Thank you, Vera, for sharing this information and this lesson about your own
political ordeal, and what a lesson this is. Yes, Vygotsky's heritage is
politically charged, very much so. Interestingly, I believe, its political
connotations change as the world around us keeps changing. What Mike wrote
about his experiences in Russia back in the 80s oddly brought me back to
Helena Worthen's earlier "what's going on here" mail that went seemingly
unnoticed or, at least, unanswered on this list. Here how I think the
different trends in Vera's, Mike's and Helena's postings are interrelated, a
view again back from the 80s in Moscow.
What is most amazing about the early 80s in Russia is how little people were
aware that they were on the edge of huge seismic changes that were about to
hit them. Sure, the political struggles went on on many academic fronts,
often taking bizarre and paranoic forms difficult to decipher to those not
immediately involved. The party apparatchiks were still influential, and as
we then thought, very much not impotent (I know first hand how easy it was
for them to ban one from travel). Their impotence is only clear in the
hindsight, when we look back at what so amazingly quickly happened to all of
these forms of control and forms of government as they were swept away in a
short period of time.
The system in the USSR itself seemed very stable and versatile to us back in
the early 80s; it existed for so long and there were so little clear
indications that it would ever crumble. Sure, there were problems, such as
an economic slow-down (what is called a recession in other countries), there
was a war with Afghanistan going on, and also a general disenchantment with
the political system, including its election system. First and foremost,
however, there was a problem with the corruption in the government (= party)
when few privileged people were able to misuse common resources for their
own benefit, creating a class of few rich and powerful (mostly apparatchiks)
and masses of underprivileged impoverished people with no access to power.
And there was clearly a lack of open discussions about these problems in the
society.
People did not think in terms of big changes, and yet these changes were
taking place, in tacit forms that became clear only in the hindsight. I
vividly remember that we thought about the Soviet regime as being a rogue
and corrupted one and our biggest fear was that, in case it was threatened
and for its own survival, the regime would do anything, especially wage more
and more wars just to keep itself in place. Somehow, luckily, this did not
happen and the country went through a peaceful though very painful
transformation that is still in progress but at least has taken clear hold
by now.
So, basically, my question is how is it that people can be so myopic to huge
tectonic shifts in the world around them? What does it take to see that the
world is crumbling? After all people themselves create societal changes,
they are the actors, not puppets in the process, so how is it that they are
often not aware of this role of theirs? Is it that we rather do not WANT to
see what is about to happen? Thank you, Helena, for bringing a larger
context - that gives rise to our motives and goals and also shapes the ways
we interact with each other also on this list - to the fore.
Anna Stetsenko
-----Original Message-----
From: Vera John-Steiner
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Sent: 2/2/2002 11:29 PM
Subject: Re: thanks Anna, Peter and......
Hi,
Mike mentions some of the events of the 70s and 80s and contact between
Soviet collegues and those of us residing in the USA. My somewhat
difficult
road towards citizenship in this country is strangely connected to these
contacts. I was a resident alien when I started to work with Mike,
Sylvia
Scribner and Ellen Souberman on the manuscripts which eventually became
the
basis of Mind in Society. Luria was still alive and I corresponded with
him
in English. He kindly answered some of my questions. while Mike was
away on
his field work. The correspondence turned up in the INS office in El
Paso,
and I was accused by the officers of the Immigration and Naturalization
service of denying that I knew Russian, they considered me dangerous.
They
denied my application. But this being America, there was a transcript of
the
interrogation which was suffieciently brutal, particularly about my
experiences during World War II, that it eventually mobilized some
influential citizens. After a few years,(during the Carter
administration)
the decision was reversed, and I became a citizen. My story may be
relevant
today as non-citizens are experiencing anew the awesome power of the
INS.
Another memory:In 1980, The Center for Psychosocial Studies in Chicago
organized an international meeting of Vygotsky scholars with Jim
Wertsch's
help and leadership. Davydov was present, but Zinchenko was unable to
attend. I wondered about the difference in their ability to travel. Mike
was
that before or after Davydov was expelled from the party?
I guess it is not surprising that part of Vygotsky's legacy is a
politically complex and difficult one,
Vera
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Cole <mcole@weber.ucsd.edu>
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Saturday, February 02, 2002 6:55 PM
Subject: thanks Anna, Peter and......
>
>Thanks for filling us in on some of the complexities of the history of
>events surrounding Carpay's interview, Anna.
>
>As a foreigner, I experienced some of the difficulties of find some
solid
>ground of reality in the hot house atmosphere of Moscovian academic
>conflicts in the 1980's. Let me add a few events of which I had
personal
>experience, the 1981 events not being one of them.
>
>1. From about 1978 to the demise of the USSR I was the official
representative
>of the American Psychological Association, through the American
Councile of
>Learned Societies, to the USSR Academy of Sciences. In that capacity I
sought
>to open up as much exchange as I could. (The Brushlinsky article
published
>in the LCHC Newsletter came from the visit of a Soviet delegation
here).
>
>During all of this time, because the exchange was with the Soviet
academy,
>no Vygotskian was put on a delegation coming to the US. No American
sent
>on the exchange could, without special permission TALK to a
psychologist
>outside of the Institute of Psychology headed by Lomov. Some special
>arrangements were made. Laura Martin was allowed to conducat research
>with Vitalii Rubstov (subsequently published in Russian and English).
>
>2. During this period, the only official contacts of American
psychologists
>with Soviet psychologists through the exchange had to occur in one room
>of the Institute of Psychology. That room was next door to the room of
the
>KGB officer at the Institute. The wall between his room and the
official
>room was made of a false front "file case" designed for recording all
>conversations that occurred there.
>
>3. In 1983, by a set of very unusual circumstances, my wife and I went
to
>Moscow as part of a delegationg led by Urie Bronfenbrenner. The meeting
>was held at the Lomov Institute. It was, as usual, difficult to have
>Vygotskians included in the discussions, but Davydov was allowed to
talk
>(Zinchenko was not).
>
> My wife, a journalist by profession, decided to study the Russian
>human potential movement of the period (an article subsequently
published
>in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology-- articles not totally critical
>off all aspects of Soviet life were not saleable at the time-- remember
the
>evil empire?). As part of her research, she spent a lot of time with
>people concerned about the blind-deaf. In this connection, she was
invited
>to a clandestine meeting by Felix Mikhailov, at which a young
Englishman
>named David Bakhurst was giving lectures on Wittgenstein and Ilyenkov.
The
>then-head of the Inst of Pedagogical Sciences-- who replaced Davydov
who
>had been removed from his post as director of the institute and kicked
out
>of the Party-- was livid that the meeting took place. The impotence
that
>Anna spoke of was evidenced by the fact that Mikhailov, Bibler, and
other
>scholars who dared to attend did not, so far as I know, suffer from
their
>attendance.
>
>No bottom line to this, just a footnote about the very different
realities
>that Russians and Americans, even those very few Americans who could
>understand Russian and knew something about Soviet life, experienced
even
>when in the same meetings, staying at the same hotels.
>
>The Communist party was not so impotent at the time that it failed to
send
>provacteurs in the form of prostitutes to hotel rooms or to arrange for
>convenient rides, just when they were needed, by Soviet colleagues who
>just happened to be passing by when the rides were needed.
>
>My own view, as an outsider, was that if you weren't paranoid under
those
>circumstances, you simply didn't know what was going on. That went for
>both Amerericans and our Soviet colleagues.
>mike
>
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