The author is Luciano Mecacci, an Italian historian and psychologist, professor at the University of Florence, and a leading expert on the history of Soviet psychology. In the 1970s, he worked at the Institute of Psychology and Pedagogy and the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. This experience, unique for a Western scholar, allowed Mecacci not only to bring the works of Vygotsky, Bekhterev, Luria, and other leading scholars to an international audience but also to encounter the far less attractive aspects of Soviet practice—in particular, punitive psychiatry.
Participants: author Luciano Mecacci, translator of the book Varvara Babitskaya, publisher Dmitry Simanovsky.