Lev Vygotskiy

Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (birth name Lev Simkhovich Vygodsky) was a Soviet psychologist and the founder of the cultural-historical school in psychology.

Lev Vygodsky was born as the second of eight children in the family of the deputy manager of the Gomel branch of the United Bank, merchant Simkha Yakovlevich, and his wife Tsipa Moiseevna Vygodskaya. He was educated by a private tutor, Sholom Aspiz, a social democrat known for his involvement in revolutionary activity. He was also significantly influenced by his cousin, literary critic and translator David Vygodsky.

In 1917, Lev Vygotsky graduated from the Faculty of Law of Moscow University and, at the same time, from the Faculty of History and Philosophy of Shanyavsky University. After completing his studies in Moscow, he returned to Gomel. In 1924, he moved to Moscow, where he lived the last decade of his life. He worked at the Moscow State Institute of Experimental Psychology (1924–1928), the State Institute of Scientific Pedagogy (GINP) at the Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute and at the A. I. Herzen Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute (both in 1927–1934), the Academy of Communist Education (AKV) (1929–1931), the Second Moscow State University (1927–1930), and, after the reorganization of the Second Moscow State University, at the M. N. Bubnov Moscow State Pedagogical Institute (1930–1934), as well as at the Experimental Defectological Institute he founded (1929–1934); he also lectured at a number of educational institutions and research organizations in Moscow, Leningrad, Tashkent, and Kharkov, for example at the Central Asian State University (SASU) (in 1929).

Vygotsky died on 11 June 1934 in Moscow of tuberculosis.

Lev S. Vygotsky’s daughter, Gita Lvovna Vygodskaya, was a Soviet psychologist and defectologist, Candidate of Psychological Sciences, and coauthor of the biography “L. S. Vygotsky: