The controversial paper describes the prehistory of coming into life of cultural-historical psychology of L. S. Vygotsky as well as the psychological expedition of A. R. Luria to Uzbekistan in the thirties; it also points to its ideological background, analyses their interrelation with cross-cultural testological research by the pedologist A. Shtillerman as well as by the psychotechnique expert V. K. Solovyov carried out in the twenties.