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Re: [xmca] Russian-American collaborations, historically speaking



Interesting idea to ask those who went early on, Bella.
Pribram, for example, met Luria and Sokolov at Stanford in, I think, 1959.
But the pre-war years? Hard to say.
mike

On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 10:40 PM, Bella Kotik-Friedgut <bella.kotik@gmail.com
> wrote:

> Mike, Unfortunately I can not help with the deeper history, I can only add
> that there was a waiting list for students and doctors who wanted to work
> with Luria. Alfred Ardila was a doctoral student of Homskaya and close to
> ARL; there were medical doctors as stagers- Richard Hurt, Thomas Hutton and
> many short term visitors- M. Gazzaniga, Lauren Harris, Jogannath Das
> (Canada). It would be possible to ask them how it influenced their work.
> May be because of my experience of growing up in Lurian environment  and
> his international status I always had a feeling of science as overborders
> activity ( our regular seminars with reviews and reports on publications in
> international journals etc.), though even then I felt that it is not so for
> everybody and every researcher in the USSR. It was an exclusive privilege
> thanks to Luria as a scientist and as an extraordinary  personality.
> Bella Kotik-Friedgut
>
> On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 6:08 AM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Anton, Jean, Bella, Anna, et. al--
>>
>> I have been corresponding with a Russian colleague about the history
>> of Russian-American collaborations/mutual influences in psychology. I
>> wonder if you could help fill out this picture?
>>
>> Up to the early 1920's I really know of nothing. Perhaps Sechenov was
>> influenced
>> by and influenced people in the U.S. Or perhaps it was just an
>> undifferentiated
>> zeitgeist.
>>
>> Horsely Gantt translated Pavlov, who certainly had a big influence in the
>> U.S. and later
>> Luria. He was influenced, in his work, but i know of no mutual
>> collaboration
>> other than the
>> translations. Luria interacted with Americans as a result of his visit to
>> the US in 1929, but
>> so far as I know, the collaborations were at the level of journal editing,
>> prefaces, and
>> that sort of thing. There were also interactions around psychoanalysis,
>> but
>> i think that was
>> mostly with Europeans.
>>
>> Some like to think that Dewey and Vygotsky met and were mutually
>> influenced,
>> but that never
>> has seemed likely to me. The influence of Dewey on Russian psychology
>> seems
>> clear, but the
>> reverse doubtful at best.
>>
>> Hebert Mueller (sp?) the geneticist went to the USSR in the late 1930's,
>> but
>> I know of no collaborative
>> consequences. The topic of genetics was kind of life threatening in the
>> USSR
>> at the time (in one
>> way) and in the US in another.
>>
>> Seems like cooperation really began after Stalin's death with visits from
>> Luria, Sokolov and others to the
>> "west," delegations of Americans going to Russia, the start of the
>> post-doctoral exchange program circa
>> 1959. Herb Pick worked with Gippenreiter, I worked with Luria, Jim Wertsch
>> worked with AA Leontiev,
>> and there was probably mutual influence in all these cases of some sort.
>>
>> Very sketchy, I realize. I know there were more extended exchanges from
>> 1970-1991 and then a lot of
>> different kinds of mutual interaction. But perhaps there are older and
>> deeper connections.
>>
>> Can anyone help on this topic?
>> mike
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>>
>
>
>
> --
> Sincerely yours Bella Kotik-Friedgut
>
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