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"Red Star" Another Look at Aleksandr Bogdanov

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Mark B. Adams
Mark B. Adams*
Affiliation:
Department of the History and Sociology of Science, the University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

In recent years, there has been a minor explosion of interest in Aleksandr Bogdanov and other radical Russian intellectuals of pre-Stalinist days. After being in limbo for half a century, their ideas seem almost fresh and vibrant: Set against subsequent Soviet history, their aborted visions of a socialist future seem to give a sense of what might have been. And who knows—in the Gorbachev period, as the Soviet Union sorts out its problems and policies, some of their ideas might enjoy a new lease on life. For these and other reasons, they have recently attracted special interest.

Of course, in Bogdanov's case, there is much to be interested in. Born Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Malinovskii in 1873, Bogdanov trained as a physician in Moscow and Khar'kov, worked briefly as a psychiatrist, and published widely on philosophy, politics, social theory, social psychology, economics, and culture.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , Spring 1989 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1989

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References

This essay is dedicated to the memory of Kendall Bailes, whose Master's thesis many years ago initiated the modern reconsideration of Bogdanov's ideas.

1. See, for example, Bogdanov, A., Kratkii kurs ekonomicheskoi nauki (Moscow 1897)Google Scholar, Osnovnyeelementy istoricheskogo vzgliada na prirodu (St. Petersburg, 1899), Poznanie s istoricheskoi tochki zreniia (St. Petersburg, 1902), Novyi mir (Stat'i 1904–1905) (Moscow, 1905), Izpsikhoiogii obshchestva, 2nd ed. (St. Petersburg, 1906), Prikliucheniia odnoi filosofskoi shkoly (St. Petersburg, 1908), Padenie velikogofetishizma: Vera i nauka (St. Petersburg, 1910), and Kul'turnye zadachi nashego vremeni (Moscow, 1911).

2. Bogdanov, Aleksandr, Empiriomonizm, 3 vols. (Moscow and St. Petersburg, 1904–1907)Google Scholar; Lenin, V.I., Materializm i empiriokrititsizm: Kriticheskie zametki ob odnoi reaktsionnoi filosofii (Moscow: Izdanie Zveno, 1909 Google Scholar.

3. Bogdanov, A., Vseobshchaia organizatsionnaia nauka (Tektologiia), parts 1–3 (Berlin, Petrograd, Moscow, 1913–1929)Google Scholar.

4. See Bogdanov, A., Sotsializm nauki (Nauchnye zadachi proletariata) (Moscow, 1918)Google Scholar, Die Kunslund das Proletariat (Leipzig, 1919), Filosofiia zhivogo opyta (Moscow, 1920), and Elementy proletarskoikul'tury v razvitii rabochego klassa (Moscow, 1920).

5. Bogdanov, Aleksandr, Bor'ba za zhiznesposobnost’ (Moscow: Novaia Moskva, 1927 Google Scholar.

6. The best general discussion of Bogdanov's ideas is to be found in Vucinich, Alexander, Social Thought in Tsarist Russia: The Quest for a General Science of Society, 1861–1917 (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1976, 206–230 Google Scholar.

7. Such claims are endemic to modern discussions of Bogdanov in both the Soviet Union andthe west. For example, a Soviet article depicts Bogdanov as a founder of systems theory: Setrov, M. I., “Ob obshchikh elementakh tektologii A. Bogdanov, kibernetiki i teorii sistem” in Uchenye zapiski kafedrobshchestvennykh nauk vuzov goroda Leningrada, 1967, no. 8, 49–60 Google Scholar. See also the sources listed in Loren Graham's useful biographical article, “Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Bogdanov (Malinovskii)” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970–1978) 15 (suppl. 1) (1978): 38–39. Thistendency to see Bogdanov's views as highly original and important can be detected even in works that are critical of his ideological failings. See, for example, Dominique Lecourt, “Bogdanov, Mirror of the Soviet Intelligentsia” in Lecourt, Proletarian Science? The Case of Lysenko, intro. Louis Althusser, trans. Ben Brewster (London: Humanities Press, 1977), 137–162; this essay was originally published as an introductionto a French anthology of Bogdanov's writings, La Science, Van et la classe ouvriere, trans. BlancheGrinbaum (Paris: Francois Maspero, 1977).

8. Bogdanov, A., Krasnaia zvezda (St. Petersburg, 1908)Google Scholar.

9. Bogdanov, A., Inzhener Me nni (Moscow, 1913)Google Scholar.

10. Russkaia fantasticheskaia proza XIX-nachala XX veka, Biblioteka fantastiki, vol. 10 (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Pravda, 1986), 431–568.

11. Pre-Revolutionary Russian Science Fiction: An Anthology (Seven Utopias and a Dream), ed. and trans. Leland Fetzer (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1982), 71–179.

12. Ibid., 71–73.

13. Bogdanov, Alexander, Red Star: The First Bolshevik Utopia, ed. Graham, Loren R. and Stites, Richard, trans. Rougle, Charles (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984 Google Scholar; hereafter, Red Star.

14. Ibid., 12.

15. Ibid., 243.

16. Ibid., 242–243.

17. Wells, H. G.. A Modern Utopia (London: Chapman and Hall, 1905 Google Scholar.

18. Wells, H. G., A Modern Utopia, reprint of 1st ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), 9 Google Scholar.

