Pavel Blonsky

Pavel Petrovich Blonsky (1884–1941) was a Soviet psychologist who lived in the Ukraine until 1918. He introduced the behaviorist approach in Russian psychology (under the label "objective Marxist psychology"). During the 1930s he was severely criticized for his adherence to psychological testing and studies of inborn capabilities (which contradicted to the official Soviet ideology of "inborn equality of all people"). Blonsky's search for a new psychology began with the condemnation of philosophical idealism that he - the specialist in Plato and neo-Platonism - now considered to be clearly irreconcilable with "normal common sense".