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C U L T U R E A S O R G A N I Z AT I O N
I N E A R L Y S OV I E T T H O U G H T
Bogdanov, Eisenstein, and the Proletkult
SPHERICAL
BOOK
COPYRIGHTS
Spherical Book Platform

Crucible Studio’s Tangential Points Series
http://crucible.org.aalto.fi/spherical/
Aalto University School of Arts Design and Architecture

books.aalto.fi
© Authors
ISBN 978-952-60-0076-3
Helsinki, Finland
2016
Outline-generating algorithm, Perspicamus Oy
The concept of interactive online publication platfrom “Spherical Book”

© Mauri Kaipainen, Eduard Shagal, and Pia Tikka
Spherical Book platform software and graphic design © Eduard Shagal

E D I TO R I A L I N T R O D U C T I O N
This anthology “Culture as Organization in Early Soviet

Thought” brings together a group of film researchers, historians,
political scientists and systems scientists to discuss historical and
contemporary tangential points between the sciences and the arts in
Russia during the first decades of the twentieth century. All chapters
provide new insights into linkages between the arts, philosophy and
other disciplines during this period. Tangential points between early
Russian systems thinking and approaches to montage that were
being developed within the film community are examined in detail.
The contributing authors focus on two thinkers: the filmmaker,
Sergei M. Eisenstein and the systems theorist, Aleksandr A.
Bogdanov.
In the early years of his career as a theatre and film director,
Eisenstein worked within the Proletkult, a cross-disciplinary move-
ment the objective of which was to create a new ‘proletarian culture’
by fostering the values of ‘collectivism’ through tuition on literature,
theatre, the graphic arts and the sciences. Bogdanov, an economist,
culturologist and physician was the principal founder of this move-
ment. Bogdanov delivered regular lectures in the Proletkult and in
other educational institutions in which he expounded his tektologi-
cal ideas of organization as universal mechanisms in nature, society
and thought. At one time the closest collaborator of Vladimir I.
Lenin, Bogdanov soon became his most feared rival, and his systemic
ideas were fated to vanish from Soviet history until their
re-discovery in the 1980s.
Most of the papers in this anthology were delivered to an
international art and science conference “Tangential Points” organ-
ized at the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture
in 2014. This scholarly meeting was convened to reflect upon appar-
ent similarities between the systemic thinking of Eisenstein and
Bogdanov, as hypothesized in the book Enactive Cinema: Simulato-
rium Eisensteinense (Tikka 2008). This work, in turn, was grounded
in publications that had introduced Bogdanov’s systemic thinking to
the English speaking world in the 1980s and later. These works are
listed in the references of many of the chapters.
The principal inspiration for the conference, however, came
from the work of the author of The Origins and Development of Sys-
tems Thinking in the Soviet Union (1982), the Finnish scholar Ilmari
Susiluoto (1947 – 2016), to whom this anthology is dedicated.
By taking the work of Eisenstein and Bogdanov as case studies
we were able to search for tangential points between early systems
thinking and the creative arts at a level beyond mere generalization.
Oksana Bulgakowa invites the reader to follow her on an expedition
into Eisenstein’s systems thinking: Eisenstein rejected linear logic
and seeked for forms of a hypertext that in his eyes were closer to the
associative, spherical, and labyrinthine thought structures, ideas that
to date have only found expression in modernist art experiments. In
John Biggart’s “Sociology of Arts” one learns how Bogdanov inte-
grated the arts into his general theory of the evolution of social
formations. Jutta Scherrer analyzes the historical genesis of
Bogdanov’s conception of proletarian culture. The concern of Maja
Soboleva is Bogdanov’s theoretical understanding of culture and its
tektological foundations. The chapter by Vesa Oittinen opens a
window upon the theoretical dispute between Bogdanov and Lenin,
between the ‘Machian’ and the ‘orthodox Marxist’ and highlights the
centrality of Kantian ‘things-in-themselves’ (Ding an sich) to this
dispute.
Peter Dudley discusses the Proletkult as an adaptive systemic
environment, created for supporting the self-organization of the
proletariat for radical social change. Giulia Rispoli joins the cohort of
systemic thinkers in the anthology: referring to biological, ecological
and cognitive levels of cybernetic organization, she highlights the
contemporary relevance of Bogdanov’s tektological polymorphic
idea of the environment and of knowledge creation. According to
Simona Poustilnik, Bogdanov’s tektological conceptions of
‘personality-organization’ and ‘assembling’ provided Soviet Con-
structivists with a scientiﬁc rationale for their ‘production art’.
Fabian Tompsett describes the impact of Bogdanov and Otto Neur-
ath upon the German Figurative Constructivists and points to the
relevance of his tektological ideas to political-art movements in the
age of digitized information.
Among the specific issues addressed is the extent to which
Eisenstein’s theoretical work on montage systems was influenced by
the systemic thinking of Bogdanov.
Daniela Steila applies metaphors of photography and cinema to
explain the difference between the views of human perception repre-
sented by Lenin and Bogdanov, enabling us to detect traces of
Bogdanov’s systemic ideas in the thinking of Eisenstein. Lyubov
Bugaeva identifies further potential linkages between the two main
subjects of this anthology, in a chapter which investigates the rela-
tions between Bogdanov’s notions of the affectional, Eisenstein’s
theory of expressiveness, and the emotional script as conceived by
Eisenstein and realized by Rzheshevskiy.
Some answers are offered to those who might ask what role the
Proletkult movement played in the careers of the two. John Biggart
and Oksana Bulgakowa examine aspects of how both Bogdanov and
Eisenstein challenged traditional modes of thought, integrating
modern thinking into their respective disciplines. In different ways
this brought about the expulsion of both from the Proletkult move-
ment.
As a feature of the anthology, we offer original translations of
texts by Eisenstein and Bogdanov. Bogdanov’s “Science and the
working class” (1918), translated by Fabian Tompsett comprises
fourteen ‘Theses’ for a lecture delivered by Bogdanov to the First
All-Russian Conference of the Proletkult in 1918. “An open letter to
A. Bogdanov” by Franz Siewert (1921), translated by Fabian
Tompsett, brings to life one critical response to Bogdanov’s concept
of ‘Proletarian art’, as expressed by a contemporary.
Two texts by Eisenstein enable the reader to grasp Eisenstein’s
original writing style, a style that resembles a line of thought cap-
tured on the fly and passed down to us in textual form. Introduced by
Oksana Bulgakowa and John Biggart, Eisenstein’s “Cinema of the
masses” (1927), translated by Richard Abraham, offers a comprehen-
sive and popular explanation of what Eisenstein understood to be his
original contribution to the art of ﬁlm. A few months before his
death, Eisenstein recapitulated in “The Magic of Art” (1947) trans-
lated by Julia Vassilieva, several of the key themes that recur through-
out his theoretical output. Bogdanov, like Eisenstein, was aware of
the power of art to influence the thinking of the proletariat. James D.
White examines the philosophical dimension of Bogdanov’s utopian
novel Red Star, drawing attention to themes that appear in his more
avowedly theoretical works. Red Star was written in order to famil-
iarize workers with Bogdanov’s understanding of the ‘culture of the
future’: it is made clear that this culture would entail an assimilation
and mastery of Bogdanov’s ‘organization science’. Indeed,
Bogdanov’s thinking in the field of organization science evolved and
matured at the very time that he articulated his utopian vision in the
form of a novel.
The reader might ask, how far are these early systemic ideas
present in the media art theories of the present day? Clea von
Chamier-Waite’s practice-based chapter leads the reader from the
rhythmic montage pioneered by Eisenstein and the Soviet avant-
garde cinema of the 1920s, to the present day and to her conception
of somatic montage for immersive cinema, experienced through the
navigation of a four-dimensional cinematic space - a Sphere.
The “Spherical Book” was a visionary invention by Eisenstein
of a new book form that anticipated hypertext. Whereas in the tradi-
tional book form articles were read sequentially, following a linear
narrative, the content of the “Spherical Book”, as Eisenstein called it,
was to be perceived as a whole, instantaneously, with essays arranged
in clusters, each oriented in different direction but circling around a
common theme.
Our implementation of this idea enables the readers make their
own book-montages by emphasizing the themes that are, for them,
most important. In response, the Spherical Book algorithm will
organize all chapters into a cluster around the chosen themes.
The interactive “Spherical Book” platform provides readers
and authors with a platform for creating, sharing, and cultivating a
multiplicity of perspectives around a variety of themes. By prioritiz-
ing amongst a multitude of themes, readers may download and print
a “Spherical Book” that is in accordance with their thematic prefer-
ences. With open access online, the “Spherical Book” platform ena-
bles the reader to adopt a unique point-of-view, and to reorganize the
material of the Book whenever preferences change.
Pia Tikka (Editor-in-Chief)

John Biggart, Vesa Oittinen, Giulia Rispoli, and Maja Soboleva
(Editorial Board)
The work has been supported by The Federation of Finnish Learned

Societies, Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki, and NeuroCine
research project at the Department of Film, Television and Scenography and
the Department of Media at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture,
Aalto University, Finland.
T H E M AT I CA L O U T L I N E
Some emphasis on Taylorism
Some emphasis on Tektology
Clea von Chamier-Waite
SOMATIC MONTAGE FOR IMMERSIVE CINEMA
John Biggart and Oksana Bulgakowa
EISENSTEIN IN THE PROLETKULT
John Biggart
BOGDANOV’S SOCIOLOGY OF THE ARTS
No emphasis on Taylorism
Without emphasis on Tektology
Aleksandr Bogdanov; Introduction and translation Fabian Tompsett
SCIENCE AND THE WORKING CLASS 1918
Lyubov Bugaeva
BOGDANOV AND EISENSTEIN ON EMOTIONS: THE AFFECTIONAL,
THEORY OF EXPRESSIVENESS, AND EMOTIONAL SCRIPT
Peter Dudley
BOGDANOV’S PODBOR AND PROLETKULT: AN ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS
PERSPECTIVE
Sergei M. Eisenstein; Introduction and translation Julia Vassilieva
THE MAGIC OF ART 1947
Sergei M. Eisenstein; Introduction Oksana Bulgakowa & John Biggart;
Translation Richard Abraham
CINEMA OF THE MASSES 1927
Vesa Oittinen
BOGDANOV AND LENIN ON ‘THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES’
Simona Poustilnik
BOGDANOV'S TEKTOLOGY: A SCIENCE OF CONSTRUCTION
Giulia Rispoli
SHARING IN ACTION: BOGDANOV, THE LIVING EXPERIENCE AND THE
SYSTEMIC CONCEPT OF THE ENVIRONMENT
Jutta Scherrer
BOGDANOV'S CONCEPT OF CULTURE: FROM WORKERS’ CIRCLES TO
THE PROLETKULT MOVEMENT
Franz Seiwert; Introduction and translation Fabian Tompsett
OPEN LETTER TO COMRADE A. BOGDANOV 1921
Fabian Tompsett
TOWARDS A TEKTOLOGY OF TEKTOLOGY
James D. White
PARADISE ORGANIZED. THE PHILOSOPHICAL DIMENSION OF
ALEXANDER BOGDANOV’S UTOPIAN NOVEL, RED STAR
Maja Soboleva
THE CULTURE AS SYSTEM, THE SYSTEM OF CULTURE
Daniela Steila
KNOWLEDGE AS FILM VS. KNOWLEDGE AS PHOTO: ALTERNATIVE
MODELS IN EARLY SOVIET THOUGHT
Oksana Bulgakowa
EISENSTEIN’S SYSTEM THINKING: INFLUENCES AND INSPIRATIONS
Articles with
Some emphasis on Taylorism
Some emphasis on Tektology

