Alexander Ivanovich Meshcheryakov

Soviet Union state institutions Marxism–Leninism 1923–1974 ○ Heart failure

Soviet psychologist who founded the Zagorsk boarding school for deafblind children and led the Zagorsk Four to university

Born in 1923 to a peasant family in the Ryazan region, he was badly wounded in the war and discharged, studied psychology at Moscow University and did graduate work under Alexander Luria. In 1960 he set up a laboratory for deafblind children at the Institute of Defectology, carrying on Ivan Sokolyansky's method, and in 1963 founded the boarding school for deafblind children at Zagorsk (now Sergiev Posad). In 1971 he led the Zagorsk experiment, which sent four of its graduates to Moscow University's psychology faculty; his teaching, built on the idea that the mind is formed in shared activity with objects, was the counterpart of his friend Evald Ilyenkov's philosophy. He died in 1974 and in 1981 was posthumously awarded the USSR State Prize together with Sokolyansky.

Also known as: Aleksandr Meshcheryakov · Alexander Meshcheriakov