Social psychology in the Soviet Union

Following the evolution of Soviet social psychology is rewarding not only in itself but also for the light it throws on current events and trends in contemporary Soviet philosophy in general.     

Pavlov and the demise of the influence of Gestalt psychology in the Soviet Union

Summary The demise of the influence of the classical Gestalt psychology in the Soviet Union has been linked to I.P. Pavlov's negative stance toward Gestalt tenets. Actually, Pavlov's attitude toward Gestalt psychology was by no means uniform. Pavlov was receptive to, as well as critical of a number of substantive issues. He acknowledged the Gestalt interpretation of transposition, but criticized the Gestalt rejection of association and learning by trial and error. Pavlov's strongest objection to Gestalt psychology centered on the philosophical issues of causality, methodology, and on the problem of mind and body. Despite these objections, no direct evidence links Pavlov's criticism of Gestalt theses to the weakening of their influence on Soviet psychology. Instead, the demise of classical Gestalt psychology in the Soviet Union should be attributed to political exigency. Soviet authorities, in a period of political crises, were intent upon the elimination of all traces of bourgeois psychologies.     

Suicide and suicidology in the Soviet Union

This study was conducted in order to obtain information on suicide in the Soviet Union, an important subject for which we have no scientific literature. Studies of attempted suicide in Soviet psychiatric journals were analyzed. This information was supplemented by interviews with Soviet psychiatrists now living abroad. The results of this inquiry show that suicide is a subject that clearly has become of increasing concern in the Soviet Union. Furthermore, in spite of the absence of essential statistical data on mortality, there is evidence indicating that the rate of Soviet suicide may be rising in certain parts of the country. Finally, growing concern about suicide has led to expanded prevention programs and to a new emphasis on social and psychological etiological explanations. In particular, the role of the Soviet family in crisis has been emphasized as a major influence in understanding the causes of suicidal attempts.     

Educational Reforms in the Former Soviet Union

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, there have been movements toward a range of education reforms. In this article, an historical account is presented of education from communist roots to current times.     

Leadership of antireligious propaganda in the Soviet Union

Re-emergent scientific atheism bears the marks of its historical origins in the efforts of Bon-Bruevi and Jaroslavskij. The disciples of the Lenin generation use their fathers somewhat as second-level classics.     

On the theoretical foundations of Soviet psychology

Conclusion We are now in a position to examine the claim that Pavlovian physiology and Marxist-Leninist philosophy form two complementary systems.There is certainly a similarity between the Leninist theory of reflection and Pavlov's theory of higher nervous activity. Both present so-called psychic phenomena as a reaction of the organism to the stimuli of the outer world and both insist that this reflection is not a passive reception of impressions but is an active response on the part of the organism.Again both systems are monist; they are united in excluding the possibility of having recourse to a non-material substance as the basis for psychic phenomena. But for Pavlov this exclusion is a scientific axiom while for Marxism-Leninism it is founded on philosophical materialism. However, the most important difference between Pavlov's theories and Marxism-Leninism on this point is that Pavlov's approach to psychic is fundamentally mechanistic and reductionist whereas that of Marxism-Leninism is dialectical and consequently anti-reductionist and anti-mechanist. Soviet psychology is, in consequence, founded partly on a mechanist system which is not materialist in the full sense of the word, and partly on a materialist system which is definitely not mechanist. From this point of view there is a definite discrepancy between the two traditions on which Soviet psychology is founded and which goes a long way towards explaining many of the inconsistencies in Soviet psychological theory.     

Marxism after the Collapse of the Soviet Union

The article studies the implications for historical materialism of the failure of the socialist project in the Soviet Union. The author demonstrates that the said failure broadly confirms central historical materialist theses, which would have been difficult to sustain if the Russian revolution had succeeded in its goal of superseding capitalism and establishing a socialist society.