Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4hhp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-03T01:35:31.044Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Stalin and the Uses of Psychology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Robert C. Tucker
Get access

Abstract

THE influence of ideological conceptions upon the men who make Soviet policy has been frequently and rightly emphasized. Some observers are so deeply impressed by this influence that they tend to regard the Soviet system as a kind of ideocracy. It is undeniable that ideology has been one powerful factor in the shaping of Soviet policies and actions from the time of the October Revolution to the present. But one must not lose sight of the fact that, in Soviet Russia, the relationship between ideology and policy is one of mutual interaction. It is a two-way process in which theoretical conceptions affect the making of policy and practical considerations affect the content of the ideology. The ideological system is not a completely static thing. It has evolved over the years, and the realities of Soviet politics have been the driving force behind this evolution.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , July 1956 , pp. 455 - 483
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1956

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The Situation in Biological Science, Moscow, 1948, p. 274.

2 Ibid., p. 37.

3 Leites, Nathan, A Study of Bolshevism, Glencoe, III., 1953, pp. 67, 84.Google Scholar

4 The Situation in Biological Science, pp. 614–15.

5 Ibid., p. 615.

6 Stalin, J. V., “Ekonomicheskie Problemy Sotsializma v SSSR” (“Economie Problems of Socialism in the USSR”), Voprosy filosofii (Problems of Philosophy), No. 5 (1952), pp. 6, 8, 47.Google Scholar

7 Kedrov, B. M., “O materialisticheskom ponimanii zakonov prirody” (“On the Materialist Conception of Laws of Nature”), Voprosy filosofii, No. 6 (1952), pp. 69, 71.Google Scholar

8 History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik): Short Course, Moscow, 1945, pp. 114–15.

9 Pravda, April 19, 1952.

10 Ibid., September 23, 1949.

11 Ibid., September 27, 1949.

12 Ibid., July 1, 1950.

13 For understandable reasons, Teplov failed to add that this task had also not previously been set.

14 Pravda, July 2, 1950.

15 Teplov, B. M., SovetsKaya Psikhologicheskaya Nauka za 30 Let (Thirty Years of Soviet Psychological Science), Moscow, 1947, p. 14.Google Scholar

16 Antonov, N. P., “Dialekticheskii materialism-teoreticheskaya osnova psikhologii” (“Dialectical Materialism-The Theoretical Foundation of Psychology”), Voprosy filosofii, No. 1 (1953), p. 195.Google Scholar

17 Petrovsky, A. V., “K itogam soveshchaniya po psikhologii” (“On the Results of the Psychological Conference”), Voprosy filosofii, No. 5 (1953), p. 261.Google Scholar

18 Smirnov, A. A., “Sostoyanie psikhologii i ee perestroika na osnove ucheniya I. P. Pavlova” (“The State of Psychology and Its Reconstruction on the Basis of the Teaching of I. P. Pavlov”), SovetsKaya Pedagogika (Soviet Pedagogy), No. 8 (1952), p. 76.Google Scholar

19 In this brief summary of earlier trends, I have followed the interpretation set forth by Bauer, Raymond A. in his important study, The New Man in Soviet Psychology, Cambridge, Mass., 1952.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Smirnov, , op. cit., p. 78.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., p. 76.

22 For the sake of historical accuracy, it should be recorded that one N. P. Antonov, a psychologist from die town of Ivanovo, raised a lone and ineffectual voice of protest against diis basic premise. In an article contributed to Voprosy filosofii (No. 1 [1953], p. 197), he wrote: “By attempting to reduce the whole psyche to reflexes, to temporary connections, we are thereby equating the salivation of a dog at the sound of a metronome with the most intricate phenomena of the spiritual life of man, with the conscious activity of people, with the brilliant creations of human intelligence in poetry, art, science, social and political life.” Antonov's article immediately became the object of severe and concerted attack on the part of the other psychologists. But the quoted statement is valuable as an acknowledgment from a Soviet source of the full implications of the neo-Pavlovian trend.

23 Smirnov, , op. cit., p. 67.Google Scholar

24 Yagunkova, V. P., “Ob osnovnykh printsipakh reflektornoi teorii Akademika I. P. Pavlova’ (”On the Fundamental Principles of the Reflex Theory of Academician I. P. Pavlov”), Voprosy filosofii, No. 3 (1953), p. 110.Google Scholar

25 Rubinstein, S. L., “Uchenie I. P. Pavlova i nekotorye voprosy perestroiki psikho-logiii (“The Teaching of I. P. Pavlov and Certain Questions of the Reconstruction of Psychology”), Voprosy filosofii, No. 3 (1952), p. 203.Google Scholar

26 Stalin, J. V., Marksizm i Voprosy YazyKoznanii (Marxism and Questions of Linguistics), Moscow, 1950, p. 39.Google Scholar

27 Gorsky, D. P., “O roli yazyka v poznanii (“On the Role of Language in Cognition”), Voprosy filosofii, No. 2 (1953), p. 82.Google Scholar

28 Langer, Suzanne K., Philosophy in a New Key, New York, 1948, pp. 48–49.Google Scholar

29 Smirnov, , op. cit., p. 68.Google Scholar

30 It is of interest in this connection to note the extraordinarily intense activity, after 1950, in the writing and rewriting of dictionaries in the Soviet Union.

31 SovetsKaya Kniga (Soviet Book), No. 8 (1953), p. 33.

32 Pravda, July 2, 1954.

33 “O filosofskikh voprosakh psikhologii” (“On Philosophical Questions of Psychology”), Voprosy filosofii, No. 4 (1954).

34 Rubinstein, S. L., “Voprosy psikhologicheskoi teorii” (“Questions of Psychological Theory”), Voprosy psikhologii, No. 1 (1955), pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

35 Ibid., p. 17.

36 Partiinaya zhizn, No. 11 (June 1955), pp. 39–40.

37 Voprosy filosofii, No. 2 (1955), p. 85.

38 Literaturnaya Gazeta, August 14, 1954.