Esthetic education), "Psichologicheskoe osveshchenie trudovogo vospitaniya" (Psychological understanding of occupational education), "Psichologiya i uchitel´" (Psychology and the teacher), and "Problema obucheniya i umstvennogo razvitiya v shkol´nom vozraste" (Problems in education and the intellectual development in children at compulsory school age).
        The chapter mentioned last was written in 1933/34 and was included among texts, that were published in 1935 by his colleagues. It is now included in the edition of  Pedagogicheskaya Psikhologiya, that has been edited by Vasilij Davydov, Moscow, 1996.