The Trip to London

Abstract

This chapter is based on a small notebook with a black leather cover and contains notes written in ink as well as in pencil, which may reflect the time of writing.

This chapter is based on a small notebook with a black leather cover and contains notes written in ink as well as in pencil, which may reflect the time of writing. It is a unique document in that it shows Vygotsky’s personal impressions of the only trip he ever made outside the Soviet Union. Vygotsky was the Soviet delegate to the 8th International Conference on the Education of the Deaf , which took place in London from July 20 to July 24, 1925. It is known that he travelled by train and that his first stop was Berlin , where he spent several days. Elsewhere (Van der Veer & Zavershneva 2011, 2012), we have reconstructed the second part of Vygotsky’s trip and shown that Vygotsky’s involvement with the London conference was minimal: He neither participated in discussions nor presented a talk. The notebook makes clear, however, that it was a major event at a personal level.

Unfortunately, the notebook is in bad shape: With the exception of a few pages where the text is written in black ink, the notes are very hard to decipher. The pages are soiled, and the text written in pencil has faded to the extent that it is impossible to copy or scan them. The great number of abbreviations do not make it easier; nevertheless the greatest part of the notebook (the London part and the diary) has now been deciphered. The remaining part concerns the stay in Berlin and still poses a challenge to the editors. Just like the notebook that was used in chapter 12, the present notebook contains a considerable number of names, telephone numbers, and addresses. All of these addresses have been checked and although they still exist, we suspect that the house numbers are not always correct. Of the approximately 20 names in the notebook, we managed to identify slightly more than half. It remains unclear whether the remaining names were correctly spelled and neither can we say with any certainty who of the persons on the list Vygotsky actually met.

[Written in ink:]

“Never mind that you are rude and ill-natured,

Never mind that you love others,

Before me I have the golden lectern,

And with me my grey-eyed fiancée.”

(From A. Akhmatova ) ¹

• Roza

• June 16, 1921

[Written in pencil:]

G.y.a.a.w.m. ²

July 15, 1925

• London N<E>5 2440

• Stoke Newington, N16

• 67 Manor Road

• Marc Tcharny

• Telephone: Clissold 39–16 ³ (home)

• Holborn 6584

• Pavel Mikhaylovich Linitskiy ⁴

• London EC2

• 31–35 Wilson Street

• c/o Arcos Limited ⁵

• [Crossed out:]

• Avgusta Mikhaylovna

• 146 Fellows Road

• Hampstead NW3

• M-me F. Ellis, 117 Holborn

• London EC (next door to Gamage’s) ⁶

• Miriam Aleksandrovna Vol’fson

• [The address is crossed out:]

• 6 Chalcot Gardens

• Hampstead NW3

• London

• David Vladimirovich Fel’dberg ⁷

• Berlin Prof.

• g. Brühl, Karlstraße 27

• Tel: Norden 1.18.46

• Berlin – dr. Al. <illegible>

• Shtange, 1^st secretary of the embassy ⁸

• Dr. Erich Baron ⁹

• Generalsekretär –  <illegible>

• Berlin – Pankow

• Kavalierstraße 10 <illegible>

• Paris Embassy ¹⁰

• Chlenov

• London Dr. Polovtseva ¹¹

• Varvara Nikolayevna WC1

• 150, Southampton Row

[Written in ink:]

Embassy:

Tel.

Chesham House:

Victoria

Chesham Place:

1109

1^st Secretary Bogomolov ¹²

• [Address crossed out:]

• 177 County Hall

• Westminster Bridge, 7

• Tavistock Square

• 45/44 M <illegible> sensky

• Dr. Paul Schumann ¹³

• Leipzig <Rol> str. <2>

• Miss D. Lipshitz

• <8> Newton Rd

• Bayswater W2

• [Written in ink:]

• “Freeland Steamship Company”

• Greener House 66/68

• Haymarket SW1

• Consulat Général de France

• 51 Bedford Square WC1

• [Written in pencil:]

• Melichar Bednáříck ¹⁴

• Directeur de l’Institution des Sourds-Muets

• Plzeň, République Tchécoslovaque

• Museum B85

• Dr. Al. Mikh. Orlova

• Vol’fson

• 14 Gladstone Park Gardens, Cricklewood

• Linitsky

• 34 Geary Rd

• Dollis Hill

• Moorgate 49

• Arcos Bank

• Moorgate Str. 49

• Financial Department

• of the Trade Delegation

• 4454 Home

• Willesden

• Vol’fson Boaz Borisovich ¹⁵

• Office Holborn 2440

• A. Sazonova

• Willesden

• 4143 From 6 o’clock.

