In the last years of Vygotsky's life, he worked and wrote at a frantic pace. He even dictated his work to a stenographer when he was too weak to write it himself.4 He refused to go to the hospital until very late in his illness. A week after he was finally hospitalized, he died of tuberculosis on June 11th, 1934. He was burried in Novodevich'je Cemetery in Moscow.
Figure 5: Vygotsky's grave, at Novodevich'je Cemetery, Moscow During the twenty years following his death, Vygotsky's work was banned. This was based on a decree by the Central Committee on Communism condemning that any work relating to pedology (i.e. educational psychology).4 Ironically, Vygotsky’s work in this area that criticized the same aspects of pedology with which the communists disagreed. However, any work related to this area of study at all was banned. In addition, some of Vygotsky’s ideas on language contradicted those espoused by Stalin in his 1950 essay on linguistics and therefore were also banned.
It was not until 1956, three years after Stalin’s death that Vygotsky’s work began to be published again.4 This occurred through the efforts of his loyal followers, including Luria and ... who built their own careers on ideas and theories originated by Vygotsky. There were further delays in Vygotsky's work being recongized in western culture because of the difficulty of translating his works. It is only recently that Vygotskian theories have come to have a great effect on current research in psychology.
