Some basic starting points in Soviet psychological, educational, and psycholinguistic research are reviewed, with emphasis on the difference in perspective and terminology between Soviet and Western research. It was found that the concept of units and levels of analysis is evident in Soviet psycholinguistic research. The development of this and other methodological principles, explicated by Vygotsky in the 1920's is traced and their application to recent Soviet psycholinguistics is discussed. The emphasis is on the interrelationships between the various levels of consciousness, neurophysiological levels, and levels of language ability; the role of memory in speech production; and categories of linguistic utterance. Leontev's theory on the process of generation of utterances is reviewed and offered as a general model of human language ability. The salient points in Vygotsky's and Leontev's models are then applied to the study of meaning, word, and vocabulary in Soviet psycholinguistics. The focus is on language and thought, meaning and sense, the role of words in language activity, the relationship between grammar and lexis, the search for words in speech production, and types of vocabulary. (AMH)