• [Written in ink:]

• Aleksandra Mikhaylovna Sazonova

• Brondesbury

• 14 Exeter Road

Molchanov Embassy

• Holborn

• Chansery Lane 46

• center <illegible> Vol’fson

• Piccadilly 117

• Secretary of the Society for Maternal Care

• V. Polovtseva

• <48> Grove Park Road ¹⁶

• Chiswick W4

• Tel: Chiswick 2013

• [Written in ink:]

• County Council

• Department of Mental Hospitals

• [Written in pencil:]

• Vigotsky or Vy

• or

• Wigotsky or Wy ¹⁷

• [Written in ink:]

• County Hall Room 159

• Westminster Bridge Road

• Mr. Newton (physical detective) ¹⁸

• Museum 9701–Tel.

• H. Stainsby ¹⁹

• National Institute for the Blind

• 224 Great Portland Street W[1]

[The page is crossed out in pencil.]

[Written in pencil:]

I visited V. between 7 and 8, as agreed, and between 10 and 10½, as I was told to. Unfortunately, I cannot go there again until Sunday. Would you be so kind to call me around 10 (I will wait until 10½). When can you come to us? You need not call—you can simply come around 10–10½ a.m.

45, Tavistock

• Jacob Chakow W 62

• Kurfürstenstr. 125 [crossed out: W 62 Kurfürstenstr. 125]

• Nollendorf[platz] <86>–63 ²⁰

Königin Augusta Strasse 22 ²¹

• August 1, 12 p.m. ²²

• I ride to the Westminster and the Parliament.

• Today my heart again felt relieved somewhat, somehow more joyous.

• 1:20 p.m. The Westminster Abbey. The soul is lost in the open, enormous and bleak spaces and is looking for something to grasp in order not to <illegible>.

• G.

August 4, 10 p.m. ²³

I am reading G. the whole day. The whole day <illegible>. Rose of my Jericho (my heather). ²⁴ How amazing <illegible> the reading fills me with calm, proud, despair. Rain all day.

• [Written in ink:]

• Al. Luria

• Königstein (Janus)

• Elmühlweg

• Villa Germania 13 ²⁵

• Rankestr. 19 ²⁶

• Therese Rubinstein

• Wilmersdorf

• Berliner Lehrer-

• [Ver]zeichnis

• Versammlung

• Kurzestr. 3–5 ²⁷

• Prof. Feld’berg

• Pension Violetta

• Joachimstahlerstr. 17 ²⁸

[Written in ink:]

August 21. The night after the letter. Aus Hotel Magdeburg. ²⁹

My Gokha. My golden birthday person. The first whole year of your life with me. At best we shall have no more than 20 to 30 of these. It is horrifying to think—this is what I thought during the trip—20 days. And young and vigorous and courageous we may have only 5 to 10. And maybe at a certain moment it will come to an abrupt stop. Let it last until our very death.

[Written in pencil:]

Bentheim. ³⁰

<Sta[tion]> July 18, 7 a.m.

We are standing in Holland for two hours. I am inexpressibly lonely; it is hard and joyous at the same time. G.I.l.y. ³¹ Instead of air, they have some sort of milky whitish steam here. It is warm, sunny. They have chubby, kind, white, round faces—especially the women. They just checked my passport for the hundredth time. These medieval regulations, are they theirs or others’? The astonishing material comfort [and] the military conditions create a strange contradiction.

G.I.l.y. Be faithful to me. My Gi. In Berlin I was thinking of you all the time. I am convinced that enormous ordeals lie ahead for us (Russia –Europe)—will you be happy and joyous? My darling. ³² My light.

