The meaning and origin of the activity concept in Soviet psychology—with primary focus on A. N. Leontiev’s approach

Collective origin of activity concept in Soviet psychology

A newcomer to the theory of activity might expect that A. N. Leontiev (1903–1979) was the originator of the activity concept. It is common to see such formulations that describe Leontiev as “the creator of … the psychological theory of activity” (Davydov, 1979/1981, p. 4) or “the development of Leontiev’s activity theory” (Yasnitsky & Ferrari, 2008b, p. 105), and A.N. Leontiev’s 1975/1978 book, Activity, Consciousness, and Personality, is usually cited when the concept is mentioned, or the structure of activity (e.g., relations between motive, need, action, goal) is presented. But it is also striking that no analytic or speculative account is given about how the concept was formulated. For example, one might expect that the biographical account of A. N. Leontiev’s life and work through 1940, written by his son A. A. Leontiev (2003/2005) and based in part on unpublished manuscripts and other documents, would give some kind of story, even if a mythical creation, about the origin of the activity concept. Instead, this account contains a number of examples of where and when the term activity was used by Leontiev and Vygotsky, along with other comments about the concept from other researchers (e.g., Gal’perin, Zaporozhets, Luria) who were working with Leontiev at the time these ideas were first developed. Similarly, A. N. Leontiev’s (1976/1989) own account, admittedly given some 30 years after the fact, mostly indicates the research topics and results, especially from Vygotsky, Gal’perin, and Zinchenko, that he considered important in the development of the concept, which gives the impression that the theoretical concept of activity emerged gradually as a way to analyze theoretically motivated empirical problems, first as terminology, later as a theoretical structure. For example, the terms were introduced in the course of investigation of “very ordinary, practical actions of children and of the development of visual-practical intelligence… . A child had to perform practical tasks… . At this point, it was necessary to adopt the term action and the term activity at the same time” (p. 33). In Sokolova’s (2005) introduction on the “formation of activity psychology,” she only indicates that everything can be found in Leontiev’s texts, but her introduction and the texts from the 1930s to which she refers do not provide any perspective or explanation about how the concept came to be formed. These three examples illustrate the absence of explanation about the concept’s origin in contexts where it would be expected (given the authors and the purpose of their texts). While these “omissions” are not proof such an account could not be constructed, it nonetheless suggests that there is not a well-rehearsed stereotypical story within Leontiev’s own personal sphere about the “birth” or “discovery” of the activity concept.

Another way to explain the lack of a discovery story for the concept of activity is that the idea emerged as a joint accomplishment among psychological researchers in the Soviet Union, as they tried to address a dialectic that arose within this scientific community. A case can be made, supported in part by A. N. Leontiev’s own statements, that the general theoretical perspective was a collective accomplishment that emerged from a particular community of researchers in Kharkov, Moscow, and Leningrad, probably toward the end of the 1930s, while Leontiev was living and/or working in all of these cities. Several of these researchers had started as students or research assistants under Vygotsky’s supervision, and continued to work on research problems within the general theoretical perspective, often under Leontiev’s formal leadership from about 1932. It appears that Leontiev, as a senior member and formal leader in this community, came to systematize a theoretical structure for analyzing activity, probably in dialogue with other researchers within his research community, taking inspiration from the empirical problems they were investigating, often with advice or supervision from Leontiev, and from the results of those investigations (e.g., Gal’perin, 1977/1992, pp. 41–42, 59, fn. 1). As a historical fact, in an unpublished manuscript, A. N. Leontiev (1940/2005b) discusses activity, motive, action, goal, condition, and operation in terms that are well-known from his 1975/1978 book, Activity, Consciousness, and Personality. Therefore, one can say with confidence that these ideas were formulated no later than 1940. But there is no indication that Leontiev claimed to be an “inventor” or “originator” of the activity concept in general, or the one who introduced the activity concept into psychological theory in the Soviet Union. Similarly, there is no indication that he claims to have produced an “activity theory” (e.g., the term does not appear in his final book from 1975).

Generality of activity in Soviet psychology

The following quotes illustrate the idea that the concept of activity is generally accepted within Soviet psychology, and not simply limited to Leontiev’s formulations. The first two quotes come from the early 1960s and late 1940s (i.e., prior to the publication of Leontiev’s articles about activity in the 1970s, which were the basis for his 1975/1978 book Activity, Consciousness, and Personality).

A section in Brožek (1962) gives a “freely rendered translation of selected passages” (p. 552) from the foreword of the first volume of The Science of Psychology in the U.S.S.R. from 1959. This volume was written by Soviet specialists for other Soviet specialists (A. N. Leont’ev, Luria, & Smirnov, 1969, p. v). Brožek describes the foreword as “the editorial self-portrait of contemporary Soviet psychology” (1962, p. 554). The following passage reflects important assumptions about the activity concept, which are discussed later as the ontological assumption and the origin of consciousness assumption: “The indissoluble connection between the reflection of the world and man’s [sic] activity (deyatel’nost’) is one of the basic tenets of Soviet psychology. Consequently, psychic (psikhicheskii) processes must be studied under concrete conditions of man’s [sic] activities” (p. 553).