19. Ibid., 11, 17, 35, 47. and 5.

20. On Lowell, see Leonard, L., Percival Lowell: An Afterglow (Boston, 1921)Google Scholar; Lowell, A. L., Biography of Percival Lowell (New York, 1935)Google Scholar; G. Marsden, Brian, “Percival Lowell” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1973) 8: 520–523 Google Scholar; and Crowe, Michael S., The Extraterrestrial Life Debate 1750–1900: The Idea ofa Plurality of Worlds from Kant to Lowell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, 480–546 Google Scholar.

21. Red Star, 247.

22. Ibid., 113–114.

23. Ibid., 112–113.

24. Ibid., 115.

25. Ibid., 116.

26. Ibid., 116–117.

27. Ibid., 117–119.

28. Ibid., 119.

29. Ibid., 148–149.

30. Ibid., 148.

31. Kropotkin, Peter, Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution (London, 1902; New York: McClure Phillips, 1902)Google Scholar.

32. Todes, Daniel P., Darwin without Malthus: The Struggle for Existence in Russian Evolutionary Thought (New York: Oxford, 1989 Google Scholar. See also his article, “Darwin's Malthusian Metaphor and Russian Evolutionary Thought, 1859–1917,” Isis 78, no. 294 (December 1987): 537–551 and the column that it inspiredby Stephen Jay Gould, “Kropotkin Was No Crackpot,” Natural History 97, no. 7 (July 1988): 12–21.

33. Red Star, 151.

34. Crowe, The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 515. On Schiaparelli, see also Giorgio Abetti, “GiovanniVirginio Schiaparelli” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 12 (1975), 159–162.

35. Red Star, 146.

36. Ibid., 14.

37. Haeckel, Ernst, Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (Berlin: Reimar, 1868 Google Scholar. For the first English edition, see The History of Creation, trans. E. Ray Lankaster, 2 vols. (New York: Appleton, 1876).

38. Haeckel, Ernst, Die Welträthsel: Gemeinverständliche Studien über monistische Philosophie (Bonn, 1899)Google Scholar.

39. See especially his Anthropogenie, 5th ed. (1st ed., 1874; Leipzig: Engelmann, 1903), published in English as The Evolution of Man, 5th ed. (London: Watts, 1907).

40. For example, see Gekkel, E., Bor'ba za evoliutsionnuiu ideiu (St. Petersburg, 1909)Google Scholar, Lektsii poestestvoznaniiu ifilosofii (St. Petersburg, 1913), and Proiskhozhdenie cheloveka (Petrograd, 1919

41. Lenin, V. I., Collected Works, 4th ed., vol. 14, 1908 (Moscow: Progress, 1968), 348 Google Scholar.

42. Ibid., 226–232 and 269–273, for example.

43. Haeckel, Ernst, Generelle Morphologie der Organismen, two volumes published as one (Berlin: GeorgReimer, 1866) 1: 30 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44. Ibid., 364–374.

45. For example, in the ninth edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, P. Geddes used the term only inreference to Haeckel's division of morphology into “'two sub-sciences, —the first purely structural, tectology, which regards the organism as composed of organic individuals of different orders; the second essentially stereometric, promorphology” (Encyclopedia Britannica [1883] 16: 842, col. 1). By 1919, tectologyhad found its way into the ninth volume of the New English Dictionary, but only as a term coined by Haeckel.

46. See, for example, Spencer's, Herbert essay “The Social Organism” in Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative, vol. 1 (London: William and Norgate, 1868).Google Scholar

47. See, for example, the illuminating discussion in Vucinich, Social Thought in Tsarist Russia, especially 206–230.

48. Bergson, Henri, Creative Evolution, trans. Mitchell, Arthur (New York: Henry Holt, 1911 Google Scholar; and Bergson, A., Tvorcheskaia evoliutsiia (St. Petersburg, 1914)Google Scholar.

49. Red Star, 237–238.

50. Ibid., 238.

51. See, for example, Smert’ i bessmerlie, Novye idei v biologii, Sbornik 3 (St. Petersburg: Obrazovanie, 1913); Kol'tsov, N. K., Omolozhenie organizma po melodu Shteinakh (Petrograd: Vremia, 1922 Google Scholar; Omolozhenie: Sbornik statei, vol. 1 (Moscow and PetrOgrad: Gosizdat, 1923) and vol. 2 (Moscow and Petrograd: Gosizdat, 1924); and Problemy starosli i omolozhenie (Moscow and Petrograd: Gosizdat, 1923

52. See, for example, Mechnikoff, Elie, Etudes sur la nature humaine, 2nd ed. (Paris: Masson, 1904 Google Scholar, The Prolongation of Life (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1908), and Etiudy o prirode cheloveka, 5th ed. (Moscow: Nauchnoe slovo, 1917). Mechnikov regarded the “normal” human life-span as roughly 100 yearsto 120 years—the very same figure subsequently suggested by Bogdanov. For an example of the contemporary popularity of monkey gland therapy, note the description of Dr. Penberthy in Dorothy L. Sayers's well knownmystery, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (London: Victor Gollancz, 1921).

53. Bogdanov, Aleksandr, Bor'ba za zhiznesposobnost', Institut perelivaniia krovi (Moscow: NovaiaMoskva, 1927 Google Scholar. Zhiznesposobnost’ can be translated as “viability,” “vital capacity,” or “life capacity,” butin context, “vitality” best captures Bogdanov's meaning.

54. Red Star, 85–86.

55. On the antitechnocratic character of the Shakhty and Industrial Party trials, see the excellent discussionin Bailes, Kendall E., Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

56. Red Star, 251.

57. See, for example, Lecourt's “Bogdanov, Mirror of the Soviet Intelligentsia,” which concludeswith a section entitled “Bogdanovism in Soviet Ideology.“