Vera Schmidt Biography
Vera Fedorovna Schmidt (27 July 1889 in Starokostiantyniv, Volhynian Governorate – 17 July 1937 in Moscow) was a Russian Empire and later Soviet educationist and one of the leading figures in the psycho*ytic movement during the "Silver Age". After the Russian Revolution (1917) she directed a highly innovative nursery school run on psycho*ytic principles.
Early life
She attended the Kiev Women's Educational Ins*ute for three years from 1913 to 1916 where she received training in the methods of Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel. In 1913 she met and married Otto Schmidt who was to become a renowned scientist and Arctic explorer.
By the outbreak of the revolution, they had both developed an interest in psycho*ysis and Vera, who spoke German, had read Sigmund Freud in the original. A supporter of the revolution, Otto Schmidt rose to positions of power and influence in the new Soviet regime becoming a member of a number of People's Commissariats including Narkompros (Narodnyi Komissariat Prosvescheniya, or the People's Commissariat for Education) and he was also employed as the director of the State Publishing House (Gosizdat) from 1921 to 1924. In this capacity, he was engaged in the publication of works by Freud and his daughter, Anna Freud.
Psycho*ysis in Soviet Russia
In 1921 the Narkompros established the Russian Psycho*ytical Society in Moscow, a body that later came to contain, among others, figures like Alexander Luria, who, after the revolution, at only nineteen, was a leader of the Kazan Psycho*ytical Circle, and Mosche Wulff (Moshe Woolf) (1878-1971) who had promoted psycho*ysis during the pre-revolutionary "Silver Age". The President of the Society was Ivan Ermakov who edited a nine-volume series of Freud's work in Russian. He later became known for his Freudian literary criticism of Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol. Otto Schmidt, in the meantime, became vice-president of the coordinating committee of the Moscow Psycho*ytic Society and the state-backed, Psycho*ytic Ins*ute which was headed by Ermakov.
The Detski Dom Laboratory
He was also officially responsible for the Detski Dom ("Children's Home", a Russian term for orphanage) which opened in May 1921 in the center of Moscow and shared with the Psycho*ytic Ins*ute the magnificent Art Nouveau building in Malaya Nikitskaya Street designed by Fyodor Schechtel (August 7, 1859 - July 7, 1926). This was the former home of Stepan Ryabushinsky a rich merchant and chair of the stock exchange who left Russia after the revolution. Although Ivan Ermakov, president of the Psycho*ytic Society and Ins*ute, was nominally in charge of the home, it was run by Vera Schmidt *isted initially by fifty-one staff members, among whom was Mosche Wulff and the prominent psycho*yst, Sabina Spielrein. She, along with Luria, joined the Russian Psycho*ytical Society in 1923 having formerly been a member of the Swiss Psycho*ytical Society and was one of only a few trained psycho*ysts in Soviet Russia.
A historian of the psycho*ytical movement in the early years of the Soviet Union described how the home was funded. He also indicated the elite familial background of the children who attended it. Later, that Party elite came to be known as the nomenklatura.
"The Detski Dom was funded partly by the State partly by the share in profits from Freud's publications in Russian, partly by international support from a German Trade Union. In 1923, 18 educators were busy with 12 children from 2 to 4 years old. According to the unpublished Charter of the Kindergarten written by Ermakov, "the major part of the children are children of the Party executives who give all their time to their work and are not able to rear their children (Ermakov Archive). In fact, it was an elite ins*ution supported by the officials to keep their children in hard times. Luria recalled orally that among these children was the son of Stalin (Vasilii, born in 1921)."
Vera Schmidt's own son, Vladimir, whose nickname was Wolik, also attended the Detski Dom and she recorded his, as well as the other children's activities, in journal. These were used as data regarding children's development by other Soviet psychologists such as Luria. The Detski Dom was virtually unique in its principles and practices and above all in its psycho*ytic approach. It was visited by several western Marxist psycho*ysts like Anna Mänchen-Helfen (1902-1991) and Annie Reich (1902-1971) together with her husband, Wilhelm Reich.
Due to the German Trade union's financial support, the home also became known as the Solidarity International Laboratory Home. When that support ended, financial problems, together with internal dissension weakened the organisation of the Detski Dom which also came under external pressure as the psycho*ytic approach came under attack from supporters of Joseph Stalin due to its *ociation with his rival for power, Leon Trotsky. *ociated with the rise of Stalin and the Communist Party's turn away from psycho*ysis was the new science of childhood named pedology which was promoted by Aron Zalkind (1888–1936) a former adherent of psycho*ysis but now its leading critic.
In early 1923 the Schmidts went to Vienna, where they met Freud. They discussed with him the children's Home and the activities of the psycho*ytic movement in Russia. They also met other *ysts, such as Otto Rank and Karl Abraham. Discussions focused mainly on psycho*ysis and the organization of the collective educational system. Following their visit, the Russian Psycho*ytic *ociation, became an *ociate member of the International Psycho*ytic *ociation (IPA) in 1924 and later in 1927, Vera Schmidt became its secretary. In this year also, her book Psycho*ytical Education in Soviet Russia was published in Germany at Leipzig by the International Psycho*ytical Publishing House. This book was based on her experiences and observations in the Detski Dom and it was cited extensively by Wilhelm Reich.
On August 14, 1925, the Narkompros (Ministry of Public Education) closed the home and the building was later to become Gorky's home and later, the Gorky Museum. In an ironic turn of events, Stalin's son, Vasilii, Vasily Dzhugashvili occupied the site of his former nursery after Gorky's death.
Last years
In 1930, after the Russian Psycho*ytical Society was dissolved she worked at the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences Experimental Ins*ute of Defectology. The research carried out there was under the direction of Lev Vygotsky since its foundation in 1929. Vera Schmidt died at the age of 48 years while being operated on for a thyroid tumor to treat Graves' disease.
Works
- Dnevnik materi: pervij god *ni (Diary of a mother: the first year of life) (2009). ISBN:978-5-98904-050-6
- Vera Schmidt SCRITTI SU PSICO*ISI INFANTILE ED EDUCAZIONE Edited by: Giuseppe Leo Prefaced by Alberto Angelini, Rita Corsa, Vlasta Polojaz Publisher: Edizioni Frenis Zero 248 pages, Year 2014, ISBN:978-88-97479-05-5
References
- Brehony, K. J. (2006) Representations of Socialist educational experiments in the 1920s and 1930s: The place of the Sciences of Education. P*ion, fusion, tension. New Education and Educational sciences - Education nouvelle et Sciences de l'éducation (end 19th-middle 20th century - fin 19e-milieu 20e siècle. R. Hofstetter and B. Schneuwly. Bern, Peter Lang. 271–304.
- Miller, M. A. (1998) Freud and the Bolsheviks: psycho*ysis in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. New Haven, Yale University Press.
- Reich, W. (1972) The sexual revolution: towards a self-governing character structure. London, Vision.
- Valkanova, Y. and K. J. Brehony (2006). "The 'Gifts' and 'Contributions'. Friedrich Froebel and Russian education from 1850 to 1920." History of Education 35(2): 189–207.
External links
- Schmidt, Vera Federovna (1889-1937): International Dictionary of Psycho*ysis at soc.enotes.com
- Vera Federovna Schmidt: Information and Much More from Answers.com at www.answers.com
- Russia by Etkind at psycho*yse.narod.ru
- Psycho*ytikerinnen. Biografisches Lexikon at www.psycho*ytikerinnen.de