London (1949) presents a survey of Soviet psychology up to 1936 (though drawing on sources through 1948). Here one can read about the importance of the activity concept, as well as a clear expression of the ontological assumption:

the concept of the unity of consciousness and activity … is … regarded as the keystone of Soviet psychology. The connection between consciousness and activity is by no means a mere formal device, but is regarded as a deeply intrinsic and reciprocally genetic relationship, whereby the one conditions the advent and development of the other. (p. 271)

The next set of quotes come from after the publication of A.N. Leontiev’s 1975/1978 book. The first quote comes from a researcher who was a colleague of Leontiev’s during the initial period when Leontiev was formulating his views about activity. “For more than thirty years, from the early thirties to the mid-sixties, the problem of activity has pervaded Soviet psychology” (Gal’perin, 1977/1992, p. 37). The second quote comes from a leading researcher in the 1980s, Talyzina, who was responding to a direct question about whether activity theory was the special work of one person or a general concept within cultural-historical theory. Her response was given in a symposium at possibly one of the first international congresses devoted to a focus on activity:

First I should like to point out that in our country activity theory is neither perceived as Rubinstein’s nor as Leontiev’s conception. The majority of Soviet psychologists agrees [sic] with the general lines underlying Soviet psychology. (in Braun et al., 1989, p. 13)

She mentions three main principles in this conception: “activity approach to the process of the human psyche … the social determination of human psychic development … the unity of the external materialized and internal psychic activities” (in Braun et al., 1989, p. 13).

And finally, from Lomov (1981/1982), the then-head of the Institute of Psychology of the Academy of Sciences: “It is a commonplace that the application of the Marxist theory of activity to the analysis of the human mind has played a tremendous role in the development of Soviet psychology” (p. 55).

In closing this discussion about the generality of activity in Soviet psychology, it should be noted, as Talyzina also pointed out: “It is of course rather easy to say that one agrees with these principles but it is quite another thing to follow them” (in Braun et al., 1989, p. 13). Or as Rubinštejn (1934/1987) noted after reviewing conceptual ideas from Marx that could be relevant to central problems in psychology: “A serious task now stands before Soviet psychology: to use concrete research work in order to actualize the potentialities” (p. 128). In other words, one can often find texts that state general ideas about activity, after which it is more difficult to see how these principles have real consequences for the research that was actually conducted.

Presentation strategy, with justification for focus on Leontiev

The main interest here is primarily conceptual, to understand the meaning of the activity concept, and partially historical, to form a reasonably stable impression of when major ideas were developed. These objectives reflect common interests among researchers who want to work productively with theoretical concepts. The presentation strategy is to first put forward a clear, coherent, compact account that summarizes the meaning of the activity concept, and communicates its main function or purpose sharply, without distorting or limiting its meaning too severely. Background assumptions embedded in the conceptual framework are elaborated as part of this account. The aim is to give greater insight into the concept’s meaning and significance by highlighting some points considered essential for an adequate and productive understanding of the concept, but which are not expressed adequately in the existing secondary literature, and difficult to grasp or notice in the primary literature. This approach is chosen for two main reasons. First, as noted, the activity concept was developed to some extent in a way that transcends single authors and single texts. Attempts to simply develop an account of the concept from a hermeneutical approach to individual texts or describing a historical sequence is not likely to grasp the conceptual framework, which has developed over several decades. Second, by having a fairly concrete idea of the current understanding of the activity concept, it should be easier to follow the historical analyses and interpretations of the development of the concept. A general dynamic for explaining the origin and conceptual evolution of the concept is outlined, followed by a chronological account. The article concludes with a brief mention of the concept of practice as a further conceptual development in the activity concept’s dialectic, and a brief reflection on the need for more nuance in theoretical discussions or mention of the activity concept.

A variety of conceptual problems were confronted in making this account. The first problem arises from focusing on A. N. Leontiev’s work as the central figure in the conceptual analysis. A slight ambiguity appears in relation to the previous contention that the initial development of the activity concept was achieved collectively. But this problem is no worse than recognizing the difference between seeking a conceptual understanding of the internal logic of a theoretical tradition, and a historical interest to document the views and interactions of different actors involved at the time.

