Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov
Nikolai Fyodorov monument at Borovsk, Kaluga Oblast, Russian Federation
Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov was born on May 26, 1829, in the Klyuchi village, Tambov region, Russian Federation. Fyodorov's parents were the Rurikid knyaz (noble) Pavel Ivanovich Gagarin and Elisaveta Ivanova, a woman of lower-class nobility.
Nikolai Fyodorovich studied at the Richelieu Lyceum in Odessa.
From 1854 to 1868, Nikolai Fyodorovich served as a teacher in various small Russian towns. In 1878, he joined the Rumyantsev Museum staff as a librarian. He opposed the idea of property of books and ideas and never published anything during his lifetime. His selected articles were printed posthumously with the title Philosophy of the Common Task (also known as Philosophy of Physical Resurrection).
Nikolai Fyodorovich was a futurist, who theorized about the eventual perfection of the human race and society (i.e., utopia), including radical ideas like immortality, a revival of the dead, space and ocean colonization. His writings greatly influenced mystic Peter Uspensky. Nikolai Fyodorovich also had direct contact with early rocket theorist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who visited the library where he worked over a 3-year period. He was also known to Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
