A.R. Luria and L. S. Vygotsky: Early Years of their Collaboration

Abstract

The names [Luria and Vygotsky] are traditionally linked. Anyone who has the least interest in the history of Soviet psychology knows that Alexander Romanovich Luria (1902-1977) was a student of Lev Semenovich Vygotsky (1896-1934). In the '20s they, together with Aleksei Nikolaev Leont'ev (1903-1979), formed the so-called troika that has played such an important role in the development of Soviet psychology. The external circumstances of their joint work at the Institute of Experimental Psychology (today the Scientific Research Institute of the Department of Applied Psychology of the USSR Academy of Pedagogical Science) and at the Krupskaya Academy of Communist Education in the '20s and '30s are known to everyone. Nevertheless, these facts have remained almost unanalyzed by historians of psychology. All of the history of the scientific collaboration between Vygotsky and Luria, the discipleship of the latter, is of undoubted interest for both the history of psychology and for the philosophy of science itself (as a model of the relationship between teacher and student in science). We shall attempt in this article to examine these questions from the perspective of one topic: What importance did his contact with Vygotsky have for Luria's scientific career? (1)