Spherical Book

SOMATIC MONTAGE FOR IMMERSIVE CINEMA

Clea von Chamier-Waite______________________________________________________
This paper investigates a new notion of cinematic montage for

immersive cinema while examining historical precedents in the arts
and cinema of the twentieth century. Immersive film creation is in its
early stages of development towards a modern, cinematic language,
comparable to the invention of rhythmic montage pioneered by
Eisenstein and Soviet cinema and followed by the avant-garde
cinema of the 1920’s. Immersive cinema makes possible a
proprioceptive interaction of form and content, allowing the
extension of the signification structure of a film from its internal
narrative out into the geometry of the projection space. The concept
of somatic montage addresses new forms of montage techniques that
marry chronological with spatial sequencing into an embodied,
participatory creation of narrative. Somatic montage is presented
here as a broader, supra-dimensional notion of what Eisenstein
This chapter is peer-reviewed and edited for
called the ‘disjunctive method of narration’. The expanded
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architectural expanse occupied by the immersive film affords a
spatialized, non-linear juxtaposition of the film’s elements or ‘cells’.
CULTURE AS ORGANIZATION IN
EARLY SOVIET THOUGHT
The projection architectonics become an ordering element in the
compositional flow of the film, allowing the spectator space to build
their own field of associations and meaning toward construction of a
poetic narrative by navigating a four-dimensional, cinematic space.
Editor-in-Chief: Pia Tikka
Editorial Board: John Biggart, Vesa Oittinen,
Giulia Rispoli, Maja Soboleva
Tangential Points Publications
Aalto University 2016
ISBN 103204787103ABC
Chamier-Waite__________________SOMATIC MONTAGE_____________________Page 1 of 18

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New concepts of space in the arts grew out of the discovery of new
geometries and physical laws at the turn of the last century. The
invention of non-Euclidean geometry at the end of the nineteenth
century and the discovery of Relativity Theory and Minkowski space-
time at the beginning of the twentieth century had profound
repercussions in the arts, ranging from the traditional avant-garde of the
early century to Minimalism in the 1960s and 70s. Hyperspace presents a
useful representation for addressing the artistic concepts of space-time –
the fourth dimension, motion, and the faceting of perspective that
evolved out of this period. The tesseract provides a model-metaphor for
forms of composition that derive from the deconstruction of linear
sources, allowing for a multi-dimensional re-composition of the parts that
actively engages the viewer in constructing associative flow structures.
The twentieth century avant-garde movements can be seen as the
forbearers of somatic montage in contemporary cinema. Somatic
montage1 explores the concept of montage in the visual arts, poetry, and
literature, but especially in cine-installation and immersive cinema as a
formal construct rooted in the notions of juxtaposition, cells, and collision
developed by Sergei Eisenstein and the Soviet cinema. A somatic
approach to cinema montage engages a supra-dimensional interaction
between the film’s content and the viewer with the immersive space in a
unity of form, participation, and content. In a somatic montage the film is
physically distributed throughout an architectural or virtual theater. The
scenes occupy different spatial as well as temporal locations as an added
dimension of montage. Immersive cinema affords expanding the
signification structure of a film from its internal narrative out into a
navigable projection space.
Immersive film creation is in the early stages of development
towards a modern, cinematic language. The notion of somatic montage
proposed here is presented as a broader, multi-dimensional interpretation
of what Eisenstein called the “disjunctive method of narration”
(Eisenstein 1949a), made applicable to immersive cinema. The external
architecture of the projection space is utilized as an ordering element in
the compositional flow of the film, providing the viewer a conceptual and
navigable space to build their own field of associations and meaning in
the construction of a poetic narrative. Using this construct, the body, with

1 The nomenclature ‘somatic montage’ was first introduced by this author in “The
Cine-poetics of Fulldome Cinema” (Chamier-Waite 2013).
Chamier-Waite_________________SOMATIC MONTAGE_____________________Page 2 of 18
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its movements, memory, and sensations, participates in the reading of the

immersive cine-poem.
Immersive cinema 2
Immersive cinema is an architectonically enveloping, embodied,

cinematic experience that encompasses presentation modes ranging from
large-scale, multi-projection installations and panoramas, the frameless
hemispherical projections of OmniMAX and planetarium fulldome
cinemas, to the full, spherical image space of virtual reality. Fulldome
refers to an immersive motion picture medium that is a dome-based,
digital video projection environment using a hemispherical projection
surface – typically a planetarium dome. The environment extends over
360 degrees in azimuth and down to the dome horizon, approximately
180 degrees and the audience looks upwards at the image space. The
images are accompanied by a three-dimensional listening experience
using a multi-speaker, spatial sound system. The OmniMAX theaters,
also known as IMAX Dome, use the same principal as fulldome cinemas
with the exception that the viewers are seated in an amphitheater
arrangement, viewing a steeply tilted, frontally oriented dome screen.
Virtual reality is a single-viewer system that uses a head-mounted display
and an interactive spatial tracking system to create the impression of a
fully stereoscopic, spherical image space surrounding the viewer in all
dimensions. In all three systems, viewers experience an immersive film
space that occupies their entire visual and acoustic space, focal and
peripheral, which unfolds itself based on the directed attention of the
viewer.
Immersive cinema has its roots in the planetarium star show with
its illusion of boundless space. The earliest planetarium shows made use
of star projectors built by Carl Zeiss in the 1920s (fig. 1). These machines
were designed specifically and solely for projecting the fixed stars and
nebulae, as well as the Sun, Moon, and planets, into the dome of a
planetarium cupola. Larger models included constellations, comets, and
other astral apparitions. These superb contrivances of mechanics and
optics simulate the progression of the stars across the night sky as the
earth rotates. Points of light, static images within them selves, are
animated around the dome using a complex set of geared mechanisms.

2 Part of this paper has previously appeared in “The Cine-poetics of Fulldome
Cinema”, Animation Practice, Production & Process, 2013 (Chamier-Waite 2013).
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Because the only light reaching the dome is that from the ‘stars’, the
negative image space is deep black, creating a convincing, immersive
experience.
In the 1960s, many planetaria began to combine the star
projector shows with multimedia slide shows that used arrays of slide
projectors and cross-dissolve techniques. The advantage here was the
new ability to add photographic and graphic imagery to their
presentations. However, these shows also presented certain drawbacks.
First, the slide imagery was static. Second, many of these slide shows were
created using conventional optics and projectors. In order to project
naturalistically onto a dome, however, the images must be photographed
and projected using special curved optics, the ‘fisheye lens’, to pre-distort
the planar image so that it matches the curved surface. The visible,
rectangular frame of the conventional photographs and the ambient spill
light from these projections destroyed the immersive illusion of deep
darkness that is the planetarium’s main attraction.
Fig. 1. The Zeiss Model II Star Projector3

3 http://www.carnegiesciencecenter.org/exhibits/zeiss/
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In the 1970s, laser-light shows became a popular addition to the

star projector shows. The laser has the advantage of being a highly
focused and intense beam of light. Its quality is comparable to the intense
points of light projected by the star projector and it does not generate any
‘spill’ light. The laser beam can be animated using a small, mechanized
mirror, scanning quickly. With the laser show, the immersive darkness of
the planetarium was restored, but with the new addition of colored
motion graphics interspersed across the dome. Optical image distortion is
also not an issue with laser projection since there is no lens involved. The
laser drawing can be designed to accommodate the curvature of the
dome although abstract imagery is often used to circumvent the need for
geometric accuracy on the dome surface. Combined and synchronized
with music, the laser shows became a popular multimedia event in the
1970s. However, they were limited as to content, only able to create
ephemeral line drawings (fig. 2).
Fig. 2. Combined laser, star machine, and slide projections in the planetarium. Photo
Frank-Michael Arndt, Zeiss-Großplanetarium, Berlin
In the 1980s, a few planetaria installed arrays of conventional

video projectors to add patches of photographic, motion-picture elements
to their multimedia shows. These attempts were far less successful than
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the slide and laser shows, despite the addition of motion, due to the poor
image quality and high expense of early video projectors. Most
significantly, the standard quadratic image projection and luminous grey
‘black’ of video projection destroyed the illusion of limitless space created
by the dome. These were, however, early attempts at incorporating live-
action content using a form of spatial montage, or collage, of the video
projection cells with the other light sources.
The first immersive film which used moving, photographic
imagery seamlessly covering the entire hemispherical space was shown in
1973 in a specially built theater, the new OmniMAX format. OmniMAX
films were shot using a fisheye lens and an exceptionally large film
format4 to create live-action images for the dome. OmniMAX remained
the dominant immersive format until the rapid development of computer
animation techniques and high-definition video in the 1990’s contributed
to the beginning of fulldome video projection in a standard planetarium.
With the innovations of OmniMax and fulldome, the hemispherical
projection became truly cinematic and immersive cinema was born.
Figure 3 shows a still image from the experimental immersive film
Moonwalk (Waite 2010) where the entire, sixty-foot diameter planetarium
dome is projected with a photographic image of the full Moon.
Temporal montage
During the silent film era at the beginning of the twentieth

century, films were often accompanied by a storyteller who narrated the
films, particularly in Russia and Japan. The Japanese narrator, the benshi,
not only narrated the films, but also directed the audience’s attention
within a continuous wide shot to accentuate certain details on the screen
such as a doorway or a window. In a planetarium, the star projector sky is
also comparable to a continuous ‘wide shot’ and is traditionally
accompanied by a live presenter. Still popular in planetarium shows
today, the presenter explains the map of the stars and points out the
details of constellations to the audience, drawing their attention to a
particular location on the dome screen. The Japanese silent film and the
star projector show with their long, wide shots can both be considered
‘proto-montage’ cinema.

