ABSTRACT
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was one of the most important Russian psychologists of the first part of the twentieth century. He is most famous for his research into the development and structure of human consciousness, and his theory of signs, which explains the way in which children internalize language in the course of their cultural development. Culture is the product of social life and human social activity. That is why just by raising the question of the cultural development of behavior people are directly introducing the social plane of development. Shortly after graduating from the Moscow University in 1917, Vygotsky moved to Gomel, where his parents lived. He stayed there until 1924, first teaching literature at a provincial school and then lecturing at a local teachers' college. In Vygotsky's view, mental functioning in the individual can be understood only by going outside the individual and examining the social and cultural processes from which it derives.
