The aim of the article is to present the first teachers of psychology and philosophy at the Faculty of History and Philology of Nizhny Novgorod State University (1918–1921), contributing to the study of the "provincial" history of psychology, which remains on the periphery of scholarly attention focused mainly on canonical figures. The article examines the biographies and academic work of four teachers: the provincial educator B.V. Lavrov, author of one of the first gymnasium textbooks on psychology, and three Moscow students of G.I. Chelpanov — A.F. Losev, N.V. Petrovsky, and P.S. Popov — who had worked at the Psychological Institute of Moscow University before arriving in Nizhny Novgorod in 1919. It shows how the teaching of psychology, philosophy, and logic was organized at the newly founded university, how a psychological laboratory and library were created, and how educational work was carried out among townspeople and students of various professions. Particular attention is paid to the closure of the Faculty of History and Philology in 1921 and to the subsequent fates of its teachers: Losev's philosophical legacy, Petrovsky's psychotechnical research, Popov's literary studies, and the political repressions of the late 1920s–early 1930s that affected three of the four protagonists. The author concludes that the history of psychology at provincial universities has independent value, allowing science to be seen in its living, rather than canonical, fullness, and calls for further archival research.
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