I was born on 22 May 1950 in Tbilisi, USSR. My father, Vladimir Surmava, was descended from Georgian peasants. A Second World War veteran, he was a white-collar worker. My mother Olga Surmava, descended from Russian aristocracy, was a radiologist.
Leaving school in Tbilisi in 1967, I entered the physical sciences department of the Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU). This was the last year of a relatively liberal atmosphere in the country and the physical sciences department of MSU was a nursery of free thought. Just at this time, my academic interests started to turn from natural sciences to philosophy and political economy. For the first time I met with the special attention of KGB as a student-physicist. It was my friendship with foreign students that kindled their interest in my modest personage.
The shift of my interest led me in 1971 to the school of economics of MSU. Here I become acquainted with work of Evald Ilyenkov and soon Ilyenkov himself. The circumstance of our first meeting is worthy of notice.
Trying to apply the principles of dialectical logic to population analysis I had formulated some general theoretic principles of demography. My science tutor, Julian Kozirev, appreciated my first attempt at theoretical writing and recommended the text to be reported at young researchers conference at MSU and literally on the next day introduced me to Evald Ilyenkov. It would seem at this point that everything in my biography as a researcher was blessed.
But … the troubles waited round the nearest corner.
The chairman of the conference was Anatolij Sudoplatov, a son of Pavel Sudoplatov, a well known KGB agent whose speciality was arranging the murder of foreign political opponents of Josef Stalin. The son marched under the standard of his father. I was reporting my first theoretical report to the accompaniment of his provocative comments trying to unmask me as a perfidious anti-Marxist. Soon afterwards I was sent down from the university and banished from Moscow by “professors” from 5th (ideological, or anti-dissident) Department of KGB.
My dreadful “anti Marxism” wasn’t the only reason for such a nervous reaction from the Lubianka. The other reason was my political activity. In 1971, we (a group of students from physical sciences department, the school of economics and history department of MSU) organized an independent political organization called TMEFP (Creative Teamwork of Experimental Forms of Propaganda – we meant propaganda of communism, internationalism and the like). We organized big exhibitions of hand-made political posters dedicated to the centenary of the Paris Commune, problems of civil war in Spain, problems of anti-fascism, the Vietnam war, Pinochet’s coup d'etat in Chile, etc., etc. You would laugh, but the first time when a group of my friends members of TMEFP – was arrested was May Day 1972, when they were standing in silent picket near the Kievskij metro station in Moscow holding posters with photos of Vietnamese children wounded with American napalm! It didn’t happen in Berkeley, or in Washington DC. It happened in Moscow, five minutes before the sightseeing visit of Patricia Nixon to Kievskij metro station. You see the Brezhnev was very hospitable host.
Besides this open political activity, TMEFP organized a study group which tried to come to more precise, based on a genuine, non-ideological Marxist understanding of politics and economy of the USSR.
Finally, one foggy morning at the end of 1972 I was taken from bed and dispatched to widely-known Lubianka’s edifice where I was interrogated all the day long. The result of this exam was not a mark in my student’s record-book, but the “kind advice” to leave Moscow in 24 hours.
Thus my hardly-started contact with Ilyenkov was interrupted for three and a half long years.
TMEFP was finally dispersed on 25 January 1975. And soon after that crucial date, some of its members (first of all Eugene Andr'ushin and Sergey Pudenko) organized a theoretical seminar under the direction of Evald Ilyenkov.
This time I was living in Tbilisi with my parents and felt like a tiger in the cage. Under my influence, my friends became Ilyenkovists. And now they have the happy possibility to communicate with Il'ienkov, while I am staying in my southern exile.
Surely I didn’t waste the time, and I continued my self-education. I studied history, political economy, philosophy, I got my teeth into Hegel and Marx. But it was a rather strange process because I couldn’t write anything. I did wrote some theoretical texts, but the next day I would burn most of them. The risk of a KGB raid was quite real.
But unexpectedly the situation changed for a moment. Edward Shevardnadze came to power in Georgia and his corrupt (irony of history that he came to power as an anti corruption militant) opponent exploded a bomb near Government House in the center of Tbilisi to destabilize the situation in Republic. It was obvious even for the KGB that it wasn’t me who exploded this bomb (I was able to explode only ideological ones). So for just a short period the close attention to my person became weaker. I siezed the occasion and our family moved from Tbilisi to Podolsk – a little town in Moscow suburbs. It was in the summer of 1976. The first place I've visited in Moscow was Ilyenkov’s seminar.
The possibility to communicate with the Teacher made me the happiest person in the world. Early on in the seminar I met with Vasiliy Davidov and Felix Mikhaylov. At that time, I didn’t even guess that in future I would make friends with both of them and that they will play such a large role in my life.
In this autumn of 1976, my future was determined in one of my conversations with Evald Vasil'evitch. It was he who advised me to continue my education in the psychological department (not philosophical, as I was planning before) “because of the genuine academic atmosphere established there by a dream team of Vygotskian disciples: Alexey Leont'ev, Alexander Luria, Petr Gal'perin, Daniil Elkonin, Bluma Zejgarnik and others,” “old Vygotskians” as Ilyenkov called them. I respected his advice and next semester, I entered the evening department of the Psychological Faculty of Lomonosov Moscow State University.
It was Alexey Leont'ev who handed me my student card. But alas, this was the last occasion I was to see him. He was badly ill and on January 21 of 1979 he died. Exactly two months later, on March 21, Ilyenkov followed him. The death of Ilyenkov was real tragedy for all his friends and disciples not to mention that it wasn’t a peaceful death from old age or disease, but by suicide … but this is a story worth a separate description.