4 OmniMAX and IMAX used what is known as a ‘15-perf’, or ‘15/70’, a fifteen
sprocket hole, horizontal piece of 70mm film as opposed to the vertical ‘5-perf’, 65mm
area of standard large format film, providing three times the image area per frame.
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Earliest cinematography mimicked the conventions of theater and

vaudeville, relying on a stationary camera taking up the position of the
audience while viewing a complete stage – the original wide shot. The
accomplished stage magician turned film pioneer Georges Méliès
invented film editing to facilitate his optical tricks in films such as Voyage
dans la Lune of 1902. Méliès made figures magically appear and disappear,
the first film cuts, but he maintained a continuous space in his films. The
attention directing of the Japanese benshi conceives a conceptual
precursor to montage, guiding the eyes’ point of focus within a
continuous space, but it is not until the innovations of the cut to a close-
up by D.W. Griffith5 and parallel editing, the intercutting of two
simultaneous events in The Great Train Robbery from 1903 by Edwin S.
Porter, do we have the beginnings of true film montage.
Fig. 3. Moonwalk (2010) by Clea T. Waite: fulldome projection at the Adler Planetarium.
Photo Mark Webb.

5 Film historians maintain an open debate as to who first used the close-up in film, but
especially Eisenstein acknowledges Griffiths as the first director to develop it into an
element of modern cinematic language. See (Eisenstein 1949a).
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The concept of montage is essential to modern cinematic

language. Like the benshi, the editor, by creating the montage, visually
directs our attention through the space and time of a film’s narrative. Art
and film theorist Rudolf Arnheim described montage as the formation of
the viewer’s interest within the film: “In montage the film artist has a
first-class formative instrument, which helps him to emphasize and give
greater significance to the actual events that he portrays. From the time
continuum of a scene he takes only the parts that interest him, and of the
spatial totality of objects and events he picks out only what is relevant.
Some details he stresses, others he omits altogether.” (Arnheim 1957)
The emphasis in conventional, temporal montage is on producing
the impression of a continuous space and time. The narrative continuity
edit reinforces spatial orientation through a non-disruptive, invisible style
of cutting. An alternative, avant-garde concept of montage that uses a
deeply structural and entirely different impetus than ‘continuity editing’
developed in the Soviet Union in the 1920s with filmmaker Sergei
Eisenstein as this movement’s most prolific theorist. Eisenstein declared
“montage as the chief means of effect.”(Eisenstein 1949b) for the creation
of cinema. Eisenstein’s core concept for montage rests in the notion of
juxtaposition, of placing two shots next to each other in sequence that are
disparate in order to create a new meaning beyond their individual
contents through association: “The montage method is obvious: the play
of juxtaposed detail-shots, which in themselves are immutable and even
unrelated, but from which is created the desired image of the whole.
...combining shots that are depictive, single in meaning, neutral in
content – into intellectual contexts and series...not so much to show or to
present, as to signify, give meaning, to designate.” (Eisenstein 1949b)
Eisenstein’s notion of juxtaposition occurs between non-
continuous elements, what he refers to as ‘cells’, single shots of a film
sequence. Eisenstein borrows the notion from biology, explaining his
concept of the cell as an organic building block of the film’s totality. The
cell is a core theme in Eisenstein’s theory. “The shot is by no means an
element of montage. The shot is a montage cell. Just as the cells in their
division form a phenomenon on another order, the organism or embryo,
so, on the other side of the dialectical leap from the shot, there is
montage.” (Eisenstein 1949a) Though composed of moving pictures, the
cell represents a graphical (or acoustic or textual) unit that functions less
due to its internal development in time than due to the associations that
arise when one cell progresses to the next in a temporal, linear
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juxtaposition, displacing the viewer abruptly in the space-time continuum

of the film and the resulting conceptual leap that this demands. Film
theorist and historian David Bordwell summarizes Einsenstein’s approach
as “constructivist montage” (Bordwell 1998), suggesting interactions
between characters and objects while never including all in the same
frame. The joining of two shots yielded an effect or meaning not evident
in either shot alone.
Jean-Luc Godard, the French Nouvelle Vague filmmaker, has
similarly equated this recipe for montage with the dynamic compositions
of Constructivist photography, like the portraits of Helmar Lerski (fig. 4),
that appeared in contemporary art at the same time as Eisenstein
developed his theories in the Soviet Union: “what made possible the
kinds of montage {Russians}... was the angled shot: the look sharply up,
down, or at a tilt so characteristic of Russian avant-garde cinema….
Renouncing the supposedly 'straight' shot ... did not simply energize the
frame with dynamic composition, it also announced it as a partial image,
just one choice among many.”(Campany 2008)
Fig. 4. Helmar Lerski,

Verwandlungen durch Licht.
Gelatin silver print, 1936.
(Eskildsen 1982)
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Eisenstein was interested in an aggressive notion of montage, his

disjunctive method of narration, using collision and conflict as his
theoretical vocabulary. In Eisenstein’s framework, the desired concept to
be communicated is constructed in the mind of the viewer, arising from
the collision of two different factors. While conflict and collision in
Eisenstein’s sense serve to direct the audience’s perception of the
narrative through association, these concepts also play a role in the
notion of disruptive narrative, non-linearity, simultaneity, and ambiguity
that are key themes arising in the arts – in the cinema, literature,
painting, sculpture, and music of the European avant-garde of the same
period.
In “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” from 1960, film
theorist and critic André Bazin argued counter to the significance of
Soviet montage, defending the long, continous take and emphasizing
composition and action within the depth and time of the image, the mise-
en-scène. Bazin, like Eisenstein, argued for interpretation by the spectator,
but in his notion this occurred by representing a total and complete
representation of reality, total cinema (Bazin 2004), rather than through the
associations created by the montage of selected details. Bazin was
opposed to the manipulation of reality represented by avant-garde
montage theory. An example of the mise-en-scène approach can be found
in the director Raoul Walsh who relished his long, highly detailed, wide-
screen shots of the American West in The Big Trail from 1930, taking a
painterly approach to image complexity and duration. Jacques Tati’s
Playtime from 1967, with its elaborate sets, intricate action, and long takes,
consciously conforms to Bazin’s total cinema approach in its extreme,
letting layers of action unfold before the camera in very long, single takes.
Notably, both directors also worked with the largest and most immersive
format of film available to them, 70mm.
The ensuing generation Soviet filmmaker and theorist Andrei
Tarkovski’s approach to cinema also owes more to Bazin than Eisenstein,
exemplified by the long takes and slow moving camera in Stalker (1979).
Tarkovski argues for the precedence of the time within the frame over
the successive juxtaposition of shots over time: “Nor can I accept the
notion that editing is the main formative element of a film, as the
protagonists of 'montage cinema', following Kuleshov and Eisenstein,
maintained in the 'twenties, as if a film was made on the editing table…
The idea of 'montage cinema'—that editing brings together two concepts
and thus engenders a new, third one—again seems to me to be
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incompatible with the nature of cinema. Art can never have the interplay
of concepts as its ultimate goal.”(Tarkovskiĭ 1987) For Tarkovski, Walsh,
or Tati, montage takes place within the deep time, the extended and
highly detailed image, of the shot.
Conventional, immersive cinema style principally adheres to
Bazin’s concepts of the mise-en-scène and a total cinema. Immersive
experiences are composed of wide, visually detailed, temporally long
shots, chrono-spatial continuity, linear narrative, and an ongoing
fascination with the realistic image. Often there are no edits at all. Video
art, in contrast, often explores disjunctive space, visual fragmentation,
and narrative ambiguity while using architectonic, immersive
constructions of multiple screens. Whereas conventional narratives rooted
in literature tend towards closure, video art tends towards dispersal,
disrupting linearity and moving meaning outwards by placing cells across
multiple screens. By departing from the impulse towards literary realism,
the poetry of a more avant-garde approach to cinema emerges through
the associations created by spatialized juxtaposition. What is missing from
the cinematic language of most immersive films is exactly this notion of
evocative, associative montage. Bordwell talks about the use of film
montage as the fragmentation of space to build an emotional impact.
Poetry and montage are manifestations of the same idiom of
fragmentation and juxtaposition, only in different media. As forms of
expression, fragmented structures compel the mind to fill in the gaps,
opening up an interaction between the recipient and the work by
communicating within a conceptual negative space. This is Eisenstein’s
notion of the disjunctive method of montage by association. Like the
early film avant-garde of the 1920s, a few creators in spherical cinema are
exploring the unique, truly media-specific potential of this young medium
that emphasizes the inherent spatiality over temporality of the immersive
cinema experience.
It is important to note that the effectiveness of certain montage
techniques, such as rapid temporal cutting in conventional, framed
cinema, do not necessarily translate well into the immersive, frameless
formats. The visceral effects of immersive media have a heavy impact on
the sensory apparatus that can make disrupting the space of the film
through fast edits physically unsettling. In spite of this, a rhythmic,
associative montage can be achieved in immersive cinema by employing
the plane of the image, a spatialized collage structure of cells rather than
linear temporality as the axis of composition. Immersion is chiefly about
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space. The metric aspect of creating rhythm through the temporal

succession of images can be comparably evoked through the translational
time of the eye across the surface of the dome in a spatial montage as it
can through rhythmic editing within the time axis.
Somatic montage
At the end of the nineteenth century, a great deal of interest

