Re: [xmca] Special issue on Vygotsky's legacy: groundbreaking discoveries in PsyAnima, Dubna Psychological Journal (Mind in Society, Vygotsky's Paedology of 1931, and psychoanalysis)!

[Anton Yasnitsky <the_yasya@yahoo.com>]

Terrific questions, indeed!


1. Question: 

"Luria's bibliography of Vygotsky's writings (published in Mind in Society) was
not mentioned in Anton's paper. Any particular reason why?"


Answer:
Primarily because the study focused on the most authentic or the most reliable sources on Vygotsky,
and Mind in Society (1978), Vygotsky's most famous book that he never wrote, is definitely neither.
Besides, the author of the study was simply oblivious of the fact that this book contained 
yet another bibliography of Vygotsky's works.

There is nothing interesting in this "Luria's bibliography", although it might need somewhat closer examination.
Anyway, from its looks, this is a(n uncredited) republication of  T.M. Lifanova's (nee Shakhlevich) bibliography, 
one of the first in a row, the one that came out in 1974 in Russian journal Voprosy psikhologii, and was later
incorporated into the revised and substantially extended version that was published in 1996 (available online,
in Russian in Cyrillic characters -- http://www.voppsy.ru/journals_all/issues/1996/965/965137.htm, 
or  in Russian in Latin transliteration -- http://www.vigotski.net/lsv_biblio-1996,1999.pdf  ).
This earlier Lifanova (Shakhlevich) bibliography was taken in consideration 
in
Anton's paper The Vygotsky That We (Do Not) Know, and --unlike in Mind in Society --
it is referred in the full version of this paper, please see:

Yasnitsky, A. (2011). "I Wish You Knew From What Stray Matter...": 
Identifying the set of Vygotsky's major oeuvre and determining the chronology of their composition. 
PsyAnima, Dubna Psychological Journal, 4(4), 1-52 (In Russian); 
http://www.psyanima.ru/journal/2011/4/2011n4a1/2011n4a1.pdf

The reference in question is the one under #139:
139. Шахлевич, Т. М. (1974). Библиография трудов Л. С. Выготского. 
Вопросы психологии(3), 152—160.

Still, fyi, the best (the fullest, the most precise, etc.) Russian bibliography of Vygotsky's works is available on 
Russian wikipedia, here:

http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Библиография_Выготского;

(some isntructions on the use of this invaluable resource are available here: 
http://psyhistorik.livejournal.com/75872.html )

2. Question: 
" Luria provided the rough translations for the chapters from Tool and Symbol
that were published as the first four chapters of Mind in Society, what text was Luria working
from?"

Answer:
God knows. Perhaps, nobody else. In other words, the text just --voila!--appeared, 
and nobody knows where exactly it comes from. We might assume that there was a
prototypical Russian text that might have been translated into English for a handbook 
to be published in 1930 in the US by Murchison, BUT:
- the book came out, with a few chapters by Americans and foreigners, --
no Vygotsky or Luria's chapter was among these
- no traces of the manuscript or a translation of 1930s exists (or, at least, is known to exist)
- we have no evidence to safely claim that the English text that Luria  
provided as the rough translations for the chapters from Tool and Symbol
AND that were published as the first four chapters of Mind in Society is this very text of 1930, ON THE CONTRARY --
- our analysis of the actual text demonstrates several ideas that could not 
have appeared in Vygotsky's text as early as 1930, but could well have
be formulated at a later time, say, not earlier than 1932 

3. Question:
"Did Luria have his own archival texts? " 

Answer: NO.
Quote ( On Tool and Sign/Symbol): 
"The original Russian text [of Tool and Sign] was lost and only the English translation remained, 
prepared for a conference in the United States [not quite so -- AY] but never actually delivered. 
Forty years later, in the late sixties, the political climate thawed and their early ideas were exonerated. 
It was then that Luria discovered, to [p. 99] his dismay, the loss of the Russian original. 
Not one to by stymied by a challenge and always a practical man, he told me to translate 
The Tool and the Symbol from English "back" into Russian and make it sound like the original text. 
With a mixture of awe and amusement, I did just that, and our benigh forgery was passed for the real thing. 
Today, it graces the opening volume of the collection of Vygotsky's writings, 
without an explanation of what had actually happened."

