Alexander Bogdanov
Encyclopedia
Alexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov ' onMouseout='HidePop("83017")' href="/topics/Russian_Empire">Russian Empire
(now Poland
) –7 April 1928, Moscow
) was a Russia
n physician
, philosopher, science fiction
writer, and revolutionary
of Belarusian
ethnicity.
He was a key figure in the early history of the Bolshevik
faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party
, being one of its cofounders and a rival to Vladimir Lenin
until being expelled in 1909. In the first two decades of the Soviet Union
, he was an influential opponent of the government from a Marxist
perspective. The polymath
Bogdanov received training in medicine and psychiatry. His scientific interests ranged from the universal systems theory
to the possibility of human rejuvenation
through blood transfusion
. He invented an original philosophy called “tectology
,” now regarded as a forerunner of systems theory
. He was also an economist, culture theorist, science fiction writer, and political activist.
ian, Alyaksandr Malinovsky was born into a rural teacher's family. While working on his medical degree at Moscow University, he was arrested for joining the paramilitary revolutionary group, Narodnaya Volya. He was briefly exiled to Tula
. He resumed his medical studies at the University of Kharkiv
(Ukraine), where he became involved in revolutionary activities and published his "Brief course of economic science" in 1897. In 1899, he graduated as a medical doctor, and published his next work, "Basic elements of the historical perspective on nature". He was arrested by the Tsar's police, spent six months in prison, and was exiled to Vologda
.
In his pursuit of social justice
, Malinouski studied political philosophy and economics, took the pseudonym Bogdanov, and in 1903 joined the Bolshevik
faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. For the next six years Bogdanov was a major figure among the early Bolsheviks, second only to Vladimir Lenin
in influence. In 1904-1906, he published three volumes of the philosophic treatise Empiriomonizm, in which he tried to merge Marxism
with the philosophy of Ernst Mach
, Wilhelm Ostwald
, and Richard Avenarius
. His work later affected a number of Russian Marxist theoreticians, including Nikolai Bukharin
. In 1907, he helped organize the 1907 Tiflis bank robbery
with both Lenin and Leonid Krasin
.
For four years after the collapse of the Russian Revolution of 1905
, Bogdanov led a group within the Bolsheviks ("ultimatists" and "otzovists
" or "recallists"), who demanded a recall of Social Democratic deputies from the State Duma
, and he vied with Lenin for the leadership of the Bolshevik faction. By mid-1908, the factionalism with the Bolsheviks had become irreconcilable. A majority of Bolshevik leaders either supported Bogdanov or were undecided between him and Lenin. Lenin concentrated on undermining Bogdanov's reputation as a philosopher. In 1909 he published a scathing book of criticism entitled Materialism and Empiriocriticism, assaulting Bogdanov's position and accusing him of philosophical idealism. In June 1909, Bogdanov was defeated by Lenin at a Bolshevik mini-conference in Paris
organized by the editorial board of the Bolshevik magazine Proletary
, and expelled from the Bolsheviks.
He joined his brother-in-law Anatoly Lunacharsky, Maxim Gorky
, and other "otzovists" on the island of Capri
, where they started a school for Russian factory workers. In 1910, Bogdanov, Lunacharsky, Mikhail Pokrovsky, and their supporters moved the school to Bologna
, where they continued teaching classes through 1911, while Lenin and his allies soon started a rival school outside of Paris. Bogdanov broke with the "otzovists" in 1911 and abandoned revolutionary activities. After six years of his political exile in Europe, Bogdanov returned to Russia in 1914, following an amnesty.
Bogdanov's innovative work on the comparative study of economic and military power of European nations, written in 1912-1913, was the first interdisciplinary work ever on systems analysis
, which he later merged with tectology
. Bogdanov discovered what have become modern principles of systems theory and systems analysis
, although his research remained unknown to systems theory posterity until many decades after his death. His works on systems analysis were not translated in his lifetime.
