Reviewed by: Science of the Child in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia by Andy Byford Lisa A. Kirschenbaum Science of the Child in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia. By Andy Byford. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. xxiv + 297 pp. Cloth $85. Andy Byford's theoretically sophisticated and deeply researched monograph is as expansive and willing to transgress disciplinary boundaries as the "science of the child," whose origins, growth, and demise it documents. He defines the "science of the child" as a fluid domain of scientific knowledge and professional practice at the intersection of education, medicine, and psychology constructed in "most modernizing societies worldwide" between the 1880s and 1930s (1). Approaching Russian and early Soviet child science as part of the transnational "scientization" of childhood, the book often highlights continuities and similarities in the theories, purposes, institutions, and methods of child science across "modernizing societies" as well as across the revolutionary divide in Russia (4). However, Byford remains attuned to the distinctiveness of [End Page 167] the Russian and especially Soviet science of the child (called "pedology") that flourished in the 1920s, only to be eradicated by party decree in the mid-1930s. Connecting Soviet pedology to varied state interventions designed to modernize populations, Byford complicates histories of Soviet education that characterize pedology as a utopian project whose dissolution marked the triumph of Stalinism in the schools. The first half of the book charts the efforts of a wide range of scholars and practitioners to construct not only "scientific" understandings of child development, but new professional identities, institutions, and alliances. Byford, a professor of Russian, sets the chapter-length introduction in a highly theoretical key, distilling an impressive range of historical, sociological, and conceptual works on childhood and the human sciences into a complex account of the transnational emergence of child science. He links the impulse to turn children into both "objects of systematic science" and "biopsychosocial embodiments of development" to "accelerated modernization," the professionalization of teaching, and "the expanding welfare/warfare states' reliance on scientific expertise" (1, 2, 25). Historians may feel more at home in the chapters that follow, as Byford takes a somewhat more narrative and empirical approach to exploring significant themes in prerevolutionary child science. Chapter 2 tracks the concept of vospitanie (upbringing) from its emergence as a key concern of the liberal intelligentsia in the reformist 1860s through its "scientization" in the late nineteenth century. A particularly fascinating aspect of this chapter is Byford's discussion of the mobilization of parents to keep detailed accounts of their child's development, which could be interpreted by trained (usually male) professionals. In chapter 3, Byford turns to child science advocates' efforts to influence another key constituency regarded as in need of professionalization: teachers. He traces the diverse institutions and individuals who worked between 1890 and 1917 to develop a "scientific pedagogy" that would raise teachers' professional status and extend the reach of child experts in medicine and psychology (83). The difficulty of balancing the distinctive disciplinary priorities and perspectives shaping child science emerges forcefully in chapter 4, which explores conflicts between teachers, psychologists, and psychiatrists regarding who had the standing to diagnose and cure the "imperfect child" (113). The second half of the book focuses on the rise and fall of Soviet pedology, and chapter 5 explores 1917 as a critical turning point in the development of Russian child science. Byford questions the centrality of ideology in this rupture, highlighting instead the ramifications of a new commitment to the [End Page 168] upbringing of working-class and national-minority children. Indeed, he finds much continuity across the revolutionary divide, as individuals and institutions prominent before the Revolution worked on scientific solutions to the problem of child homelessness (besprizornost') that confronted the Soviet state between 1917 and the early 1920s. In chapter 6, Byford examines the heyday of Soviet pedology, the late 1920s, when the eclecticism of the early years of the decade gave way to efforts to articulate pedology's contribution to the revolutionary transformation envisioned by Stalin's first Five-Year Plan. He turns to pedology's demise in chapter 7. The sharp 1931 turn of educational policy toward more traditional schooling effectively reduced pedology...
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