Career
He is the leader of the Democratic Party of Russia and a Freemason, Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Russia. As a candidate for the 2008 presidential election, he received 968,344 votes or 1.30% of the Russian electorate. Russian president Putin described Bogdanov as "an ambitious young man with progressive views".
During his presidential campaign, in 2008, he showed support for Russian integration with Europe and for less state involvement in the economy.
Regarding his candidacy, the British newspaper Times Online put forward suspicions that Bogdanov could be a puppet candidate used by the government to make the elections look legitimate. He dismissed these claims as "fantasies".
At the same time Bogdanov founded the Andrei Bogdanov Centre, an independent non-profit organization for the development of social technologies, which in many respects became a successor to the Democratic Party. Bogdanov entered the race for the mayorship of Sochi on 25 March 2009, however he pulled out of the race on 13 April 2009, urging his supporters to vote for acting mayor Anatoly Pakhomov
The election of Bogdanov as the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Russia entailed the schism of 2007, when a large group of members did not accept the results of elections and organized an alternative United Grand Lodge of Russia.