Lev Vygotsky was born in Orsha, Byelorussia, in the Russian Empire (today in Belarus) into a nonreligious Jewish family. He was raised in the city of Gomel, where he obtained both public and private education. He was influenced by his cousin, David Vygodsky.
The Vygotskys had eight children. Lev was keen on studying languages, literature, philosophy (Benedict Spinoza remained his favourite philosopher for the rest of the life).That contributed the boy’s abilities and enabled him to study at home
On the invitation of the new director of the Psychological Institute of Moscow, K. N. Kornilov, Vygotsky and his new wife, Roza Smekhova, moved to Moscow. Until the birth of his first daughter, Gita, they lived in "the basement of the Institute of Experimental Psychology" surrounded by the "archives of that institute's philosophical section".
He died of tuberculosis in 1934, at the age of 37, in Moscow.
Education
Vygotsky was eventually admitted to the Moscow State University through a “Jewish Lottery”, whereby a three per cent Jewish student quota for entry in Moscow and Saint Petersberg universities was made There he studied law, but his thirst for knowledge pushed him to enrol in the “unofficial” "Shanyavskii People’s University".
He went to gymnasium only for the last two years of studies but managed to finish it with a gold medal in 1913. By the moment he entered Moscow State University, he had already mastered to various extents German, French, English, Latin, Old Greek and Hebrew.
Initially L.Vygotsky studied at the University medicine but then asked to be transferred to the law faculty. However, the passion for literature remained and in 1914 L.Vygotsky entered also the history and philology faculty of A.L. Shenyavsky University. That university was a progressive institution for its time, admitting students irrespective of their nationality, religion or political ideas. The authorities did not recognize diplomas of A.L. Shenyavsky University, as it was not an official educational institution. However, the level of education there was high and the students could get really fundamental knowledge
Career
Upon graduation in 1917, Vygotsky returned to Gomel to teach, "a profession he was now able to practice due to the abolition of the anti-Semitic legislation after the October Socialist Revolution" and publish "copies of great literary works".
On 6 January 1924, Vygotsky delivered “The Methodology of Reflexologic and Psychological Investigationsat the “Second All-Russian Psychoneurological Congress at Leningrad. Vygotsky completed his dissertation in 1925 on "The Psychology of Art". He began his career at the Psychological Institute as a "staff scientist, second class and continued it at other educational, research and clinical institutions in Moscow, Leningrad and Kharkov extensively investigating ideas about cognitive development.
. L.Vygotsky’s first research work, devoted to the analysis of Shakespeare's Hamlet, was written as a course paj>er in philology. Prior to writing the paper, L.Vygotsky studied thoroughly both the original text of the tragedy and its translations, thus acquiring knowledge in philosophy of literature. The future of the work was unusual as it was published 52 years later, went through a lew printings, was translated into several languages anti got reviews leading experts in literature.
During his studies in Moscow, L.Vygotsky came seriously interested in psychology. It was not by chance that after graduating from the universities in 1917 and returning to Hoinel, L.Vygotsky began in 1919, when the city was liberated from German troops, to teach not only literature, aesthetics, philosophy and the Russian language at a vocational school, but also psychology and logics at a local jxxlugogical tehnikum (college).
Those were the years when L.Vygotsky conducted his first investigations in psychology and established a psychological laboratory, where he conducted research experiments. At the 2nd National Psychoneurology Congress held in 1924 in St. Petersburg, LVygotskv made three excellent presentations and was immediately invited to work at the Moscow Institute of Experimental Psychology. In 1925, although suffering from a serious illness L.Vygotsky was busy with nietluxlological work The Sense of Psychological Crisis, which was published onlv 55 vears later.
The lot of L.Vygotsky’s research papers in l>edagogical psychology was luckier, the first paper was published in 1926. Of special interest for the scholar were children with mental or physical disabilities. Although L.Vygotsky was very busy with his work and had health problems he studied medicine for three years because he felt that he lacked knowledge in medicine. In 1926, he established a special laboratory, which became a basis for the Experimental Institute of Defectology opened in 1929, where Vygotsky was the scientific director until his death.
The outstanding scholar was destined to live only 37 years. Those were the years of titanic work that resulted in 270 scientific works (some of them are still unpublished).
There is an opinion, that L.Vygotsky’s over-all psychological theory is united by three main themes: the importance of culture, the central role of the language and «the zone of proximal growth or development*. L.Vygotsky introduced the notion of the sign as of a special psychological tool, used
as an effective means of transforming the psyche from natural (biological) into cultural (historical) one. L. Vygotsky tried to reveal the general picture of psychological world of a person and studied for that purjxwe the evolution of sign meanings, primarily the language signs, in the intellectual life of a child. He maintained that only this way of teaching can e really effective as it is ahead of the development of a child.