In a foreign country, in the fresh air (an airplane) ³³ at sea, you feel a strange aloofness of everything. A reconsideration of your whole life, a revision of the soul. Suddenly you look at your whole life from aside, as in the minute of death.

How excruciating.

My words in this unforgettable journey—“I myself set the rules of the game.” ³⁴ The unforgettable Berlin is like a sign of my courage. I became more cour <ageous and> (again the passport—Oldenzaal —memorize!!!) only after this bleak, excruciating, and wonderful day in B[erlin].

In my destiny, this is the sign of enormous future ordeals.

Am I afraid? Of course, I am afraid, I feel terror, but keep it in check.

I still have my strength and power.

Let be. Gokha. Gi. I am with you.

2:50 p.m. The ship just left from Vlissingen. ³⁵

Sea. Fog. I <illegible> G.

2:55 p.m. The shores disappeared. Before the eye and in the soul is the same.

3:30 p.m. As is known, in medicine there are allopaths and homeopaths, of the latter there are very few left. I perceive Europe homeopathically, i.e., so that it leaves no traces in the organism, but the homeopaths say that the minimal doses are the strongest.

If G. would watch these enormous <lines> of the sea with me—this would straighten out our love (again homeopathy—the hope for a tiny fragment).

5:25 p.m. A very strong wind.

The sun. A rainbow.

The enormous sea.

Delight. All my sorrow and my fear sink in this enormous [space]. The white crests of the waves. [The boat is] rolling.

Infinity is with me. G.y.a.a.w.m.

Friday 20, 10:15. a.m.

In 15 min, the conference will be opened. I was presented to the President and I was moved from the 4th to the 1st row. ³⁶ In <illegible>. I am alone. Slightly cold. Calm. I am a stranger to myself in the mirror and in feeling , but your name, G., is with me and I am calm. Not without reason the ancients believed in the name as a reality (res ³⁷ )—a genius. In your name, G.m.b.w. ³⁸ Let be.

1:50 p.m. Break—we drink tea.

Anxiety, what is the matter with you G., why are you depressed?

Monday. I sit on the terrace of County Hall on the very Thames. Just opposite the Parliament and the Westminster Abbey . The fog thickens, like a veil.

Calm. Some minutes it is slightly absurd, other minutes it is as if I have been for 5 years in London and in this company. You cannot think of a loneliness that is more severe and awful. How is Gi, how is G.? Is she with me? Frailty <illegible>. ³⁹

If only we could tear out minutes of our live.

“ Verweile doch ,” ⁴⁰ not because it would be beautiful, but because it would be bliss.

Malisch died 2 weeks ago. ⁴¹ My journey is astounding and its purport is much more important and larger than just its work aspect. Success, good fortune, I <recover/depart> <illegible> and more than I see myself: These minutes will illuminate my whole life. G.y.a.w.m.

Tuesday, 10:20 a.m.

The cardinal opened the meeting. Not very approving of non-Christians. Hansen is reading. ⁴²

Loss of strength. I am tired. Indifference, almost despair.

My trip yesterday revealed its main contradiction. I am extremely tense (the language, the responsibilities, the suit, the foreign countries), on the other hand I am outside time and space and free of everything as never before (aloof).

The former pushes aside everything that yesterday was still dear to me and excited me (the apartment ⁴³ and other things). The latter is a huge entrance to the basic undercurrents of life. A journey is a “trial of oneself.” This is life, shattered in moments, but also sub specie aeternitatis . ⁴⁴

In essence, Russia is the first country in the world. The Revolution is our supreme cause. In this room only one person knows the secret of the genuine education of the deafmutes. And that person is me. Not because I am more educated than the others, but [because] I was sent by Russia and I speak on behalf of the Revolution.

My Gokha. Be faithful to me. My heart is restless, there is some warm dampness outside and in my soul.

[Written in ink:]

11 o’clock. The embassy. An enormous waiting-room. Gi probably feeds for the second time today. How did it go last night? G.y.a.a.w.m.

[Written in pencil:]

Wednesday, July 22, Margate. ⁴⁵

5 p.m. I am lying on the playing field. 250 deafmute children perform “The Bohemian girl.”

The lords with golden chains. Tea.

