Perspectives in Cultural-Historical Research 2 Еkaterina Zavershneva René van der Veer Editors Vygotsky’s Notebooks A Selection Perspectives in Cultural-Historical Research Volume 2 Series editors Marilyn Fleer, Peninsula Campus, Monash University, Frankston, Victoria, Australia Fernando González Rey, Department of Psychology, University of Brasilia, Brasília -DF, Brazil Elena Kravtsova, Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia Nikolai Veresov, Faculty of Education, Monash University, Frankston, Australia There is growing interest in the work of LS Vygotsky internationally, but also in finding new ways and perspectives for advancing cultural-historical theory for solving contemporary problems. Although Vygotsky has become one of the most influential scholars in education and psychology today, there is still a need for serious studies of his work because so much remains unexamined. The books in this series draw on the collected works of Vygotsky as a primary source of authority. They go beyond secondary sources and discuss Vygotsky’s original ideas in the context of a system of concepts or through the elaboration and theorisation of research findings so that contemporary problems can be addressed in new ways. This series collectively brings together under one umbrella a more equal representation of works from scholars across both the Northern and Southern continents. In the context of a large volume of contributions to cultural-historical theorisation and the empirical work from North America, there is an urgent need for making visible the works of scholars from countries who reside in countries other than North America. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13559 Еkaterina Zavershneva • René van der Veer Editors Vygotsky’s Notebooks A Selection 123 Editors Еkaterina Zavershneva René van der Veer Moscow State University Faculty of Education Moscow Leiden University Russia Leiden The Netherlands ISSN 2520-1530 ISSN 2520-1549 (electronic) Perspectives in Cultural-Historical Research ISBN 978-981-10-4623-0 ISBN 978-981-10-4625-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4625-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017941068 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore Preface It is ironic that Lev Vygotsky, who claimed for many years that mental develop- ment is about the internalization of external signs and that external signs must be replaced by inner ones during the course of such development, made notes throughout his life. It seems he was always making notes on whatever was at hand (e.g., cards, maps, pieces of paper, forms) and whatever he was doing (e.g., visiting museums, attending lectures, reading books, examining patients). Subsequently, these notes formed the basis of lectures, articles, and books. This book contains a selection of these notes found in Vygotsky’s personal archive. They were metic- ulously studied and deciphered by the first editor and, in cases of doubt, by both editors. The second editor provided a first translation of the text, and together the editors tried to solve the remaining linguistic and conceptual problems. Elsewhere one of us has argued that the fact that Vygotsky became popular long after his death causes problems for the modern reader (Van der Veer 2014, p. 4). We know so little of the psychology of the early 20th century that it is easy to attribute ideas to Vygotsky that were common at the time or fail to see the novelty of the ideas he advanced. In the words of Boring (1950, p. ix): “Without such knowledge he [the reader] sees the present in distorted perspective, he mistakes old facts and old views for new, and he remains unable to evaluate the significance of new movements and methods.” This is why the editors have supplied introductions and what may seem an excessive number of notes to the text. It is their hope that these will allow the reader to at least partially reconstruct the historical context of Vygotsky’s ideas. In writing these introductions and notes, they relied on the usual encyclopedias (notably, Wikipedia), read scores of articles and books by Vygotsky and his contemporaries, and were especially pleased with the existence of digitalized older books. The editors were also morally supported by colleagues and friends (e.g., Tatyana Akhutina, Igor Arievitch, Irina Kazakova, Peter Keiler, Alexandre Métraux, Maksim Osipov, Yakov Sinichkin, Natal’ya Stoyukhina, Anton Yasnitsky) and felt free to bother them with silly or difficult questions. In rare cases, they believed they knew something themselves. The result v vi Preface of this effort is what Vygotsky regarded as typical for the modern Western person: borrowed knowledge, e.g., knowledge that is transmitted from expert to novice. Few readers have been in the Sahara; yet most of them believe it is a hot and sandy place in the daytime. Even with the introductions and the footnotes, this volume requires some hard work by the reader, and the editors do not claim that they fully understand each and every part of the text. After all, a large part of this text was written for private use, and arguments were not spelled out. Moreover, sometimes is not even clear whether Vygotsky gives his own point of view or summarizes the view of a colleague. Hopefully, discussions of this volume in the scientific press and on the Internet will help to solve the remaining problems of comprehension. The publication of private notebooks always involves some modifications, and we wish to explain the procedure we followed. First, the text was deciphered and typed. This in itself is no easy task because Vygotsky’s handwriting was not always clear, and he frequently used abbreviations of his own invention (e.g., “m.r.” for “mental retardation” or “hndwrtng” for “handwriting”). One might say that his notebooks have several of the properties that Vygotsky himself ascribed to inner speech: abbreviations, references to things that are only clear to someone who has the same knowledge (e.g., “See my talk”), etc. In typing the text of the notebooks, we lost the typical typographical features of a manuscript, that is, the underlining, the crossing out, the arrows, the writing upside down or backwards, the added remarks in the margins, and so on. Rendering these features in the book would have made it very unpleasant to read, but in the comments we have indicated what readers cannot see for themselves. In addition, we have corrected the mistakes in foreign words, expressions, citations, and names. Although Vygotsky read several languages, his active use of them left much to be desired. Words underlined by Vygotsky, book and journal titles, poetry lines, and foreign words are rendered in italics. In the rare cases that Vygotsky himself used English words or expressions, these are given in bold script. Punctuation has been mostly left intact—unless this made the understanding difficult—and we added quotation marks when Vygotsky was citing a poet or writer verbatim. Vygotsky was in the habit of repeatedly writing up the outlines of the same talk or chapter and had a stock of pet expres- sions and ideas to which he came back time and again, as the reader will see in the present edition. For this reason, in rare cases, we left out part of the text when it became excessively repetitive. These suppressed passages have been indicated with angle brackets and ellipses. Insertions and comments by the editors are given in square brackets (i.e., [ ]) and/or small script. Words that were difficult or impossible to decipher are given in angle brackets (i.e., < >) with either our best guess or the word “illegible.” Finally, this book was edited by two authors who have never met each other and communicated solely through email. There is no doubt that this caused some dis- advantages—e.g., written speech needs to be much more elaborate than oral speech —and it is better not to speculate about the possible advantages. However, we Preface vii sincerely believe that the present result once more shows the truth of Feuerbach’s dictum, that what is impossible for one person is possible for two. Moscow, Russia Еkaterina Zavershneva Leiden, The Netherlands René van der Veer References Boring, E. G. (1950). A history of experimental psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Van der Veer, R. (2014). Lev Vygotsky. London: Bloomsbury. Contents 1 A Tragicomedy of Strivings ................................ 1 2 Jewry and World History .................................. 11 3 The Book of Fragments ..................................