You hold in your hands a new book. Professor Dorothy Robbins dedicated
it to one of the aspects of the cultural heritage of the famous
psychologist L. S. Vygot- sky. His activity (deyatelnost) was
multifaceted. He had input into different fields of psychology: its
methodology, psychology of art, pathopsychology, the psy- chology of
child and adolescent development, pedagogical psychology, general
psychology, speech psychology, and other fields. Within his various
activities he enriched not only psychology, but a variety of different
sciences/academics- pedagogics, defectology, psychiatry, literary
critical theory, and linguistics. Some famous scientists feel that he
left his mark in fields of various scientific areas that did not exist
during his lifetime-such as psycho linguistics, semiotics, and
cybernetics. Many psychologists and linguists conduct research in the
spirit of his ideas that are contained within his approach of
cultural-historical theory of human psy- chological development, all
created by Vygotsky as early as the 1920s and 1930s; these ideas have
become popular among scientists in different countries in the last
decades. The use of Vygotsky's theories, even beyond the frame of
psychol- ogy, turns out to be fruitful. I hope that this new book by
Dorothy Robbins will help readers understand the deeper meaning of the
scientific/academic research undertaken by my father and the scientific
results that were obtained by him.