Historiography of the post-Soviet period of Russian psychology: on the problem statement

The article draws attention to the problem of scarcity of historical and psychological research on the post-Soviet period of Russian psychology. Based on the analysis of the content of textbooks, dissertation research, and scientific publications, a conclusion is made about the insufficient coverage of facts, personalities, events, and factors of the formation of psychological science, practice, and education in the specified period. The paper notes the fragmented nature of the available data in publications devoted to individual personalities or subject areas and identifies the publications that can be regarded as laying groundwork for the development of the historiography of the period. It is shown that in recent decades the historiography of Russian psychology has mainly focused on the tasks of rediscovering and rethinking the pre-revolutionary and Soviet periods. Assumptions are made about the determinants of the historiographical gap of the period under consideration, including the following: the illusion of modernity in the last three decades; the historical and political incompleteness of the period; methodological and axiological unpreparedness of the psychological community for a holistic, open-minded, and multivariate discussion of the period. The objectives of the holistic panoramic historiography of the post-Soviet period are as follows: the identification of the main features of the context, factors of influence, events, microperiods, and leading personalities of the period; the identification of the main institutional changes in the organization of science, psychological education, and practice; systematization of the main advances and losses, innovations and contradictions. To solve the tasks set, in addition to traditional methods of documentary analysis being employed, it is proposed to actively use the methods of autobiography and interviewing living witnesses of the post-Soviet period. The difficulties of the historiography of the period include: the uncertainty of the temporal depth of the «beginning of history»; the need to substantiate the status of the event behind selected historical moments; the importance of choosing the proper historical, axiological, and methodological approaches to analysis and generalization; the recognition of the possibility of alternative versions of history in multiple interpretations of facts and personal assessments of contemporaries.