Bogdanov served as a physician at a hospital. He had no involvement in the Russian Revolution of 1917
. After the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917, Bogdanov refused multiple offers to rejoin the party and denounced the new regime as similar to Aleksey Arakcheyev
's arbitrary and despotic rule in the early 1820s.
In 1918, Bogdanov became a professor of economics at the University of Moscow and director of the newly established Socialist Academy of Social Sciences.
In 1918-1920, Bogdanov co-founded the proletarian art movement Proletkult
and was its leading theoretician. In his lectures and articles, he called for the total destruction of the "old bourgeois culture" in favour of a "pure proletarian culture" of the future. At first Proletkult, like other radical cultural movements of the era, received financial support from the Bolshevik government, but by 1920 the Bolshevik leadership grew hostile and on December 1, 1920 Pravda
published a decree denouncing Proletkult as a "petit bourgeois" organization operating outside of Soviet institutions and a haven for "socially alien elements". Later in the month the president of Proletkult was removed and Bogdanov lost his seat on its Central Committee. He withdrew from the organization completely in 1921-1922.
On 18 September 1923, Bogdanov was arrested by the GPU
(the Soviet secret police) on suspicion of having inspired the recently discovered secret oppositionist group Worker's Truth. He was released after five weeks in October, however his file was not closed until a decree passed by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on 16 January 1989. He wrote about his experiences under arrest in Five weeks with the GPU.
In 1908, Bogdanov published the novel, Red Star
about a utopia
set on Mars
. In it, he made predictions about future scientific and social developments. His utopia also dealt with feminist
themes, which would become more common in later utopian science fiction, e.g., the two sexes becoming virtually identical in the future, or women escaping "domestic slavery" (one reason for physical changes) and being free to pursue relationships with the same freedom as men, without stigma. Other notable differences between the utopia of Red Star and present day society include workers having total control over their working hours, as well as more subtle differences in social behavior such as conversations being patiently "set at the level of the person with whom they were speaking and with understanding for his personality although it might very much differ from their own". The novel also gave a detailed description of blood transfusion in the Martian society.
Red Star was one of the inspirations for Red Mars, an award-winning science fiction novel by Kim Stanley Robinson
. Bogdanov is the surname of the character Arkady, who is also a fictional descendant of Alexander Bogdanov. Bogdanov later published a prequel to Red Star, called Engineer Menni (1913).
He seems to have had in mind a third book during the composition of the poem, "A Martian Stranded on Earth" (1924).
, later explored by Cybernetics
. In Tectology, Bogdanov proposed to unify all social, biological, and physical sciences by considering them as systems of relationships and by seeking the organizational principles that underlie all systems. His three volume book anticipated many ideas later popularized by Norbert Wiener
in Cybernetics and Ludwig von Bertalanffy
in General Systems Theory. Both Wiener and von Bertalanffy may have read the German translation of Tectology, published in 1928. In Russia, Vladimir Lenin
(and later Joseph Stalin
) considered Bogdanov's natural philosophy an ideological threat to dialectic materialism. The rediscovery of Tectology occurred only in the 1970s.
experiments, apparently hoping to achieve eternal youth
or at least partial rejuvenation
. Lenin's sister Maria Ulianova was among many who volunteered to take part in Bogdanov's experiments. After undergoing 11 blood transfusions, he remarked with satisfaction on the improvement of his eyesight, suspension of balding, and other positive symptoms. The fellow revolutionary Leonid Krasin
wrote to his wife that "Bogdanov seems to have become 7, no, 10 years younger after the operation". In 1925-1926, Bogdanov founded the Institute for Haemotology and Blood Transfusions, which was later named after him. But a later transfusion cost him life, when he took the blood of a student suffering from malaria
and tuberculosis
(Bogdanov died, but the student injected with his blood made a complete recovery). Some scholars (e.g. Loren Graham
) have speculated that his death may have been a suicide, because Bogdanov wrote a highly nervous political letter shortly beforehand, while others attribute it to blood type incompatibility, which was poorly understood at the time.
