[Xmca-l] Help With Russian

[David Kellogg]

In Chapter One of the Problem of Age Periodization, Vygotsky is trying to
"finalize" the chain of critical ages, and argues that birth should be
included as a "crisis". He and Blonsky apparently agree here. He writes:

Катастрофическое, скачкообразное изменение всего хода развития в акте р
ождения, когда новорожденный, быстро, критически попадая в совершенно новую
среду (Блонский), изменяет весь строй и ход своей жизни, определяет
начальный период внутриутробного развития как один из самых острых и
несомненных критических возрастов.

I take this means something like: "Catastrophic, leaping changes (i.e.
"breaks" or "ruptures", discontinuous changes--DK) in the whole course of
development in the act of birth, when the newborn, rapidly entering
critically into a completely new environment (Blonsky), transforms the
whole structure and the course of his life and defines the beginning period
of intra-uterine development as one of the most acute and undoubtedly
critical ages.



The problem with this translation is that it is utter nonsense, because the
beginning period of intra-uterine development is not birth but conception. The
Russian collected works (which simply omits Blonsky's name because he is a
non-person) just changes внутриутробного развития to внеутробного развития
without any comment at all. (In all fairness the Soviet editors seem to be
working with a different manuscript or transcription of this material, and
the correction might have been Vygotsky's.)

Now, my grasp of Russian grammar is pretty tenuous. But it seems to me it
MIGHT be possible to interpret this passage as someting like this:

"Catastrophic, leaping changes (i.e. "breaks" or "ruptures", discontinuous
changes--DK) in the whole course of development in the act of birth, when
the newborn, rapidly entering critically into a completely new environment
(Blonsky), transforms the whole structure and the course of his life and
defines (i.e. delimits, fixes and puts an end to--DK) the beginning period
of intra-uterine development, seem (appear to be--DK) one of the most acute
and undoubtedly critical ages."

So--once again a question for the infinite patience of the Russophones of
the list--is this a reasonable interpretation, or did Vygotsky make a
mistake (saying "внутриутробного развития" when he really meant "
внеутробного развития") and did the Soviet editors put him right?

David Kellogg
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies





 My question, for the Russophones on the