A second problem is that in the 1920s and 1930s—when the activity concept was first being developed theoretically within Soviet psychology—a variety of researchers, beyond Leontiev and his immediate colleagues, were explicitly engaged with and addressing the main relevant issues about relationships among consciousness, environment, and psychic development. S. L. Rubinshtein (1940) is most commonly and appropriately identified (see Brushlinsky, 1989; Payne, 1968), and occasionally M. Ia. Basov is named (e.g., Dafermos, 2018, p. 205). It is also possible to find other researchers from this time period making relevant general statements about these relations (e.g., “activity mediates consciousness and consciousness manifests itself in activity,” from Shnirman, 1930, who worked in the reflexological tradition associated with Bekhterev, cited in Umrikhin, 1991, p. 142). The assumption behind the present analysis, based on an assessment of the actual content, is that attention to these other historical sources (both the content of their work and the historical interactions between them and Leontiev and his immediate colleagues) will not provide fundamental changes in understanding the conceptual and historical development of the activity concept.

A third problem is that the conceptual threads do not have to start with psychologists, such as Leontiev, who were working in the first two decades of the Soviet Union. The concept of activity has been important in philosophy, especially in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, among Kant, Hegel, Fichte, and others (e.g., Hoffman, 1982). Conceptual ideas formulated in the mid-19th century, particularly in some of Marx’s texts, were important sources of inspiration for Vygotsky and Leontiev. A legitimate case could also be made to include ideas developed by the physiologist I. M. Sečenov (1863/1965), who focused on the relations between organism and environment and argued that a psychic component was an integral and necessary part of brain reflexes—an idea subsequently developed further by Bekhterev and Pavlov from the beginning of the 20th century (for one conceptual overview, see McLeish, 1975, pp. 65–96). However, the adaption of these general ideas to the concrete research problems in psychology about the development of psychological capabilities cannot be characterized as a simple application of conceptions from Marx or Sečenov. This was the challenge that Vygotsky, Leontiev, and colleagues were pursuing.

Finally, the further development of the activity concept has not stopped with Leontiev. As A.N. Leontiev (1975/1978) noted in the first sentences of Activity, Consciousness, and Personality, the theory is incomplete, and only implicated in many places (p. 1). Lompscher (2003) recalls hearing one of Leontiev’s last speeches, possibly at a Congress of Soviet Psychologists, where Leontiev emphasized that the theory was not complete, and should not be turned into dogma. At the same time, as Sokolova (2003) noted, students and researchers usually have trouble understanding the existing theory, in part because it is multidimensional, with many layers to understand (p. 198). Productive use and further development of the concept presupposes that existing conceptions are already understood. This is the task of the rest of this article.

Conceptual overview of activity as a psychological category

The category of activity, as a psychological phenomenon, is based on the idea that persons are inseparably engaged and acting in relation to objects (both physical and spiritual). Activity emerges or is embedded in this always-present internal relation between person and the objective world, where the dynamic of this relation is a person’s intentional action aimed ultimately at satisfying needs. That is, a person formulates and pursues goals, aimed at making transformations in material conditions in the course of producing needed objects. This inseparable relation of person and environment, together with the dynamic productive relation are the fundamental core of the concept of psychological activity, where these actions usually draw on historically existing traditions of action, and sometimes by creating new actions.

As a simple illustration of these ideas, consider Lewin’s (1917/2009) analysis of how he perceived landscapes as a soldier engaged in World War I. While traveling over peaceful landscape, on the way to the battlefront, the landscape seems to extend infinitely in all directions, with no front or behind. As he approaches the battlefront, a “boundary” appears in the landscape, with a front and behind, danger zones, and a “position” where one settles. This example shows how perception of the landscape changes in relation to one’s intentions and actions in the landscape. In peaceful areas, there is no structure. In battle areas, there are highly structured perceptions, organized by his task as an artilleryman. To speak of Lewin’s “activity” (as soldier) is to refer to this interactive “package” of mutually interacting intentions, perceptions, and actions, and the “flow” or “movement” that appears in his operations in relation to changing conditions, which arise from that interaction of intentions, perceptions, and action. By way of contrast “a pedestrian sees the fields and meadows before him as nature in the aesthetic sense” (p. 201). In other words, another person (with different intentions, and possibly non-wartime conditions) would also be in activity (intentions, perceptions, actions) in relation to the exact same physical landscape—but the perceptions and actions would be organized differently in relation to the intentions.

Notice the impossibility of not being in a relation to the landscape, even if it is just to ignore it (because of other intentions). In other words, a person is never a passive recipient, simply responding to stimuli, or having the environment determining fully the person’s action. Perception and action arise in the interaction between intentions and the physical situation, where the interactions are in constant motion, because of changes in perception and action. The term activity is used to refer to the interaction of intention, action, and perception along with the relation to a specific need toward which action is oriented.

