ABSTRACT
The history of psychoanalysis gives testimony to the penetrability of national borders by ideas. Sigmund Freud's science of the individual gave rise to concepts that were equally well apprehended by and bore identical significance for different societies. Psychoanalysis might aptly be compared to a comet transecting various solar systems: The comet is surrounded by a vacuum and encounters no similar objects as it pursues its course. The evolution of Russian psychoanalysis was unique and multifaceted. In the area of theory, one of its most intriguing aspects is the line that can be traced from the Adlerian beliefs of Russian psychotherapists of the 1910s to the Trotskyism of Soviet analysts of the 1920s. The transnational character of psychoanalysis was amusingly confirmed by Igor' Shafarevich, an aggressive anti-Semite who nonetheless made recourse to Freud in his analysis of socialism as a manifestation of the death instinct.
