Alexander Bogdanov Was One of Russia’s Great Revolutionary Thinkers and a Sci-Fi Pioneer
Alexander Bogdanov played a key role in Russia's socialist movement in the years leading up to the 1917 revolution. He was also a remarkably creative thinker who wrote a sci-fi novel about a socialist civilization on Mars.
Portrait of Alexander Bogdanov in 1903. (Wikimedia Commons)
Alexander Bogdanov was one of the most versatile and creative thinkers of Russia in the revolutionary era. Besides being a political activist, he was a prolific writer on philosophy, economics, education, and culture, whose works included a science-fiction novel about a socialist civilization on the planet Mars.
Due to his conflict with Vladimir Lenin, however, he was almost entirely written out of the historical record. When Bogdanov was mentioned in Soviet times, it was exclusively from the Leninist viewpoint. Only recently has Bogdanov’s life and works become the subject of academic study. Bogdanov deserves to be remembered as one of the most intriguing figures from the Russian socialist movement in a tumultuous time.
Early Life
“Bogdanov” was the pseudonym of Alexander Alexandrovich Malinovsky, who was born in the village of Sokółka, in the province of Grodno on August 22, 1873. His childhood and youth were spent in Tula, a town near Moscow, where his father was a school inspector. In 1892, Bogdanov entered Moscow University to study the natural sciences, specializing in biology, but two years later he was expelled for his presence at a student demonstration and banished to his home town of Tula.
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