1931

[achilles-brazil.livejournal.com]

Greetings for all, psyhistorik.

I had already received much precious informations from you, and more than simple informations, nice clues to (re)construct all a methodological path to think historical process in psychology. But let me ask again about something not so deep, but, at least curious too me, before any causal relationship establishment... It's about the year 1931 again. As we know, it was in this year that we have a decree about reorientation in Educational Politics to all URSS (in van der Veer's understanding), and it was too an year in that an apparently paedology-favorable decree was proclamed (Постановление СНК РСФСР от7 марта 1931 года «Об организации педологической работы в республике) which was posteriorly cancelated by the famous 1936 resolution about paedologists and paedology. But now I will ask you for help, one more time, about another resolution of Central Comity of Communist Party URSS. It's about January, 25 1931. I have some notice about it in Ferenc Fehér (an entry to "Soviet marxism" - in Tom Bottomore "A Dictionary of marxist thought", from Oxford, 1983). I will try to pass from my Portuguese version to English:

• " A second phase was marked by destruction of two antagonistic groups, the mechanicists and the Deborinists, which theoretical disputation was around of the fact that the firsts (with who Bukharin had distant relation) denied the independent existence, or the relevance, of a marxist philosophy and considered natural sciences as a materialization of a marxist world view. Deborin an his group, by the other side, orthodox followers of Plekhanov, claimed the orientation of marxist philosophy in all scientific research. The debate, that extended itself for years, gives a good chance to the establishment of the collective authority of the party and of the personal authority of Stalin over the theoretical questions. For the first time, since 1917, a session of the Central Comity of the Party (January, 25, 1931) approved a resolution about purely theoretical questions, condemning the two groups, moving away academics from their positions and adopted new ways of administrative supervision of the intellectual life" (Fehér, 1983/1988 - p. 253)...

Is this correct? 

Can you suggest me any way by which I could read the original document from January, 25 1931? I'm specially interested in: what actually was those "new ways of administrative supervision of intellectual life"?

Thank you very, very much.
Achilles.

Comments

[achilles-brazil.livejournal.com]

At least, seems that it existed...

Постановление ЦК ВКП(б) от 25 января 1931 года "О журнале "Под знаменем марксизма""

[ipain.livejournal.com]

of course it existed, check out any deborin's bio. i was not able to find it on the web thou it was published ('кпсс в решениях' 1988), so after i scan september resolution, i'll get to the january one (unless someone beats me to it =).

it was too an year in that an apparently paedology-favorable decree was proclamed

the decree was 'reforming pedology' meaning all then current pedology was not good enough. so it died 5 year later while struggling to become better. check out академическое дело (http://www.nkj.ru/archive/articles/9908/) - all these topics have a lot of known and still hidden backgrounds. have u seen rodin's article (http://aprol-pro.narod.ru/student/pedagogika/005.htm)?

[achilles-brazil.livejournal.com]

humm...

Thank you very much...
I had not read Rodin's article yet. It will be very instructive.

I found a French site with some abstracts of Под знаменем марксизма:
http://www2.unil.ch/slav/ling/recherche/REVUES20-30/PODZNAMMARKS/index.html

Now I understand that it was an official journal, this is very interesting: Издательство ЦК ВКП (б) "Правда".

"La revue commence à paraître en janvier 1922, avec comme sous-titre «Ежемесячный философский и общественно-эконом. журнал». A cette époque elle est publiée par la maison d'éditions Материалист (Moscou). Son dernier numéro est publié en juin 1944.
Rédacteurs en chef :
- 1926-1930 : A.M. Deborin
- 1931-1944 : M.B. Mitin
- 1944 : M.T. Iofčuk
A partir de 1947 c'est la revue Voprosy filosofii qui reprend le rôle d'organe central de philosophie en URSS."

They has this nice picture too:
http://www2.unil.ch/slav/ling/recherche/REVUES20-30/PODZNAMMARKS/1922-4.jpg

For me a critical question that arose was the following: If the Deborin's defense of omnipresence of marxist philosophy in all scientific knowledge was not accepted anymore, then can we conclude that scientific thinking could obtain perhaps a little more autonomy, for some time, before Lysenko's episode? I saw that there was the so called "Aleksandrov discussion" in 1947, and "Michurin debate" at 1948, presided by Lysenko. I try to organize my mind, because in 1950 there was the famous "Pavovlian session" "event inspired and arranged by the academician-physiologist A. G. Ivanov-Smolensky" (according Homskaya, 1992/2001) - and is so hard to me understand how to find any explicit intellectual marxist heritage in Plavlov's contributions. Understand Pavlov as a genuine marxist contribution seems to be more related to "mechanicists" than to "deborinists" trends, in terms of debate before January 25, 1931.

