Soviet Psychology and Its Utopias: Historical Reflections for Current Science

Abstract

In the case of sciences, utopias are not just imaginaries of the upcoming times, but an inherent vector in the organization of research agendas and goal assessment. Utopias, in a historical sense, have not been a mirage, an illusion incapable of grasping reality – as many communist theoreticians and propagandists claimed – but, as mentioned, provided programmatic meanings to present actions, that is, future visions defined the required means and the proper sequence of events. Utopias are active elements of political thinking and discourses: they define how present is assessed in relation with the future, which values and results are expected from scientific knowledge, which dangers, intrinsic or accidental, are foreshadowed in the accomplishment of that future. This chapter needs a critical memory of those experiences to give us alternatives to analyze the present without assuming past utopias can be still fruitful.