Gita Vygodskaya (Lev Vygotsky’s daughter) died on July 13. She was in her mid-80s. I and so many Vygotskians around the world will miss her wonderful stories, her warmth and sparkle, and the joy she took in meeting people the world over whose work was inspired by her father’s writings.

Gita was nine years-old when her father died at age 37 in 1934. His works were then banned by Stalin and   his widow and two daughters kept the manuscripts safe under their beds in their apartment in Moscow for years. When her mother died, Gita took charge of keeping the  manuscripts safe and getting a volume of them finally published in 1956. Over the next two decades she worked, along with some of Vygotsky’s students, to turn the manuscripts into six volumes of his works published in Russia in the 1980s. She received her  doctorate in psychology from Moscow University in 1959 and worked with deaf children for many years.

I first met Gita in Moscow in 1993 when she invited me to visit her in her apartment. She shared memorabilia and stories of her childhood with her father, something she continued doing with people until her final days. The next year, I and the East Side Institute brought her to the US for her first ever visit to visit with our community, visit the Vygotskian school we were running at the time (Barbara Taylor School) and give a conference presentation.  Over the years, Gita and I saw each other a few more times. Our last visit was this past November at the home outside of Moscow she shared with her daughter, son-in-law and their family. With friends Carrie Lobman, Elina Lampert-Shepel and Dot Robbins, I spent a memorable and lovely night there.

I ended 2009 with two adventures—one in Russia and the other in Serbia. Two different trips, two different countries, two different organizing milieus—connected in our collective histories with each other and with Vygotsky.

I spent a week in Moscow and its surrounds, mostly at the 10th Annual Vygotsky Memorial Conference, organized by psychologist Elena Kravtsova of the Vygotsky Institute of Psychology at the Russia State University for the Humanities and aided immeasurably by Dot Robbins. For many years, Elena has been implementing the ideas of  her grandfather Lev Vygotsky in creative and significant ways in schools and university training, along with her husband Gennady Kravtsov.  (They were featured  at a conference on Vygotsky and Culture that I and the late Leslie Williams of Teachers College Columbia University convened in 1997; a chapter in my book, Schools for Growth, is devoted to one aspect of their work, based on first-hand experience in the late 90s.)

The conference offered a lot: a chance to experience first-hand several voices of Russian non-classical/Vygotskian psychology; the fun and challenge of leading a performatory workshop for more than 100 Russian university students with my dear  colleague Carrie Lobman; the privilege of  delivering a plenary address with the incomparable translation of another dear colleague Elina Lampert-Shepel; being reunited with Gita Vygodskaya after after nearly a decade (in addition to being together in Moscow and parts of Europe a few times, I and the Institute hosted Gita’s first ever visit to the US in the mid-1990s); and walking, talking with and learning from many of the other participants.

What I offered was a “Vygotsky without truth” — by which I meant the work of the Institute and its broader performance and development community.  I shared some of the theory/practice of truthless therapy and truthless developmental learning in and outside of schools, where it has come from, and how I understand it to be a worthwhile pursuit in the current social-cultural-political climate.

I think that the talk was challenging. For one thing, it didn’t do what many talks (not just at this conference but in most academic and intellectual contexts) do, which is to focus on what Vygotsky meant by something he wrote and make the argument for the correctness of that interpretation (“the truth”). I actually love following the train of thought of such speakers and authors and admire their smarts. It’s just not what I chose—or choose—to do. For another, putting “Vygotsky” and “therapy” together in the same sentence was completely new to the majority of the audience and, understandably, it took awhile for them to wrap their heads around it. It was fascinating and gratifying to me that it was the Russian psychologists who caught a glimpse of the newness and potential of our social therapeutic approach to emotionality and were the most eager to pursue the topic. The conversation continues!

I returned home for about two weeks and then traveled to Serbia, something I’ve been doing nearly every year since 1998. I go at the invitation of Zdravo da Ste (“Hi Neighbor”) to participate in their annual meeting. Zdravo da Ste is a unique organization initiated by volunteer developmental psychologists in 1992 originally to provide support to refugees—its work is Vygotskian based and delightfully focused on play, creativity and performance in all of their programs. Each year, guests like myself create a panel discussion and lead workshops on the theme chosen by the organization (this year it was play and development). Others who have become regular participants are Volker Bunzendahl (Denmark), Lina Kostarova-Unkovska (Macedonia), Paul Murray (UK and Serbia), Thomas Sorensen (Denmark), and Leif Strandberg (Sweden)—we were joined this year by Tim Prentki (UK). We’re an odd lot—academically trained (and somewhat academically located, on the fringe) practitioners and researchers who persist in creating environments for play, and who love to theorize about it too.

At the annual meeting (which took place in Golubac, a village in northeast Serbia) and again in Belgrade, Zdravo da Ste hosted a book launch for the Serbian edition of Let’s Develop! A Guide to Continuous Personal Growth, by Fred Newman (Institute co-founder, colleague, friend and mentor). A popular seller in English since 1994, the translation and publication came about through the efforts of  Zdravo da Ste psychologists (Vesna Ognjenovic and Bojana Skorc in particular), along with publisher Dragan Stojkovic and MOSTART.

Thus completed a year of travels, rich with new performances for me and others in our modest efforts to help the world develop. Here are some slides of some of the people and places I visited and people I worked and played with. It is great privilege to be building these relationships with colleagues who playfully and passionately resist “the tyranny of the normal.”

I am happy to report that a new documentary film, Lev Vygotsky: One Man’s Legacy through his Life and Theory, is being released this month. The filmmaker is Valerie Lowe who, in addition to making films, is an adult educator, corporate consultant and staff trainer in British Columbia — and a completely lovely person. I got to know Val when she was just beginning this project a few years ago and have been following its development. 

I also got  pre-release glimpses of the film this past fall when Val showed segments at the ISCAR (International Society for Cultural Activity Research) conference in San Diego and the Performing the World 2008 (PTW’08) conference in New York City. The film uniquely combines the political-cultural history of Vygotsky’s life with illustrations of contemporary Vygotskian practices in several countries, and is comprised of interviews with Vygotsky family members Gita L. Vygodskaya and Elena Kravtzova, photographs, archival footage, and commentaries by contemporary Vygotksian scholars, Michael Cole, Lois Holzman, Vera John-Steiner, Alex Kozulin, Tamara Lifanova, Luciano Mecacci, and James Wertsch. You can view sections of the film at the website media page. (You can see about 5 seconds of me in one of them.)

It was a  privilege to have been included in “Lev Vygotsky” and, even more, to have been able to introduce Val and viewers to the some extraordinary Vygotskian practitioners.

Some colleagues and I are now planning a New York premiere of the film to take place in March or April. Watch for the announcement!