1.+Work+and+Theories

After graduating from University Vygotsky moved to Gomel and began teaching. He set up a lab at the Gomel College where he conducted psychological research and gave lectures. In 1924 Lev gave a presentation at the Second All-Russian Psychoneurological Congress in Leningrad. The Presentation was a complete success and Lev was offered work in Psychological Institute of Moscow. In 1925 Vygotsky finished his Ph.D. “The Psychology of Art”.

Vygotsky worked in the field of special education services in Russia. Lev conducted a lot of research in fields of disability, development and pedagogy. Vygostky and his colleagues had a goal to use methodology to adapt psychological theories into the Sovliet Union’s current political and social problems (Newman and Holzman, 1993). Apart from Russia’s sudden change from feudalism to socialism it also brought together many different cultural and ethnic groups. This created a lot of problems in the sense of the lack of appropriate services and resources for the society with a such wide range of cultural backgrounds, this meant that a lot of the people could not fully participate and function in their new society and infact felt left out from the social culture and their community.

After Vygotsky’s death in 1934 due to tuberculosis his students, family and colleagues remained loyal to him and continued his work. Vygotsky’s theory on “Thought and Language” was only first published in English in the early 1960s. But it was only in 1978 when “mind and Society” was published his contribution was noticed and appreciated. (Newman and Holzmann, 1993). Vygotsky became much appreciated and respected in the field of psychology and was credited with making the divide between European and Russian schools of psychological thought which holds a historical value on the course of psychology from 1920s to the present (Newman and Holzmann, 1993). Vygotsky’s work in the field of sociocultural development of humans and development of thought a nd speech at early childhood holds major contribution to the field of psychology and development.

__3. Zone of proximal development. __
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Vygotsky explored the concept of inter-relationships of language development and thought, he provided us with a connection between speech and the development of mental concepts and cognitive awareness. According to Vygotsky there are two types of speech inner speech and external speech, inner speech has been described as being very different to normal speech. But Vygotskys theory believed that inner speech developed from external speech. This can be observed when a child first starts to develop speech in general. They use this tool to describe what they want and what they need. This sort of speech, also known as "think out loud" is referring the developing staged of inter speech. The tool that a child would exercise to get what they want would gradually turn into a way of directing himself and guide personal behaviour, this is also known as self-talk. This is how a child learns to interact with other people. By the time children go to school they almost fully loose the idea of self-talk. The inner speech develops as a differentiation from social speech ([]).

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One of the main problems with Vygotsky,s work was that by 1930s his opponents criticized him for "idealist aberrations". At the time that could be compared to a charge of disloyalty to the Communist Party. In Stalin era such accusations could lead not only for potential loss of credit in academic work but also such things like imprisonment, detention, prosecution or even execution.  The main conflict between Vygotsky and Stalin arouse in the field of pedagogy. Stalin strongly disagreed with Vygostky’s approach to testing children for handicap and in fact Stalin considered Vygostky’s testing not valid or reliable, he saw the testing being over-identifying students as handicapped. Yaroshevsky offered evidence of the conflict as personal reasons from Stalin, calming that Stalin’s own son was amongst many children who failed the psychological tests. The field of study in pedagogy was banned as Stalin regarded Vygostky as “bourgeois idealist”. This resulted in many leading psycjologist who studied in that area being send to labour camps (http://vygotsky.afraid.org/).  As result of this some of Vygotsky's students such as Leontiev and Luria had to leave Moscow. They moved to Ukraine where they started the Kharkov School of Psychology ([]). By 1936, two years after Vygotsky's death, his work was banned in the USSR. But after Stalin died in 1953 the ban of Vygotsky's work was reconsidered and finally lifted in 1956.