to lead to a technocratic society. This was because the workers lacked the knowledge and initiative to seize control of social affairs for themselves as a result of the hierarchical and authoritarian nature of the capitalist production process. However, Bogdanov also considered that the hierarchical and authoritarian mode of organization of the Bolshevik party was also partly to blame, although Bogdanov considered at least some such organization necessary and inevitable.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Bogdanov's theorizing, being the product of a non-Leninist Bolshevik, became an important, though "underground", influence on certain dissident factions in the Soviet Union
who turned against Bolshevik autocracy while accepting the necessity of the Revolution and wishing to preserve its achievements.
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
(now Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
) –7 April 1928, Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
) was a Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
, philosopher, science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
writer, and revolutionary
Revolutionary
A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.-Definition:...
of Belarusian
Belarusians
Belarusians ; are an East Slavic ethnic group who populate the majority of the Republic of Belarus. Introduced to the world as a new state in the early 1990s, the Republic of Belarus brought with it the notion of a re-emerging Belarusian ethnicity, drawn upon the lines of the Old Belarusian...
ethnicity.
He was a key figure in the early history of the Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party , also known as Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party or Russian Social Democratic Party, was a revolutionary socialist Russian political party formed in 1898 in Minsk to unite the various revolutionary organizations into one party...
, being one of its cofounders and a rival to Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
until being expelled in 1909. In the first two decades of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, he was an influential opponent of the government from a Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
perspective. The polymath
Polymath
A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath may simply be someone who is very knowledgeable...
Bogdanov received training in medicine and psychiatry. His scientific interests ranged from the universal systems theory
Systems theory
Systems theory is the transdisciplinary study of systems in general, with the goal of elucidating principles that can be applied to all types of systems at all nesting levels in all fields of research...
to the possibility of human rejuvenation
Rejuvenation
Rejuvenation may refer to:*Rejuvenation , reversing the aging process*Rejuvenation , when the base level that a river is flowing down to is lowered*Rejuvenation , 1974*Rejuvenation , 2009...
through blood transfusion
Blood transfusion
Blood transfusion is the process of receiving blood products into one's circulation intravenously. Transfusions are used in a variety of medical conditions to replace lost components of the blood...
. He invented an original philosophy called “tectology
Tectology
Tectology is a term used by Alexander Bogdanov to describe a discipline that consisted of unifying all social, biological and physical sciences, by considering them as systems of relationships, and by seeking the organizational principles that underlie all systems...
,” now regarded as a forerunner of systems theory
Systems theory
Systems theory is the transdisciplinary study of systems in general, with the goal of elucidating principles that can be applied to all types of systems at all nesting levels in all fields of research...
. He was also an economist, culture theorist, science fiction writer, and political activist.
Early years
Ethnically BelarusBelarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
ian, Alyaksandr Malinovsky was born into a rural teacher's family. While working on his medical degree at Moscow University, he was arrested for joining the paramilitary revolutionary group, Narodnaya Volya. He was briefly exiled to Tula
Tula, Russia
Tula is an industrial city and the administrative center of Tula Oblast, Russia. It is located south of Moscow, on the Upa River. Population: -History:...
. He resumed his medical studies at the University of Kharkiv
Kharkiv
Kharkiv or Kharkov is the second-largest city in Ukraine.The city was founded in 1654 and was a major centre of Ukrainian culture in the Russian Empire. Kharkiv became the first city in Ukraine where the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in December 1917 and Soviet government was...
(Ukraine), where he became involved in revolutionary activities and published his "Brief course of economic science" in 1897. In 1899, he graduated as a medical doctor, and published his next work, "Basic elements of the historical perspective on nature". He was arrested by the Tsar's police, spent six months in prison, and was exiled to Vologda
Vologda
Vologda is a city and the administrative, cultural, and scientific center of Vologda Oblast, Russia, located on the Vologda River. The city is a major transport knot of the Northwest of Russia. Vologda is among the Russian cities possessing an especially valuable historical heritage...
