ABSTRACT
In this period, the Communist Party actively intervened to change the direction of Soviet science. Many tendencies had appeared, or continued to exist, in the field of Soviet culture and science which were basically anti-Communist or anti-Russian. The policy of Zhdanovshchina (named after A. A. Zhdanov) was put into operation, to recognize these tendencies, to categorize the nature of their unacceptability, to ensure by ‘criticism and self-criticism’ that they were given up, and to deal with recalcitrant minorities which persisted in holding these views. This critical evaluation of cultural and scientific trends took place in the form of conferences of writers (1946), philosophers (1947), biologists (1948), psychologists and physiologists (1950), physicists ((1948), and many other specialists. The discussions were reported verbatim not only in the specialist journals but in the Party and popular press. The content of these discussions represents a new phase in Soviet thinking which is vital for the understanding of contemporary psychology and of Soviet science in general. Most of the questions discussed are of vital importance for psychology. The nature of the discussions reveals the context or environment within which psychology and psychologists make their contribution. In 1950, in a series of extraordinary interventions Stalin criticized the Georgian philologist N. Y. Marr and inaugurated a period of ‘thaw’ which persisted until, and after, Stalin’s death in 1953.
