Bogdanov, Alexander

BOGDANOV, A. (pseudonym of Alexander Alexandrovich Malinovsky, 1873–1928), philosopher, sociologist, economist, political figure, physician. Born in Grodno Governorate, in the family of a village schoolteacher. From the mid-1890s, he took an active part in the social-democratic movement. He studied in the natural sciences department of the physics and mathematics faculty of Moscow University (expelled from the 3rd year), then at the medical faculty of Kharkov University, which he graduated from in 1899. In 1901, he was exiled to Vologda, where he first engaged in practical medical work as a psychiatrist-resident at the provincial zemstvo hospital. Upon returning from exile, he went entirely into political struggle, joining the Bolsheviks at the II Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (1903). At the III, IV, and V congresses, he was elected a member of the Party Central Committee. Bogdanov was one of the organizers of the first legal Bolshevik newspaper, Novaya Zhizn. From 1907, Bogdanov began to move away from the Bolsheviks, leading first the 'Otzovists' and 'Ultimatists,' then the 'Vperedists'; he participated in the organization of the party school on the island of Capri (1909). From 1914, when Bogdanov was

mobilized as a physician to the front, he never returned to political activity. In 1918, he participated in the organization of the 'Proletarian University'; from 1918 to 1921, he was a member of the Central Committee of Proletkult; from 1918 to 1926, he was a member of the Communist Academy. A comprehensively educated man, a bright intellectual and strong-willed personality, and a brilliant popularizer, Bogdanov left a deep mark on the development of Russian social thought. However, in his economic, sociological, and philosophical works, Bogdanov noticeably deviates from Marxism (for more details, see the article on Bogdanov in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, where the corresponding bibliography can also be found). In 1926, Bogdanov was appointed director of the State Institute of Blood Transfusion, founded on his initiative, and thus returned to medical activity, devoting with enthusiasm his remarkable creative abilities and persistence to a new, little-researched field of combating premature aging and the withering of the organism. Bogdanov set forth his ideas and the practical ways of implementing them in his work The Struggle for Viability, published in 1927. In the spring of 1928, Bogdanov exchanged a significant amount of blood with a student suffering from tuberculosis and malaria and died a victim of this experiment on April 7, 1928.