When perestroika began financial support of science and education was seized. Researchers had to find some new sources for living. Many Russian specialists in mathematics and physics went abroad. For psychologists this appeared to be not so easy because of the language barrier and because of their specific theoretical background. But another powerful source of finance sprang up: the "customer demand" for practical psychology. Three product areas opened where psychologists were called for and very well paid:

• Politics. Elections, gubernatorial and others. Politicians believed that psychologists could help them to exert influence upon the voters.

• Young and wild Russian business. New Russians believed that psychologists could help them to sell their products and to raise labor productivity.

• Psychological education. People were interested in psychology. They believed that it could help them to get rid of their stresses and inner conflicts and to be influential. Psychological education became very popular, and it was provided at all levels, from short time courses up to university diplomas.

So, psychology has been boosted in Russia since "Perestroika". The number of graduated psychologists has increased dramatically. In 2003 there were about 300 institutions of higher education in psychology in Russia from which about 5 000 students annually graduated. You can guess that these universities were very different from the old ones. The "father" University faculties also changed to meet the situation: now they were making money not on fundamental research, but on "educational services".

The totalitarian government during the Soviet period had treated psychology as a gardener shaping his tree: letting only those branches grow which fit his plan. Any deviation was illegal. With the fall of the Soviet state, ideological barriers to the development of Russian psychological science were removed. Many of older psychologists were just tired of sticking to the old theoretical "rules". The majority of the newly graduated psychologists had little knowledge of what the theoretical basics of Soviet Psychology were, and no interest to know about it. Most rapidly developing areas of contemporary Russian psychology were those which had been virtually abandoned during the Soviet period: counseling psychology social psychology etc. Naturally Western psychological theories were generally recognized and widely employed. Lots and lots of textbooks translated into Russian had no references to Russian authors whatsoever.