Konstantin Kornilov

Born Feb. 24 (Mar. 8), 1879, in Tiumen’; died July 10, 1957, in Moscow. Soviet psychologist; active member (1943) and vice-president (until 1950) of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR.

Kornilov was a teacher in Siberia from 1898 to 1905. He graduated from Moscow University in 1910. From 1923 to 1930 and from 1938 to 1941 he was director of the Scientific Research Institute of Psychology. At the first and second All-Russian Congresses on Psychoneurology in 1923 and 1924 he headed the methodological reconstruction of psychology on the basis of dialectical materialism. In a struggle against the idealist school of G. I. Chelpanov, the reflexology of V. M. Bekhterev, and American behaviorism, Kornilov’s reactology assumed an eclectic combination of Marxist principles and certain mechanistic and energist concepts. Criticism during the psychological discussion of the early 1930’s led to Kornilov’s rejection of the errors of reactology. He subsequently helped to elaborate the problems of pedagogical psychology and the psychology of personality. He was awarded two Orders of Lenin and various medals.