.
In his pursuit of social justice
Social justice
Social justice generally refers to the idea of creating a society or institution that is based on the principles of equality and solidarity, that understands and values human rights, and that recognizes the dignity of every human being. The term and modern concept of "social justice" was coined by...
, Malinouski studied political philosophy and economics, took the pseudonym Bogdanov, and in 1903 joined the Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. For the next six years Bogdanov was a major figure among the early Bolsheviks, second only to Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
in influence. In 1904-1906, he published three volumes of the philosophic treatise Empiriomonizm, in which he tried to merge Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
with the philosophy of Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach was an Austrian physicist and philosopher, noted for his contributions to physics such as the Mach number and the study of shock waves...
, Wilhelm Ostwald
Wilhelm Ostwald
Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald was a Baltic German chemist. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1909 for his work on catalysis, chemical equilibria and reaction velocities...
, and Richard Avenarius
Richard Avenarius
Richard Heinrich Ludwig Avenarius was a German-Swiss philosopher. He formulated the radical positivist doctrine of "empirical criticism" or empirio-criticism....
. His work later affected a number of Russian Marxist theoreticians, including Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin , was a Russian Marxist, Bolshevik revolutionary, and Soviet politician. He was a member of the Politburo and Central Committee , chairman of the Communist International , and the editor in chief of Pravda , the journal Bolshevik , Izvestia , and the Great Soviet...
. In 1907, he helped organize the 1907 Tiflis bank robbery
1907 Tiflis bank robbery
The 1907 Tiflis bank robbery, also known as the Yerevan Square expropriation, was an armed robbery by Bolshevik revolutionaries of a bank cash shipment in the Georgian city of Tiflis . The robbery occurred on 26 June 1907 in Yerevan Square...
with both Lenin and Leonid Krasin
Leonid Krasin
Leonid Borisovich Krasin July 1870, Kurgan – November 24, 1926) was a Russian and Soviet Bolshevik politician and diplomat.-Early years:Krasin was born in Kurgan, near Tobol'sk in Siberia. His father, Boris Ivanovich Krasin was the local chief of police...
.
For four years after the collapse of the Russian Revolution of 1905
Russian Revolution of 1905
The 1905 Russian Revolution was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. Some of it was directed against the government, while some was undirected. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies...
, Bogdanov led a group within the Bolsheviks ("ultimatists" and "otzovists
Otzovists
Throughout the history, there were a number of political factions within the RSDLP , in addition to the major split of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.- Factions by political stand :...
" or "recallists"), who demanded a recall of Social Democratic deputies from the State Duma
State Duma
The State Duma , common abbreviation: Госду́ма ) in the Russian Federation is the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia , the upper house being the Federation Council of Russia. The Duma headquarters is located in central Moscow, a few steps from Manege Square. Its members are referred to...
, and he vied with Lenin for the leadership of the Bolshevik faction. By mid-1908, the factionalism with the Bolsheviks had become irreconcilable. A majority of Bolshevik leaders either supported Bogdanov or were undecided between him and Lenin. Lenin concentrated on undermining Bogdanov's reputation as a philosopher. In 1909 he published a scathing book of criticism entitled Materialism and Empiriocriticism, assaulting Bogdanov's position and accusing him of philosophical idealism. In June 1909, Bogdanov was defeated by Lenin at a Bolshevik mini-conference in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
organized by the editorial board of the Bolshevik magazine Proletary
Proletary
Proletary was an illegal Russian Bolshevik newspaper edited by Lenin; it was published from September 3, 1906 until December 11, 1909. A total of fifty issues having appeared. Active participants in the editorial work were M. F. Vladimirsky, V. V. Vorovsky, I. F. Dubrovinsky, Anatoly Lunacharsky...
, and expelled from the Bolsheviks.
He joined his brother-in-law Anatoly Lunacharsky, Maxim Gorky
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...
