Pavel Blonsky
Pavel Petrovich Blonsky (May 14 (26), 1884, Kiev – February 15, 1941, Moscow) was a Russian Soviet psychologist and philosopher who lived in the Ukraine until 1918. Blonsky was one of the main theorists of Soviet paedology and introduced the behaviorist approach in Russian psychology (under the label "objective Marxist psychology"). After the publication of the anti-paedology decree "On Paedological Distortions in the System of People’s Commissariat of Education" (1936) he was severely criticized for his adherence to psychological testing and studies of inborn capabilities (which contradicted the official Soviet ideology of "inborn equality of all people ). Life and work. Blonsky was born to a petty szlachta family, an official of (Дворянская опека") Peter (Zygmunt) Błoński (Петр (Сигизмунд) Матвеевич Блонский) of mixed Spanish-Polish-Russian-Ukrainian ancestry. 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".