The author wishes to thank David Joravsky and James Rice for their careful and helpful reading of this paper. Support for this study was provided by the National Council for Soviet and East European Research, the W. Averill Harriman Institute for Advanced Studies of the Soviet Union, Columbia University, and the Duke University Research Council.

1. Technically, this was a reconstituting rather than the founding of the Russian Psychoanalytic Society since a similar body was set up in 1911. The original organization had ceased functioningduring World War I.

2. On Ermakov's significance, see Donald Young, “Ermakov and Psychoanalytic Criticism inRussia,” Slavic and East European Journal, 23, no. 1 (Spring 1979): 72–86.

3. V. N. Voloshinov, Freidizm: kriticheskii ocherk (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1927). There is considerabledebate over whether Bakhtin himself was the author of this analysis of Freudian theory. Foran English translation of this book, see V. N. Voloshinov, Freudianism: A Marxist Critique (NewYork: Academic Press, 1976). It should be noted, however, that the final chapter of the originalversion has been omitted in the translation. The chapter is of relevance here since it contains theauthor's arguments against four Soviet specialists who were in favor of accepting certain aspects ofFreudian theory. The theories advanced by these scholars (B. Bykhovskii, A. R. Luria, B. D. Fridman,and A. B. Zalkind) are discussed below in detail.

4. See Robert Maguire, Red Virgin Soil: Soviet Literature in the 1920's (Princeton, N.J.: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1968), especially pp. 205–206, 209–13.

5. On Zoshchenko's interest in Freud, see von Wiren-Garczynski, Vera, “Zoshchenko's PsychologicalInterests,” Slavic and East European Journal, 11, no. 1 (Spring 1967): 3–22.Google Scholar

6. For citations to Osipov's early articles in the Korsakov Journal of Neuropathology, see thebibliography in Lobner, Hans and Levitin, Vladimir, “A Short Account of Freudism: Notes on theHistory of Psychoanalysis in the USSR,” Sigmund Freud House Bulletin, 2, no. 1 (1978), pp. 28–29 Google Scholar. For a discussion of psychoanalysis before the revolution, see Miller, Martin A., “The Origins andDevelopment of Russian Psychoanalysis, 1909–1930,” Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, 14, no. 1 (January 1986)Google Scholar.

7. On the career of Spielrein, see Rice, James, “Russian Stereotypes in the Freud-Jung Correspondence, “ Slavic Review, 41, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 19–34 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, and Carotenuto, Aldo, Secret Symmetry:Sabina Spielrein between Jung and Freud (New York: Pantheon, 1982)Google Scholar. On Rosenthal, see Neiditsch, Sara, “Die Psychoanalyse in Russland wahrend der letzten Jahre,” Internationale ZeitsChrift für ärztliche Psychoanalyse, 7 (1921): 381–85.Google Scholar

8. Istoriia psikhiatrii (Leningrad: Gosudarstvenno-meditsinskoe izdatel'stvo, 1929).

9. On the problems of psychoanalysis within psychiatry during this period following the revolution,see Wortis, Joseph, Soviet Psychiatry (Baltimore, Md.: Williams and Wilkins, 1950), pp. 71–81 Google ScholarPubMed. See also Martin A. Miller, “The Theory and Practice of Soviet Psychiatry,” Psychiatry, February1984, pp. 13–24.

10. On Soviet psychology in the 1920s and its relationship to psychoanalysis, see Bauer, Raymond, The New Man in Soviet Psychology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Joravsky, David, “The Construction of the Stalinist Psyche,” in Fitzpatrick, Sheila, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1931 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), pp. 105–28Google Scholar; Kozulin, Alex, Psychology in Utopia: Toward a Social History of Soviet Psychology (Cambridge, Mass.:The MIT Press, 1984), especially pp. 5–39 and 83–101Google Scholar.

11. Bernard E. Bykhovskii, “O metodologicheskikh osnovaniiakh psikhoanaliticheskogo ucheniiaFreida,” Pod znamenem marksizma, 1923, no. 11–12 (November-December): 158–77.

12. Lobner and Levitin, “Short History of Freudism,” p. 13. Also see Jean Marti, “La psychanalyseen Russie et en Union Soviétique de 1909 a 1930,” Critique, 32, no. 346 (March 1976):216–17. Reisner was, in addition, an associate of the Russian Psychoanalytic Society and one of the founding members of the Communist Academy, both in Moscow. His best-known work at this timewas Gosudarstvo burzhuazii i RSFSR (Moscow, 1923).