Walked around, saw the sea—enormous and amorphous, the coast is awful (a health resort).

I shall, of course, never in my life be in Margate again.

So be it. So much the easier.

The time has passed when I thought that this depreciates everything. Gokha, you alone I need until my death. And, maybe, Gi.

Friday 24, 10:50 a.m.

The last day of the congress. A boring talk.

A humid, incomparably mild morning and a very special grief. And I am waiting for something all the time, am looking for some words, for at bottom I no longer want anything. I myself set the rules of the game.

Gokha. Gi. Your names are with me.

[Elsewhere on the page there is the signature “L. Wygotsky,” the name Vygotsky used to sign the visitors’ book.]

• 3:40 p.m. The last session is taking place. Tonight is the farewell dinner and everything will be over. So be it.

• 4:32 p.m. I said the final words au nom , etc. ⁴⁶ Ahead is an enormous freedom, emptiness, solitude and melancholy.

• I’ll wait for you. G. My wife.

July 28, 3:20 p.m.

The National Gallery: no Rafael , da Vinci or Michelangelo, no French and no Dutch, even no Dührer. The Spaniards Greco, Goya, Velázquez.

I am sitting before Goya’s portrait and Greco’s pink-black Christ. ⁴⁷

My soul is full of flashes of burnt-out passions.

In my mind is nothing—or an appraisal. I am searching confirmation of the theory on the portrait and the overcoming of the body.

July 29, 3 p.m. British Museum . In the morning there was a telegram.

How far away I am each minute something <illegible> with me, my Roza, that all this I <drink> alone, and not together with you. Who once saw Egyptian skeletons and mummies (one with hair) in a simple chest made of planks with cement, already views the world in another way. How I would <like to> <illegible> with you!

[Until the end of the page and on the back the text is corrupted; the whole sheet is soiled and worn.]

Today I am anxious and in <pain> all day.

It seems to me that I am on the point of <illegible> on this terrible <illegible>.

• Philip Michels

• VIII. Festetics – <L.> 3.

• Budapest. Exchange of ed. ⁴⁸

• July 31, 1925. 9:35 p.m.

• Lion’s Tea Piccadilly. Tea. Inexpressibly sad.

• Why is G. not happy? <For> you believed in your happiness. Oh, how I would love to see you ⁴⁹ happy! More than anything I want that.

• I am already almost free of personal longings. I saw the planks and the Egyptian putty, my brothers. ⁵⁰

• Oh, how we must despise and respect life at the same time in order to live. The main thing is to be above life, to deal with it slightly condescendingly (Chekhov) and to be free of it. ⁵¹ I am independent. ⁵² My passions have again burnt out.

• I arrived on the 20th during the day.

• 1 ale, 1 supper.

• 1 ale – beer. 1 siphon. ⁵³ Dinner. Lunch. Crossed out: [1 ale – beer. 1 siphon]

• 1 glass of seltzer. Dinner. Lunch.

• 1 siphon Dinner

• 1 siphon

• from August 5

• for the Deaf,

• Derby Hill and Ainsworth Ltd.

FormalPara Notes

• 1. This is the second half of a poem by Anna Akhmatova written in 1913 and published in her second volume of poetry Chetki (The Rosary) in 1914 (cf. Akhmatova 1977). It was evidently copied and undersigned by Vygotsky’s future wife, Roza Noyevna Smekhova. The fragment is dated June 16, 1921, which is rather early given that Vygotsky and Smekhova married only in 1924. It indicates that Vygotsky began using tiny notebooks long before he entered psychology as an independent thinker.

• 2. Presumably, the Russian abbreviation stands for “Gokha, you are (always) with me” (Gokha, ty (vsegda) so mnoj) where Gokha is Vygotsky’s wife Roza. The abbreviation was possibly inspired by the communication between Kitty and Levin, the protagonists of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, to which Vygotsky refered in the last chapter of Thinking and speech . In the continuation, Gokha is indicated with “G,” whereas “Gi” stands for Gita L’vovna Vygodskaya (1925 to 2010), Vygotsky’s oldest daughter, who was just a few months old at the time.

