Psychoanalysis in Russia and the U.S.S.R.: 1908–1979

I became interested in the history of psychoanalysis in Russia and the Soviet Union when I was invited to attend the First International Symposium of the Unconscious, held in Tbilisi, Georgia, U.S.S.R., in October 1979. I was very interested in meeting colleagues from the U.S.S.R. and the Eastern Bloc and to learn what they knew and thought about psychoanalysis and what they were critical of. I prepared several papers which were published before the Symposium took place, and I delivered a plenary paper at the Symposium which will be published in a volume containing the proceedings. This essay has already appeared in English (Pollock, 1980). The Symposium was exciting and my memory is filled with many personal impressions. Leon Chertok (1981), has recently published a report of the October 1979 meeting and some afterevents.

After returning from the 1979 Tbilisi meeting, I was invited to present my impressions at the 1980 and 1981 meetings of the American Psychiatric Association. I chose as my main focus for both of these meetings the history of psychoanalysis in Russia and the U.S.S.R. I realize that my report may be less factual than I had hoped, and that my account is bound to reflect my own feelings.

Before beginning, let me note that the Tbilisi meeting was large. I understand there were over 1,400 participants. I learned that, in 1979, there were no practitioners of psychoanalysis in the U.S.S.R. Yet the interest in Freud, psychoanalysis, and its applications to various fields was great. Many who attended were not clinicians. They came from different disciplines—for