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There is currently a great deal of discussion in the humanities and social sciences about collective memory, but there is very little agreement on what it is. The first goal of this volume is to review various understandings of this term to bring some coherence to the discussion. Drawing on this review, James V. Wertsch goes on to outline a particular version of collective remembering grounded in the use of 'textual resources', especially narratives. This takes him into the special properties of narrative that shape this process and into the issues of how these textual resources are produced and consumed. Wertsch brings these general ideas to life by examining the rapid, massive transformation of collective memory during the transition from Soviet to post-Soviet Russia.

Vygotsky’s notions of speech, language and thought have recently begun to receive more attention in the west, but some of his basic distinctions are not well understood. The first part of this paper deals with some of the confusions that have arisen due to inaccurate translation and misunderstanding of Vygotsky’s general theoretical framework. The focus of this analysis is on Vygotsky’s distinction between language and speech. The second part of the paper deals with the emergence of self-regulative capacities in ontogenesis – a central theme in the work of Vygotsky and his followers. It is argued that their ideas about self-regulation can be properly understood only if we conduct a genetic analysis that goes back to the origins of self-regulation. These origins are to be found in adult-child interaction where adults provide the ‘other-regulation’ necessary for a child to carry out a task. We argue that it is by coming to function in communicative settings involving other-regulation that the child can develop self-regulative capacities. These self-regulative capacities are seen as emerging as the result of the child’s taking over the communicative and regulative responsibilities formerly carried out by the adult.

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