• 3. UK numbers had no letters except for those in the Director areas, where the first three of the seven digits were assigned letters, and written “ABBey 1234” or “WHItehall 1212,” for example. A lack of pronounceable words, and the fact that most telephones world-wide had no letters on the dial, led to the abandonment of letter usage in directory numbers.

• 4. Pavel Mikhaylovich Linitskiy (1885 to 1938). Soviet Party official and tradesman. Arrested in 1937 and accused of a being a spy and member of a terrorist organisation. Convicted and shot.

• 5. Arcos (an acronym for All-Russian Cooperative Society) Limited was a trading organization that the Soviets created in 1920 to encourage trade between the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. Similar organizations had been created in other countries. Many of their employees were suspected to be spies who gathered intelligence under the cover of the trade organizations. On May 12, 1927, almost 2 years after Vygotsky’s visit, the British police—working on information gathered by the Security Service MI5—stormed the Arcos building at 49, Moorgate. All personnel were detained; locked rooms and strongboxes were opened with drilling machinery; and many documents were removed from the building. The Soviet Embassy handed in an official note of protest, to which the British government replied with the accusation that Arcos was being used for military espionage and subversive activities. Shortly thereafter, diplomatic relations and trade agreements between the Soviet Union and the UK were dissolved. Subsequently, the whole episode became known as the Arcos Affair. On another page of this notebook, Vygotsky again mentions Linitskiy and gives 49 Moorgate as the address of the Arcos Bank . After that he lists the same address for the Trade Organization’s financial department. Perhaps, then, Arcos also served as a bank to provide Soviet citizens visiting the UK with British pounds.

• 6. Gamage’s was a huge department store at 116 to 128 Holborn. Founded by Arthur Walter Gamage in 1878, the store quickly grew to cover almost a block. The store sold just about anything (bikes, cars, furniture, clothing), but was famous for its toys and its Christmas toy catalogue.

• 7. David Vladimirovich Fel’dberg (1873 to 1942). Russian speech therapist and specialist in the education of the deaf . From 1908 onward, he was professor at the Faculty of Speech Therapy at the Psychoneurological Institute in Saint-Petersburg; in 1919 he founded the OFI (Otophonic Institute), which specialized in the study and treatment of hearing and speech disorders. On Fel’dberg’s initiative, Leningrad organized classes for deaf children, centers for speech therapy in schools, etc. See also chapter 18.

• 8. Presumably, Аleksandr Aleksandrovich Shtange (1885 to 1927). Member of the board of the People’s Commisariat for Foreign Affairs, first secretary of the Trade Delegation of the SSSR in Germany, and participant in political negotiations between the SSSR and Germany to establish military-technical cooperation in the 1920s (сf. Gorlov 2001).

• 9. Erich Baron (1881 to 1933). German Jewish lawyer, journalist, and leftist politician. From February 1, 1924, onward, he was the general-secretary of the Gesellschaft der Freunde des neuen Rußlands (Society of the Friends of the New Russia ) and editor of the journal Das neue Rußland (The New Russia ). Baron was arrested and tortured after the Reichstag fire in February 1933 and died in prison shortly thereafter. Wikipedia claims the address of the journal was Kavalierstraße 22.

• 10. There is a story (cf. Van der Veer & Valsiner 1991, p. 45; Vygodskaya & Lifanova 1996, p. 85) that Vygotsky during his trip visited Germany, Holland , England , and France . We now know with certainty that Vygotsky visited Berlin and London and that his stay in the Netherlands lasted no more than the time it took for a train to travel from the German border to the North Sea, that is, approximately 3 hours. The story about a visit to France remains unclear, however. Timewise, it can only have taken place in August after the London stay and on the way back to Moscow; the fact that Vygotsky mentions both the French embassy and the French consulate in his notebook seems to confirm this possibility. However, in a letter to the American philosopher Horace Kallen (dated August 4, 1930), Vygotsky wrote that in 1925 he spent 2 months working in England and Germany, and made no mention of France.

