ABSTRACT
In the early 1930s, despite his previous apparent success as a social activist and a scholar, Vygotsky appears distressed, frustrated, and disoriented. Stalin’s Great Break and the social turmoil resulting from the introduction and realization of the First Five-Year Plan – forced industrialization, collectivization, and cultural revolution – caught him fairly unprepared for change, and following local peer criticisms and breakthroughs in contemporary international science, Vygotsky turned into a “revisionist”, highly critical of the peers and himself. In numerous published works and archival documents we see our main character repeatedly criticizing himself and his associates for the mistakes they made during the previous, “instrumental” period of their work; Vygotsky is painfully looking for better ways to create a “new psychology” – both in the theoretical and practical domain, i.e. meeting the demands of national healthcare, education, and the economy.