13. 1922 to be exact. It should be noted that Reisner's psychoanalytic sources were only availablein German, whereas Bykhovskii had used the Russian translations of Freud's earlier writings.

14. Vienna, 1919.

15. James's book was published in Russian translation as Mnogoobrazie religioznogo opyta inMoscow in 1910. Reisner considered James “an apologist for religion” but found his analysis ofreligious motivation useful as a starting point for understanding Freud's critique.

16. M. A. Reisner, “Freid i ego shkola o religii,” Pechat’ i revoliutsiia, book 1 (January-February1924): 40–60; book 3 (May-June 1924): 81–106.

17. Ibid., pp. 51–52.

18. V., Lurinets, “Freidizm i Marksizm,” Pod znamenem marksizma, no. 8–9 (1924): 52–93.Google Scholar

19. Or, as he put it more succinctly, to view “the individual psyche as the apparatus of massresponses (collective reflex). “

20. “K postanovke problem teorii istoricheskogo materializma,” Vestnik Sotsialisticheskoi Akademii, book 3 (1923): 8–13.

21. M. A. Reisner, “Sotsial'naia psikhologiia i uchenie Freida,” Pechat’ i revoliutsiia, book 3(May 1925): 54–69; book 4 (June 1925): 88–100; book 5–6 (July-September 1925): 133–50. On theFrankfurt School's efforts in this regard, see Jay, Martin, The Dialectical Imagination (Boston: Little,Brown, 1973), pp. 86–111.Google Scholar

22. Another indication of this increasing influence can be seen in the discussions which tookplace at the Second Psychoneurological Congress in Petrograd, January 3–10, 1924. Freud was frequentlymentioned in the proceedings, and a special resolution formulated by one of his Russianfollowers (Zalkind) was accepted by the Congress. See G. Daian, “Vtoroi psikhonevrologicheskiis “ezd,” Krasnaia nov', 2 (19) (March 1924): 155–66, and 3 (20) (April-May 1924): 223–38.

23. Klara Tsetkin, Vospominaniia o Lenine (Moscow, 1925), p. 44. Krupskaia may or may nothave been speaking for her husband when she publicly criticized Freud in 1923, calling his theories “superficial explanations … imbued with petty bourgois views of women.” Quoted in A. V Petrovskii,Istoriia sovetskoi psikhologii (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1967), p. 89.

24. Trotskii, Lev, Sochineniia (Moscow-Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1927), vol. 21, p. 260.Google Scholar Trotskii'sexperience with Freud undoubtedly came via his comrade in Vienna, A. A. Ioffe, with whom hecollaborated in editing the émigré edition of Pravda. Ioffe had been in psychoanalytic treatment withAlfred Adler from 1908 to 1912 and had also contributed an article to the journal Psikhoterapiia in 1913 (no. 4) while a practicing physician in Russia. He committed suicide in 1927.

25. Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960),p. 220. There is some evidence indicating that Karl Radek may also have been a supporter ofFreudian theory among the leading Bolsheviks at this time. See A. B. Zalkind, “Freidizm i Marksizm, “Krasnaia nov', 4 (21) (June-July 1924): 164, and Reich, Wilhelm, “Psychoanalysis in the Soviet Union,” Sex-Pol: Essays, 1929–1934, ed. Baxandall, Lee (New York: Random House, 1966), p. 77.Google Scholar

26. Luria, Alexander, The Making of Mind (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979),p. 23 Google Scholar. Dilthey defined “nomothetic” as phenomena obeying universal laws and “idiographic” asindividual cases not explainable by scientific or natural laws. Luria's medical training was completed,after an interruption, in 1937.

27. Lobner and Levitin, “Short History of Freudism,” p. 12. The correspondence between Luriaand Freud is unpublished and will be unavailable until the year 2000, when Freud's archive can bemade public, according to Dr. Kurt Eissler, former Secretary of the Sigmund Freud Archives (personalcommunication).

28. See Radzikhovskii, L. A. and Khomskaia, E. D., “A. R. Luria and L. S. Vygotsky: EarlyYears of their Collaboration,” Soviet Review, 23, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 38 Google Scholar and also Luria, Alexander, The Nature of Human Conflicts (New York, 1932)Google Scholar.