• 11. Varvara Nikolayevna Polovtsova (Polovtseva) (1877 to 1936). Russian biochemist, philosopher, and member of the Moscow Psychological Society. In 1918, she moved to London where she represented Soviet organizations, the Russian Red Cross, and the All-Union Society for International Cultural Connections. Perhaps Vygotsky wanted to meet Polovtsova because she had authored an excellent translation of The Ethics, the main work of Vygotsky’s favorite philosopher Baruch Spinoza (Benedicto de Espinosa) (1632 to 1677), which he received as a present from his father. See chapter 13.

• 12. Dmitriy Vladimirovich Bogomolov (1890 to 1938). Soviet diplomat. “When the SSSR and Great-Brittain established diplomatic relations (February 1, 1924) we received the former building of the Tsarist embassy with the address Chesham House, Chesham Place, W. This was an enormous mansion of six floors looking unto Chesham Place… The important function of first secretary of the embassy was fulfilled by Dmitriy Vladimirovich Bogomolov, a man of about 35, intelligent, enterprising, an able administrator. In World War 1 he served as an officer and spent a long time in a prison camp together with Englishmen. Here Bogomolov learned to speak good English. After the war he began working for the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and was sent to London . Bogomolov turned out to be a very good diplomat and later, after London , occupied the position of ambassador in Poland and China” (Mayskiy 1971, pp. 8/10). In 1937, Bogomolov was called back to Moscow and arrested. In 1938, he was sentenced to death for anti-Soviet terrorism and shot.

• 13. Paul Schumann (1870 to 1943). German expert in the education of the deaf and head of the German Museum for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb (Deutsche Museum für die Taubstummenbildung) in Leipzig from 1924 to 1944. Rolstraße did not exist in Leipzig, so perhaps Vygotsky wrote Roßstraße.

• 14. Melychiar Bednarik (1888 to 1980), as he was called in the proceedings, was one of the presenters at the conference who discussed the contemporary state of the education of the deaf in his country. He was the superintendent at the Institution for the Deafmutes in Plzen and president of the Society of Teachers for the Deaf in Czechoslovakia. It was probably Bednarik himself who wrote down his name and address in French in Vygotsky’s notebook.

• 15. Boaz Borisovich Vol’fson (1883 to ?). Russian revolutionary from Gomel ’. In the late 1890s, he used a hectograph to print proclamations for the Gomel Organization of Social-Democrats. Subsequently he graduated from the Faculty of Law of Moscow University and began working for the Vysotsky Tea Company. In London , Vol’fson organized the tea delivery (Al’tshuler 1924). Boaz Vol’fson was a brother of Miron (Meier‒Shmer) Borisovich Vol’fson (1880 to 1932), one of the founders of Russian library science and chief editor of the State Publishing House of the RSFSR, which published major encyclopedias and Lenin’s collected works.

• 16. According to А. Маydanskiy (personal communication), Polovtsova lived in a mansion at 70 Grove Park Road.

• 17. Vygotsky tried out various spellings of his name. In the proceedings he figures as “Mr. Vigotsky,” “Mr. L. Wygotski,” and “Leo Vygotsky” (International conference 1925).

• 18. A puzzling reference. The police historians we consulted believe that Mr. Newton was a school inspector of some kind and that Vygotsky mixed up the terms.

• 19. Henry Stainsby (1859 to 1925). British expert in the education of the blind and, at some time, secretary-general of the National Institute of the Blind. Inventor of many useful appliances for the blind such as a machine for writing Braille shorthand.

• 20. This is an address in Berlin.

• 21. Perhaps the empress became a queen. There is a Kaiserin-Augusta straße in Berlin.

• 22. The notes are not in chronological order. The first note about the trip to London is from July 18, and the notes from early August describe the last days of his stay.

• 23. For all we know, this was the last day Vygotsky spent in London (Van der Veer & Zavershneva 2011).

• 24. “Heather” is not a Russian surname. Vygotsky is playing with his wife’s name Roza (Rose) and refers to the rose of Jericho or resurrection plant (Anastatica hierochuntica), a plant that can survive almost complete desiccation and revives in the rainy season. He may also indirectly refer to Bunin’s (1924) volume of short stories published in Berlin under the title Rose of Jericho .