, and other "otzovists" on the island of Capri
Capri
Capri is an Italian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrentine Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples, in the Campania region of Southern Italy...
, where they started a school for Russian factory workers. In 1910, Bogdanov, Lunacharsky, Mikhail Pokrovsky, and their supporters moved the school to Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
, where they continued teaching classes through 1911, while Lenin and his allies soon started a rival school outside of Paris. Bogdanov broke with the "otzovists" in 1911 and abandoned revolutionary activities. After six years of his political exile in Europe, Bogdanov returned to Russia in 1914, following an amnesty.
Bogdanov's innovative work on the comparative study of economic and military power of European nations, written in 1912-1913, was the first interdisciplinary work ever on systems analysis
Systems analysis
Systems analysis is the study of sets of interacting entities, including computer systems analysis. This field is closely related to requirements analysis or operations research...
, which he later merged with tectology
Tectology
Tectology is a term used by Alexander Bogdanov to describe a discipline that consisted of unifying all social, biological and physical sciences, by considering them as systems of relationships, and by seeking the organizational principles that underlie all systems...
. Bogdanov discovered what have become modern principles of systems theory and systems analysis
Systems analysis
Systems analysis is the study of sets of interacting entities, including computer systems analysis. This field is closely related to requirements analysis or operations research...
, although his research remained unknown to systems theory posterity until many decades after his death. His works on systems analysis were not translated in his lifetime.
During and after World War I
During World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
Bogdanov served as a physician at a hospital. He had no involvement in the Russian Revolution of 1917
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
. After the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917, Bogdanov refused multiple offers to rejoin the party and denounced the new regime as similar to Aleksey Arakcheyev
Aleksey Arakcheyev
Count Alexey Andreyevich Arakcheyev or Arakcheev was a Russian general and statesman under the reign of Alexander I.He served under Paul I and Alexander I as army leader and artillery inspector respectively. He had a violent temper, but was otherwise a competent artillerist, and is known for his...
's arbitrary and despotic rule in the early 1820s.
In 1918, Bogdanov became a professor of economics at the University of Moscow and director of the newly established Socialist Academy of Social Sciences.
In 1918-1920, Bogdanov co-founded the proletarian art movement Proletkult
Proletkult
Proletkult was movement which arose in the Russian revolution and was active from 1917 to 1925 which aspired to provide the foundations for what was intended to be a truly proletarian art devoid of bourgeois influence.The name is a portmanteau of "proletarskaya kultura" , which are better-known as...
and was its leading theoretician. In his lectures and articles, he called for the total destruction of the "old bourgeois culture" in favour of a "pure proletarian culture" of the future. At first Proletkult, like other radical cultural movements of the era, received financial support from the Bolshevik government, but by 1920 the Bolshevik leadership grew hostile and on December 1, 1920 Pravda
Pravda
Pravda was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991....
published a decree denouncing Proletkult as a "petit bourgeois" organization operating outside of Soviet institutions and a haven for "socially alien elements". Later in the month the president of Proletkult was removed and Bogdanov lost his seat on its Central Committee. He withdrew from the organization completely in 1921-1922.
On 18 September 1923, Bogdanov was arrested by the GPU
State Political Directorate
The State Political Directorate was the secret police of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1934...
(the Soviet secret police) on suspicion of having inspired the recently discovered secret oppositionist group Worker's Truth. He was released after five weeks in October, however his file was not closed until a decree passed by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on 16 January 1989. He wrote about his experiences under arrest in Five weeks with the GPU.