The works by L. Vygotsky were criticised severely for ‘idealism' and ‘formalism’ and were not comprehended adequately by the Soviet psychology. Nevertheless, his ideas of correlation between language and thought and of the connection the formation of notions and education had a great influence on the applied aspects of pedagogy and the development of neurolinguistic research.
L.Vygotsky ‘s premature death prevented the implementation of the scholar’s many promising projects. Nevertheless, his ideas helped to find out totally different approaches to the fundamental issues related to the formation of a personality. The works done by L.Vygotsky had a deep response in all the sciences devoted to studying a human being, including linguistics, psychiatry, ethnography, sociology. L.Vygotsky' s influence is recognised also in the spheres o
Achievements
Vygotsky's interests in the fields of developmental psychology, child development, and education were extremely diverse. The philosophical framework he provided includes not only insightful interpretations about the cognitive role of tools of mediation, but also the re-interpretation of well-known concepts in psychology such as the notion of internalization of knowledge. Vygotsky introduced the notion of zone of proximal development, an innovative metaphor capable of describing not the actual, but the potential of human cognitive development. His work covered such diverse topics as the origin and the psychology of art, development of higher mental functions, philosophy of science and methodology of psychological research, the relation between learning and human development, concept formation, interrelation between language and thought development, play as a psychological phenomenon, the study of learning disabilities, and abnormal human development (aka defectology).
Works
book
Consciousness as a problem in the Psychology of Behavior, essay,
1925
Thinking and Speech
1934
essay
Ape, Primitive Man, and Child: Essays in the History of Behaviour
1930
Other Work
Educational Psychology
1926
Historical meaning of the crisis in Psychology
1927
The Problem of the Cultural Development of the Child, essay
1929
The Fundamental Problems of Defectology, article
1929
The Socialist alteration of Man
1930
Paedology of the Adolescent
1931
Play and its role in the Mental development of the Child
1933
Tool and symbol in child development
1934
Views
Perhaps Vygotsky's most important contribution concerns the inter-relationship of language development and thought. This problem was explored in Vygotsky's book Thinking and speech, titled, in Russian, Myshlenie i rech that came out in 1934. In fact, this book was a mere collection of essays and scholarly papers that Vygotsky wrote during different periods of his thought development and included writings of his "instrumental" and "holistic" periods. Vygotsky never saw the book published: it came out posthumously, edited by his closest associates (Kolbanovskii, Zankov, and Shif) not sooner than December, 1934, i.e., half a year after his death. First English translation was published in 1962 (with several later reeditions) heavily abbreviated and under an alternative and incorrect translation of the title Thought and Language that would stand for Russian Mysl' i iazyk. The book establishes the explicit and profound connection between speech (both silent inner speech and oral language), and the development of mental concepts and cognitive awareness. Vygotsky described inner speech as being qualitatively different from verbal external speech. Although Vygotsky believed inner speech developed from external speech via a gradual process of "internalization" (i.e., transition from the external to the internal), with younger children only really able to "think out loud," he claimed that in its mature form inner speech would not resemble spoken language as we know it (in particular, being greatly compressed). Hence, thought itself develops socially.
Personality
Vygotsky's interests in the fields of developmental psychology, child development, and education were extremely diverse. His philosophical framework includes interpretations of the cognitive role of mediation tools, as well as the re-interpretation of well-known concepts in psychology such as internalization of knowledge. Vygotsky introduced the notion of zone of proximal development, a metaphor capable of describing the potential of human cognitive development. His work covered topics such as the origin and the psychology of art, development of higher mental functions, philosophy of science and methodology of psychological research, the relation between learning and human development, concept formation, interrelation between language and thought development, play as a psychological phenomenon, learning disabilities, and abnormal human development (aka defectology)
Quotes from others about the person
"This is the final thing I have done in psychology – and I will like Moses die at the summit, having glimpsed the promised land but without setting foot on it. Farewell, dear creations. The rest is silence" his own statement
Connections
Lev was married on Roza and they had two daughters Asya and Gita
Wife:
Roza Noevna
Daughter:
Asya
Daughter:
Gita
adherent:
Lydia Ilinichna Bozovic
adherent:
Alexei Leontyev
adherent:
Alexander Luria
adherent:
Alexander Zaporozhets
References
250 people from Belarus in the dialogue of cultures
