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The author, being a former student of the Department of Psychology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, and now is teacher, professor, remembers those who created and maintained such traditions of the Department as depth of knowledge and coherence of ideas, methodological clarity and dialogue, holistic view of the issue and using problem solving in teaching, and also the joint work of professors and students in the way of perceiving the truth. According to the author the 50th anniversary of the Department of Psychology is an occasion to both recall the path members of the Department went over the years, including several epochs, and to outline the prospects for further development. Considerable attention is paid to the personality of G.M. Andreeva, who is a gifted teacher, a brilliant scholar, and one of the founders of social psychology in the Russia. Particular attention is drawn to Galina Andreeva collecting the brightest staff of the Chair of Social Psychology, whose key feature was involvement in both the scientific and also collective life of the Department, which contributed to the development of the new important branch of psychology. The author also singles out the figure of the wonderful teacher L.A. Petrovskaya who encouraged the students to cherish their individuality as she believed it to be the main tool of the professional psychologist. With much gratitude the author recalls tips for organizing the teaching process received from A.U. Kharash.

The paper characterizes the current state and the importance of the Department, and outlines the prospects for further development. In particular, the author speaks of the need for developing student personal involvement in professional activities, and also of creating favourable conditions at the Deaprtment for a student successful transition from training to real life.

The paper analyses such polysemantic terms as “subject”, “individual”, “personality”, and which form sincretic notions, e.g. “subjectivity of personality”, “multisubjectivity of personality”, etc.

The author claims that he was unable to find in the works of other authors meaningful connections between the concepts of «subject» and «personality». The concept of «subject» is used in such a wide meaning that its content potential is close to zero. It highlights the complexity of understanding the subject, and provides evidence of the difficulties that the author finds in the works of the leading philosophers and psychologists who are concerned with the issue of personality. As a result, the author concludes that the analysis of the different forms of reflexivity and, their base practices are the theory of psychology of the subject.

The second term of the triad – the individual or the individuality, is both the subject and the subject matter and objective of an infinite number of studies. At the same time the concepts of «subject» and «personality» are not congruent to the concept of «individual», although many attempts to define or describe the personalityare repelled by the notion of individual. The phenomenon of personality expresses a rather late result of human development.

The interpretation of these terms by G.G. Shpet, S.L. Rubinshtein, B.M. Teplov, A.N. Leontiev, etc. is refurbished. The author believes the main issue of psychological research is personality. On the ontological plane,there are two notions of personality: down — to the subject — to a function or a collection of functions; and up — to the personality — to an ideal, to the limit of self-construction, to spirituality and freedom.

The period of the Middle Ages became a new progressive stage of development of psychological thought. Daily supervision and generalization in the course of communication, activities gained further development in the form of philosophical judgment and a formulation of the most general laws and offers. In the Middle Ages, under the influence of the developed objective historical reality, in Azerbaijan the number of the poets and prose writers writing in the native language though before this work were created by them, generally in the Arab and farsidsky languages has increased. The ancient period comes to the end at this stage and the medieval period of the Azerbaijani literature when in parallel the psychology passed the stage of consecutive studying and the analysis of human knowledge which is saved up in the course of communication of people with each other begins. In article it is told about culture, customs, literary and cultural heritage of the Azerbaijani people. The main attention is paid to studying of prescientific and scientific psychological science of Azerbaijan during various periods when it developed as one of the field of philosophy. Also merits of such prominent representatives of public and scientific thought as Bahmanyar, Siradzheddin Urmavi, Nizami Gyandzhevi, Nasireddin Tusi, etc. are emphasized. Researches show that history of science and culture of Azerbaijan, models of folklore and references are rich with psychological thoughts and ideas. Azerbaijan has ancient traditions in the history of forming of the first psychological views. After declaration of independence as Azerbaijan in modern literature the main place is taken by universal ideas, subjects of return of the occupied native lands, love for the country, justice, etc. In spite of the fact that now the Azerbaijani literature is based on reflection and a celebration of ideas of an azerbaydzhanizm, modernist and post-modernist aspirations are also shown in a varying degree. In article the origin and history of development of psychological thought of the period of the Middle Ages reveals that gives the chance to consider psychology comprehensively, in a complex, and also to learn what has formed the basis of modern psychological thought.

The paper presents the book “Island of Utopia: pedagogical and social engineering of postwar school” (M. Mayofis, P. Safronova, & I. Kukulina (Eds.) (2014) Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie) which is currently in press. This collective monograph is the result of a research project relevant School of Humanitarian Studies of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.

The work is devoted to a particular period of history of education (1940s-1980s), but in scope, it inevitably goes beyond the period mentioned, forcing to think about what was happening in the Soviet education before this period after, i.e. in the post-Soviet education.

The author defines the genre of the book mentioned, as non-fiction pedagogy literature. Previously non-fiction pieces had no analogues among the historical and pedagogical works.

On the one hand, the genre of non-fiction involves precision, rejection of many myths rooted in human consciousness. On the other hand, it allows multiple interpretations. Therefore, the author notes that the text of the paper cannot be regarded as a professional review with a brief overview of the diverse collective heads of academic monographs. This is a reflection on the book that offers readers the opportunity to join a meaningful conversation, complete the piece with their own stories that clarify and specify the message of the book, and sometimes even disagree with the authors of the book.

The book is written by serious Russian and foreign authors. It enables a sober assessment of the Russian education system with all its ups and downs. The book convinces the reader that despite education being a sphere of activity is very dependent on the state of politics and ideology, it allows a certain breakthrough which results in emerging relatively autonomous pedagogical utopias.

A great number of pages devoted to the reform of education outside Russia show that the only correct solution accepted by absolutely all the players on the field of education (the state and the teachers, parents and their children) is found nowhere in the world.