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This paper surveys the most important currents in the development and strategic achievements of Soviet psychology. The historical milestone in the development of psychology on a Marxist basis was K. N. Kornilov's lecture in 1923. Thereafter the principal theoretical and methodological principles of Soviet psychology gradually emerged. These now include a systems approach. A general outline is given of the results of the efforts of psychologists and their contributions to social practice from the point of view of particular psychological disciplines. The results of the institutionalization of psychology in the USSR (the creation of departments of psychology in 1966, the establishment of the Institute of Psychology under the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, etc.) are indicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is devoted to psychological investigations of cognitive processes (sensations, perception, representations, memory, imagination and thinking), their determinants and their basic underlying mechanisms. The history of psychological investigation of cognitive processes begins here. Psychophysicists were pioneers in the study of sensation as an elementary form of subjective reflection. The term reflection was not used in psychophysics, but psychophysisists investigated the laws of the regular links between the physical stimulation of the sense organs and sensations provoked by them. Sensations and perception arise from the immediate impact of objects and events on sense organs. Like sensations and perceptions image-representations are phenomena of pictorial reflection. But they arise without immediate interaction between sense organs and an object as secondary image. This level incorporates a wide range of cognitive processes. Figurative thinking and imagery are the most important. The first is a creative process of constructing fresh images on the basis of transformations and combinations of images stored in the memory.