[Xmca-l] Re: Mediating Activity and Mediated Activity

[Andy Blunden]

That's very interesting, Martin. I had confirmed that there 
was a Russian translation of the Phenomenology in LSV's 
lifetime. Still, I have not found a single remark by any 
Marxist of the time, or LSV, indicating specific interest in 
the Phenomenology of Spirit. Lenin, for example, who was 
actually the founder of Marxist-Hegelianism, made extensive 
analysis of both Logics and Hegel's Lectures on the History 
of Philosophy, but never mentioned the PhG.

On the other hand, I know that in 1930 LSV collaborated with 
Finget and Shirvindt (two supporters of Abram Deborin who 
was regarded at the time as a Marxist-Hegelian) in some work 
on Psychology. Without any evidence other than the timing of 
this contact being coincident with Vygotsky's change in what 
he understood by "concept" from the positivist definition to 
the Hegelian definition. This time is also recognised as a 
major turning point in Vygotsky's thinking across a range of 
issues, reflected in HDHMF.

That is my best bet, but maybe Shpet was a part of it too.

Andy


------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://home.mira.net/~andy
http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making 

On 3/05/2016 10:03 PM, Martin John Packer wrote:
> Andy, as you know, LSV had contact over a number of years with Gustav Shpet. For example, according to V. Zinchenko, at the end of the 1920s, Shet and Vygotsky both taught in the Pedology Department of the Second Moscow University.
>
> In 1936-37 Shpet completed a Russian translation of Hegel’s Phenomenology, for which he had been awarded a contract by the State Socio-Economic Publishing House. Obviously this was after LSV’s death, but presumably Shpet was already very familiar with Hegel before starting work on the translation. Shpet was a scholar, he had around 30,000 books in his Moscow apartment.  Equally significantly, in 1913 Ernest Radlov had translated the Phenomenology into Russian. Shpet drew upon this earlier translation, and I see no reason to assume that it would have been unavailable to LSV, or that it went unread by any Russian Marxist or psychologist.
>
> Martin
>    
>> On May 2, 2016, at 7:42 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>>
>> but he hadn't, far less the Logic (though he had studied Lenin's Annotations on the Logic) or the Phenomenology, which no Marxist or Psychologist read in the period of his lifetime.
>
>