The article considers the conditions in which the public consciousness was formed in the 1920s. It presents the factors that influenced the main directions of scientific inquiry, and shows the context in which new branches of Russian science, namely paedology, psychotechnics, and pedagogics, were formed. The author notes the tension and difficult circumstances of that period that affected such prominent scientists as A.B. Zalkind, I.N. Spielrein, and others.