Alexander Bogdanov

Alexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov , Alexandre Malinovski , in Russian АлександрАлександровичБогданов , born the 10 (22) August 1873 with Toula and dead the April 7th 1928 with Moscow, is a doctor, economist, writer and a Russian politician.

Of the student shining with the Marxist revolutionist

The young Alexandre Malinovski is resulting from a family of small civils servant of Belorusse origin. His/her father is professor of physique to the college of Toula. Early, it attends there very young person the library and the laboratories of the establishment before being integrated there as stock-broker. High-school pupil, it shows undeniable intellectual gifts but badly accepts the military organization of the place. It will very early push it, according to him, to refuse any authority and to embrace without hesitation the revolutionary creed.

Under the influence of his/her older brother, Malinovski is registered in 1891 with the Faculty of Science of Moscow but its course stops brutally three years later when the police force tsarist stops it under its participation in a company coed not - authorized. It turns over to Toula, dates to which, not very interested by a Populisme then in lose speed in the Russian intellectual mediums, it joined the rows of the social democrat party of Marxist inspiration.

The following year, Malinovski is registered at the medical college of Kharkov. It carries out in parallel of its studies of the actions of propaganda near the workmen. It then writes - fruit of its conferences near the working classes - a political Cours of economy , published in 1897, whose Lénine will praise the merits, indicating that this book is a “remarkable expression of our economic literature”. Beyond the economic questions, it is interested also, and more and more, with philosophy. It publishes into 1899 the Basic elements of a historical design of nature , work of inspiration nietzschéenne which is opposed to the ideas defended then a POSDR largely influenced by Kantian logic.

This same year, Alexandre Malinovski is graduate of medicine. This success is accompanied by a new arrest more severe than the preceding one because followed by a imprisonment, initially in Moscow, then with Vologda where it is exiled for three years. It assumes there per periods the functions of doctor to the psychiatric hospital but it côtoie especially of many intellectuals who underwent the same fate as him - Berdiaev, Bazarov, Lounatcharsky - and which will count durably in its intellectual course. During this period, Malinovski, which chooses at this moment the pseudonym of Bogdanov, reads intensely, writes as much and looks further into philosophical ideas, often original and subtle.

Of the theorist to the activist Bolshevik

Bogdanov joined the faction Bolshevik in 1903, before becoming at once, with its release, the editor of the Pravda published in Moscow. The following year, it publishes (in collaboration with Lounatcharski and Bazarov) its Essais of a realistic design of the world . In addition to this prolific activity of edition, he exploits as from this moment a big role within the POSDR at the sides of Lénine, friend and rival, the face of the philosophical ideas, last plane where he dares an ambitious synthesis of work of Mach, of Ostwald and especially of Avenarius, university Switzerland, inventor of the Empirio-criticisme then very to the mode in the Marxist intellectual mediums.

At that time, Bogdanov is in the foreground of the political responsibilities. Member of the Central committee created to London in May 1905, it ensures a strategic role at the time of the revolution which bursts at once in Russia. First Bolshevik inside the empire, it directs this faction in a party then briefly controlled by the menchéviques ones. Decree once again in December 1905, Bogdanov can however escape the imprisonment by choosing the exile. It joined Lénine with Kuokkala, in Finland (in Karelia, today, Repino, quoted Russian close to Leningrad). Living in the same house, Lénine at the ground floor, itself on the floor, the two men collaborate in various publications and take care of the political positioning of the successive Doumas elected after the events of 1905.

In 1907, the strategic dissension between the two leaders is consumed. Bogdanov, supported by the majority of the Party, preaches the boycott of the legal institutions in the newspaper Vperiod which it directs (fraction Oztoviste). It is then, during a short period, the leader of the movement Bolshevik but this debatable success, exerted with the detriment of Lénine, is of short duration. Attached to sap the ground on which it builds its authority, its adversaries, within the POSDR, carry out initially the combat against its philosophical ideas. Thus, the same year, in 1908, two major works tackle the ideas of Bogdanov effectively. The first, the materialism militant , of menchevic the Plekhanov meets the motivations of the famous Matérialisme and empiriocriticism of Lénine published the same year. In two years, until its ousting of the Central committee in 1911, Bogdanov is put little by little at the variation. It takes refuge, with the support of Gorki and Lounatcharsky, in Italy then in France, animating with his friends various meetings of the School of Capri then of Bologna , not without undergoing sour criticisms of his former comrades Bolsheviks.

