On the Role of Popularizing Scientific Knowledge in Alexander Bogdanov's Socio-Political Activity (original) (raw)
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Alexander Bogdanov and the suppression of "Collectivism"
Alexander Bogdanov and the suppression of "Collectivism", 2021
, a motion was put before a general meeting of members of the Socialist Academy that the institution should be renamed "The Communist Academy". 1 In the course of debate the historian M.N. Pokrovsky reminded members that when this had been proposed in 1918 (when the Academy had been founded), the Left-Socialist Revolutionaries had objected on the grounds that such a title would deter them from becoming members. 2 Others who were working in Soviet institutions but were not Communists had also raised objections. It had therefore been decided to name the Academy 'Socialist', and individuals as varied as Alexander Blok and Andrei Bely had felt able to join. However, Pokrovsky went on, the Academy had now decided to include the study of 'Leninism" in its curriculum. He agreed with Bukharin that Leninism was a distinct phase in the development of Marxism. 3 As members of the Communist Party they belonged to this phase, and not to the Marxism of Plekhanov or earlier theorists. It therefore now made sense to adopt the title "Communist Academy". This would set the Academy apart from institutions in Western Europe where the emphasis was still on socialism. In this respect, even the designation [Soviet Socialist] Republic was out of step with the times. 4 The eminent historian of Marxism, D.B. Ryazanov, agreed. He recalled having proposed the name change in 1919, but on different grounds. He was neither a Bolshevik, nor a Menshevik nor a Leninist: he considered himself to be a Marxist and * My thanks to Fabian Tompsett and James D. White for scrutinizing and commenting on this paper.
Science and the Working Class (Bogdanov 1918)
This text is a summary of a presentation which Alexander Bogdanov (1873-1928) gave at a conference for the Proletkult organisations of Moscow, 23-28th February 1918. It was written during a period in which Bogdanov was very active in Proletkult.
Alexander Bogdanov and the Sociology of Knowledge
A. Medzibrodszky (2017) “Alexander Bogdanov and the Sociology of Knowledge.” In: Gyula Szvák ed. Russian Studies in History in the 21st Century. Materials of the 10th International Conference at the Centre for Russian Studies in Budapest, May 18–19, 2015. Russica Pannonicana. 287-294.
2016
This research reconstructs the traditions of scientific enlightenment in Russia. The turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was chosen as the most representative period. The modern age saw the establishment of the optimal model for advancing science in the global context and its crucial segment – Russian science. This period was characterized by significant scientific and sociopolitical changes. The level of education in Russia was extremely low; good education was accessible only to the upper class. Therefore, a program for popularizing science was launched. This research investigates the means and methods that were used to popularize science in Russia. In order to achieve the set goal, a set of complementary methods was used, including analysis, didactic method, and structural-functional analysis. The research also generalizes the experience of Russian and foreign experts in the subject at hand and applies the principles of historicism, systematicity, and dialectic unity o...
Alexander Bogdanov and the theory of a "New Class"
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . Blackwell Publishing and The Editors and Board of Trustees of the Russian Review are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Russian Review. The theory that in certain circumstances state socialism could degenerate into a system in which power was exercised by a bureaucratic elite or by a new class has its origins in Mikhail Bakunin's famous critique of Marx written during the years 1870-1873. In 1905 the theory acquired a new lease of life in the writings of Jan Waclaw Makhaisky. In Western historiography the application of such theories to the development of socialism in the Soviet Union has usually been associated with the "Left Oppositions" of 1923 and, above all, with Leon Trotsky's celebrated denunciation of Stalinism, The Revolution Betrayed (1937).2 As Ivan Szeleny and Bill Martin have written in their recent survey of "new class" theories, "most of the (Marxist) bureaucratic class theories could be traced back to the work of Leon Trotsky . . .": for while "Trotsky himself was of course not a New Class theorist ... the first comprehensive theories that described the Soviet Union as a society dominated by a bureaucratic class were developed by former Trotskyists."3 In the Soviet Union during the 1920s Marxist theories of bureaucratic degeneration were by no means associated exclusively with the political thought of Trotsky. In October 1926 the leading theoretician of the Communist Party, Nikolai Bukharin, in an article devoted to the ques-1See M. Bakounine. L'Empire Knouto-Germanique et la Revolution Sociale (1870-1871) (Leiden, 1981) and Gosudarstvennost' i Anarkhiia [1873] (Leiden, 1967); and A. Vol'ski (Makhaisky), Umstvennyi Rabochii (Geneva, 1905) and Bankrotstvo sotsializma XIX veka (Geneve, 1905). 2See L. Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (New York, 1970). The most complete surveys of "new class" theory are: Marian Sawer, "Theories of the New Class from Bakunin to Kuron and Modzelewski: The Morphology of Permanent Protest," in Marian Sawer (ed.), Socialism and the New Class: Towards the Analysis of Structural Inequality within Socialist Societies. Monograph no. 19 of Australasian Political Studies Association (Sidney, 1978); and Ivan Szelenyi and Bill Martin, "The Three Waves of New Class Theories," Theory and Society, vol. 17 (1988), pp. 645-67. Neither work deals with Bogdanov. 3 See Szeleny and Martin, pp. 652-53. For an example of Trotskyist theory, see Christian Rakovsky's letter of 6 August 1928 to Valentinov, published under the title "Power and the Russian Worker," The New International, November 1934, pp. 105-109. For Rakovsky the principal cause of degeneration was functional and social differentiation within the working class. However, he admitted that "The bureaucracy of the Soviets and the party is a fact of a new order. It is not a question here of isolated cases but rather of a new social category to which a whole treatise ought to be devoted." The Russian Review tion of the feasibility of constructing socialism in one country, and in the context of polemics against the "United" Trotskyist and Zinovievite Oppositions, singled out Alexander Bogdanov and Vladimir Bazarov for their alleged contention that a precondition of the construction of socialism was the cultural maturation of the proletariat under capitalism.4
Bogdanov: his tributes to Marx and Lassalle
2022
In February 1913 Aleksandr Bogdanov, then resident in Belgium and France, agreed to be a regular contributor to the St. Petersburg newspaper, Pravda, and in April 1913 to submit works to an associated social-democratic publishing house, Priboi. Whereas Bogdanov’s exclusion from Pravda by the end of 1913 can be attributed to Lenin’s having acquired influence over the paper’s editorial board, different circumstances were responsible for his dispute, the following year, with Priboi. These included problems of epistolary communication, police censorship, and Bogdanov’s mistaken conviction that he was being discriminated against by Priboi, as he had been by Pravda. This article traces the development of Bogdanov’s relations with Priboi, provides translations of commemoratory articles that he contributed on Karl Marx and Ferdinand Lassalle, and examines the publishing history of these articles.