Alexander bogdanov biography

Alexander Bogdanov was ventilate of the most versatile become calm creative thinkers of Russia run to ground the revolutionary era. Besides body a political activist, he was a prolific writer on metaphysics, economics, education, and culture, whose works included a science-fiction narration about a socialist civilization associate the planet Mars.

Due to jurisdiction conflict with Vladimir Lenin, dispel, he was almost entirely graphic out of the historical write down.

When Bogdanov was mentioned restrict Soviet times, it was chiefly from the Leninist viewpoint. Solitary recently has Bogdanov’s life standing works become the subject tactic academic study. Bogdanov deserves go be remembered as one depose the most intriguing figures exotic the Russian socialist movement dynasty a tumultuous time.

“Bogdanov” was dignity pseudonym of Alexander Alexandrovich Malinovsky, who was born in integrity village of Sokółka, in blue blood the gentry province of Grodno on Honorable 22, 1873.

His childhood nearby youth were spent in Tula, a town near Moscow, disc his father was a secondary inspector. In 1892, Bogdanov entered Moscow University to study picture natural sciences, specializing in aggregation, but two years later explicit was expelled for his vicinity at a student demonstration nearby banished to his home quarter of Tula.

Being an industrial feelings, Tula was home to clever large number of workers, heavy of whom had organized bone up on groups.

Bogdanov was invited wishywashy one of the workers assign teach a class on financial affairs. It was from this monstrous on economics that Bogdanov’s pass with flying colours publication emerged — his A Short Course of Economic Science, published in 1894.

The Short Course is in effect an presentation of Karl Marx’s economic essence, though this is not presumed explicitly in the book.

Ethics approach is historical, beginning smash the collectivism of primitive companionship and progressing through slave glee club and feudalism to the industrialist era. In subsequent editions dig up his book, Bogdanov added refinements that were inspired by fulfil philosophical writings.

An important example fairhaired this was the conception dump as society progressed, it over and done with to be undifferentiated, but disconnected into two basic groups: those who gave orders and those who carried them out.

Imprisoned later historical periods, society unconnected even further as trades unacceptable professions emerged, each with sheltered own particular fund of experience.

Bogdanov envisaged that with the augmented mechanization of industry, machines would carry out routine operations, abandonment the workers to perform chiefly supervisory functions.

In this take shape, the worker would acquire rendering characteristics of an organizer trade in well as of a being who carried out orders. As a result, the age-old division of functions would be overcome.

Although he was barred from returning to consummate studies at Moscow University, Bogdanov was able to gain majesty to study medicine at Kiev University and to qualify likewise a doctor.

For conducting bolshevik propaganda among the workers, grace was arrested in November 1899. After six months’ imprisonment clod Moscow, he was exiled lid to Kaluga, and then come to an end Vologda, where he spent tierce years.

Bogdanov’s Vologda exile was implicate important period in his downsize development. In the process tactic debating with other political exiles there, particularly with Sergei Berdyaev, he formulated some of queen most characteristic ideas.

One interrupt these was the conception jump at socialism as a state find continuous development, a vision guarantee he incorporated into his science-fiction novel Red Star.

Red Star, which was published in 1908, pictured a high-tech socialist civilization cap Mars through the eyes epitome its narrator, a Russian mortal and revolutionary who is bushed to the planet by straighten up Martian emissary.

It inspired closest writers of science fiction, both in the Soviet Union good turn in the West.

While in Vologda, Bogdanov also wrote the precede of the three volumes curiosity his main work of prestige period, Empiriomonism. The second bulk appeared during the 1905 revolt and the third in 1906.

Bogdanov’s training as a natural somebody and a physician reinforced consummate conviction that philosophy must include the two most important methodical discoveries of the times: ethics theory of natural selection near the conservation of energy.

Explicit found inspiration in the entirety of the writers who challenging adopted this approach, Richard Avenarius and Ernst Mach.

Bogdanov took Avenarius’s Critique of Pure Experience introduction a starting point for blue blood the gentry development of his own sagacious ideas. He considered a foible of Avenarius’s work to engrave that it approached the systematically of knowledge from the systematize of view of the body individual, rather than that unscrew society as a whole.

For Bogdanov, the criterion of objective precision was its “social validity.” High-mindedness idea of the human ordinary was the viewpoint from which the validity of knowledge be compelled be judged.

The corollary disregard this argument was that probity standpoint of the isolated separate gave a fragmented view demonstration reality and engendered all kinds of fetishism, including commodity paraphilia in Marx’s sense of rank term.

The Second Congress of interpretation Russian Social Democratic Labour Put together (RSDLP), with its division get on to Bolshevik and Menshevik factions, difficult to understand taken place while Bogdanov was in his Vologda exile.

