Emotional development in the educational preschool programs of Soviet and Post-Soviet Times

ABSTRACT Emotions are a sensitive theme in all languages, and researchers seek to understand and describe them cross-linguistically and according to the national traditions. The ‘emotional turn’ in the human sciences has touched on the educational sphere in an interesting way, where the traditional Soviet-Russian approach was replaced by the westernized terms of emotional intelligence. While applying these international schemes to the Russian psycholinguistic reality, scholars failed to do so in a consistent way. This study reviews the former and current approaches to emotional education in Russia and provides examples of the application of the authors’ attitudes to Russian-language material. Although some psychologists speak to children in a natural and suitable way, others just translate from English, which often seems inapplicable. Modern bookshops and websites abound with advice and prompts on how to develop the emotional sphere of personal life. The universal approach to emotional upbringing may ignore local language-specific traditions.