Biography of Creativity in the Language of a Historical Document: To the 130th Anniversary of N.I. Zhinkin

Abstract

Nikolai Ivanovich Zhinkin (1893–1979) is one of the most prominent represen­tatives of Russian psychological science and intellectual culture, for whom psy­chology was inseparable from philosophical roots, and general psychological theory became the alpha and omega of experimental work (including in the field of military affairs).The article presents the results of reconstruction and correc­tion of information about the event components of his creative path. Compiling scientific biographies of domestic scientists of the first half of the twentieth century is not an easy task for a historian of any science, which is due to the well-known socio-cultural circumstances of the development of domestic sci­ence and the peculiarities of subsequent information coverage of its historical stages. Of particular importance in this kind of search is the archive of organi­zations, in which many formal documents are stored (personal files, record sheets, reports and autobiographies, minutes of meetings of departments and Academic Councils), thanks to which biographical information is revealed that makes it possible to clarify the direction of the scientist’s intellectual searches. The conducted historical and psychological study of Zhinkin’s biography is based on documentary sources from the archives of the Psychological Insti­tute. In particular, new updated information concerning his research activities in the field of military psychology and international cooperation was introduced into scientific circulation, and some gaps in his creative biography before the 1940s were restored.