What do you think?

[achilles-brazil.livejournal.com]

Ow, of course, I hope nobody wants to beat you, for such an innocent cultural curiosity... =)

[ipain.livejournal.com]

i know this site, it's just unfortunate that early soviet periodicals are still not easily available. but they are just tip of the iceberg, there are much more materials still dusting somewhere in russia, w/out any access whatsoever.

pavlov does look like 'mechanicist' and was labeled as such as well as some of his followers. his marxist contribution was to erase 'ideal' from brain's functionality and to make shift to proactive research (e.g. - constructing conditional reflexes). you are mixing people and ideas - deborin could be defending marxist science omnipresence with all his heart; be blamed for not defending it well enough and destroyed, in order, for others to defend it even stronger.

after нэп was destroyed, only carving a particular type of niche (too important or totally unimportant for state to get involved) allow one to have a somewhat autonomic scientific thinking.

i meant - scans it before i do.

[achilles-brazil.livejournal.com]

"deborin could be defending marxist science omnipresence with all his heart; be blamed for not defending it well enough and destroyed, in order, for others to defend it even stronger."

Humm... This make much more sense... I was supposing a third (dialectical) way to the two last opposite trends, that did not would proposed by the Party, any way. Now I understand... He was not so papist has the Pope... I am un-mixing better now. Thank you.

[achilles-brazil.livejournal.com]

Even so, Pavlov seems to be an interesting case, because seems that he was not so obligated to quote Marx and/or make phraseologycal jugglery in his texts... Well, I did not read many Plavlov's texts, but those that I read seemed to be "normal"... Since Lenin's time Pavlov was respected - I had a notice of an "Akt" from 1921 conceding favorable conditions to Pavlov. And I wonder he was really to be respected, even not privileged... I understand his work was an important scientific contribution in his specific field, at least. Don't you agree? If we can generalize to all human mental functions, and all human social life, is another subject... However I think this is complex... When ideological motivations can stay above all rationality and/or when these same motivations must import the authority of something anteriorly reasonable to sustain itself. Lysenko case seems to be the highest extrapolation... but 2 years latter Pavlov not only "survive", but his contributions was something generalized... with political proposes? Homskaya suggest that not only Pavlovian session made this generalization, but even a crude simplification... (well Pavlov himself was not alive anymore) Maybe the key would be in this "simplification" in order to generalize and to ideologically manipulate... I fear we also have this tactic even today, spite not necessarily made by the own State political devices, but more by the own laws of editorial marketing purposes, sometimes...

[ipain.livejournal.com]

pavlov is simply great. he started the whole thing by creating the benchmark for any human research in xx'th century. his results are still valid (though we know and understand much more now). currently i am reading a wonderful pavlov's biography by his student babkin.

life of his ideas in soviet science is another story (and another one abour his western infulences). he was respected by authorities starting with lenin and had his own space for work independent from state. appropriation of his ideas were as usual done with a butchering knife and as u rightly said for political purposes. again, there is a lot of known and still hidden pieces of the puzzle.

[achilles-brazil.livejournal.com]

Also van der Veer give me a nice picture about Pavlov's character too. Seems the he was really a gentleman:

"That scientific differences of opinion did not exclude civilized behavior in the older generation of Russian psychologists is proved by Pavlov who on occasion of the opening of Chelpanov's Institute wrote his colleague the following lines: "he who fully excludes any mention of subjective states from his laboratory sends his cordial congratulations to the Institute of Psychology and its founder" (Luria, 1979, p. 29). Pavlov also explicitly condemned Chelpanov's dismissal and offered him to head a psychological section in his own laboratory (Umrikhin, 1994)". (p. 25 Cambridge Companion).

=)

[ipain.livejournal.com]

i like another nice picture of its decendants:

[achilles-brazil.livejournal.com]

Oh... I don't know how to insert these images in my posts. It's very cool.

[ipain.livejournal.com]

btw, check out rodin's dissertation about bubnov (http://www.lib.ua-ru.net/diss/cont/65705.html).

[achilles-brazil.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[nemo-nostrum.livejournal.com]

For the analysis of the history and the contents of the discussions between Deborinites, Mechanists, and Bolshevizers you might want to have a look at David Bakhurst's book on Il'yenkov (http://books.google.com/books?id=zFKdE945GlEC&printsec=frontcover), specifically, chapter 2 (pp. 25-57); yet the rest of the stuff may look interesting and quite relevant, too.

You might also enjoy the memoirs of the academician A.M. Deborin of mid-1960s published in 2009 in Voprosy filosofii: http://community.livejournal.com/revkom2017/115342.html

[achilles-brazil.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much, Nemo.
Best.

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