Source: http://books.google.ca/books?id=9NEN80chkT8C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=benign%20forgery&f=false

Goldberg, E. (2005). The wisdom paradox: How your mind can grow stronger as your brain grows older. New York: Gotham books.
Pages 98-99

Luckily for us, the researchers, but quite unfortunately for us the readers, the editors manipulated with the text
even more than usual and published several fragments of the text twice, in different loci of the Russian edition.

Anlysis of the structure of the outcome and the style and language of these repeated text fragments--
 --obviously identical, but
not verbatim repetitions--confirms Goldberg's testimony and strongly suggests that
yet another (at least one) translator was employed to do the job. The repeated texts have all traced of the same 
original, phrased differently by several (at least two) different translators, each of which 
fairly consistently followed 
different, pretty idiosyncratic style of  translation. Discourse analysis convincingly shows this.

References:

For discourse analysis of a repeated fragment in the Russian text see:
Yasnitsky, A. (2011). "I Wish You Knew From What Stray Matter...": 
Identifying the set of Vygotsky's major oeuvre and determining the chronology of their composition.
PsyAnima, Dubna Psychological Journal, 4(4), 1-52 (In Russian)
http://www.psyanima.ru/journal/2011/4/2011n4a1/2011n4a1.pdf
Table 5, page 28

For the representation of the structural features of the Russian/English texts and nice pics for the repeated fragments see:
Kellogg, D. & Yasnitsky, A. (2011). The differences between the Russian and English texts of 
Tool and Symbol in Child Development. Supplementary and analytic materials. 
PsyAnima, Dubna Psychological Journal, 4(4), 98-158
http://www.psyanima.ru/journal/2011/4/2011n4a4/2011n4a4.pdf
Figures 1 and 2, pp. 101 and 102 respectively; the rest might be of interest, too.

For a summary of Yasntisky's (2011 ) longer paper see:
Yasnitsky, A. (2011). The Vygotsky That We (Do Not) Know: 
Vygotsky’s Main Works and the Chronology of their Composition. PsyAnima, Dubna Psychological Journal, 4(4), 53-61
http://www.psyanima.ru/journal/2011/4/2011n4a1/2011n4a1.1.pdf
 

4 Question:
"how does this textual material  relate to the history
of the translations of Tool and Sign on page 54 of Anton's paper?"

Answer: 
I believe the above answers 2 & 3 are pretty explanatory, but please let me know if any questions remain, or
further questions, comments or suggestions emerge.

5. Question:
"Does Anton know the titles of the three missing chapters from the Pedalogy of the Adolescent (Chapters 13, 14, 15)
from the Russian Collected Works? [In the Russian text chapter 12 is followed by chapter 16.]"

Answer: YES, he does.
The titles are:
Chapter 13: The choice of profession [Vybor professii] pp. 457-464
Chapter 14: Social behaviour of the adolescent [Sotsial'noe povedenie podrostka] pp. 464-471
Chapter 15: Working [Alternatively: Working-class --AY] adolescent [Rabochii podrostok]  pp. 471-481

For the relative size of the chapters in Vygotsky's "Paedology of the adolescent" [Pedologiia podrostka]  (1931)
see:
Yasnitsky, A. (2011). "I Wish You Knew From What Stray Matter...": 
Identifying the set of Vygotsky's major oeuvre and determining the chronology of their composition.
PsyAnima, Dubna Psychological Journal, 4(4), 1-52 (In Russian)
http://www.psyanima.ru/journal/2011/4/2011n4a1/2011n4a1.pdf Scheme 1, page 18 

6. Question: 
"Is there any information in the Vygotsky archives about Vygotsky's involvement in the Russian
Psychoanalytic Society (co-founded by Sabina Speilrein)?"

