Lev Vygotsky : biography
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky ( born Лев Симхович Выгодский (Lev Simkhovich Vygodsky)) (November 5 (November 17) 1896 – June 11, 1934) was a Russian and Soviet psychologist, the founder of an original holistic theory of human cultural and biosocial development commonly referred to as cultural-historical psychology, and leader of the Vygotsky Circle.
Vygotsky’s main work was in developmental psychology, and he proposed a theory of the development of higher cognitive functions in children that saw the emergence of the reasoning as emerging through practical activity in a social environment. He argued that the development of reasoning was semiotically mediated and therefore contingent on cultural practices and language as well as on universal cognitive processes.
Vygotsky also posited a concept of the Zone of Proximal Development, often understood to refer to the way in which the acquisition of new knowledge is dependent on previous learning, as well as the availability of instruction.
During his lifetime Vygotsky’s theories were controversial within the Soviet Union. In the 1970s Vygotsky’s ideas were introduced in the West where they were a central component of the development of new paradigms in developmental and educational psychology. While initially Vygotsky’s theories have been ignored in the West, they are today widely known, although scholars do not always agree with them, or agree about what he meant. The early 21st century has seen a trend towards reevaluating scholarly understandings of many of Vygotsky’s central concepts and theories.
Biography
Lev Vygotsky was born in the town of Orsha, Belarus, in the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus) into a non-religious middle class Jewish family. His father was a banker. He was raised in the city of Gomel, where he obtained both public and private education. In 1913 Vygotsky was admitted to the Moscow State University through a "Jewish Lottery" to meet a three percent Jewish student quota for entry in Moscow and Saint Petersberg universities.(p. 5-6) There he studied law and, in parallel, he attended lectures at fully official, but privately funded and non degree granting "Shanyavskii People’s University". His early interests were in the arts and he might have aspired to be a literary critic, fascinated with the formalism of his time.
Upon graduation in 1917, Vygotsky returned to Gomel, where he lived after the October Socialist Revolution of 1917 happened. There is virtually no information about his life during the years of the German occupation and the Civil War until the Bolsheviks overtook the town in 1919. Since then Vygotsky was an active participant of major social transformation under the Bolshevik rule and a fairly prominent representative of the Bolshevik government in Gomel in 1919-1923. For unclear reasons, around early 1920s, he changed his birth name from Vygodskii (with "d") into Vygotskii (with middle "t") and his patronymic from original Jewish "Simkhovich" to Slavic "Semenovich".Б. Г. Мещеряков. . Культурно-историческая психология №3/2007
In January 1924, Vygotsky took part in the Second All-Russian Psychoneurological Congress in Leningrad. Soon thereafter, Vygotsky received an invitation to become a research fellow at the Psychological Institute in Moscow. Vygotsky moved to Moscow with new wife Roza Smekhova. He began his career at the Psychological Institute as a "staff scientist, second class". (p. 10)Van der Veer, R., & Valsiner, J. (1991). [https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/10170 Understanding Vygotsky. A quest for synthesis]. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. By the end of 1925, Vygotsky completed his dissertation in 1925 on "The Psychology of Art" (not published until 1960s) and a book "Pedagogical Psychology" that was apparently created on the basis of lecture notes that he prepared back in Gomel as a psychology instructor at local educational establishments. In summer 1925 he made his first and only trip abroad to a London congress on the education of the deaf.van der Veer, R. & Zavershneva, E. (2011). To Moscow with Love: Partial Reconstruction of Vygotsky’s Trip to London. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 45(4), 458–474: , Upon return to the Soviet Union, he was hospitalized due to relapse of tuberculosis and, having miraculously survived, remained an invalid and out of job until the end of 1926.Завершнева Е.Ю. «Ключ к психологии человека»: комментарии к блокноту Л.С. Выготского из больницы «Захарьино» (1926 г.) // Вопр. психол. 2009. №3. С. 123—141Zavershneva, E. “The Key to Human Psychology”. Commentary on L.S. Vygotsky’s Notebook from the Zakharino Hospital (1926). Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, vol. 50, no. 4, July–August 2012 His dissertation was accepted as the prerequisite of scholarly degree, which was awarded to Vygotsky in fall 1925 in absentia.