sprang up around the concept of n-dimensional geometry, hyperspace,
and the fourth dimension – from serious scientific inquiry to esoteric
claims. Within this range there developed two strands of interpreting the
fourth dimension. One of these defined the fourth dimension as an
additional dimension of space perpendicular to our own three,
unimaginable to us yet encompassing our three-dimensional scope as the
cube encompasses the square. The other defined the fourth dimension as
time, imagining space-time as a continuous, four-dimensional volume of
past and future spread along a linear axis of time, all moments existing
simultaneously with the present constituting a continually shifting, three-
dimension slice of this hyper solid through our lower-dimensional space.
“Now the characteristic of time is succession; in time alone one thing
follows another in endless sequence. The unique characteristic of space is
simultaneity, for in space alone everything exists at once.” (Bragdon
1914). In hyperspace the simultaneity of space is conjoined with the
succession of time. Architect and designer Claude Fayette Bragdon,
known for his creation of a new, geometrically based, ornamental
vocabulary that he called ‘projective ornament’, based on sections of the
four-dimensional hypercube, played a key role in popularizing the fourth
dimension at the turn of the twentieth century. Bragdon was intrigued by
the notion of a supra-dimensional object that is only perceivable in time
and then only partially; an object which contains time within its own
volume – the four-dimensional hypercube or tesseract. When one does
perceive the tesseract, inside and outside become interchangeable – they
are simultaneous.
The dawn of the twentieth century brought with it, in addition to
the invisible dimensions of four-space and beyond, a curved universe in
which the familiar rules of Euclidean geometry no-longer applied and a
relativistic, space-time continuum that contradicted the notion of single-
point perspective. Further developments in physics added the concept of
multiple, simultaneous realities in the Heisenbergian realm of quantum
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mechanical cats, and the vast void of nothingness, empty silence, that
occupies the majority of matter and space at every scale. These are
‘advanced’ notions implying an ambiguity to reality that we are still
learning to understand over one hundred years later, far removed from
our every day experience of the world.
These profound concepts discovered in mathematics and physics
have resonated with creative artists and intellectuals since their inception
at the turn of the last century. The cultural impact of these ideas
instigated a Modernist series of artistic and philosophical movements.
Painting, sculpture, music, literature, cinema, and architecture –
influences from the new mathematics and physics can be found in all
these forms. Starting with Cubism, Futurism, Dada, and avant-garde
cinema, we can follow these influences through the Modernist literature
of Joyce, the twelve-tone music of Schoenberg, to the Minimalism of the
1960s, up until the beginning of post-modernism in the 1980s. These
avant-garde movements share a formal engagement with breaking the
singular point-of-view through the disruption of linear narrative, single-
point perspective, and spatio-temporal continuity. Motion,
fragmentation, simultaneity, ambiguity, and participation with the work
of art are constructs that are indicative of the Modernist approach. The
Cubists, for example, aspired to portraying a perceived representation
over an observed one. The historian of architecture Sigfried Giedion, in
Space, Time, and Architecture, analyzes the Cubist rejection of single point
perspective: “Cubism breaks with Renaissance perspective. It views
objects relatively: that is from many points of view, no one of which has
exclusive authority. And in so dissecting objects it sees them
simultaneously from all sides – from above and below, from inside and
outside” (Giedion 2009). Giedion’s analysis brings into focus the
implication of observer motion and simultaneous interiority/exteriority in
Cubism that also features in Bragdon’s description of the tesseract. The
Cubist rejection of Renaissance perspective in favor of a multi-point,
faceted perspective embraced a notion of spatial unfolding. In cinema,
the notion of unfolding can be realized in the concept of spatial montage,
the presentation of multiple, time-based cells distributed across a plane to
form a three-dimensional, space-time network of associations through
simultaneous presentation. With the tesseract model, this unfolding
occurs in the fourth dimension in which time-based cells are faceted
within a three-dimensional space; a Cubistic, immersive cinema space,
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that extends beyond the plane, allowing a view simultaneously within and
without a film, presenting it continuously in space and time.
The historical development of these concepts: disjunctive
montage, faceted perspective, the curvature of space-time, n-dimensional
spaces, spatial montage, and disrupted narrative that arose in the
twentieth century culminated in a Modernist Zeitgeist that embraces
spatial and temporal ambiguity, simultaneity, fragmentation, peripatetic
perception, and a heightened personal involvement with a work of art.
The notion of somatic montage gathers these impulses into a formal
construct for creating a cinema that occupies three-dimensional space
and time; an immersive, somatic, proprioceptive form that extends the
notions of temporal and spatial montage, alternative narrative,
simultaneity, and multiple viewpoints into an immersive, formal structure
for cinematic art-making.
The tesseract, with its embodiment of three-space and time,
provides a model-metaphor for constructing a spatio-temporal flow
structure in an immersive cinema. The observer must navigate through
the cinema space using the motion of their body in time to experience all
the facets of the tesseract space. In doing so, she experiences the
information contained within the space as simultaneous cells occupying
its individual faces – faces which can never be seen all at once. She
assembles these cells into a unique narrative through engaging her
memory to fill in the voids between the spatialized elements as she makes
her own peripatetic juxtapositions of this physical and conceptual space.
The early twentieth century phenomenological philosopher Maurice
Merleau-Ponty examined the role of motion, the body, and a peripatetic
experience in the perception of objects in space, a perception, which he
noted, is always partial and must be assembled into a whole through
experience. He uses the cube as an example of how we construct
meaning through our bodies, assembling fragments of perception
together into our memory:
From the point of view of my body I never see as equal the six sides of
the cube, even if it is made of glass, and yet the word 'cube' has a meaning; the
cube itself, the cube in reality, beyond its sensible appearances, has its six equal
sides. As I move round it, I see the front face, hitherto a square, change its
shape, then disappear, while the other sides come into view and one by one
become squares. But the successive stages of this experience are for me merely
the opportunity of conceiving the whole cube with its six equal and
simultaneous faces, the intelligible structure which provides the explanation of
it. … the experience of my own movement conditions the position of an object,
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it is, on the contrary, by conceiving my body itself as a mobile object that I am

able to interpret perceptual appearance and construct the cube as it truly is.
…In order to be able to conceive the cube, we take up a position in space, now
on its surface, now in it, now outside it, and from that moment we see it in
perspective. The cube with six equal sides is not only invisible, but
inconceivable; it is the cube as it would be for itself; but the cube is not for itself,
since it is an object. (Merleau-Ponty and Landes 2013)
Somatic montage builds upon a structural foundation rooted in
these notions of twentieth century geometric principles that serve as a
formal, objective counterpoint to poetic content constructed through
associative collisions. In a somatic montage, form and content, geometry
and motion, are inextricably interdependent. The immersive architecture
that the film projection occupies serves as a constructive factor of its
narrative flow. Cinematic elements, cells, are distributed in space as on
the facets of a cube. Movement in time by the viewer, through the fourth
dimension, provides the connection between these cells which are then
assembled in memory to create meaning. This formal approach to
composition derives from the deconstruction of linear narrative and the
hyper-expansion of the two-dimensional image space, allowing for a
multi-dimensional, oneiric re-composition of the parts that actively
engage the viewer through movement and memory. Assembling these
elements, somatic montage motivates the viewer’s focus, affording the
formation of relationships between signifiers in which it is the viewer’s
attention that composes the flow of information in a cinematic tesseract.
Multi-dimensional, simultaneous information precludes a passive viewing
of the somatic film.
The experimental fulldome film Moonwalk provides an example of
the somatic montage approach. An immersive film about the Moon,
Moonwalk is projected into the dome of the planetarium so that the images
of the Moon occupy the round volume of the dome’s hemispherical
shape. The film and format intertwine form and content. In the film,
time-based cells are distributed in a three-dimensional collage across the
extent of the image, displaying them simultaneously as well as
sequentially in time (fig. 5) and surrounding the viewer on all sides.
Spatialized sound and peripheral vision guide the eyes around the dome
screen. A peripatetic rhythm is created between the viewer’s own roving
attention and the film’s progression. The result is a narrative within a
narrative that is lyrical, non-linear, and individual to each viewer,
creating what Eisenstein called the dialectical relationship between form
and content in a film, the ‘dual unity’: “The dialect of works of art is built
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upon a most curious ‘dual unity’. The effect generated by a work of art is
due to the fact that there takes place within it a dual process: an
impetuous progressive rise along the lines of the highest conceptual steps
of consciousness and a simultaneous penetration by means of the
structure of the form into layers of profoundest sensuous thinking. The
polar separation of these two lines of aspiration creates that remarkable
tension of unity of form and content characteristic of true artworks.”
(Leyda 1986)
Fig. 5. Still from Moonwalk, fulldome digital film. (© 2010 Clea T. Waite)
The concept of somatic montage is not restricted to cinema. Or,

cinema has become a contemporary metaphor for most artistic
manifestations that involve framing space and moving through time. In
1997, Catherine David curated the exhibition DocumentaX in Kassel,
Germany. For David, the city was her tesseract and the vistors’
movements through it the time axis, the fourth dimension of her ‘film’.
David placed artworks throughout the city, especially along the routes
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between the exhibition locations. Art critic and theorist Rosalind Krauss
analyzes David’s cinematic metaphor in Under Blue Cup: “Catherine
David,… planned this procession from train station to exhibition park as
a kind of filmic sequence carefully edited with one display juxtaposed to
another: a series of jump cuts and dissolves. As she explains it: ’Like a
film, Documenta is a long and patient process of montage. Working from a
more or less coherent script, sequences are isolated and thought out;
when their internal structure is established, they are spliced into the
whole.6’” (Krauss 2011) For Krauss, David’s curatorial flow is cinematic.
Filmmaker and artist Peter Greenaway used a similar structure in
his public installation The Stairs-Munich-Projection (1995). Greenaway
placed one hundred movie screens throughout the city of Munich, one
for each year in the history of cinema. Greenaway, master of indexicality,
presented a spatialized database of films which the viewers assembled
into individual narratives as they strolled through town, a somatic
montage. They could enjoy the rhythms internal to the works on screen
or make their own rhythms by standing or moving, waiting or leaving.
Somatic montage addresses a growing theoretical concern as
immersive cinema gains in status and expands from the highly specialized
environments of the planetarium dome and the OmniMAX theater into
the increasingly widespread domains of video installation and virtual
reality. It addresses the basic principles of cinematic montage in relation
to a three-dimensional, architectonic screen as a spatio-temporal
experience. The early twentieth century was a time of exceptional
creative experimentation in cinema and the arts, part of the Zeitgeist of the
new discoveries being made in geometry and physics at that time.
Montage theory and contemporary cinematic language are the legacies of
this experimentation. Comparable formal experiments in montage are
now emerging in immersive cinema media, diverging from the mis-en-scène
approach reminiscent of the earliest films and Bazin’s total cinema, to a
more disjunctive method of montage as developed by Eisenstein and the
proponents of Soviet cinema. The tesseract, the geometric embodiment
of three-dimensional space in combination with the fourth dimension of
time, provides a model metaphor for a new approach to disjunctive
montage in immersive cinema. This strategy promises a rich practice of
immersive, somatic cinema that formally engages a supra-dimensional

6 Krauss is quoting David from "A la rencontre de l'art contemporaine, Catherine
David et la Documenta X," a television program broadcast on Arte August 10,1997
(Krauss 2011: 55-58)
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approach to participatory interaction between film and viewer in forming

meaning. The engaged body, memory, and the expansion of the
cinematic experience into a navigable space of simultaneous
presentations and ambiguous interpretations unlocks the potential for a
more associative, proprioceptive sensibility towards creating a poetic,
immersive, cinematic experience.
References
Arnheim, Rudolf. 1957. Film as Art. University of California Press.