Answer: YES and NO.
Yes - there is, no - not in the archives.
A remark, though: Sabina S. returned to Russia from Switzerland/Austria in 1923, and Russian Psychoanalytic Society 
had been founded a year before, in 1922, by Ermakov, Wulf, Kannabich, and dozens of other enthusiasts 
(btw, Luria was not among them, he was in Kazan' back then, founding, in turn, Kazan' Psychoanalytic Society, though).

As to Vygotsky, here it is: he is mentioned among the reports of the Russian Society as an occasional presenter in 1924 &1927 
(he talked twice -- on 4.12.1924 and on 10.3.1927 on the topics related to the psychology of art). No other traces of 
Vygotsky among the activities of the Society has been found. After all, it was only in 1930 
that Vygotsky  was listed as its member. 
I tend to think this membership, were it true, was pretty formal. Then, in 1930 the Society ceased to exist, 
but definitely not for the reason it was not Marxist.

These reports were authored by A.R. Luria, later - Vera Schmidt, and published in Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse 
(and also in its mirror version that was published in English, too; I am not very sure about this, though). 
For the translated Russian texts of these reports documenting the activities of the Russian Psychoanalytic Society in 1922-1930 see:

http://psyhistorik.livejournal.com/35949.html


AY




________________________________
 From: larry smolucha <lsmolucha@hotmail.com>
To: the_yasya@yahoo.com 
Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2012 11:31:24 PM
Subject: RE: [xmca] Special issue on Vygotsky's legacy: groudbreaking discoveries in PsyAnima, Dubna Psychological Journal (Trotsky, Shmotsky, and Vygotsky)!
 

 
In regard to Anton's paper The Vygotsky That We (Do Not) Know:

Luria's bibliography of Vygotsky's writings (published in Mind in Society) was
not mentioned in Anton's paper. Any particular reason why?

 Luria provided the rough translations for the chapters from Tool and Symbol
that were published as the first four chapters of Mind in Society, what text was Luria working
from? Did Luria have his own archival texts? And, how does this textual material  relate to the history
of the translations of Tool and Sign on page 54 of Anton's paper?

Does Anton know the titles of the three missing chapters from the Pedalogy of the Adolescent (Chapters 13, 14, 15)
from the Russian Collected Works? [In the Russian text chapter 12 is followed by chapter 16.]

Is there any information in the Vygotsky archives about Vygotsky's involvement in the Russian
Psychoanalytic Society (co-founded by Sabina Speilrein)? Speilrein was a notable psychoanalyst 
who introduced the concept of the so-called death instinct (aggression toward self or others).
She was also Jung's first analysand and allegedly his lover (Madame X in his letters to Freud).
Speilrein was also Piaget's analyst. Both Vygotsky and Luria were members of the Russian
Psychoanalytic Society until it had to be disbanded (because it was not Marxist).

Thanks.





> Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2012 16:24:56 -0700
> From: the_yasya@yahoo.com
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Special issue on Vygotsky's legacy: groudbreaking	discoveries in PsyAnima, Dubna Psychological Journal (Trotsky,	Shmotsky, and Vygotsky)!
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> 
> Steve, thank you for you Trostkian update!
> 
> I am afraid, though, this input leads us quite away from the main topic that we attempt to discuss, namely: 
> 
> 
> recent groundbreaking textological and historiographic research that demonstrates that our view on what we believed were Vygotsky's main texts
> 
> was largely distorted and -- due to numerous falsifications, manipulations, and other damage done to Vygotsky's discourse --
> 
> still much work needs to be done. Luckily, a few important contribution have already been made and clarify the picture to some extent:
> 
> 
> http://www.psyanima.ru/journal/2011/4/index.php
> 
> 
> Thus, keeping this focus of our current discussion in mind, I believe I need to respond to several questions of yours that I can parse in your message.
> 
> 
> 1. A remark. I might well agree with you that Stalin, like Hitler -- and quite unlike Lenin or Trotsky -- was a reincarnation of Darth Vader, or, at least, Lord Voldemort,
> but please keep it in mind that such Manichean perspective on the history of Soviet science does not quite allow us understand why quite a few of American scholars were so 
> fascinated with "Stalinist" Soviet science of 1930s --
> 
> 
> see, e.g.: Peter J. Kuznick (1987). Beyond the laboratory: scientists as political activists in 1930s
> 
> http://books.google.ca/books?id=pQxy2PRHWrwC&pg=PA106#v=onepage&q&f=false
> 
> 
> or  how come the "oppressed science" of zee ruskies was able to scare all of us out of ours witts back in the 1950s with the launch of 'sputnik' in 1957 and, then Gagarin in 1961. 
> 
> For the not so simple and truly exciting history of the inseparable union between the science and the party-state apparatus in the Soviet Union from mid-1920s onwards see. e.g.: 
> 
> Krementsov, N. (1997). Stalinist Science. Princeton
> 
> Stalinist Science (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997)
> 
> http://books.google.ca/books?id=8Nl_FUgFykQC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
> 
> 2. Another remark. Yep, Vygotsky did refer to Trotsky's Utopian visions of the superman (Uebermensch, if you wish) of the inevitable Communist future, in his (i.e. Vygotsky's) 
> three books of mid-1920s, and, generally,seems to have been charmed by the "prophet armed/unarmed/outcast".
> However, I do not think there is anything distinctly Marxist in this variation of Uebermensch, 
> and the idea of a "new man" is very much ingrained into the entire construct of Western civilization and from time to time reoccurs in the history of humanity here and there.
> 
> 3. Now, to question. It seems that Trotsky's "Literature and revolution" came out in the original in 1923, and then, second, augmented edition - in 1924.
> 
> 4. Question: "
> Marxists tend to be very careful about claiming they have a "new" idea.  Marx and Engels were meticulous about this.  Vygotsky was like that too, yes? "
> Answer: yes and no, that depends. In certain instances Vygotsky does refer to his predecessors, in some instances -- he pretty charmingly forgets to do so. 
> Pretty messy and unorganized author, I should say.
> 
> 5. Phrase: "Vygotsky, who himself contributed to this revolution in substantial ways, despite the rising Stalinist counter-revolution that eventually buried Vygotsky's writings"
> Comments:
> * Vygotsky did contribute to the social and scientific life of the country in many, but not necessarily in substantial ways,
> * he did so in full accordance with all turns, ups and downs of the national policy and social processes throughout 1920s-1930s,
> * contributed notably to Stalinist counter-revolution during and after the Great Break and Cultural Revoltion of 1929-1932 as well as to the movements of the NEP period of 1920s
> * and, finally, was buried not by Stalinist oppressive apparatus, but by his allegedly most devoted students and followers :))
> 
> This is why much of the published legacy of Vygotsky, especially, the Soviet six-volume collection of his works of 1982-1984, is in such bad shape. 
For discussion and materials please see:
> 
> Yasnitsky, A.
> The Vygotsky That We (Do Not) Know: Vygotsky’s Main Works and the Chronology of their Composition
> http://www.psyanima.ru/journal/2011/4/2011n4a1/2011n4a1.1.pdf
> 
> Kellogg, D.
> Which is (More) Original, and Does Either Version Really Matter?
> (A comment on A. Yasnitsky’s “The Vygotsky That We (Do Not) Know: Vygotsky’s Main Works and the Chronology of their Composition”)
> http://www.psyanima.ru/journal/2011/4/2011n4a2/2011n4a2.pdf
> 
> Kellogg, D.
> Untangling a genetic root of Thinking and Speech:
> Towards a textology of Tool and Sign in Child Development
> http://www.psyanima.ru/journal/2011/4/2011n4a3/2011n4a3.pdf
> 
> Kellogg, D. & Yasnitsky, A.
> The differences between the Russian and English texts of Tool and Symbol in Child Development. Supplementary and analytic materials
> http://www.psyanima.ru/journal/2011/4/2011n4a4/2011n4a4.pdf
> 
> Mecacci, L. & Yasnitsky, A.
> Editorial Changes in the Three Russian Editions of Vygotsky's "Thinking and Speech" (1934, 1956, 1982): Towards Authoritative and Ultimate English Translation of the Book
> http://www.psyanima.ru/journal/2011/4/2011n4a5/2011n4a5.pdf
> 

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