The paper is devoted to the field work carried out by outstanding psychologist Alexander R. Luria and his team in isolated villages in Uzbekistan and mountain Kyrgyzstan (1931- 1932) and its place in cross-cultural studies. Many people of these places never went out of own villages. That time, in the Western social science racist theories that interpreted the differences in ways of thought in terms of biology were popular. These theories were based on application of "standard intellectual tests" to illiterate peoples in Asia, Africa and Latin America. A. Luria has criticized these "standard intellectual tests", and results of his survey gave strong proof of ties between level of social conditions and peculiarities of mental processes but not between race and mind. Long before the famous Western works on comparative psychology and cultural anthropology (J. S. Bruner, M. Cole, P.M. Greenfield, J. Gay, C. Levi-Strauss, etc.) published in 1950-1970-s, the A. Luria' research expedition has anticipated the main directions and results of future crosscultural studies.

• Valeriy S. Khan(Academy of Public Administration under President of Uzbekistan, Vice-Director, Institute of History, National Academy of Sciences (Uzbekistan), Fulbright Researcher, Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, University of Kansas (USA),)