“A slanderer disguised as a scholar”: Morris S. Viteles and the implosive internationalization of Soviet prewar applied psychology.

This article examines the international connections of Soviet applied psychology in the 1930s. Using the visit of American industrial psychologist Morris S. Viteles to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1934-1935 as a focal event, the article considers three perspectives on the internationalization of Soviet applied psychology that clashed during the visit: those of Viteles, his host Isaak Spielrein, and Lev Schwarz, who reviewed the results of Viteles's research in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Drawing on archival and published sources, the article demonstrates that Viteles regarded Soviet applied psychology as an international scientific endeavor suffering from political and ideological intervention. In contrast, Spielrein embraced the concept of two sciences-proletarian and bourgeois-that were ideologically and politically opposed yet participated in the international circulation of knowledge. Schwarz viewed Soviet and non-Soviet applied psychology as fundamentally incompatible. The article shows that the latter vision produced the paradoxical phenomenon of implosive internationalization-international communication that undermined itself. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).