The Social History of Industrial Psychology in Russia

The history of industrial psychology in Soviet Russia of the '20s and '30s has traditionally been described largely in terms of the content of its subject matter, its methodological and theoretical foundations, the fate of its leaders, etc. (Gellershtein, 1960; Kol'tsova, Oleinik, & Noskova, 1990; Petrovskii, 1967, 1988). But attempts to reconstruct the history of applied psychology without paying attention to the processes that generate the corresponding social demand and the conditions for its fulfillment seem to me inadequate.