Fichtner (1999) expresses this subtle idea exceptionally well: “Activity is not what an organism does. Rather, the organism consists in its activity. Activity is the mode of existence by which organisms establish themselves as subjects of their life processes” (p. 55). In other words, activity appears (so to speak) as a consequence of “life processes” (i.e., acting to transform conditions in relation to need), where this emergence occurs simultaneously with intentional action—a kind of bootstrapping process. In this sense, one can say, as Fichtner wrote, that an organism establishes itself. From this point of view, all human life can be analyzed theoretically as activity. ¹

This idea—that a person’s perception of and action in a situation materialize in relation to what one is seeking to do—is the critical kernel of the psychological concept of activity, the germcell if you like. It is called a germcell here because this idea of activity is present in all psychological phenomena; explanations of other psychological phenomena (e.g., learning, development) would be grounded in this relation. The relations in this basic kernel have been elaborated further in the Soviet conception of activity, but the theoretical structure of the activity concept is understood conceptually as emerging from this basic kernel relation.

The Fichtner (1999) quote does not mention the sociohistorical source of human action. Therefore, this quote is supplemented here with a brief description from Yudin (1978, p. 266) which does not emphasize the germcell as clearly as Fichtner, but otherwise expresses clearly many key aspects of an elaborated activity concept: “a specifically human form of the active relation to the surrounding world that consists in the purposeful change and transformation of this world on the basis of the assimilation and development of the available forms of culture” (cited in Shvyrev, 2001, p. 21).

And finally, one more quote to highlight an additional important aspect in the psychological concept of activity: the consequences for psychological development that arise from acting. The idea probably entered into Soviet psychology from Marx (1867/1976). ² It is reflected in McLeish’s (1975) historical review of the hallmarks of Soviet psychology: “the activity of man [sic] who, as a species and as individual, acts to change reality and in doing so is himself changed” (pp. 264–265).

Notice that three quotes, each from experts in the area, were needed to communicate a fuller picture of the meaning of the scientific concept of activity. All of the formulations express important aspects of activity, even if they are not sufficient by themselves. Further aspects will be elaborated below. It is unlikely that a single, comprehensible definition will capture all these aspects adequately.

This situation highlights an important challenge in learning to work with the theoretical concept of activity. The complexity to which the activity concept refers—its conceptual structure and its dynamics—is difficult to capture adequately in a single formal definition. So many details are needed to express the core theoretical ideas that one tends to lose the clarity and integrated coherence, such as that found in McLeish’s (1975) formulation. But while McLeish’s formulation captures important aspects, it does not convey many essential ideas necessary for understanding the dynamism in this short characterization. For example, the psychological concept of activity describes an internal relation, not a property of a person or a “thing” done by a person. This is invisible in McLeish’s formulation. Ultimately it is necessary to understand the conceptual structure (intentions, perception, action), along with the dynamics of that structure, the consequences of those dynamics, and how those abstract relations are manifest in concrete, meaningful situations in which persons are acting. This theoretical understanding is needed if one is going to work with the concept in concrete research investigations, where basic problems involve understanding the structure and dynamics of relations between intention, perception, and action in concrete, meaningful situations.

Another challenge in practical scientific work with the activity concept is the legitimate similarities and important differences in the everyday and scientific meanings of activity. It is important to recognize that it is possible to make a statement like “a person develops through their activity,” such as can be seen in the McLeish quote, which can be read meaningfully with both scientific and everyday meanings of the term activity.

Everyday meanings of activity focus on observable appearances, referring to “states” (e.g., being in motion), “qualities” (e.g., doing something), and “things” (e.g., a particular task; cf. Oxford English Dictionary). The scientific meaning focuses on the essential relations that underlie or motivate activity (in an everyday sense). In everyday speech, one can do an activity to make transformations where one’s activity is the transforming action. It is not immediately apparent that the scientific meaning of activity in this case is referring to specific structural relations within the everyday meanings. At the same time, it is valid to say that activity, in its everyday meaning, is relevant to activity in the systematic meaning (even if it is not sufficient and is missing the most critical aspects), therefore it is all too easy for scientific speakers to sometimes shift into using an everyday meaning or for listeners to interpret a scientific meaning in an everyday way.

It is unlikely that this problem in scientific communication can be avoided (for now) with some lexical conventions. As far as I know, there is not a convenient everyday word that could serve as an alternative for referring to activity in the everyday sense, and the thesaurus for Oxford English Dictionary does not provide any likely candidates. In other words, activity is the best word in English for describing—in everyday terms—what people are doing when they are active, but at the same time, this meaning obscures the scientific focus on the internal conceptual structure of this activity. Recognizing and understanding this issue can motivate more precise communication and interpretation when working with the term activity. (Ravich-Shcherbo, 2003, made the interesting suggestion to introduce the transliterated Russian word dejatelnost into English, just as perestroika was adopted.)