After these episodes undoubtedly painful for him, Bogdanov takes field and moves away definitively from the direct political action. It does not take part any more but in some publications, in particular those which directs with much energy his/her friend and Lounatcharsky brother-in-law. In 1913, the tercentenary one of the dynasty of the Romanov is the occasion of a general amnesty for all the authors of violations of the press laws. Bogdanov, like his/her friend Gorki, benefit at once from this possibility of return in Russia.

Of the scientist to the doctor visionary

The war of 1914 surprises it in this relatively obscure fallback position. Mobilized as army medical officer, it achieves various missions while writing articles of propaganda which do not have, for as much, more bond with its last activism. Remaining with the variation of the movement until 1917, while being close to the new capacity, he refuses all which is quoted to him to play a part in leading authorities that he does not hesitate to criticize for their despotic aspect. He devotes himself to the philosophical writings, building a treaty, probably most original of his works, on the Tectologie , universal science of the organization which curiously anticipates a Cybernétique which will be a great success one half-century later.

In 1918, he becomes professor of economy at the university of Moscow and director of the new academy of social sciences. In addition to its scientific work - it translates also works of the Marx and Engels and becomes member of the directory of the Sovnarkhoz (council of the nation's economy) - it at that time supports the movement Proletkult which it contributed to develop at the time of the school of Capri and which preaches the total destruction of the “old middle-class culture” in favor of a “pure proletarian culture”. Initially supported by the party, this movement then is fought vigorously, in particular in the columns of the Pravda . In 1922, it is sent like advising with the embassy of Russia with London. It benefits from it to visit the hospitals and to acquire modern medical instruments.

At the summer 1923, Bogdanov is stopped by the Guépéou (GPU), police force of State which succeeds the Tchéka then. It is locked up during five weeks with the Lioubanka for its supposed participation in a group of dissidents Bolsheviks says “truth of the workers” appeared at the time of the establishment of the NEP in 1921 but which especially protested against the authoritative practices of the new capacity. This last, very anxious to kill in egg resistances, quickly qualified these opponents of “menchevic” before liquidating them definitively. Released, can be with the support of Stalin, Bogdanov turns then definitively to medicine and specializes in the blood research which it had approached at the time of his stay in Great Britain.

On the scientific level, the motivations of Bogdanov in this field remain discussed. Certain sources indicate that its explorations aim at curious possibilities of physical regeneration while at the same time the contribution of its work, in a Soviet Union still destabilized by the revolution and the Civil war, appears lower than that of Western research at the same time. In 1923, more than twenty years after the discoveries of Landsteiner on the System ABO, Bogdanov explores the blood transfusions. It even subjects to him, with regular intervals, these protocols of research receiving a great number of transfusions of which it notices the positive effects on its organization, the improvement of its sight, the deceleration of its baldness. His/her old friend Leonid Krassine even indicates, in a letter with his wife, that the doctor, after these operations, appears renovated of ten years. For as much, in spite of these contestable approximations, Bogdanov receives, undoubtedly with the title of the innovation to the strong revolutionary symbolic system, the support of the authorities, in particular that of the Académie of medicine of Moscow. It launches thus in 1925 the idea of an institute specialized in the blood transfusion. Created in May 1926, world innovation at that time, it will legitimately take, after its death, the name of its founder.

During two years, the transfusions carried out at the institute exceed the hundred. In March 1928, at fifty-five years, Bogdanov tries the exchange of its blood with that of a student reached of Malaria and of a benign form of Tuberculose. Shortly after a negative reaction, mortal, appear. Fifteen days later, after a long anguish which it observes and which it scrupulously records, Bogdanov disappears. Its funeral is an occasion for the Party to greet qualities of the scientist. Its representative, Boukharine, lyric, exalte in front of crowd size of this “tragic death and splendid”.

