Alexander Bogdanov

Alexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov was born on August 22, 1873 (five months premature) in Hrodna, now Belarus, a city in Russian Empire, and he grew up in Tula. He was a talented man and had a keen interest in science.

He had a strong education in medicine and psychiatry. He enrolled in a medical course at the University of Moscow in 1891, and became a political activist by joining the Narodanaya Volya movement. He was arrested and exiled to Tula, then resumed his medical studies at the University of Kharkiv where he became involved in revolutionary activities. In 1899 he graduated as a medical physician. Because of his seditious books, he was arrested and exiled to Vologda. In 1903, he became an ally of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.

He was the inventor of an original philosophy called “tectology” and is presently acknowledged as one of the fundamental architects of systems theory. He was also recognised as a famous science fiction writer, a Marxian economist, a philosopher, and a political activist. Zenovia Sochor’s study of his knowledge about culture (‘Revolution and Culture: The Bogdanov-Lenin Controversy Cornell University Press 1988) was the only book devoted to him.

Bogdanov was one of the founders of the proletarian art movement theory Proletkult in 1918-1920. His books greatly influenced Nikolai Bukharin and other Marxist theoreticians.

In 1924, he started an experiment of blood transfusion, hoping to achieve a possible human rejuvenation. The experiment was successful and in 1925-1926 he founded the Institute for Haematology and Blood Transfusions.

In 1928, Bogdanov died as a result of infectious blood of a student transferred to him, but some scholars speculated his death was a suicide, due to letters found after his last experiment.