Bazin, Andre. 2004. What Is Cinema? Vol. 1. Translated by Hugh Gray. Rev Ed. Berkeley
CA.: University of California Press.
Bordwell, David. 1998. On the History of Film Style. Harvard University Press.
Bragdon, Claude. 1914. Projective Ornament. Kindle Edition. Cosimo Classics.
Campany, David. 2008. “Stillness.” In Photography and Cinema, 22–59. London: Reaktion
Books Ltd.
Chamier-Waite, Clea von. 2013. “The Cine-Poetics of Fulldome Cinema.” In Animation
Practice, Production & Process, 3:219–33. Bristol, UK: Intellect Journals.
Eisenstein, Sergei. 1949a. “Dickens, Griffith and the Film Today.” In Film Form: Essays
in Film Theory, 195–256. New York: Harcourt Brace.
———. 1949b. “Statement on Sound.” In Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, translated by
Jay Leyda, 234–35. Harcourt.
Eskildsen, Ute. 1982. Helmar Lerski: Metamorphosis Through Light. Luca Verlag.
Giedion, Sigfried. 2009. Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition, Fifth
Revised and Enlarged Edition. Revised edition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press.
Krauss, Rosalind E. 2011. Under Blue Cup. The MIT Press.
Leyda, Jay, ed. 1986. Eisenstein On Disney - A Classic Book. Translated by Alan Y.
Upchurch. 1St Edition edition. Seagull Books.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, and Donald A Landes. 2013. Phenomenology of Perception.
Tarkovskiĭ, Andreĭ Arsenʹevich. 1987. Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema. Austin,
TX: University of Texas Press.
Waite, Clea T. 2010. Moonwalk. Fulldome. Experimental. Carl Zeiss AG, Planetarium
Section, Jena Germany.
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EISENSTEIN IN THE PROLETKULT

John Biggart and Oksana Bulgakowa________________________________________
In their respective fields, Aleksandr Bogdanov and Sergey

Eisenstein made a radical break with traditional modes of
thought. Both sought to bring the findings of modern science into
their respective disciplines. We examine some of the theoretical
issues that exercised Sergey Eisenstein during the years 1920-
1924 when he worked in the Russian Proletarian Cultural-
Educational Organization, of which Bogdanov was one of the
founders. We ask how far Eisenstein was influenced by Marxism
and by the ideas of Bogdanov. We explain the departure of
Eisenstein from the Proletkult in terms of the unacceptability of
Eisenstein’s theory and practice in theatre and film and of his
political orientation to the Chairman of the Proletkult, Valeriyan
Pletnëv, at a time when the Agitprop Department of the Central
Spherical Book titled Committee of the Communist Party, at Lenin’s behest, was
taking steps to reduce the scope of activities of the Proletkult,
CULTURE AS ORGANIZATION IN discredit Bogdanov as a thinker, and exclude him from politics.

ISBN 103204787103ABC
Biggart and Bulgakowa________EISENSTEIN IN THE PROLETKULT _________Page 1 of 20

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“There are two specific trends that I physically cannot stand:

first, art prolétaire quand-même and second, the ‘Stanislavskiy system’...”1
“A polemic. An unequal combat between an individual and an

organization (it was yet to be dethroned for its claims to have a
monopoly on proletarian culture). At any moment, the matter could
turn into ‘persecution’… I was threatened with unpleasant things by
the Proletkult.”2
Science in the service of ideology3
The years during which Eisenstein worked under the aegis of

the Proletkult were years during which he formulated his first theory of
theatre and film art - the theory of attractions.4 In “Montage of
attractions” (1923) he described his understanding of the theatrical
programme of the Proletkult as follows: “the moulding of the audience
in a desired direction (or mood) is the task of every utilitarian theatre
(agitation, advertising, health education, etc.” An “attraction” was:
“.. an aggressive moment in theatre, i.e., any element of it that
subjects the audience to emotional or psychological influence, verified
by experience and mathematically calculated to produce specific
emotional shocks in the spectator in their proper order within the
whole. These shocks provide the only opportunity of perceiving the
ideological aspect of what is being shown, the final ideological
conclusion...” (Taylor 2010: 34).5
In “Montage of Film Attractions” (1924), Eisenstein argued
that this theory was also applicable to film, which, he claimed, shared
with the theatre the purpose of “influencing the audience in a desired direction
through a series of calculated pressures on its psyché” (Taylor 2010: 39).
Indeed, “... there is, or rather should be, no cinema other than agit-
cinema. The method of agitation through spectacle consists in the
creation of a new chain of conditioned reflexes by associating selected
1 Eisenstein, letter to his mother, 4 January 1921. Bulgakowa 2001a: 24.

2 Eisenstein 1997: 111–113; Taylor and Powell 1995: 147–148.
3 In this paper, individual terms used by Eisenstein or other writers, as well as
quotations from their works, are indicated by double inverted commas.

4 On the evolution of Eisenstein’s theories, see Bulgakowa 2001c: 38–51; and
Bulgakowa 2014: 423–448.

5 Yurenev, citing S.Yutkevich, notes that Eisenstein seized upon the term attraktion
at a time when he had a special interest in pantomime. The term can also refer to
a circus act or carnival amusement. In 1925 Eisenstein spoke of the “role of circus
and sport in the renewal of acting skills”. See “The problem of the materialist
approach to form” in Taylor 2010: 60, and, on the affinities between circus and
theatre in the early 1920s. Yurenev 1985: 51, 58–59.

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phenomena with the unconditioned reflexes they produce (through the

appropriate methods)” (Taylor 2010: 45).
The sources that Eisenstein drew upon for his understanding of
reflexology were Vladimir Bekhterev (1857-1927)6 and Ivan Pavlov
(1849-1936).7 He had recourse to other science in seeking to ensure
that the movements of his “model actor” (naturshchik) would achieve
the necessary “affect”: the “whole process of the actor’s movement
[should be] organized with the aim of facilitating the imitative
capacities of the audience” (Taylor 2010: 50). Movements should be
selected “from the versions that are most characteristic of real
circumstances”. This selection was not to be made from the standard
repertoire for associating gestures with emotions (as in mime); nor was
the actor to ‘enter into’ the state of mind of a character (Taylor 2010:
50).8 Rather, movement should be broken down into its “pseudo-
primitive primary component elements for the audience”. These
“neutral elements” would then be assembled and coordinated into a
temporal schema by the actor and the director. The objective should
be to achieve not the superficial imitation of a real action but an
“organic representation that emerges through the appropriate
mechanical schema and a real achievement of the motor process of the
phenomenon being depicted” (Taylor 2010: 50). Such a “montage
(assembly) of movements that are purely organic in themselves... will
involve the audience to the maximum degree in imitation and,
through the emotional effect of this, in the corresponding ideological
treatment...We see that the methods of processing the audience do not
differ in the mechanics of their realization from other forms of work
movement...” (Taylor 2010: 56.)
In 1921, at a time when he was working within the Proletkult,
Eisenstein was also attending the “theatrical technical school” of
Vsevolod Meyerhold where lectures on biomechanics were delivered
by Nikolay Bernstein, and it seems likely that his interest in the
physiology and psychology of human movement originated or further
developed at this time (Bulgakowa 2001a: 26; Bulgakowa 2014: 427;
6 For Eisenstein’s reference to Bekhterev, see “Montage of Film Attractions”, in

Taylor 2010: 49 and for his use of the term ‘reflexology’, “The method of making
a workers’ film” (August 1925), in Taylor 2010: 68.
7 Pavlov is mentioned in “Through the Revolution to Art: Through Art to the
Revolution” (1933) in Taylor 2010,:243. Here, Eisenstein also mentions the

influence of Freud.
8 In 1926 Eisenstein declared that “My artistic principle was, therefore, and still is,
not intuitive creativity, but the rational constructive composition of effective

elements; the most important thing is that the effect must be calculated and
analysed in advance”. Battleship Potemkin “had nothing to do with Stanislavskiy and
the [Moscow] Art Theatre”. See the translation of “Sergej Eisenstein uber Sergej
Eisenstein – den Potemkin regisseur”, Berliner Tageblatt, 7 June 1926, in Taylor 2010:
75–76.

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Braun 1995: 172–177). In “Montage of film attractions” (1924) he

claimed to be making his own contribution in this field: “The norms of
organicism ...for motor processes have been established partly by
French and German theoreticians of movements (investigating kinetics
in order to establish motor primitives) and partly by me (kinetics in its
application to complex expressive movements and the dynamics of
both)...in my laboratory work in the Proletkult Theatre” (Taylor 2010:
51).9 He goes on to mention the work of specialists in pathology
(Hermann Nothnagel, 1841–1905); neurology and physiology
(Guillaume-Benjamin-Armand Duchenne de Boulogne, 1806–1875);
eurythmics (Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, 1865–1950); rhythmic gymnastics
(Rudolphe Bode, 1881–1970); hygiene and physical exercize
(Ferdinand Hueppe, 1852–1938); and expressive movement
(Hermann Krukenberg, 1863–1895; Ludwig Klages, 1872–1956)
(Taylor 2010: 52–53).10 He also mentions Charles Darwin’s The
expression of the emotions in man and animals (1872), and, in what was in all
probability a reference to his studies of 1921, a “collection of essays by
the Central Labour Institute in their application to work
movement”.11
Eisenstein’s selective elaboration in the First Workers’ Theatre
of the Proletkult of the methods and techniques he had learned in the
school of Meyerhold has been well described by Robert Leach (Leach
1994). Here, we shall focus upon what Eisenstein described as being
his main purpose in applying scientific and aesthetic techniques on the
stage and in film, namely to achieve the desired propaganda effect, or,
as one scholar has put it, to “organize the cognition of the spectators”
(Tikka 2009: 229). Indeed, we learn from an interview of 1928 that
one of the modules of his Teaching and Research Workshop was
devoted to “Ideological Expressiveness” – “the problem of the
transition of film language from cinema figurativeness to the cinematic
materialization of ideas, i.e., with the problems of the direct translation of
an ideological thesis into a chain of visual stimulants” (Taylor 2010:
127–129).12 The film Strike, completed in 1924, Eisenstein’s last year in
9 On the theoretical and practical work of the First Workers’ Theatre see Leach
1994: 151–161.
10 For a fuller account of Eisenstein’s adaptation of the ideas of these thinkers, see
Bulgakowa 2001b: 175–178; and Bulgakowa 2014: 428–429.