Conceptual dialectic in activity concept’s theoretical development

It is hypothesized that the development of the activity concept in Soviet psychology can be usefully understood as starting from a dialectic grounded in two distinct scientific problems that appeared more or less simultaneously in the mid-1920s—(a) the need to develop a Marxist psychology in the Soviet Union and (b) a crisis in the historical development of psychology (see McLeish, 1975, pp. 99–125 for a historical overview). Initial attempts by Soviet psychologists to address these two problems introduced many conceptual ideas that remain in the present-day theoretical conception of activity, but a longer historical process was needed for these ideas to become explicit and elaborated, including the concept of activity itself. The development is understood as a dialectic because implications and consequences of developed ideas often brought new issues into focus, which brought new questions and challenges for further theoretical development. The main general features in this dialectic are: (a) an initial focus on individual psychology, the development of psychological functions, and the development of consciousness; but (b) the theoretical concepts introduced to address these problems made it necessary to consider the meanings of societal practices in relation to individual development, which shifted focus, at least conceptually, to meaningful activity; which (c) introduced a need to study theoretical connections between societal practices and individual development, and use this theory in relation to the development of practices. By understanding the dialectic within which the concept developed, it should be easier to understand why particular assumptions and features of the concept were developed, and how contemporary interpretations lost sight of the original issues that motivated the concept.

This general dialectic is expressed in a series of stages, which were chosen with the advantage of hindsight to highlight conceptually important points. The stages correspond roughly to the historical course of the development of ideas, but they should not be interpreted as a strictly historical or chronological account of the actual development of the ideas. The concrete dynamic in this dialectic can be summarized roughly as follows: (a) the origin of the dialectic in the tension between the need to make a Marxist psychology and the crisis in psychology, (b) initial attempt to address these problems by examining use of tools in psychological development, (c) focus on practical activity, (d) role of meaning and goal formation, (e) formation of an explicit activity concept and general structure of activity, (f) role of the collective in activity, and (g) need for further development of the relation between individual activity and societal practice. This dynamic can be documented and elaborated with the details of the research conducted between the late 1920s and the mid-1990s. For now, only a few indicators are given to illustrate and provide some support for this reconstruction, often presupposing that the reader recognizes the significance of the examples. More detailed analysis of the relation of this structure to actual historical events must be investigated on another occasion. Because many of the ideas were embedded in the conceptual resources from the start, one cannot say that each stage always reflects new discoveries. Often it was a matter of what issue was in the foreground in the empirical research. The important issue for now is to understand the conceptual problems and intermediate results that motivated the theoretical developments.

The first stage of the dialectic starts with the need to introduce Marxist concepts into psychology, and the appearance of crisis in psychology. The question of a Marxist psychology was at the forefront in 1924 in the Soviet Union, when Kornilov, who was promoting the need for a Marxist psychology, was appointed to replace the leader of the Moscow Institute of Psychology, where Leontiev, who had just completed his university degree, and Luria were already working. Vygotsky was invited by Kornilov to start working in the Institute in late 1924. A main problem was to work out what a Marxist psychology could mean, when Vygotsky, Leontiev, and Luria first started their collaborative research relations. Also around this time, there was discussion about the so-called crisis in psychology, arising from radically incompatible views about how to pursue psychological studies, which engendered not-easily-resolved conceptual tensions for the legitimation and coherence of scientific psychology (see Dafermos, 2014). One of the main issues was the role of consciousness in psychology, and whether or not it should be included in scientific psychology (e.g., A. N. Leontiev & Luria, 1937/2005, p. 35; Vygotsky, 1925/1997a).

The second stage arose from attempts to deal with the challenges in the first stage. Vygotsky (1927/1997b) wrote a long analysis of the crisis in which he reduced the many psychologies to “two fundamentally different constructions of systems of knowledge” (p. 301)―one oriented to a natural-scientific, materialist conception of psychology, which sought law-like or causal explanations of behavior; the other to a humanistic, subjective, idealistic approach, which sought to describe and understand human experience. Both perspectives created a parallelism (or dualism) with psychic aspects (consciousness) on the one hand, and material behavior on the other. As A. N. Leontiev (1935/2005a) formulated it: “on one pole … appears the psychic, consciousness as pure experience, consciousness torn away from activity, on the other pole activity, torn away from consciousness and taken independently from the physiological mechanisms by which it is realized” (p. 50). A particular concern was to overcome the dualism, by having a theory of consciousness that was integrated with material behavior. The first resolution for overcoming the conceptual problem in the theoretical foundation for psychology (as well as to start toward a psychology based on Marxian ideas) was to focus on the idea of labor and use of tools. A. N. Leontiev (1976/1989) recounts an episode from around the beginning of 1925 in which Vygotsky sketched a diagram for “restructuring of psychology into a Marxist psychology” (p. 24), which included semicircles with words like man [sic], tool, object of labor, product, fire, means, method. ³ These general ideas were elaborated further in Vygotsky’s idea about the development of higher psychological functions as a mastering of historically developed actions, mediated through tools. This theoretical conception about the relation between organism and environment provided an alternative to the then-dominant behaviorist (stimulus-response) conception, which conceived of organism and environment as separate, independent elements, and a way to understand the role of consciousness in terms of tool use. This “instrumental” period in Vygotsky’s research development can be considered as the second stage in the conceptual dialectic. Empirical studies were conducted on topics like perception, attention, and concept development. Leontiev conducted studies on memory. All these studies focused on the use of mediating tools in these psychological functions.

