ABSTRACT
In the brief space of one chapter it is impossible to do justice to the wealth and variety of current Soviet research. The topics chosen for presentation here constitute a mere fraction of the ground covered by empirical research; they represent a sample, about ten per cent of the total, as does the actual work reported under each heading. The intention is, by the particular selection made, to represent certain key principles characteristic of the Soviet way of conceptualizing main issues, such as the psychology of the emotions, of set, or of social psychology.
There is an impression abroad that Soviet research in these, and other areas, is ‘coming round’ as the result of the ‘thaw’ to which reference has been made earlier. The appearance of Soviet psychologists at International Conferences (the first being at Montreal in 1954) and the holding of the great International Conference at Moscow in 1966, together with the massive amounts of translated materials that have become available throughout the sixties, contribute to this feeling.
It must be said however that co-operation is at the administrative level and not at the theoretical. Soviet psychology has not abandoned any of its traditional principles, – partisanship, materialist monism, theory of consciousness as the reflection of reality, development as a dialectical process involving conflict and synthesis. Here there is no accommodation. Certain aspects of Lysenko’s views have been discredited, because practice has shown him to be wrong about inter-specific struggle. Einstein is acceptable because he was, on balance, found to be on the side of materialism. The emphasis on Pavlovianism as a basis of psychology has been transposed from a major to a minor key but the basic commitment remains and continues to be emphasized. Empirical studies of groups and of crime are no longer taboo as belonging to applied political science. This is because the need for ‘hard’ data on these questions demands such action.
But the general picture of Soviet psychology presented in previous chapters remains accurate, as of today, and it seems unlikely to change in any major fundamental in the 70s – except that certain loosenesses of expression in relation to particular kinds of bourgeois psychology will almost certainly be brought under Party control, as in 1929, 1947 and 1950. We can be certain that Soviet psychology will continue to make massive strides not only in the central areas of learning, thought, language, perception, but in newer branches such as cybernetics, computer analysis, space psychology, social psychology. These advances will be made on the foundation of the Marxist materialist conception of the psyche.