29. In addition to the 1925 essay, Luria also published a comprehensive review of psychoanalyticresearch in Russia ( “Die Psychoanalyse in Russland,” Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, 11, no. 3 [1925]: 395–98), and an empirical paper ( “Die moderne russische Physiologie und diePsychoanalyse,” ibid., 12, no. 1 (1926): 40–53, in which he explicitly sought to fuse Pavlovian andFreudian methods. Since these papers were published abroad in German and were therefore not apart of the Bolshevik debate over Freud, they are not discussed here. On Kornilov's psychological work, see Bauer, Raymond, The New Man in Soviet Psychology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UniversityPress, 1959)Google Scholar, especially pp. 57–59,61,69–70, and also Graham, Loren, Science and Philosophyin the Soviet Union (New York: Knopf, 1972), pp. 363–64Google ScholarPubMed. For a Soviet treatment, see A. V Petrovskii,Istoriia sovetskoi psikhologii, pp. 53–65,121–32.

30. “Psychoanalysis as a System of Monistic Psychology,” in Cole, Michael, ed., The Selected Writings of A. R. Luria (White Plains, N.Y.: Sharpe, 1978), pp. 4–5 Google Scholar. Translated from Kornilov, K. N.,ed., Psikhologiia i marksizm (Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1925), pp. 47–80.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., p. 11.

32. Ibid., p. 16.

33. Ibid., pp. 16, 17.

34. Ibid., n. 32, p. 37.

35. Ibid., pp. 30, 31.

36. Portions of their statements are reproduced in Marti, “La psychanalyse en Russie,” Critique, 31, no. 346 (March 1976): 231.

37. Ibid., p. 221. There were about thirty listed members of the Russian Psychoanalytic Societybetween 1922 and 1929.

38. Sapir cites Engels's letter to Konrad Schmidt, October 27, 1890.

39. I. D. Sapir, “Freidizm i marksizm,” Pod znamenem marksizma, no. 11 (1926): 70.

40. Ibid., p. 76.

41. Ibid., p. 79.

42. It should be pointed out that Sapir's critique of Freud still retains some importance in the Soviet Union. The major text on the history of Soviet psychology includes an extensive quotationfrom Sapir in the section of the book devoted to this period of Freudian influences during thepostrevolutionary era. See A. V. Petrovskii, Istoriia sovetskoi psikhologii, pp. 91–92. Sapir's name,interestingly, does not appear in Petrovskii's footnote reference to the source of his quoted material.Sapir, who was a significant presence in the wider discussions of Soviet psychiatry and mental healthduring the 1920s, disappeared during the 1930s and may have been a purge victim. Among his works,see I. D. Sapir, Vysshaia nervnaia deiatel'nost’ cheloveka (Moscow, 1925).

43. “Psikhoanaliz kak estestvenno-nauchnaia distsiplina,” Vestnik Kommunisticheskoi Akademii, 1929, no. 35–36, pp. 345–50.

44. Reich, “Psychoanalysis in the Soviet Union,” p. 81. For the original publication, see “DieStellung der Psychoanalyse in der Sowjetunion: Notizen von einer Studienreise nach Russland,” DiePsychoanalytische Bewegung, 1 (1929): 358. See also Reich's stimulating discussion of Freudiantheory and Marxism in “Dialekticheskii materializm i psikhoanaliz,” Pod znamenem marksizma, no. 7–8 (July-August, 1929): 180–206. This article is translated in Sex-Pol: Essays, pp. 1–74, withsome changes.

45. I. Sapir, “Freidizm, sotsiologiia, psikhologiia,” Pod znamenem marksizma, no. 7–8 (1929):207–36. Reich's article was also criticized by Dr. Wulff, who knew the situation well. See Lobnerand Levitin, “Short History of Freudism,” pp. 15–16.

46. See Siegfried Bernfeld, “Die kommunistische Diskussion um die Psychoanalyse und Reichs'Widerlegung der Todestriebhypothese,’ “ Internationale Zeitschrift fur Psychoanalyse, 18, no. 3(1932): 352–85. Bernfeld reviews some of the articles discussed here on Freudian Marxism in additionto Reich's work regarding the Soviet Union. See also Richard Sterba, “Discussions of SigmundFreud,” The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 47, no. 2 (1978): 181–83, for Freud's informal criticism ofReich in Reich's presence at one of the meetings of Freud's Psychological Wednesday Society.

