Российская психология в пространстве мировой науки

Perhaps we are the last generation that has been taught to understand those texts, who masters that language, that conceptual apparatus. After us the layer thins rapidly. Are there many among Russian psychologists wishing to study AT approach today? I do not believe that best students queue to study AT even in the prime universities which have preserved the teaching staff mastering the theory and methodology of the AT approach. This trend was actual in another country with a different culture and a different mentality, in different universities.

If we do not ensure integration of the AT developments into the mainstream, the concepts that have not yet been integrated are likely to share the fate of artifacts of a dead civilization. I believe that the integration it is a matter of professional viability for scientists developing AT approach, and their duty to their teachers.

However, it would not be true to say that in the AT group of scholars integration tendencies are dominating.

The point is that the integration strategy for AT group encounters the maximum constraints and tactical difficulties. The language problem, the problem of translation, turns up a problem of hermeneutics here, bringing forth a necessity to relate the conceptual system of Soviet psychology, conceptual system so complex and sophisticated, with the conceptual system of the mainstream.

Consider for example the difficulties in translation of a key scientific term of AT – "sub'ekt". Translation of this word as "subject" (unfortunately, it happens often) immediately renders a text meaningless because of the mismatch of semantic fields, because of the difference of the meaning attributed to the term in the texts of Russian scholars and meaning of the word "subject" in English texts. Sub'ekt means somebody who's activity is generated by his own needs, who is choosing and pursuing his own aims, serving his own purposes: a self-determined and self-actualizing agent. And in English "subject" means the opposite – it is something or somebody who is put under some pressure, exposed to some action, subjected to some impact… This difficulty of translation of the notion of "Sub'ekt" into English could probably account for the fact that AT approach caused more interest in Germany and in Scandinavia than in the English speaking countries.

A special hermeneutics is needed for the integration of AT texts into the mainstream. So, the tactics of the movement towards integration for AT trend should be discussed by itself, but the necessity of the strategy for integration seems obvious.

The question of the place and significance of Russian psychology in the international science is not limited to the formal parameters of evaluation of quality of scientists' work. This is a key point today for professional self-identification for Russian psychologists, who from the very beginning of their professional education are actively assimilating production of foreign science, while at the same time, the vast majority of them are able to speak and write only in Russian.

Let us specify that by "international science" we mean the mainstream of scientific knowledge, which was shaped in the West after the World War II, and which is an objective reality of the contemporary world, where psychological practices have become a mass profession with more or less universal standards, where people live, study and work, moving from country to country.

Meanwhile the "Russian psychology" can be understood in different ways. By "Russian psychology" we can mean the psychological theories generated and developed in Russia. At the same time we can mean by "Russian psychology" the contemporary professional community in Russia.

Russian professional community has grown in number thousand times in the 90's. Such rapid quantitative growth naturally was accompanied by decline in the quality of education (on average) and – on average – by change of preferences from complex fundamental theoretical concepts of Soviet science to Western theories, presented in an accessible form in translated textbooks and addressing the demands of psychological practice. For "Westerners" in the Russian professional community this time is a period of growth, accompanied by problems natural for developing countries.

At the same time, Russian psychology as one of the great schools of the 20th с is going through a dramatic crisis. Speaking about Russian psychology as scientific knowledge, the question of its place in the international science is, first, the question of the impact on the development of the world science of Russian theories that had been integrated into its context, like Vygotsky's and Pavlov's, and secondly, it is the question of the causes and consequences of other Russian theories remaining obscure for the international science, not integrated in the context of the mainstream.