An unquestionable mark on the Soviet universe

To plunge in the biography of Bogdanov, all at the same time doctor, economist, philosophical, writer of science fiction, precursor of cybernetics, poet, professor, politician, revolutionist, it is to wonder about the dimension of a “man-science”, near to Mikhaïl Lomonossov, touches with very brilliant whose intellectual eclecticism illuminated Russia of the XVIII° century. If the impact of Bogdanov does not reach that of its famous precursor, its influence on the history of the Soviet Union at the first times of the Bolchevism is undeniable in many fields.

Bogdanov plays good match with Lénine, initially on the philosophical ground and Marxist interpretation, spaces from which the leader Bolshevik draws the essence of his authority at the first times of the POSDR. The writings of Vladimir Illitch, in refutation of the theses of its rival, show by their violence and their volume which it fears Bogdanov by the influence that it could have on the Party. At the time of debates as theoretical as complicated, he refuses not only his interpretation, according to him “erroneous”, of the Marxism - argument often mobilized by Lénine against its adversaries - but also the adventurism of his strategic choices. It is certain that the radicalism of the “oztovists” could only lead to the marginalisation of the movement. The failure of its leader meant the end of the political influence of Bogdanov.

On the intellectual level, its legacy appears firmer, although it is difficult to disentangle wire of a plentiful work whose many publications make dubious a total control. In medicine, the discoveries of Bogdanov are mean. They are quite as relative in philosophy where its attempts at synthesis of sciences, without speaking about its analyzes of Mach or Avenarius, do not exceed, especially in the first case, the fame of work of these Masters. The contribution of Bogdanov is on the other hand obvious in economy by the extraordinary modernity already raised of its “tectology”. This idea of a universal science, which precedes cybernetics, is moreover in the beginning of mathematical diagrams and logical structuring which will be used by the economic planning of State, installed in the USSR as of the years 1920. One initially knows that many close relations of Bogdanov, sometimes combined with the menchevism, worked with the direction of the Gosplan, Bazarov which began again, in the field of the control of the economy, various principles approached by the " tectologie".

This science of the organization shows through in the astonishing science-fiction novel, prophetic under many aspects, " the star rouge" , real success of edition - it will be drawn, as from 1908, to several hundreds of thousands of specimens - which thus presents a social and industrial operating process extraterrestrial preceding the perfect world of a socialism finally carried out. Immutable and eternal, the planned organization described in this book is saturated with recalls of former and posterior work of Bogdanov, including in the many references which bind immortality to the possible effects of the blood transfusions. This last aspect, which expresses an almost pathological obsession of this concept, gives a relief particular to the conditions of the disappearance of its author. It is, more still, to replace in the genesis of the worship returned with Lénine by Soviet after his death. Embaumé, momifié, ready with resurrection in its mausoleum, the leader Bolshevik symbolizes the eternity of the Communist regime that two friends of Alexander Bogdanov, " old man bolchéviques" , Krassine and Lounatcharsky, then theorized and realized for the greatest benefit of Stalin.

Quotations

Lénine in Materialism and empiriocriticism (1908), chapter IV, One would be wrong, of the remainder, to regard the philosophy of Bogdanov as an immutable and completed system. In nine years of 1899 to 1908 the philosophical fluctuations of Bogdanov passed by four phases. He was initially “scientific” materialist (i.e. with half unconscious and instinctively faithful to the spirit of sciences of nature). Its Basic elements of the historical design of nature carry obvious traces of this phase. The second phase was that of the “energetics” of Ostwald, in vogue towards 1895 1900, i.e. of confused agnosticism, being mislaid that and there in the idealism. Bogdanov passes from Ostwald to Mach, while adopting the basic principles of a subjective, inconsistent and confused idealism as all the philosophy of Mach (the cover of the Course of natural philosophy of Ostwald carries these words: “Dedicated to E. Mach”). Fourth phase: attempts to demolish certain contradictions of the doctrines of Mach, to create a pretense of objective idealism. The “theory of general substitution” shows that Bogdanov described since its starting point an arc of circle of 180° approximately. This phase of its philosophy is it further away from dialectic materialism than the preceding ones, or some is more brought closer? If Bogdanov tramples on the spot, it goes without saying it moved away from the materialism. If it persists in following the curve which it followed during nine years, it approached some: it has nothing any more but one serious step to make to return to the materialism.

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