Fiction
Bogdanov wrote science fiction to test out his political-scientific ideas. Most of Bogdanov's works remain unavailable in English.In 1908, Bogdanov published the novel, Red Star
Red Star (novel)
Red Star is Alexander Bogdanov's 1908 science fiction novel about a communist utopia on Mars. Set in early Russia during the Revolution of 1905 and on socialist Mars, the novel tells the story of Leonid, a scientist-revolutionary who travels to Mars to learn and experience their socialist system...
about a utopia
Utopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
set on Mars
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
. In it, he made predictions about future scientific and social developments. His utopia also dealt with feminist
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
themes, which would become more common in later utopian science fiction, e.g., the two sexes becoming virtually identical in the future, or women escaping "domestic slavery" (one reason for physical changes) and being free to pursue relationships with the same freedom as men, without stigma. Other notable differences between the utopia of Red Star and present day society include workers having total control over their working hours, as well as more subtle differences in social behavior such as conversations being patiently "set at the level of the person with whom they were speaking and with understanding for his personality although it might very much differ from their own". The novel also gave a detailed description of blood transfusion in the Martian society.
Red Star was one of the inspirations for Red Mars, an award-winning science fiction novel by Kim Stanley Robinson
Kim Stanley Robinson
Kim Stanley Robinson is an American science fiction writer known for his award-winning Mars trilogy. His work delves into ecological and sociological themes regularly, and many of his novels appear to be the direct result of his own scientific fascinations, such as the fifteen years of research...
. Bogdanov is the surname of the character Arkady, who is also a fictional descendant of Alexander Bogdanov. Bogdanov later published a prequel to Red Star, called Engineer Menni (1913).
He seems to have had in mind a third book during the composition of the poem, "A Martian Stranded on Earth" (1924).
Tectology
From 1913 until 1922, Bogdanov immersed himself in the writing of a lengthy philosophical treatise of original ideas, Tectology: Universal Organization Science. Tectology anticipated many basic ideas of Systems AnalysisSystems analysis
Systems analysis is the study of sets of interacting entities, including computer systems analysis. This field is closely related to requirements analysis or operations research...
, later explored by Cybernetics
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
. In Tectology, Bogdanov proposed to unify all social, biological, and physical sciences by considering them as systems of relationships and by seeking the organizational principles that underlie all systems. His three volume book anticipated many ideas later popularized by Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener was an American mathematician.A famous child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.Wiener is regarded as the originator of cybernetics, a...
in Cybernetics and Ludwig von Bertalanffy
Ludwig von Bertalanffy
Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy was an Austrian-born biologist known as one of the founders of general systems theory . GST is an interdisciplinary practice that describes systems with interacting components, applicable to biology, cybernetics, and other fields...
in General Systems Theory. Both Wiener and von Bertalanffy may have read the German translation of Tectology, published in 1928. In Russia, Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
(and later Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
) considered Bogdanov's natural philosophy an ideological threat to dialectic materialism. The rediscovery of Tectology occurred only in the 1970s.
Later years and death
In 1924, Bogdanov started his blood transfusionBlood transfusion
Blood transfusion is the process of receiving blood products into one's circulation intravenously. Transfusions are used in a variety of medical conditions to replace lost components of the blood...
experiments, apparently hoping to achieve eternal youth
Elixir of life
The elixir of life, also known as the elixir of immortality and sometimes equated with the philosopher's stone, is a legendary potion, or drink, that grants the drinker eternal life and or eternal youth. Many practitioners of alchemy pursued it. The elixir of life was also said to be able to create...
or at least partial rejuvenation
Rejuvenation
Rejuvenation may refer to:*Rejuvenation , reversing the aging process*Rejuvenation , when the base level that a river is flowing down to is lowered*Rejuvenation , 1974*Rejuvenation , 2009...
. Lenin's sister Maria Ulianova was among many who volunteered to take part in Bogdanov's experiments. After undergoing 11 blood transfusions, he remarked with satisfaction on the improvement of his eyesight, suspension of balding, and other positive symptoms. The fellow revolutionary Leonid Krasin
Leonid Krasin
Leonid Borisovich Krasin July 1870, Kurgan – November 24, 1926) was a Russian and Soviet Bolshevik politician and diplomat.-Early years:Krasin was born in Kurgan, near Tobol'sk in Siberia. His father, Boris Ivanovich Krasin was the local chief of police...
wrote to his wife that "Bogdanov seems to have become 7, no, 10 years younger after the operation". In 1925-1926, Bogdanov founded the Institute for Haemotology and Blood Transfusions, which was later named after him. But a later transfusion cost him life, when he took the blood of a student suffering from malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
and tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
(Bogdanov died, but the student injected with his blood made a complete recovery). Some scholars (e.g. Loren Graham
Loren Graham
Loren R. Graham is a noted historian of science, considered the leading scholar on Russian science outside that country....
