The Vygotsky Circle (also known as Vygotsky–Luria CircleYasnitsky, A. & van der Veer, R. (Eds.) (2015) Revisionist Revolution in Vygotsky Studies London and New York: RoutledgeYasnitsky, A., van der Veer, R., Aguilar, E. & García, L.N. (Eds.) (2016) Buenos Aires: Miño y Dávila Editores) was an influential informal network of psychologists, educationalists, medical specialists, physiologists, and neuroscientists, associated with
Lev Vygotsky
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (russian: Лев Семёнович Выго́тский, p=vɨˈɡotskʲɪj; be, Леў Сямёнавіч Выго́цкі, p=vɨˈɡotskʲɪj; – June 11, 1934) was a Soviet psychologist, known for his work on ps ...
(1896–1934) and
Alexander Luria
Alexander Romanovich Luria (russian: Алекса́ндр Рома́нович Лу́рия, p=ˈlurʲɪjə; 16 July 1902 – 14 August 1977) was a Soviet neuropsychologist, often credited as a father of modern neuropsychology. He develope ...
(1902–1977), active in 1920-early 1940s in the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
(
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
,
Leningrad
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
and
Kharkiv
Kharkiv ( uk, wikt:Харків, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city and List of hromadas of Ukraine, municipality in Ukraine.cultural-historical psychology Cultural-historical psychology is a branch of psychological theory and practice associated with Lev Vygotsky and Alexander Luria and their Circle, who initiated it in the mid-1920s–1930s.Yasnitsky, A., van der Veer, R., & Ferrari, M. (Eds.) (2014) ...
.
The Vygotsky Circle, also referred to as "Vygotsky boom" incorporated the ideas of social and interpersonal relations, the practices of empirical scientific research, and "Stalinist science" based on the discursive practices of the Soviet science in the 1930s.Yasnitsky, A. (2009). Vygotsky Circle during the Decade of 1931-1941: Toward an Integrative Science of Mind, Brain, and Education. University of Toronto, 1-147. Retrieved from: https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/19140/1/Yasnitsky_Anton_200911_PhD_thesis.pdf The group dispersed after the German invasion of the Soviet Union at the beginning of World War II, but the influence of its former members was quite notable in
Soviet science
Science and technology in the Soviet Union served as an important part of national politics, practices, and identity. From the time of Lenin until the dissolution of the USSR in the early 1990s, both science and technology were intimately linked ...
of the postwar period, especially after Soviet psychology finally came to power in early 1960s. A problem with the theories of the Vygotsky Circle and connecting it to the present generation is the biases and misconceptions with the history of Soviet Psychology.
The Circle included altogether around three dozen individuals at different periods, including Leonid Sakharov, Boris Varshava,
Nikolai Bernstein Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bernstein (russian: Никола́й Алекса́ндрович Бернште́йн; 5 November 1896 – 16 January 1966) was a Soviet neurophysiologist who has pioneered motion-tracking devices and formal processing of in ...
Leonid Zankov Leonid Vladimirovich Zankov (russian: Леонид Владимирович Занков; 23 April 1901 – 27 November 1977) — was a Soviet psychologist and defectologist, a member of Vygotsky CircleYasnitsky (2015). Unity in diversity: Vygotsky- ...
Alexander Zaporozhets
Aleksandr Vladimirovich Zaporozhets ( rus, Александр Владимирович Запорожец, p=zəpɐˈroʐɨt͡s; , Kyiv, Russian Empire — October 7, 1981, Moscow. Soviet Union) was a Soviet developmental psychologist and a studen ...
, Filipp Bassin, and many others. German-American psychologist
Kurt Lewin
Kurt Lewin ( ; 9 September 1890 – 12 February 1947) was a German-American psychologist, known as one of the modern pioneers of social, organizational, and applied psychology in the United States. During his professional career Lewin applied hi ...
and Russian film director and art theorist
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (russian: Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ ɪjzʲɪnˈʂtʲejn, 2=Sergey Mikhaylovich Eyzenshteyn; 11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, screenw ...
are also mentioned as the "peripheral members" of the Circle.
History of the Circle
The Vygotsky Circle was formed around 1924 in Moscow after Vygotsky moved there from the provincial town of Gomel in Belarus. There at the Institute of Psychology he met graduate students Zankov, Solov'ev, Sakharov, and Varshava, as well as future collaborator Aleksander Luria. The group grew incrementally and operated in Moscow, Kharkiv, and Leningrad; all in the Soviet Union. From the beginning of World War II 1 Sept 1939 to the start of the
Great Patriotic War
The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of conflict between the European Axis powers against the Soviet Union (USSR), Poland and other Allies, which encompassed Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northeast Europe (Baltics), and Sout ...
, 22 June 1941, several centers of post-Vygotskian research were formed by Luria, Leontiev, Zankov, and Elkonin. The Circle ended, however, when the Soviet Union was invaded by Germany to start the Great Patriotic War.
However, by the end of 1930s a new center was formed around 1939 under the leadership of Luria and Leontiev. In the after-war period this developed into the so-called the "School of Vygotsky-Leontiev-Luria". Recent studies show that this "school" never existed as such.
There are two problems that are related to the Vygotsky circle. First was the historical recording of the Soviet psychology with innumerable gaps in time and prejudice. Second was the almost exclusive focus on the person, Lev Vygotsky, himself to the extent that the scientific contributions of other notable characters have been considerably downplayed or forgotten.
Vygotsky Circle collaborators
Source: Note: This list does not include some of Luria’s collaborators of 1920-30s and those members of the Kharkov group of researchers who did not work directly with Vygotsky;
Similar academic unions
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Prague Linguistic Circle
The Prague school or Prague linguistic circle is a language and literature society. It started in 1926 as a group of linguists, philologists and literary critics in Prague. Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis and ...
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Moscow Linguistic Circle
The Moscow linguistic circle was a group of social scientists in semiotics, literary theory, and linguistics active in Moscow from 1915 to ca. 1924. Its members included Filipp Fortunatov (its founder),Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen
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Linguistic Circle of New York The International Linguistic Association (ILA) was founded in 1943 as the Linguistic Circle of New York. Its founding members were academic linguists in the New York area, including many members of the École Libre des Hautes Études in exile. The m ...
Kurt Lewin
Kurt Lewin ( ; 9 September 1890 – 12 February 1947) was a German-American psychologist, known as one of the modern pioneers of social, organizational, and applied psychology in the United States. During his professional career Lewin applied hi ...
See also
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Constructivism
Constructivism may refer to:
Art and architecture
* Constructivism (art), an early 20th-century artistic movement that extols art as a practice for social purposes
* Constructivist architecture, an architectural movement in Russia in the 1920s a ...
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Kharkov School of Psychology
{{Use dmy dates, date=October 2015
The Kharkov school of psychology (''Харьковская психологическая школа'') is a tradition of developmental psychological research conducted in the paradigm of Lev Vygotsky's "sociocult ...
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Group dynamics
Group dynamics is a system of behaviors and psychological processes occurring within a social group (''intra''group dynamics), or between social groups ( ''inter''group dynamics). The study of group dynamics can be useful in understanding decision- ...
Gestalt Psychology
Gestalt-psychology, gestaltism, or configurationism is a school of psychology that emerged in the early twentieth century in Austria and Germany as a theory of perception that was a rejection of basic principles of Wilhelm Wundt's and Edward T ...
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Thesis circle
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A thesis circle involves a number of students and at least one professor, lecturer or instructor who collaborate in supervising and coaching final (undergraduate or MSc) projects. This tool for supervising student ...