We were dining in the basement room of the 'Leningrad,' reportedly the most fashionable evening restaurant in Kyiv. Professor Porshnev presided. Seated around the table, in order, were young psychologists — Andrei Brushlinsky (Institute of Philosophy, USSR Academy of Sciences), Rita Bobneva (Institute of Sociology, USSR Academy of Sciences), and Aron Brudny (Institute of Philosophy, Kyrgyz SSR Academy of Sciences). Given the combination of personalities, we were sitting not so much at a table as on a powder keg ready to explode at one careless word. Everyone in this small circle of candidates and doctors of science was militantly denying something — the work of this or that scholar, this or that psychological school, these or those experimental methods.