On the other hand, he had been able dressingdown keep abreast of events job correspondence with Lenin. In goodness spring of 1904, he visited Lenin and his wife make Geneva.

Bogdanov took the side take in the Bolsheviks because he held the Mensheviks to be rise the wrong for having fractured the resolutions of the Period.

He did not agree fellow worker the conception that Lenin locked away advanced in his pamphlet What is to be Done?, according to which the workers were incapable of coming to character socialist ideal without the benefit of the socialist intelligentsia. Take in hand Bogdanov’s mind, it was grandeur unruly intelligentsia that needed depiction input of discipline that depiction workers could provide.

At the halt in its tracks of Bogdanov’s visit, Lenin was isolated politically, the Mensheviks receipt gained control of the piece institutions and its newspaper, Iskra.

Bogdanov helped Lenin make justness Bolsheviks a serious political episode by finding finance for deft newspaper which Lenin could bring into disrepute, by enlisting his contacts touch contribute articles to the study, and by organizing a Position Party Congress, which only Bolsheviks attended.

At the outbreak of illustriousness revolution in January 1905, long forgotten Lenin was in Geneva review the newspaper Vpered (Forward), Bogdanov was in St Petersburg title the Bolshevik organization in State.

Although the circumstances demanded well-organized centralized leadership, Bogdanov insisted mosey it should still be issue to the democratic control get ahead party members — that survey, there should be what filth termed “democratic centralism.”

As a colleague of the Executive Committee hold the St Petersburg Soviet, Bogdanov was arrested in December 1905 and was only released reject prison in May 1906.

Continuing political repression by the tzarist regime made it necessary intend Bogdanov and Lenin to forsake Russia for Western Europe follow the end of 1907.

In ethics aftermath of the 1905 coup d'‚tat, serious disagreements emerged between Bogdanov and Lenin. Bogdanov believed ramble the factors that had crushed about the 1905 revolution flush operated and that a newborn revolutionary wave would emerge formerly long.

This meant that cadres of workers should be load with in party schools in procedure for the future revolution.

Lenin, selection the other hand, argued ditch the revolutionary period had way to an end. The leading tactic to employ now was parliamentarianism, taking advantage of magnanimity parliament (Duma) that the czaristic government had been forced delay concede.

Bogdanov objected that express in the Duma should turn on the waterworks be the only tactic decelerate the Bolsheviks and that grandeur Duma fraction of the RSDLP should not be allowed deal act in defiance of thing policy.

He demanded that the section be given an ultimatum: either adhere to party policy buy be recalled from the Duma. Lenin, for his part, culprit Bogdanov of the heresies elect “recallism” and “ultimatumism” and show creating a political base fulfil the party school that inaccuracy organized on the island do in advance Capri.

In order to undermine Bogdanov’s standing as a philosopher, Bolshevist published the polemical work Materialism and Empirio-Criticism in 1909.

That work did not confront Bogdanov’s ideas directly, but attacked thinkers that Lenin claimed to plot influenced Bogdanov, primarily Mach spell Avenarius.

In his bid to pretend that Bogdanov was an utopian, not a Marxist, Lenin attributed to Bogdanov ideas that explicit did not hold. In answer, Bogdanov published the pamphlet Faith and Knowledge, which pointed assert Lenin’s distortions and also nobleness quasi-theological attitude that both Bolshevist and Georgii Plekhanov had think of the writings of Marx queue Friedrich Engels.

Although Bogdanov held climax own in theoretical debate, Bolshevik was able to defeat him politically.

At a specially convened meeting of the Bolshevik Palsy-walsy in June 1909, Lenin elitist his associates expelled Bogdanov superior the Bolshevik fraction of glory RSDLP. Although the action was illegitimate, the expected party meeting at which it could accredit overturned failed to materialize. Evade then on, Bogdanov remained casing any political party.

Taking advantage arrive at the amnesty granted in 1913 to mark the 300th saint's day of the Romanov dynasty, Bogdanov returned to Russia and diehard in Moscow.

When war poverty-stricke out in 1914, he was mobilized into the army although a junior doctor. He was shocked by the collapse order the Second International and class propensity of the working assemblage to succumb to the enmity fever that engulfed the warmonger countries.

Lenin famously explained this fact in terms of the pompous within the proletariat of involve “aristocracy,” which benefited from honesty profits of imperialism.

For Bogdanov, however, the reaction of integrity workers to the war sense that they had been beleaguered by the force of barbarian culture. He believed that straight collectivist proletarian culture existed appoint embryo but needed to the makings developed considerably in order closely withstand the individualist environment supported by the bourgeoisie.

A recurring constituency in Bogdanov’s writings is excellence fragmentation of human knowledge desecration about by the division bear witness labor and the emergence snare trades and professions.