• 25. Aleksandr Romanovich Luria (1902 to 1977). Russian psychologist, founder of neuropsychology , and Vygotsky’s closest collaborator. In the summer of 1925, Luria travelled through Germany in the company of his father (Luria 1994, pp. 43–44); this was probably one of his temporary lodgings.

• 26. This is an address in Berlin.

• 27. The index or register of teachers working in Berlin (German). The Lehrer-Verzeichnis Berlin, 1925, was published in Berlin in 1925 by Comenius-Verlag and can be consulted on the Internet. A Versammlung is a meeting. Kurzestraße is an address in Berlin.

• 28. This is an address in Berlin.

• 29. In German: “From Hotel Magdeburg.”

• 30. Bentheim is a Germain railroad station close to the Dutch border where in the past the locomotives were changed. Oldenzaal is the first Dutch railroad station after the border.

• 31. Possibly “Gokha, I love you.”

• 32. The text has nitochka moya (“my thread”), which may express the idea that his wife was the thread that connected him with life.

• 33. Presumably, Vygotsky saw a plane in the sky while sailing. This was still an unusual sight in the 1920s and hence noteworthy.

• 34. Vygotsky quotes the poem “I myself set the rules of the game” (1922) by Fyodor Sologub (real name “Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov” [1863 to 1927]), the Russian poet, novelist, and dramatist, who also wrote The Petty Demon.

• 35. A small harbor in the south of the Netherlands where the trains from Berlin arrived and from which the ferries departed for England . Cf. Van der Veer & Zavershneva (2011) for details.

• 36. On the first day of the conference, July 20, 1925, Lord Charnwood welcomed the delegates. Apparently, Vygotsky was introduced to him and, as the formal representative of the Soviet Union, was moved to the first row.

• 37. Thing (Latin).

• 38. Presumably, “Gokha, my beloved wife.”

• 39. Vygotsky cites Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “Frailty, thy name is woman.”

• 40. Citation from Goethe’s Faust: “Tarry a while! You are so fair!”

• 41. Konstantin Malisch (1860 to 1925) was an Austrian specialist in the education of the deaf to whom Vygotsky referred in his conference paper and who died on July 11, 1925.

• 42. The second day of the conference was opened by the Roman -Catholic Cardinal Francis Bourne, and then A. Hansen from Denmark read a paper about the classification of deaf children.

• 43. Not long before he left for London , Vygotsky and his wife moved from Gomel ’ to an apartment in Moscow (Vygodskaya & Lifanova 1996, p. 259).

• 44. “Under under the aspect of eternity” (Latin). Phrase introduced by Spinoza to describe what is universally and eternally true.

• 45. On the third day of the conference, Wednesday, July 22, the delegates took a special train to the Royal School for the Deaf in Margate. The deaf -mute students of the school there performed Michael W. Balfe’s opera The Bohemian Girl, which was based on a story by Cervantes. Cf. Van der Veer & Zavershneva (2011).

• 46. In the name of (French). According to the conference proceedings, “Mr. Vigotsky” spoke the following words: “I salute the conference in the name of the Socialist Soviet Republics of Russia and in the name of the Commissioners of the Russian People for Public Education. I thank the committee for the reception in London , and I trust that the discussions of the conference will have real success” (International Congress, p. 211).

• 47. Presumably, Vygotsky tried to interpret the artistic affect of Goya’s portrait (either Doña Isabel Cobos de Porcel, or Don Andrés del Peral, or The Duke of Wellington) and Greco’s The Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane in light of his own theory of art.

• 48. It is unclear what this refers to.

• 49. One sheet was torn out; the next sheet begins with the isolated French words “du succès réel” (“real success”).

• 50. “To prepare sarcofagi one often used sycamore timber. Irregularities of the surface were polished with pumice (planes did not yet exist), then they were luted with putty and painted with oil paint; sometimes they were first covered with linen and then painted with rich colorful ornaments and hieroglyphs; paintings were covered with protective varnish” (Kes 1981, p. 26).

• 51. Possibly referring to Chekhov’s story “The Bet” (1888).

• 52. “Independent” written like in English but in Cyrillic letters.

• 53. Probably a soda siphon or seltzer bottle, which was popular in the 1920s. It was a device to dispense soda water that made use of a valve to maintain the pressure inside the bottle.