The third stage in the dialectic builds further on the ideas of the second stage, and is connected with Leontiev’s decision to focus on practical actions in connection with investigating the development of psychological functions (A. N. Leont’ev, 1976/1989, p. 32; see also Gal’perin, 1934, cited in Yasnitsky & Ferrari, 2008a, p. 130). The initial studies in Kharkov (roughly 1932–1936) focused on these issues (see Yasnitsky & Ferrari, 2008b, p. 108, for a detailed list of the topics studied). A consequence of focusing on the unified relation of organism and environment engendered a need to shift attention away from the organism alone and to consider “the changing forms of the relationship between subject and reality” (A. N. Leontiev & Luria, 1937/2005, p. 42). Possibly terms like action, activity, goal, and conditions started to be used, but still not formulated in a systematic theoretical structure (inferred from A. N. Leont’ev, 1976/1989, p. 33).

In the fourth stage of the conceptual dialectic, the issue of meaning and goal formation comes into focus. A. N. Leont’ev (1976/1989) explains that the Sakharov experiment on concept formation (using blocks in different shapes and colors) was critical for helping to understand the role of meaning and forming goals in psychological development (pp. 30–31). This idea of goal formation provides an important conception for understanding the interactive connection between psyche and world. ⁴ Studies conducted in Kharkov in the latter part of the 1930s were focused particularly on this issue.

The fifth stage (probably around 1938–1940) involved the formation of the basic structure of concepts of activity, motive, action, and operation (A. N. Leontiev, 1940/2005b). For example, A. N. Leont’ev (1976/1989), after noting the importance of P. I. Zinchenko’s work on involuntary memory in the period 1937–1939 (which involved assessing memory for material fused in different meaningful tasks), says: “Thus were born representation and also differentiation; the concepts of activity, motive, and later, goal and conditions were formed” (p. 34). There were presumably many ideas “in the air” at that time, and other scholars have speculated about possible influences in Leontiev’s formulations. For example, Brushlinsky (1989, p. 30) asserts that Rubinshtein (1935) had already formulated these ideas—but he cites no specific pages in this source, and the detailed table of contents for this 1935 book does not give any clear supporting indication. ⁵ From 1936, Leontiev was traveling occasionally to Leningrad, where Rubinshtein was working. El’konin (1983/1984) remembers that in 1938, Leontiev started to give regular lectures in Leningrad, and visited Rubinshtein on each trip (pp. 66–67), so they could have discussed these ideas. Similarly, Stadler (1989) speculates—but without indicating specific evidence—that Leontiev could have gotten his ideas about motive from Lewin’s (1926) concepts, but Stadler does not consider the conceptual dialectic described here and the likely source from Marx’s concepts, nor does he comment on A. N. Leont’ev’s (1975/1978, p. 46) explicit rejection of Lewin’s motivation concept.

The sixth stage in the conceptual dialectic, probably developing concurrently with the fifth, focused on the idea of individual activity in relation to the collective. This issue was clearly discussed in the years immediately after Leontiev’s death (e.g., Davydov, Zinchenko, & Talyzina, 1982/1983, p. 35).

The seventh and current stage is to note that the theoretical development of the activity concept is not exhausted. If we accept Davydov’s (1999) evaluation from around the beginning of the 1990s, many of the basic questions from earlier stages in the dialectic still need to be addressed. Problems identified in the sixth stage remain, and there are many open questions about how to use the activity perspective in the study of individual development and societal practices.

Chronological overview of conceptual development

The dialectic described in the preceding section presents an unfolding of the conceptual relations in the development of the activity concept, without much attention to the speed or time periods for this unfolding. In this section, four main time periods are presented to give a simple, temporal image of the major blocks of events in the chronological development of the theoretical ideas in relation to Leontiev (see Table 1). The purpose of this periodization is to give a rough sense of the dialectic’s chronology. No attempt is made to give a fine-masked account of the details of each aspect in the theory, so the fixing of precise boundary years (or setting them up or down 1 or 2 years) is less critical. Moreover, it is possible to differentiate these time periods into sub-periods, corresponding to conceptual developments, or to correlate them with more general historical developments in Soviet science policy, but the simpler structure should make it easier to form an image of the main developmental blocks.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Main historical periods in Leontiev’s development of activity-related concepts.

Time period	Mnemonic label	Main events
1925–1931	Initial period	Engagement with general problems of forming a Marxist psychology and addressing the crisis in psychology.
1932–1949	Conceptual period	Explicit formulation of activity structure, concepts: leading activity, objective meaning, personal sense.
1950–1968	Stagnant period	Minimal development by Leontiev.
1969–1979	Final formulation period	Introduction of focus on personality. Production of articles in the early 1970s, which are collected together into Activity, Consciousness, and Personality (A. N. Leont’ev, 1975/1978).