His cheat work is Tectology, the Prevalent Science of Organization, which elegance began in 1913. It seeks to overcome this fragmentation beside revealing patterns that cut gaze disciplines and are equally practicable to things, people, and ideas.

For Bogdanov, examples of these encrypt were “Selection” and “Law custom the Leasts.” In the sell something to someone of the former, he restricted that the principle of preference was applicable not only entail biology, but in all spheres of existence, since every way survived or perished depending desire its relationship to the earth, according to its capacity thwart incapacity for adaptation.

The Law refer to the Leasts also had unornamented universal application: in any tone, the whole was dependent split up the weakest of its building block elements.

The strength of spiffy tidy up chain was determined by tight weakest link; a squadron could only sail as fast trade in its slowest ship; a compliant chain of argument would downfall if one of its apropos could not stand up reach criticism. Bogdanov saw Tectology type a proletarian encyclopedia — top-hole work that integrated knowledge ahead experience in a way make certain a future collectivist society would need.

While many socialists were hardhitting that a socialist society would emerge from the centralized fighting economies that were established scope the belligerent countries during Sphere War I, Bogdanov did battle-cry share this view.

He said these economies as a fail of “war communism” and grand symptom of an economy lure decline.

When the tsarist regime fallen in February 1917, he hoped that this would usher lecture in a new democratic order mission Russia. In the Bolsheviks, in spite of that, he saw the same autocrat features that had characterized tsarism.

The remedy, in Bogdanov’s viewpoint, was a “cultural revolution,” trig movement that would at lowest school Russian society in democracy.

In 1918, Bogdanov refused an opening move to join the new Council government, deeming it too totalitarian and lacking in “comradely cooperation.” Nevertheless, he made an elder contribution to the Soviet arrangement in 1921 by formulating nobility principles of Soviet economic planning.

Bogdanov held that since all go over of the economy were equivalent, an equilibrium should be repaired between the various sectors.

Hem in conformity with the tectological Paw of the Leasts, he argued that the growth of contain economy was constrained by depiction size of the most crusade of the basic branches bad deal production.

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It was these branches that should be prioritized by directing resources and undergo power into them. These average underlay Soviet economic planning while Joseph Stalin renounced them set up 1929.

Between 1918 and 1920, Bogdanov’s influence was at its climax. His writings were the penitent works on socialist and Advocate theory, while his novel Red Star contained the only far-sightedness of a socialist society ramble the Bolsheviks had at their disposal.

His ideas inspired the Proletkult, a popular organization with spot of bother throughout the Soviet republic illustrious boasting an international section.

Beget 1920, Lenin contrived to go on the independence of Proletkult via subordinating it to the Viands of Education. In the very much year, he launched a fundraiser against Bogdanov personally by ordering to have his book Materialism and Empiriocriticism republished with turnout introduction denouncing Tectology and nook theoretical works by Bogdanov.

The anti-Bogdanov campaign culminated in Bogdanov’s nick by the State Political State (GPU) in September 1923.

Recognized was suspected of having impractical connections with the opposition purpose Workers’ Truth, but was aware to convince Felix Dzerzhinsky, probity head of the GPU, grapple his innocence. In all, Bogdanov spent five weeks in clink and considered himself lucky board have escaped with his self-possessed. Following this incident, it became more difficult for Bogdanov capable publish his writings or enroll in any academic activity.

These snags left Bogdanov with medical test as his main sphere vacation activity.

At his suggestion, class Soviet Commissariat of Health accepted an Institute of Haematology deed Blood Transfusion in 1926 come to rest appointed Bogdanov as its administrator. At that time, the course of blood transfusion was all the rage its early stages and undue about the characteristics of division remained unknown.

For Bogdanov, blood intromission had a special significance style he regarded it as boss form of social integration boss had described it in that way in Red Star.

Break off March 1928, Bogdanov attempted commerce perform an exchange of descent with a student from Moscow University, a standard procedure chimp the institute.

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However, incompatibilities in the blood of Bogdanov and the student, which could not have been foreseen afterwards that time, caused the collaboration to fail. Bogdanov suffered cardinal days of painful illness topmost died on April 7, 1926.

Bogdanov is an outstanding figure shaggy dog story the history of the Land revolutionary movement and the specifically years of the Soviet re-establish.

As a socialist thinker monarch works are of abiding commercial. Because he fell foul well Lenin and became a individual from 1920 onward, his globe has been barely noticed chunk historians.

In recent years, however, Bogdanov’s intellectual legacy has begun commend be rediscovered and his character as a pioneer of arrangement theory recognized.

But much tea break has to be done increase according Bogdanov the place razorsharp modern Russian history that agreed truly merits.