47. Lobner and Levitan, “Short History of Freudism,” p. 14.

48. See n. 3.

49. For Zalkind's pro-Freud ideas, see “Freidizm i marksizm,” Krasnaia nov', no. 4 (1924):163–86. On his anti-Freud stance in 1930, see Bauer, The New Man in Soviet Psychology, pp. 80–81, 99–100. The switch did not prevent Zalkind from vanishing in the 1930s. The date of his deathis unknown, an indication that he was probably a victim of the purges. See also Kozulin, Psychologyin Utopia, pp. 16–17, 20–22.

50. On the politicization process, see Joravsky, “The Construction of the Stalinist Psyche, “pp. 105–28, and “The Stalinist Mentality and the Higher Learning,” Slavic Review, 42, no. 4 (Winter1983): 575–600.

51. On the clinical work and publications of a psychoanalytic nature in these years, see Marti, “La psychanalyse,” pp. 232–36; Lobner and Levitin, “Short History of Freudism,” p. 15; and theannual reports in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.

52. The Future of an Illusion appeared in 1930 as Budushchnost’ odnoi illuzii, translated andedited by I. D. Ermakov.

53. Perepel, Elias, “The Psychoanalytic Movement in the U.S.S.R.,” Psychoanalytic Review, 26(1939): 299.Google Scholar

54. See Zalkind, “Freidizm i marksizm,” pp. 163–64.

55. Bauer, New Man, p. 49.

56. On these conflicting currents in the late 1920s and their resolution at the 1930 Congress,see Petrovskii, Istoriia sovetskoi psikhologii, pp. 117–39; Luria, Making of Mind, pp. 211–12; Bauer,New Man, pp. 62–92; and Joravsky, “Construction of the Stalinist Psyche,” pp. 108–13.

57. The original article, “Kul'tura i sotsializm,” appeared in Novyi mir, no. 1 (January 1927).It was republished in Trotskii, Sochineniia, pp. 423–46. For this passage, see pp. 430–31. An Englishtranslation can be found in Deutscher, Isaac, ed., The Age of Permanent Revolution: A TrotskyAnthology (New York: Dell, 1964), pp. 305–14Google Scholar, with this passage on pp. 312–13.

58. Freud, Sigmund, Civilization and its Discontents (New York: Norton, 1961), pp. 67, 69.Google Scholar

59. There is, of course, a vast literature on this subject. See Robert Heilbroner, “Marxism,Psychoanalysis and the Problem of a Unified Theory of Behavior,” Social Research, 42, no. 3 (Autumn 1975): 414–32, and Joel Kovel, “The Marxist View of Man and Psychoanalysis,” ibid., 43,no. 2 (Summer 1976): 220–45. Also of interest are Schneider, Michael, Neurosis and Civilization: AMarxist-Freudian Synthesis (New York: Seabury Press, 1975)Google Scholar; Robinson, Paul, The Freudian Left(New York: Harper and Row, 1969)Google Scholar; Seve, Lucien, Man in Marxist Theory and the Psychology of Personality (Sussex, England: Harvester Press, 1978)Google Scholar; and Jacoby, Russell, The Repression of Psychoanalysis(New York: Basic Books, 1983)Google Scholar.

60. For recent work in the Soviet Union on the concept of the unconscious, see Bassin, F., Prangishvili, \A., and Sheroziia, A., eds., BessoznateVnoe (Tbilisi: Metzniereba, 1978), 3 vols.Google Scholar; Chertok, Leon, “Reinstatement of the Concept of the Unconscious in the Soviet Union,” The American Journal of Psychiatry, 138, no. 5 (May 1981): 575–83Google ScholarPubMed; Zachepitskii, R. A., “Kriticheskii analiz ‘freidomarksizma, “Zhurnal nevropatologii i psikhiatrii imeni S. S. Korsakova, 82, no. 1 (1982): 142–48Google Scholar.For examples of interesting parallel work, which is rich in potential for comparison with the Sovietexperience described here, see Thomas E Glick, “The Naked Science: Psychoanalysis in Spain, 1914–1918 “; Use N. Bulhof, “Psychoanalysis in the Netherlands “; Hannah Decker, “The Reception ofPsychoanalysis in Germany “; and John C. Burnham, “The Reception of Psychoanalysis in WesternCultures: An Afterword on Its Comparative History,” all in Comparative Studies in Society andHistory, 24 (October 1982): 533–610.