The initial period (corresponding to the first two stages in the conceptual dialectic) is the beginning of the development of the activity concept. During this period, the idea of activity, from Marx’s texts, started to become known, Vygotsky had drawn attention to the idea of using tools in labor as critical for psychological development. Leontiev (1976/1989) notes that 1927 is the year when this happens. Veresov (2005) gives a kind of empirical confirmation based on examining all of Vygotsky’s texts from 1925–1931. Leontiev’s research on memory, which was conducted in 1928, and published in 1931 was drawing on these ideas.

The conceptual period (stages 3 to 5 of the conceptual dialectic), marked somewhat arbitrarily by Leontiev’s departure from Moscow to Kharkov in late 1931 or early 1932 through to roughly 1950. In the beginning of this period, Leontiev started to concentrate more explicitly on the idea of practical intelligence (i.e., thinking in relation to objects as a source of psychological development). In the early part of this period, not only Leontiev, but also his colleagues in Kharkov (e.g., Zaporozhets, Gal’perin, Bozhovich) were working with these ideas in various ways. Gal’perin (1977/1992) asserts that the “problem of activity” was first presented in the early 1930s (p. 38). During the first decade in this period, the initial activity concept—differentiated into activity, action, and operation—started to be formed as a psychological concept (e.g., A. N. Leontiev, 1940/2005b), and elaborated in more detail in the second decade, where ideas of objective meaning, personal sense, and leading activity were introduced (A. N. Leont’ev, 1947/1981a).

The third historical period, from 1950 to the late 1960s, was a stagnant period, where existing ideas were being used, especially by colleagues (Gal’perin, Bozhovich, El’konin, Zaporozhets) who were making important concrete developments (e.g., about play, school learning, and motivation), but qualitatively new theoretical ideas do not seem to be introduced in this period. Davydov and Radzikhovski (1985) also note that the concepts were used to study sensory and cognitive processes (p. 35). An important historical fact, which helps to explain this situation, is that three conferences held from 1950 to 1952, starting with the so-called Pavlov Session in 1950, resulted in the political view that psychology should be “reconstructed” on the basis of Pavlovian theory and methodology. This is not to say that it was impossible to work with ideas in an activity approach—especially two years after Stalin’s death in 1953 (see Sirotkina & Smith, 2012, p. 436 for some details). In this period, Leontiev published his book Problems of the Development of the Psyche (1959, though most of the articles in the collection were written before 1950; for English translation see, Leont’ev, 1959/1981c). As one of the 1959 articles explained, this historical situation “posed very serious difficulties for developing the theme of the socio-historical nature of the human psyche, which naturally could not be surmounted right away” (A. N. Leont’ev, 1959/1981b, p. 284). Another important event occurred in 1962, when discussions of N. A. Bernshtein’s physiological work on physical movement at the “All-Union conference on philosophical problems of psychology and higher nervous activity” re-opened the legitimacy to consider meaning and other psychic aspects such as an image of a future state when analyzing physical movement. These points cannot be considered a full explanation for this stagnant period, but it should help to give some sense of why theoretical development was modest during this time period.

The start of the final formulation period is placed in 1969 because of a series of private meetings that were organized in Aleksandr Luria’s home, where Leontiev presented his theoretical views, followed by critical remarks from some colleagues (Zaporozhets, Gal’perin, and El’konin) who had been with him in Kharkov or Leningrad when these ideas were first being formed (Zinchenko & Leont’ev, 1990/1995, p. 8). A. N. Leont’ev (1969/1995) started by announcing an intention to work out and reexamine his system of concepts in the analysis of activity. But he also mentions the need for further development: “Obviously, this system must be developed, which essentially has not been done in recent years. This system of concepts is frozen, without any movement. I personally was quite alone in this respect” (p. 39). This comment is also taken as support for the previous period as being “stagnant.” Leont’ev also says that “the concept of activity has been developed highly unsatisfactorily” (p. 39), which expresses his view about how the concept has been received and used by others in Soviet psychology, hence his interest in trying to formulate his position more explicitly. Shortly thereafter, several articles were published in the main Soviet philosophy journal, Voprosy Filosofii in 1972 and 1974. These articles became the backbone of Activity, Consciousness, and Personality (A. N. Leont’ev, 1975/1978), which was first published in Russian in 1975, and translated into at least 12 languages, many of them within the first five years (Rückriem & Schürmann, 2012, p. 12). It is possible that the concept of personality is elaborated theoretically for the first time in this period. There are three observations that support this speculation. Prior to this period, the concept of personality is barely mentioned in the Leontiev texts collected together in 1959 in Problems of the Development of the Psyche, including “A Propos the Historical Approach to Study of the Human Psyche” (1959/1981b), nor mentioned in his review of postulates concerning how activity is used in psychology (1969/1995). However, in response to a question in an interview from the summer of 1978, A. N. Leontiev (1982) expressed some concerns about the then-current state of Soviet psychological research (similar concerns are also discussed in A. N. Leontiev, 1975/1978, pp. 2–3), and suggested a need to remove extraneous ideas. When then asked to “name one of the most important single concepts” among “central psychological notions,” he replied, “I think the problem of personality is central to psychology today” (p. 121). Leontiev’s choice of personality as one of the most important concepts is consistent with the idea that he was focused on this issue during this period. Perhaps it is noteworthy that activity was not chosen as the single most important concept, given his dissatisfaction expressed elsewhere. His choice reflects the integral assumption, rather than simply focusing on activity or consciousness (devoid of person). The rest of the interview (pp. 125–126) shows again how the focus on personality is grounded in and motivated by Marxian ideas from the 1920s (which were summarized here previously.