My university years were full of investigation (I tried to join a serious logical culture, acquired from Marx, Hegel and Ilyenkov, with the wide psychological material, especially those of Vygotsky and Leont'ev) and full of deadly struggle with my old “friends” from KGB. I had hardly entered university when I was informed by one of the vice deans that I had entered the psychological faculty “by his mistake” and that he was going to correct this error as soon as possible. He didn’t mention Lubianka, but he made sure that I understood the hidden meaning of his words. And he did his best to accomplish his promise.
It is necessary to comment, that according to soviet laws, students of the evening department were obliged to work somewhere and moreover in the later semesters his work had to be necessarily correspond to his specialty (in my case – psychology). So the KGB and the vice dean began to play in some special kind of game with me. The KGB forced my employers to fire me while vice dean tried to catch me in jobless status so as to send me down from the university. Because of this “game” I changed jobs a lot. Sometimes the situation was quite ridiculous.
Thus, working in the Institute of Sociology, as an English speaker, I was included in the organizing group of an international sociology conference which occurred just at this time in Moscow. On the day after the conference I was presented with the official thanks from the directorship of the institute for my good work, and the same day I was fired from it.
Running a few steps forward: final victory in this game was gained by KGB. I was sent down before completing the last semester in spite of the fact that I was more than A-student, I was ripe to be a researcher and a collaborator of Vasiliy Davidov.
Meantime, I passed to a third course and had to choose a scientific adviser. If Ilyenkov had been alive I wouldn’t have any problem with a choice. Respecting the recommendations of my friends, I resorted to Alexei Novokhatko – one of the foremost of Ilyenkov’s disciples, who today plays the role of chief administrator and publisher of Ilyenkov’s archive. Then he was a Fellow of The Department of Theoretical Problems of Activity Theory, led by Felix Mikhailov in the Psychological Institute led by Vasiliy Davidov. The topic of my first research project was formulated as “The will and consciousness in the early Hegel.”
This time after Leont'ev’s death the Psychological faculty had no dean Underhand intrigues were weaving around this position for long months. This time I went to the Chair of General Psychology to ask for formal approval of my choice and I was met with great enthusiasm. I was told that philosophical reflection on psychology is a very productive approach and that the Chair approves with pleasure the topic as well as my choice of scientific advisor. Thus full of hope I set out my first research project. Nothing foreboded any troubles. Meanwhile troubles were coming.
Beginning an in-depth study of Hegel texts, I realized that the chosen topic was out of my actual theoretical potential. I couldn’t connect it with the psychological material as I would like to do it. So having consulted with Novokhatko, I changed topic. Now it read: “To the historical roots of the psycho-physical problem” and dealt with the socio-historical roots the psycho-physical dualism in modern physiology and psychology. This new investigation was going forward successfully and I approached the chair to approve the revision of the topic. And hear an unexpected trouble waited for me. The same professor who had acclaimed the “productive philosophical approach” had radically changed her mind and now crossly disapproved my new topic as well as my scientific advisor as having nothing to do with psychology. “If you are so fond of philosophy you have to change the department,” I was told.
It was the catastrophe. I had no time, and sincerely no desire for writing a new term paper. So the dream of my best friend (I mean vice dean) to unload me was as realizable as never before. Meanwhile the hidden motive of behind the mutability of the respected professor was quite evident. In the period between my first and my second visit to the chair a new dean had been appointed. It was Alexei Bodalev – a personage who was known as fierce enemy of the Vygotsky school. Thus he and his confederate Boris Lomov put forward the argument that the background of influence of Lev Vygotsky and his disciples is a clandestine influence of sinister world Zionism. So the first thing he did in becoming dean of the Psychology Department was an annihilation of the very spirit of Vygotsky and Leont'ev. And first of all he needed to change the high standards of theoretical research characteristic of Vygotsky, Leont'ev and their disciples to trivial empiricism. It was obvious that my term paper was written in striking contrast with this new line.
What had I do in this situation?
An appeal for help to Davidov – the recognized leader of Vygotskian school after Leont'ev’s death – was my only chance. So Novokhatko and I went to Davydov and explained my situation to him. Davidov’s reply was laconic: “Tell ’em that I'm your scientific advisor.” And so I did, and now I met no objections. Soon I put before Davidov the completed work and was invited by him to publish it as an article in “Voprosi psichologii” (Questions of psychology) journal.
The text of my article was ended with big quotation from “Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844:”
“We see how subjectivity and objectivity, spirituality and materiality, activity and suffering, lose their antithetical character, and – thus their existence as such antitheses only within the framework of society; we see how the resolution of the theoretical antitheses is only possible in a practical way, by virtue of the practical energy of man. Their resolution is therefore by no means merely a problem of understanding, but a real problem of life, which philosophy could not solve precisely because it conceived this problem as merely a theoretical one.”
Davidov attached to the text of my article a resumé which sounded literally this way: “All psychologists who want to build their research on the solid basis of dialectical materialism must learn this idea of Marx’s.”
Surely I was in the sky from happiness. To be published in the first rank scientific journal was not bad start for the student attempting his third course. But at the same time I was a little embarrassed with Davidov’s attachment. The third year student who gives his older colleagues such advice … Hm, hm.. it has a rather equivocal look. But this “problem” was solved very soon. The article was simply banned by censorship.