11 The Central Labour Institute was headed by Aleksey Kapitonovich Gastev
(1882–1939), a former ‘proletarian poet’ and a disciple of Frederick Winslow

Taylor, the pioneer of the “scientific organization of labour. In 1921, Bernstein
had founded a biomechanics laboratory in the Central Institute of Labour. See
Bulgakowa 2001a: 26. According to Edward Braun, the programme of
Meyerhold’s ‘theatrical-technical school’ drew upon the ideas of William James,
Bekhterev, Pavlov, Taylor and Gastev (Braun 1995: 172–177).
12 The other two modules were devoted to “Human Expressiveness” and
“Montage Expressiveness”. For the range of connotations acquired by ‘attraction’

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the Proletkult, provides an insight into the kind of ideological messages

that he was seeking to convey at this time.
The ambivalent messages of Strike
There is no ‘programmatic’ Marxism in Strike. The film had

originally been conceived as the fifth of a series that would outline the
history of the Russian workers’ movement from the first underground
printing press to the October Revolution, but the Communist Party
had not yet come round to formulating an official version of the
history of the revolution. Besides, as Mark D. Steinberg has pointed
out, very few writers and artists working within proletarian cultural
institutions during the 1920s considered themselves to be Marxists,
and not only Marxist instructors taught within the Proletkult
(Steinberg 2002: 52, 61). This doctrinal pluralism made possible a
cross-fertilization of Marxist and non-Marxist ideas in the arts and this
eclecticism is evident in Strike.13
A key message of Strike is that workers can prevail against
adversity if they accept the need for ‘organization’ (the film opens with
a lengthy quotation on this subject from Lenin, dated 1907).
Surprisingly, however, in the end, such ‘organization’ as is achieved is
not effective, and the strike ends in defeat. The concluding message is
not the standard rallying call of Social Democratic and, later,
Communist Parties: – “Workers of the world unite!”, but a more
sombre exhortation to “remember these things”; not the inevitable
triumph of proletarian revolution, but a kind of radical ouvrierisme.
In Strike, rank and file Bolshevik leaders are shown mobilizing
worker activists in ‘circles’, but there is no over-bearing emphasis upon
the leading role of the Party. Throughout the film the workers,
whether in the factory, in a family setting, or as a crowd or ‘collective’
are represented as a force capable of moving of its own volition.14 This
representation was consistent with Eisenstein’s view of the importance
of “mass material in establishing the ideological principle”, as opposed
to “the individual plot material of bourgeois cinema”15 and also with
the founding philosophy of the Proletkult, which had originally
conceived of itself as the ‘third’ wing of the labour movement, on a par
and ‘montage’ in the later theoretical writings of Eisenstein, see Bulgakowa 2001c:
41 and passim.
13 The relatively open membership policy of the Proletkult and the eclecticism of
its activity in the arts are well described in Fitzpatrick 1970 and Mally 1990.
14 Eisenstein described the ideas expressed by him in Strike as “themes of the social
mass”. See “Beseda s rezh. S.M. Eyzenshteynom”. Kino-nedalya 1925 (4): 17.
15 See “The problem of the materialist approach to form” (1925) in Taylor 2010:
59–61; and Bulgakowa 2001a: 47–48.

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with the party-political and trade union wings.16 It is significant that

Eisenstein himself never became a party member.
The intellectual and the proletarian
The completion of Strike marked the point where Eisenstein’s

conception of revolutionary art could no longer co-exist with the
traditionalist approach to theatre and film and the schematic Marxism
of the Chairman of the Proletkult, Valeriyan Pletnëv. Differences in
their social backgrounds may also have been a source of friction.
Whereas Eisenstein was the son of a court councillor and engineer,
Pletnëv (born in 1886, he was 12 years older than Eisenstein) had been
born into a working class family and had earned his living for 19 years
as a carpenter. A member of the RSDRP since 1904, Pletnëv had
endured two periods of exile, in the Vologda Governorship and the
Lena region of Siberia. He had begun writing in 1918 and by the early
1920s was considered to be a ‘proletarian writer’.17 A preoccupation of
his dramatic works was that of popular uprisings and a Proletkult
production The Avenger (Mstitel’), based on Revanche! Episode de la commune
by Léon Cladel (Cladel 1878), had been enthusiastically reviewed by
Bukharin in Pravda on 16 December 1919.18 The Paris Commune was
also the theme of Flengo (Pletnëv 1922b), his stage adaptation of a
story, Flingot (Paris, 1907) of Lucien Alexandre Descaves (1861–
1949).19 Pletnëv’s principal theatrical work was, however, Lena, a five-
act play devoted to the massacre of gold mining workers in Siberia on
4 April 1912. In his introduction to the first edition of 1921, he had
called upon “Poets, artists and actors” to take the struggles of the
proletariat as their subject matter (Pletnëv 1921b). In 1923, he
published a lengthy history of events leading up to the massacre, and
included his play as an appendix.20 Pletnëv’s status as an authority, at
16 On the aspirations of the Proletkult to an independent role in workers’
education, inside Soviet Russia and internationally, see Biggart 2001.

17 His works included Na tikhom plëse (1919), a short story on the life of political
exiles; his play Lena (1921); Andreykino Gore (1921) on the everyday life of the
proletariat and the life of children before the revolution. In Bolotnye ogni (1921) he
provides one of first post-revolutionary portraits of the kulak. See Literaturnaya
Entsiklopediya 1934 and Kratkaya Literaturnaya Entsiklopediya 1968: 5.
18 Mstitel’ was published in Ekaterinburg in 1920 and, to commemorate the 50th
anniversary of the Paris Commune, in Petersburg in 1921. In the edition of 1921

Pletnëv’s name is omitted from the title page and there is an introductory
dedication to the Paris Commune by A. Piotrovskiy. On Bukharin’s review, see
Fitzpatrick 1970: 147–149.
19 According to a “Repertoire of the Workers’ Theatre of the Proletkult” published
in Pletnëv 1921b, it would appear that Flengo had first been published in 1921.
20 Pletnëv 1923. In 103 pages, Pletnëv outlines the history of the gold industry in
Russia and of the company Lenskoe zolotopromyshlennoe tovarishchestvo (“Lenzoto”). He

includes information on wages, working conditions, technology, the legal and

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least within the Proletkult, in matters relating to strikes, rested also

upon his dramatization of a short story by Aleksey Gastev, entitled
Strikes (Stachki), the text of which appeared under his own name in two
editions in 1921 (Pletnëv 1921c, 1921d) and the following year under
that of Gastev (Gastev 1922).
In December 1920, Pletnëv had succeeded Pavel Lebedev-
Polyanskiy as Chairman of the Presidium of the Central Committee of
the Proletkult,21 having acquiesced in the policy of the Communist
Party that the Proletkult should concern itself with improving the
productivity of labour.22 In November 1921 he was appointed Head of
the Arts Section of the State Agency for Political Education,
Glavpolitprosvet. (Fitzpatrick 1970: 238–242). By the time, therefore, that
Eisenstein began working on Pletnëv’s plays as a set-designer, Pletnëv
was already a senior official of the cultural superstructure. It boded ill
for Eisenstein that, whereas Lebedev-Polyanskiy had denounced as
“demagogy” the idea that intellectuals could not create proletarian
culture,23 Pletnëv was of the opinion that only a proletarian could give
adequate expression to the proletarian mentality.24
material situation of the workers and photographs of the site of the massacre. The
following year, a shorter version was published as a supplement to Kurskaya Pravda
(Pletnëv 1924a).
21 Lebedev-Polyanskiy had helped found the Proletarian University and had been
Secretary of the International Bureau of the Proletkult. He claimed to have been a

“dedicated defender of the idea of proletarian culture, proletarian science,
proletarian art, proletarian literature.” See his autobiography in Deyateli... 1989:
489–491.
22 See the minutes of the Plenum of the Central Committee of 16–20 December
1920 and 15–20 May 1921 in Proletarskaya Kul’tura, 1921 (20/21). Pletnëv’s initial
attempt to find a middle way between Bogdanovism and Lenin’s conception of
socialism as “the Soviets plus electrification of the countryside” is well illustrated in
his article, “Na ideologicheskom fronte”, Pravda, 27 September 1922.
23 Proceedings of the Second Conference of the Moscow Proletkult (March 1919),
RGALI, f.1230, l. 140. A year earlier, Lebedev-Polyanskiy had expressed the more
nuanced view that socialist intellectuals could be “temporary helpers”, but the
cultural influence they brought to bear should be carefully scrutinized. In the final
analysis, only the proletariat could “resolve” (razreshit’) the question of proletarian
culture”. See his speech of 16 September 1918, in Protokoly Pervoy Vserossiyskoy
Konferentsii Proletarskikh kul’turno-prosvetitel’nykh organizatsii 15–20 sentyabria 1918.g.
Moscow: 1918. On the relationship between workers and intellectuals in the
Proletkult, see Mally 1990: 115–121.
24 In 1922 he wrote that the class consciousness of the proletariat was “alien to the
peasant, the bourgeois, the intellectual (intelligent) – the doctor, lawyer, engineer –
who were reared in the spirit of capitalist competition ...” See Pletnëv, “Na
ideologicheskom fronte” in V.I. Lenin o literature i iskusstve 1967: 460.

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The “reactionary tendency”
In March 1921, in the Second Central Studio of the

Proletkult,25 Eisenstein and Leonid Nikitin had designed the sets and
costumes for Valentin Smyshlyaev’s production of The Mexican, a play
based on a story by Jack London.26 The two subsequently designed
sets and costumes for a production by Smyshlyaev and Vasiliy Ignatov
of Pletnëv’s Lena, which had its première in October 1921.27 However,
the incompatibility of Eisenstein’s vision with that of his Proletkult
seniors soon became apparent: his stage effects for a production by
Smyshlyaev of Pletnëv’s On the Abyss (Nad obryvom) were rejected by
Pletnëv (Yurenev 1985: 49).28 Eisenstein and Smyshlyaev “had a
complete disagreement in principle that led to a split and subsequently
to our working separately” (Taylor 2010: 33).29 Following the première
in April 1923 in the First Workers’ Theatre of The Wise Man
(Eisenstein’s debut as a director and the first implementation on stage
of his ‘theory of attractions’),30 Eisenstein and Pletnëv planned a
production of the latter’s detective play, Patatras, but preparations
ground to a halt (Bulgakowa 2001a: 39).31
By this time, Eisenstein and the neo-Futurist playwright and
critic, Sergey Tret’yakov, saw themselves as the principal source of
theatrical innovation in the Proletkult. After The Wise Man, Eisenstein
in November 1923 directed Tret’yakov’s Are You Listening Moscow?
(Slyshish’, Moskva?) and then, in February 1924, Tret’yakov’s Gas Masks
(Protovogazy). But “the group came under unrelenting attack from
Bolshevik critics and less adventurous artists alike” (Leach 1994: 151).
25 On the network of Proletkult theatre studios, 1920–1923, see Leach 1994: 71.
26 According to both Yurenev and Leach, whilst Smyshlyaev was formally the
director of The Mexican, Eisenstein was “the true begetter” and directed the play
when it was revived in August 1923. The posters for the play in 1921 attributed it
to “Smyshlyaev, Arvatov and Eisenstein”. For photographs of the stage and
costume designs of Eisenstein and Nikitin, see Yurenev 1985: 44–45, 47; and
Leach 1994: 72, 74–75. See also Bulgakowa 2001a: 21–23.
27 The production of Lena in 1921 was the work of both Ignatov and Smyshlyaev.
Eisenstein assisted Leonid Nikitin with the set designs. See Nikitina 1996 which
has an introduction and commentary by Andrei L. Nikitin, the son of Leonid
Nikitin. For a photograph of one scene, see Leach 1994: 78–81.
28 Yurenev reproduces one of Eisenstein’s graphics for this play. See also Leach
1994: 162 & 199; and Bulgakowa 2001a: 31.

