Bogdanov and related remarks

[Alex Trotter <uburoi@xxxxxxxxx>]

Although I'm critical of Lenin's polemics in MAEC, that doesn't mean that
I am a partisan of A.A. Bogdanov's politics. I do, however, find him
quite an interesting and creative character. How many of you are aware,
for example, that he wrote an early science-fiction novel entitled *Red
Star*, about a human (Russian) visit to a socialist society on (you
guessed it) Mars. And then there was his involvement as the animating
force behind Proletkult, a movement that nurtured such talents as Sergei
Eisenstein and Vsevolod Meyerhold. Bogdanov's cohorts in the
"god-building" Bolshevik tendency, Anatoly Lunacharsky (Bolshevik
commissar of education in the pre-Stalin era of 1917-1929) and MAxim
Gorky, were also artistic-oriented fellows who, although they had an
attraction to what comrades such as Ralph would regard as the poisonous
and decadent influence of Nietzsche, have a much greater
inherent appeal for me than the staid and culturally conservative Lenin.
An interesting source I've flipped through in recent days has been a book
called *The Other Bolsheviks: Lenin and His Critics, 1904-1914* by Robert
C. Williams (Indiana Univ. Press, 1986).

Well, Ralph has, with his usual erudition, given me some food for thought.
I'll sit on it for a while, do more reading, and get back to these
philosophical questions later. Stay tuned.





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