) have speculated that his death may have been a suicide, because Bogdanov wrote a highly nervous political letter shortly beforehand, while others attribute it to blood type incompatibility, which was poorly understood at the time.
Legacy
Both Bogdanov's fiction and his political writings imply that he expected the coming revolution against capitalismCapitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
to lead to a technocratic society. This was because the workers lacked the knowledge and initiative to seize control of social affairs for themselves as a result of the hierarchical and authoritarian nature of the capitalist production process. However, Bogdanov also considered that the hierarchical and authoritarian mode of organization of the Bolshevik party was also partly to blame, although Bogdanov considered at least some such organization necessary and inevitable.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Bogdanov's theorizing, being the product of a non-Leninist Bolshevik, became an important, though "underground", influence on certain dissident factions in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
who turned against Bolshevik autocracy while accepting the necessity of the Revolution and wishing to preserve its achievements.
Non-fiction
- Poznanie s Istoricheskoi Tochki Zreniya (Knowledge from a Historical Viewpoint) (St. Petersburg, 1901)
- Empiriomonizm: Stat'i po Filosofii (Empiriomonism: Articles on Philosophy) 3 volumes (Moscow, 1904–1906)
- Filosofiya Zhivogo Opyta: Populiarnye Ocherki (Philosophy of Living Experience: Popular Essays) (St. Petersburg, 1912)
- Tektologiya: Vseobschaya Organizatsionnaya Nauka 3 volumes (Berlin and Petrograd-Moscow, 1922)
- "Avtobiografia" in Entsiklopedicheskii slovar, XLI, pp. 29-34 (1926)
- God raboty Instituta perelivanya krovi (Annals of the Institute of Blood Transfusion) (Moscow 1926-1927)
Fiction
- Krasnaya zvezda (Red Star) (St. Petersburg, 1908)
- Inzhener Menni (Engineer Menni) (Moscow, 1913)
Non-fiction
- 'Proletarian Poetry' (1918), Labour MonthlyLabour MonthlyLabour Monthly was the magazine of the Communist Party of Great Britain .-Authors published:* Alexander BogdanovLabour Monthly was the magazine of the Communist Party of Great Britain .-Authors published:...
, Vol IV, No. 5-6, May-June 1923 - 'The Criticism of Proletarian Art' (from Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva, 1918) Labour Monthly, Vol V, No.6, December 1923
- 'Religion, Art and Marxism', Labour Monthly, Vol VI, No.8, August 1924
- Essays in Tektology: The General Science of Organization, translated by George Gorelik (Seaside, CA: Intersystems Publications, 1980)
Fiction
- Red StarRed Star (novel)Red Star is Alexander Bogdanov's 1908 science fiction novel about a communist utopia on Mars. Set in early Russia during the Revolution of 1905 and on socialist Mars, the novel tells the story of Leonid, a scientist-revolutionary who travels to Mars to learn and experience their socialist system...
: The First Bolshevik Utopia, edited by Loren GrahamLoren GrahamLoren R. Graham is a noted historian of science, considered the leading scholar on Russian science outside that country....
and Richard StitesRichard StitesRichard Thomas Stites was a historian of Russian culture.In 1978 he published The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism and Bolshevism, 1860-1930, a book that opened up a new discipline of Russian studies.In 1984, he wrote the introductory essay for an English translations of...
; trans. Charles Rougle (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984):- Red Star (1908). Novel. In English
- Engineer Menni (1913). Novel.
- "A Martian Stranded on Earth" (1924). Poem.