29 Smyshlyaev had been a pupil of Konstantin Stanislavskiy in the Moscow Arts
Theatre. See Yurenev 1985: 42; and Bulgakowa 2001a: 31.

30 On this adaptation by Sergey Tret’yakov of Aleksandr Ostrovskiy’s Enough
stupidity for every wise man (Na vsyakogo mudretsa dovol’no prostoty), see Yurenev 1985:
62–67; Leach 1994: 142–150, with a photograph of one scene on page 148; and
Bulgakowa 2001a: 36–38.
31 According to a report in Gorn 1923 (9), Eisenstein and Pletnëv were at his time
collaborating in the production of a three-act detective play and over a play

entitled Naslednik Garlanda, but it is not known whether the latter was ever
performed or even written. See Yurenev 1985: 68.

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In “Montage of attractions” (1923), Eisenstein attributed these

difficulties to differing understandings of what constituted
revolutionary theatre: there had been a reactionary tendency within
the Proletkult – “The figurative-narrative theatre (static, domestic –
the right wing: The Dawns of Proletkult,32 Lena, and a series of unfinished
productions of a similar type. It was the line taken by the former
Workers’ Theatre of the Proletkult Central Committee.” (Taylor 2010:
33). In 1926, he provided further detail: “In 1922 I became the sole
director of the First Workers’ Theatre and I got involved in the most
violent differences of opinion with the leaders of the Proletkult. The
Proletkult people shared Lunacharskiy’s view: they favoured making
use of the old traditions and were not afraid of compromise when it
came to the question of the relevance of the pre-revolutionary arts.33 I
was one of the most uncompromising champions of LEF, the left front,
which wanted a new art that corresponded to the new social
relationships. All the younger generation and all the innovators were
on our side at that time, including Meyerhold and Mayakovskiy;
ranged against us were Stanislavskiy, the traditionalist, and Tairov,34
the opportunist” (Taylor 2010: 74). In 1924, in his unpublished
‘Montage of film attractions’, without naming either Lunacharskiy or
Pletnëv, Eisenstein made no effort to conceal his contempt for their
conception of theatre and in particular for Pletnëv’s commitment to a
linear-thematic script. It was the merit of ‘montage’ that it “liberated
film from the plot-based script” (Taylor 2010: 40–41). A script,
“whether plot-based or not”, should be “a prescription (or list) of
montage sequences”. The approach of “our scriptwriters” to the
construction of a script was “utterly feeble”, and this task should fall
entirely to the director (Taylor 2010: 46).
The anti-Proletkult campaign
Not only artistic, but also party-political factors were involved

in Eisenstein’s departure from the Proletkult. By 1924, both Pletnëv
and the Proletkult were coming under increasing pressure from the
32 The Dawns of the Proletkult, an anthology by Vasiliy Ignatov of the verse of several
proletarian poets and adapted for the stage by Smyshlyaev, was performed in the
Central Arena of the Proletkult in 1920. One of Eisenstein’s first tasks in the
Proletkult was to assist Leonid Nikitin with the visual effects. See Yurenev 1985:
42, 44; and Leach 1994: 76–77.
33 On Lunacharskiy’s conservative policies regarding the theatre and Platon
Kerzhentsev’s ‘leftist’ critique of Lunacharskiy’s plays, see Fitzpatrick 1970: 139–

161.
34 Aleksandr Tairov was the founder and producer-director of the Kamernyy
Theater, “famous for its highly stylized productions of exotic decadent plays and
multi-level decorative scenery” (Bulgakowa 2001a: 283).

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Agitprop Department of the Central Committee of the RK (b) and this

may help to explain why Pletnëv felt he could no longer take the risk
of harbouring within the Proletkult such a maverick as Eisenstein.
In September 1922, Pletnëv had felt able, in an article in Pravda
entitled “On the ideological front”, publicly to defend the mission of
the Proletkult to develop proletarian culture.35 However, one month
later he had been subjected to a humiliating rebuff by Yakov
Yakovlev, the Deputy Head of Agitprop, in an article that had been
prepared in consultation with Lenin and which coincided with the
anniversary of the October Revolution.36 In one section of this article,
‘On Proletkult theatre’, Yakovlev had articulated what was, in fact,
Lenin’s position, namely that during a period of transition it was more
important to assimilate the achievements of bourgeois culture than to
attempt “artificially” to create a proletarian culture.37 Yakovlev had
apparently attended performances of The Mexican and of Lena. The
representation of the revolution in The Mexican, he complained, in no
way corresponded to the Russian worker’s experience of class struggle.
The production was “dynamic and entertaining” enough, but an
American audience would struggle to find anything “proletarian” in
it.38 Lena had some revolutionary content, but the first act was spoiled
by quasi-Futuristic effects, and there was “a transition to somewhat
hackneyed crowd scenes in the style of the Bolshoy Theatre”.
Representation of the proletarian masses was deficient – “five actors
emitting a friendly ‘u-u-u’ in unison will never transform a crowd into
the hero of the action.”39 Yakovlev was unhappy that the Proletkult
repertoire included a number of “individualistic”, “counter-
revolutionary”, foreign plays that had come to Russia after the
Revolution of 1905, notably Flengo40 and The Avenger. Audiences who
35 See Pletnëv, “Na ideologicheskom fronte”, Pravda, 27 September 1922.

36 Yakovlev, “O ‘proletarskoi kul’ture’ i Proletkul’te”, Pravda, 24 & 25 October
1922, The discussions between Lenin and Yakovlev are described in V.I. Lenin o
literature i iskusstve 1967 and in Gorbunov 1974: 192–193.
37 For Lenin’s sarcastic annotation of the article by Pletnëv, see V.I. Lenin o literature
i iskusstve 1967, 457–466.

1922, in Voprosy kul’tury pri diktature proletariata 1925: 39.

1922, in Voprosy kul’tury pri diktature proletariata 1925: 39–40. Pletnëv had earlier
hailed the 1921 production of his own play as being, “for all its weakness…the first
shaft of light of a proletarian theatre”. See ‘Na ideologicheskom fronte’, Pravda, 27
September 1922, in V.I. Lenin o literature i iskusstve 1967: 465.
40 Judging by Yakovlev’s article, Flengo must have been performed before 24–25
October of 1922. For a résumé of the plot and a photograph of the production of
Flengo by Vladimir Tatarinov, see Leach 1994: 78–79. On 1 February 1925 Flengo
was performed in the Bolshoy Theatre as a “musical dramatization of an episode
of the time of the Paris Commune”, with music by Vladimir Tsybin and a libretto
by “V.Pletnëv and Tyshko”. See http://www.bilet-bolshoy.ru/old-
repertoire/flengo

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needed representations of the proletariat, were instead being served up

with the fine flowers of decadent art and an imitation of Futurism. No
matter how many carpenters and stage-hands (montëry) laboured on
these agit-plays (agitki) they would never be transformed into “artistic
productions”.41 However, Yakovlev’s target was not so much the
Proletkult’s conception of theatre but its conviction that a proletarian
culture could be constructed: the Proletkult, in its theses “On the tasks
of the proletariat in physical culture”, had proclaimed that “the new
physical culture of the proletariat consists of the psycho-physiological
education of the qualified individual.” This ignored the fact that the
bourgeoisie was already organizing sport for the masses, and
organizations like Sokol were inculcating nationalist ideas into the
younger generation, using the very same methods that the Proletkult
considered to be essentially “proletarian”.42 By contrast, on 12 June
1922, Meyerhold (a “representative of the left-Futurist persuasion”),
had delivered a lecture in the Concert Hall (Malyy Zal) of the
Conservatoire on the subject of “The actor of the future”. Meyerhold
had argued that “Physical training (fizkul’tura) acrobatics, dance,
rhythmics, boxing, fencing... were useful subjects, and would bring
benefit if they were taught in conjunction with ‘biomechanics’ – an
essential subject for every actor.” Meyerhold, had done much to bring
the theatre into line with the “crazy tempo” of modern life; and he
had not been so foolish as to employ the term “proletarian culture”.
Yakovlev’s diatribe was not aimed solely at Pletnëv; indirectly
it was aimed at Aleksandr Bogdanov and at one of the leading
theorists of the Communist Party, Nikolay Bukharin, who had in some
respects been influenced by him.43 Notwithstanding the fact that in
December 1920 Bogdanov had stepped down from his leading role in
the Proletkult, and by November 1921 had completely withdrawn
from the institution, Lenin had come to the conclusion that, as in the
past, Bogdanov was a political, as well as an intellectual threat.44 On 4

1922, in Voprosy kul’tury pri diktature proletariata 1925: 40.
1922, in Voprosy kul’tury pri diktature proletariata 1925, 42–43. Yakovlev quotes
Meyerhold from the journal Ermitazh (6): 41.
43 Bukharin, whose ideas on culture owed something to Bogdanov, asserted at a
conference convened by the Central Committee in February 1925, that Lenin,

through the article of Yakovlev, had been criticizing not only the Proletkult but
also himself. See Bukharin 1925 (4): 265; and Biggart 1992: 131–158.
44 Bogdanov was not re-elected to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the
Proletkult in December 1920, but remained a member of the Central Committee.

