The concept of activity in Soviet psychology: Vygotsky, his disciples and critics

For a long period of time, the concept of activity has remained a local affair of Soviet psychology. In his classical book. The New Man in Soviet Psychology, Raymond Bauer (1952) neglected entirely the concept of activity. More recent studies, such as those of Ted Payne (1968), Levy Rahmani (1973), and Luciano Mecacci (1979), mentioned this problem but hardly made it a center of their work. The major breakthrough occurred when a volume of translations, The

Concept of Activity in Soviet Psychology, edited by James Wertsch, appeared in 1981. Since then, there has been a growing interest among American psychologists in the problem of activity. To comprehend this problem properly, one should, however, be cognizant of its complex history and the current reevaluation of it by the younger generation of Soviet psychologists.