As it is well known, the Hammer and Sickle symbolise Lenin’s strategy for the Revolution, which Lenin thought achievable if the alliance between the industrial proletariat and proletarian peasantry is maintained. The symbol came about as a product of an official competition held after the October Revolution. Originally it was aimed for the upcoming May Day celebrations, but it has become the symbol of Marxist-Leninist socialist and communist movements, parties and states globally. On the other hand, the Red Star symbol refers to a future communist society that is yet to come about. Although its history has not yet been established by research, Red Star symbolism overlaps with the sharp image Alexander Bogdanov masterfully portrayed in his 1908 novel, which bears the same name. Bogdanov's Red Star was published many times, especially after the October Revolution, when Bogdanov was one of the leaders of the Proletkult movement and later on, and accepted as the starting point of the genre of Bolshevik sci-fi / utopian novel. My talk will be about the fall and rise of Alexander Bogdanov and the importance of his 'lost paradigm'. I will present an overview of his scientific, utopian, and revolutionary politics, the decay of his contribution, as well as its re-discovery and renewal. Contrasting the anti-authoritarian line of his politics to Lenin's – which Bogdanov explicitly dubbed as an authoritarian one well before the Revolution - I will be using the metaphor of clashing symbols: Red Star vs Hammer and Sickle.

1. AlexanderBogdanov
Red Star vs.
Hammer & Sickle

2. Hammer & Sickle
• Adopted after a competition held in 1917
as the may day symbol
• Symbolised workers - peasant alliance
• Become the official symbol of the Soviet
State and the Leninist interpretation of
Marx’ ideas
• Turned into a global symbol of socialism
and communism with the spread of
Marxist-Leninist parties that are member
of the Comintern

3. • The red star is the other most widely used
symbol of communism and its history is
not yet documented
• Red Star sequel [Red Star (1908) and Engineer
Menni (1913)] is the first Bolshevik sci-fi utopia
• In Red Star, Bogdanov gives a sharp image of
future communist society, its history, the way
it works, as well as the problems it encounters
Red Star

4. Who is Alexander Bogdanov?
• A Russian polymath, 1873-1928
• Natural scientist and doctor by education, poet,
author, philosopher, scientist, educator, and
revolutionary
• Co-founder and the second name of Bolshevik
faction until 1922
• One of the most important and creative contributors
to critical Marxian thought – in polemic with
orthodox Russian Marxism of Plekhanov,Axelrod
(Orthodox) and Lenin
• Beyond that his forgotten work is comparable to Da
Vinci’s lost books, in terms of their scientific
importance

6. Strong utopian influence
• Utopian socialist Nikolay
Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky, and
his ‘What is to be done?’
• Rakhmetov charachter
• Lenin lives like Rakhmetov –
which is one of Bogdanov’s other
pseudonyms
• Bogdanov reads and influenced
by H.G.Wells

7. Bogdanov vs. Lenin

8. Lenin’s attacks on Bogdanov
• Writes Materialism and Empiriocriticism in 1909 to attack and eliminate Bogdanov,
• Orchestrates Bogdanov’s exclusion from the editorial board of Proletarii and then from
the Bolshevik Centre in 1910,
• Manipulates the participants of the party school in Capri, and direct them to the party
school he opened in Paris –to counter Bogdanov and the Vpered group, in 1910
• Press Pravda (St. Petersburg) editors to exclude Bogdanov’s articles from the journal, in
1914,
• To counter Bogdanov’s influence he republished Materialism and Empiriocriticism in 1920
and orchestrate his exclusion from Proletkult, with a dictated foreword explicitly
attacking Bogdanov and his ‘reactionary philosophy’,
• Bogdanov got arrested in September 1923, with the order of Lenin and accused with
counter-party activities,
• Before his death he arranged the publication of all his and Plekhanov’s polemics with
Bogdanov in Under the Banner of Marxism, with the title ‘Against A. Bogdanov’, late 1923

11. Scientific monism or the unity of science

12. 1980s-2000s
G. Gorelik 1980 trans. Essays inTektology
I. Susiliouto - 1982
Z. Sochor’s Revolution and Culture 1982
Loren R. Graham and Richard Stites edits Red Star &
Engineer Menni trans. 1984
Official rehabilitation - 16 January 1989
L. Mally’s Clture of the Future (1990)
Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy 1992,93,96
P. Dudley (ed.) 1996 trans. Tektology Book 1
John Biggart et. al. Bogdanov and HisWork 1998
John Biggart et. al. Alexander Bogdanov and the
Origins of SystemsThinking in Russia 1998…
A. Gare’s articels (2000s)

15. • Monoskop: https://monoskop.org/Bogdanov