Background
Alexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov was born on August 22, 1873 in Sokolka, Poland. His father was a local college supervisor.
Moscow State University
the University of Kharkiv
Proletkult
the Kummunist academy
the State Scientific University of blood transfusion
columnist Political activist scientist writer
Alexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov was born on August 22, 1873 in Sokolka, Poland. His father was a local college supervisor.
Alexander Aleksandrovich attended the Sokolka College and the Tula gymnasium. He was a brilliant student and was awarded a gold medal by his graduation. In 1892 he entered the Natural Science Department at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow State University, although he was unable to finish his studies and only spent there two years. By 1899 he graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Kharkiv.
In 1894 Alexander Aleksandrovich took part in the Union Council of Regional Societies and was sent into exile to Tula. He carried on socialist propaganda among local laborers and joined the social-democratic movement by 1896. His first work called A short course of economic science was published in 1897 and was appraised by V.I. Lenin as "a wonderful phenomenon in our economic literature".
In 1899 Alexander Aleksandrovich was arrested again under the basis of socialist propaganda and was sent to Kaluga in 1900. A year later he moved to Vologda to work as a doctor at a local psychiatric facility. In 1903 he became a member of the Russian Socialist Democratic Labor Party. By 1904 Alexander Aleksandrovich moved to Bezhetsk and worked as one of the editors of such newspapers like Pravda and Rassvet. He was later sent abroad, to Geneva, where he met Lenin and became his ally. It happened as a result of his participation in the Meeting of 22 Bolsheviks, where he joined the Bureau of Bolshevik committee. Despite having major disagreements in terms of philosophy, the two of them formed an alliance that lasted during the whole Revolution.
Alexander Aleksandrovich was included in the Central Committee of the Party during the Third Congress. He was appointed an associate editor and a coordinator of all Party's literate department in Russia. By the autumn of 1904, he left for Russia to start a fund-raising and outsourcing campaign for the newspaper Vpered!. In 1905 he worked for such newspapers as Ekho and Novaya zhizn.
In 1906, while performing the function of a Central Committee representative of the Saint Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies, Alexander Aleksandrovich was arrested and sent to Bezhetsk once more. A few months later he was allowed to leave the country and went to Kuokkala to live there with Lenin. In November he took a short trip to the Island of Capri and met M. Gorky to discuss their editorial work. Alexander Aleksandrovich continued to publish his articles and work as an editor of many newspapers, including Volna, Vestnik zhizni, and Proletary.
His first book was called Empiriomonism and came out in 1906 as well. It was a collection of philosophical essays. In 1907 Alexander Aleksandrovich headed the faction on Ultimatists who was against the idea of Bolsheviks' work at any legal organization. In December he went abroad with Lenin and Dubrovinsky. Alexander Aleksandrovich worked for Zagranichnaya Gazeta and took part in a philosophical discussion against Lenin on Capri. He was one of the creators of the Capri Party School and worked there as a lecturer for some time. Because of his factionist activity, he was excluded from the list of Proletary editors, the Bolshevik Centre, and the Party in 1909. In his report of 1909 called The Party's current situation and aims Alexander Aleksandrovich introduced a separatist concept of "pure proletarian culture". It was later developed in his books About the proletarian culture and Cultural aims of today. He claimed that the bourgeoisie's baneful influence was a clear danger coming from the old culture as a whole. By 1911 he parted ways with Vpered!.
Bogdanov's views were also expressed through his fiction works. In 1907 Alexander Aleksandrovich published the utopian novel Red star. It was widely discussed by the Democratic Socialists. The novel introduced the utopian concept of a perfect collectivist society as well as the assumption about upcoming scientific discoveries and new ways of labor organization. His next work Tektology included his autobiography and covered his ideas about scientific methods of social development based on exact sciences. Some of these assumptions anticipated the cybernetics approach.
Alexander Aleksandrovich came back to Russia in 1913 and worked for Pravda, Rabochaya Gazeta, and Sovremennik. In 1914 he was conscript into the army as a military surgeon. By 1915 Alexander Aleksandrovich was sent to Moscow to work at a hospital.
Since 1916 he published his articles on pages of the editorial Letopis and considered himself to be apolitical. His ideology of "proletarian culture" estranged him from Bolsheviks. In 1918 he became a board member of Proletkult and the Kummunist academy and worked there till 1921 and 1926 respectively. Alexander Aleksandrovich later created and headed the State Scientific University of blood transfusion. His death in 1928 was an unfortunate medical accident as he experimented on himself and caught malaria and tuberculosis from his student's blood.
Alexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov was a Democratic Socialist and focused on the cultural aspect of the Bolshevik movement. After his expulsion from the Party he claimed to be apolitical.
Bogdanov's tektology approach 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.