The beginning of the article in which A.N. Leontiev (1975/1978) introduces the personality concept reflects more or less the entire conceptual dialectic presented here:

In order to overcome the dyadic scheme that dominated psychology, it was necessary first of all to isolate that “middle link” mediating connections of the subject with the real world. For this reason we began with the analysis of activity and its general structure. Immediately, however, we found that a concept of its subject necessarily enters into a determination of activity, that activity because of its very nature is subjective. (p. 97)

The quote starts with noting the initial concern with the crisis of psychology, the subsequent development of the structure of activity, and then the need to expand the theoretical concerns as a consequence of the theoretical concepts that were used. With Leontiev’s death in 1979, further theoretical development was necessarily left for other researchers to pursue.

Continuation of the dialectic of conceptual development

Soviet (and post-Soviet) psychologists (e.g., Davydov, 1996/1997, p. 62; Davydov et al., 1982/1983, p. 35; Lomov, 1981/1982, pp. 58, 81) recognized the need to work more with a general understanding of the relation between individual and collective activity and to use these theoretical ideas in intervention studies (stages 6 and 7 in the conceptual dialectic). At the end of Activity, Consciousness, and Personality, Leontiev raised the need for better analysis of the interaction between the psychological and the social levels (1975/1978, p. 141), but did not offer any ideas for how this interaction might be analyzed, or how to analyze the social.

Chaiklin (2011) has suggested the need to differentiate a practice concept from the activity concept, where practice is an institutionally structured tradition of action, organized in relation to the production of collectively needed products. Both the tradition of action and the collectively needed products are understood as ideals (i.e., reflecting collective phenomena; Ilyenkov, 1977). While activity is a universal feature of human action, its concrete manifestation depends on the concrete and historical details of the specific fields of action (i.e., practice). Activity, which may also be collective, is still understood as enacted in relation to practice (see also Sagatovsky, 1990, p. 38).

The example of educational practice and activity related to educational practice provide a simple illustration. There is a societal need for educated persons. Educational practice refers to the tradition of action that aims to produce such persons. The organizational and physical form of school provides a common setting or arena where this practice can be carried out. In the current historical organization of school, individual teachers are not able to produce educated pupils by themselves. A division of labor is needed, where each teacher contributes to realizing this objective. The object of the practice—educated pupils—serves as the motive for teachers. It is this object which gives meaning to their activity. The practice is greater than what individual teachers can achieve, but their activity is organized by this practice. This distinction also highlights that another analysis is needed for understanding the pupils’ activity, which is also organized in relation to the same ideal of “educated person,” but is not the same activity as for the teachers. Historical analysis is needed to understand the ideal of practice, where there is likely to be a series of conceptual problems for how to present the analysis theoretically. I have attempted this in a modest way (see Chaiklin, 2014) in relation to the historical development of early childhood education. The explicit differentiation of practice from activity allows one to analyze the ideals that organize societal traditions of action, and provides a way to conceptualize individual activity in relation to this practice by focusing on the collective structure (or context) within which individual activity is found.

Concluding remarks

This article has noted—mostly indirectly—that there is a multiplicity of interpretations of activity and applications of these theoretical ideas. One implication is that pronouncements about “activity theory” cannot automatically be understood as applicable to all who are using this expression. One has to accept this multiplicity. There is no point in holding a summit meeting to establish a common terminology or theoretical interpretation. Rather, one has to pay attention to and evaluate the specific meanings being communicated with this label; this simply reflects a standard scientific understanding about the difference between a linguistic label and the conceptual substance to which the label refers. At the same time, widespread usage of one interpretation of activity should not be mistaken as a sign of greater validity or better appreciation of the theoretical insights in the original arguments. A second implication is that there are possibilities for more discoveries and new theoretical developments of the activity concept if one continues to pursue the theoretical logic in the conceptual structure rather than use it primarily as a descriptive or classification system.