See the minutes of the Central Committee of the Proletkult and of its Presidium
for the period December 1920 to May 1920 in RGALI, f.1230 and in Proletarskaia
kul’tura 1921 (20/21): 32–37. In an autobiographical sketch of 1925 Bogdanov
wrote that “In the autumn of 1921 my work in the Proletkult came to an end and I

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January 1923, in an article, entitled “Menshevism in Proletkult attire”,

Yakovlev returned to the attack and denounced Bogdanov’s views as
being inherently oppositional and conducive to the formation of a new
political “group or party”; the Proletkult was merely a first step in this
direction.45 Then, some time before August 1923, an anthology was
published, Against A. Bogdanov, 46 which contained works not only by
Lenin but also by G.V. Plekhanov, whose understanding of Marx had
since the turn of the century been the butt of Bogdanov’s criticism.
Finally, the suspicion that Bogdanov had encouraged the formation of
the oppositional Workers’ Truth group led to his detention, between 8
September and 13 October 1923, by the GPU.47
Given that the public campaign against Bogdanov coincided
with Eisenstein’s period of activity within the Proletkult, and given the
closeness of Eisenstein’s working relationship with Pletnëv, Eisenstein
could hardly have been ignorant of the fact that Bogdanov was now an
outcast.48 This seems to be the most likely explanation for the absence
of any mention of Bogdanov in Eisenstein’s works of this period and of
later years.49 Pletnëv, for his part, had by May 1924 fallen completely
into line with the policy of Agitprop and was calling for “not several,
but a single revolutionary Marxist criticism”.50 In the same year he
went out of his way publicly to dissociate himself from
“Bogdanovism”.51
devoted myself exclusively to scientific work.”. See Bogdanov, A.A. (Malinovskiy)

1995: 19 and 60, fn.20.
45 Yakovlev, “Men’shevizm v Proletkul’tovskoy odezhde”, Pravda 4 January 1923.
46 V. I. Lenin & G. V. Plekhanov 1923.
47 This episode is dealt with in Biggart 1990 (3): 265–282.
48 Not all leading party officials ostracized Bogdanov. He continued to be highly
regarded by Bukharin, Krasin and others. In December 1925, the Commissar for
Health, Nikolay Semashko, supported the founding of Bogdanov’s Institute for
Blood Transfusion. Stalin was well disposed towards Bogdanov during his lifetime.
49 Lenin’s anathematization of Bogdanov was taken up by Stalin after Bogdanov’s
death in 1928, which is doubtless one explanation why, even in his memoirs of
1946, Eisenstein makes no mention of Bogdanov.
50“ne raznaya, a odinakovaya revoyiutsionnaya Marksistskaya kritika”. See the contribution
of Pletnëv to a conference convened by the Press Department of the Central

Committee of the RKP(b) on 9 May 1924 and chaired by Yakovlev, in K voprosu o
politike RKP(b) v khudozhestvennoy literature 1924: 48. In the introduction to this
volume, Yakovlev notes that it had originally been intended to hold the conference
“a year earlier”.
51 Pletnëv now claimed that whereas he, Pletnëv, was engaged in “practical work”,
Bogdanov was an abstract theorist. Bogdanov’s theory that proletarian culture was
“socialist culture in the process of development” was identical to that of Trotskiy
(Pletnëv 1924b: 37).

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Eisenstein’s departure from the Proletkult
Relations between Eisenstein and Pletnëv approached their

nadir when, in mid-November 1924, Eisenstein refused to participate
in that part of the planned programme of the Workers’ Theatre that
included two plays by Pletnëv. His departure from the Proletkult soon
followed. In January 1925 he gave his reasons in separate interviews
published in Novyy zritel’ and Kino-nedelya, shortly after Strike had been
completed and while the film was awaiting approval by the censor. He
had turned his back on Pletnëv’s plays “because of their formal and
theatrical qualities” (Eisenstein 1925b: 22).
In Eisenstein’s vocabulary “theatrical” was, of course, a term of
contempt, but his criticism of the Proletkult ranged more widely: in
Novyy zritel’ in 1925 he deplored the absence of any direction (formal or
in terms of content) in the repertoire of the Proletkult theatre. The
repertoire had been constructed in haphazard fashion and since The
Wise Man, only the two plays of Tret’yakov had conveyed any
consistent political message. In the forthcoming repertoire there was
not a single play with any clear line. Priority was being given to
performances for the urban districts, for which the Proletkult theatre
was not suited: during his four years with the Workers’ Theatre its
policy had been to concentrate on practical exercises for the actors,
putting on shows (spektakli) and on working out formats for agit-bouffe
and agit-guignol, so that this experience could in due course be passed
on to the districts and the provinces. He complained of “harassment”
(gonenie) that had begun as early as his staging of The Wise Man, which
had been removed from the repertoire after the general rehearsal in
1922 and then re-instated. In the current season, interference had
assumed unacceptable forms: the Artistic Council of the Theatre,
without informing him, had removed a number of “tricks” from The
Wise Man and introduced verbal components of their own. A number
of elements had been removed from the last “fight” scene in Are you
listening Moscow? Grigoriy Roshal, whose approach to theatre was
diametrically opposed to his own, had been brought in. Arbitrary
appointments of this nature made it impossible to create a theatre with
its own identity. In general, the Proletkult had adopted the role of a
‘censor’: ninety percent of its concerns were with ideological
conformity and the fidelity of a production to the details of everyday
life. Its approach to both theatre and film was one of “petty-bourgeois
realism” (Eisenstein 1925c: 13–14).
In Kino-nedelya in 1925 Eisenstein outlined the circumstances of
his departure from the Proletkult during the first week of December
1924. The occasion had been the “failure of the Proletkult Executive

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Bureau to recognize my rights as co-author of the script of Strike”.

However, there had been a more deep-seated struggle between his
own, revolutionary, conception of the theatre and that of the
Proletkult leadership: “over the past year my work could not conform
with the manifestly reactionary direction (theatrically, formally) taken
by the ruling circles of the Proletkult, from the moment that influence
passed to people who had always opposed my approach and who
stubbornly defended the ‘rightist’ point of view in the theatre… The
subsequent direction of work in the Proletkult marked a complete
break with the ‘left front’ and, therefore, a strengthening of the
position of our enemies in the theatre” (Eisenstein 1925a: 17). Two
issues later, in the same journal, Pletnëv dismissed Eisenstein’s claim to
represent the cultural avant-garde: Eisenstein possessed only a
“formally revolutionary tendency”, that amounted to mere “leftism”.
This tendency “manifested itself in a striving for superfluous, self-
directed formalism and gimmickry in working out the director’s plan
for the film; and in the introduction into the plan of a number of
incidents of dubious Freudian purport” (Pletnëv 1925: 9).
Eisenstein, Marxism and ‘Bogdanovism’
Varieties of organization theory
In 1933, Eisenstein wrote that his “personal research and

creative work” had from the outset been accompanied by a “study of
the founders of Marxism” (Taylor 2010: 244), but in his writings of the
1920s there are only passing and, it sometimes seems, dutiful
references to ‘materialism’, ‘collectivism’, ‘organization’ and the
‘dialectic’. Neither in his memoirs, nor in any of his theoretical works,
does he give any indication that he was influenced by Bogdanov.52
Can we nevertheless discern conceptual affinities between the two?
Charlotte Douglas has noted that the revolutions of 1917 made
possible a wide dissemination of Bogdanov’s ideas within the literary
and artistic community: the head of the Petrograd Visual Arts Section
of the Commissariat for Education, Nikolay Punin, in lectures read to
teachers in 1919 “followed Bogdanov’s ideas and terminology closely.”
Artists such as Lyubov Popova (an associate of Eisenstein) and
Solomon Nikritin, employed the language of ‘organization’. According
to Douglas “the organizational order and high level of abstraction in
Bogdanov’s Tektologiya lent scientific authority to the artistic structures
of constructivism and projectionism”, and there was a “common
52 Sergey Mikhailovich Eisenstein (1898–1948) wrote his memoirs in 1946. The
complete text was published in Russia only in 1997.

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conceptual basis”, even if this “did not result in an identifiable style of

abstraction” (Douglas 2002: 81–82, 92).
Mikhail Yampolskiy, citing V. Zabrodin, has referred to a
debate in the Proletkult during which Eisenstein called for a struggle
for “1) the organized society…2) the organized human being”, and
has detected “behind these formulae…the Proletkultist-Bogdanovist
‘Tektology’, the science of organization” (Yampolskiy 2005).53
However, whilst Tektology might well have influenced Eisenstein’s
thinking, ideas on organization during his Proletkult years could just as
well have come from other sources. The theatre critic, Platon
Kerzhentsev, who spoke at the First Conference of the Proletkult in
September 1918 and became a member of the editorial board of
Proletarskaya kul’tura, had written a book on organization and was one
of the founders of the journal The Time League (Liga Vremeni – Liga NOT).
Kerzhentsev was a fierce critic of Bogdanov’s organization theory.54
Such prominent leaders as Lenin, Trotskiy and Krasin were all, at this
time, advocates of the “scientific organization of labour”.55 Krasin had
always been close to Bogdanov, but Lenin and Trotskiy can hardly be
described as his disciples.
Art as cognition and art as propaganda
Did Bogdanov’s theory of the social function of art influence

Eisenstein’s ‘theory of attractions’? For Eisenstein, “the theatre’s basic
material derives from the audience: the moulding of the audience in a
desired direction (or mood)...” (Taylor 2010: 33–36) .For Bogdanov,
the function of art was both cognitive and educational: “firstly, to
organize a particular sum of the elements of life, of ‘experience’; and,
secondly, to ensure that what is created serves as an instrument for a
particular collective”.56 The difference is that, for Bogdanov, cognition
was one of the interactive processes of social selection, whereas
53 Yampolskiy is mistaken in identifying the Proletkult exclusively with Bogdanov

and both with iconoclasm. See Yampolskiy 2005: 49.
54 Kerzhentsev’s Printsipy organizatsii (1918), ran to four editions. His Tvorcheskiy teatr
(1918), reached its fifth edition in 1923. In Pravda for 14 April 1923 he criticized
Bogdanov’s Tektologiya as “reactionary”. See “O kritikakh ‘Tektologii” (1925), in
Bogdanov 1996: 308–315. For Kerzhentsev’s autobiography, see Deyateli... 1989.
55 See E.B. Koritskiy, “Pervye stranitsy NOT”, in U istokov NOT 1990. Two
surveys by Sergey Chakhotin on Western experience of organization science had

been published in Russia in 1924. His bibliography on the subject was published
under the auspices of the People’s Commissariat of the Workers’-Peasants’
Inspectorate (Rabkrin), which had been given responsibility for the
“rationalization” of state institutions (Chakhotin 1924a; Chakhotin 1924b).
56 “O khudozhestvennom nasledstve’”(1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 150.

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Eisenstein at this time viewed art as an instrument of agitation and

propaganda, consciously applied, one might almost say ‘from above’.57
Organizational aesthetics
In the case of one writer who was close to Eisenstein, there is a

more evident affinity with the ideas of Bogdanov. The critic Boris
Arvatov, who for some time worked as an ‘academic secretary’ in the
Proletkult and who had collaborated in the production of The Mexican
and in designing the programme of the directing workshop of the
Proletkult, contributed articles on the culture of everyday life to both
LEF and Proletkult journals.58 The use of objects to convey social
meaning in certain episodes of Strike might well reflect the influence of
Arvatov.59 Furthermore, for Arvatov, the artist in socialist society was
essentially a designer whose works would acquire meaning only when
“subordinated to the production process... to the collective’s socially
conscious and free will: integralness and organization are the premises
of industrial art; purposefulness is its law” (Arvatov 1922 in Bowlt
1991: 229–230). Art was to be regarded as “simply the most efficacious
organization in any field of human activity” (Arvatov 1926: 88–89).
Here we are close to Bogdanov’s contention that “all of the usual
human evaluations that take the form of such concepts as goodness,
beauty and truth, that is, moral, aesthetic and cognitive evaluations...
are organizational evaluations (Bogdanov 1922: 516; Biggart 2016).
Arguably, Eisenstein was enunciating a similar theory in 1924,
when he wrote that, just as the movements of animals, structured in
strict accordance with organic laws and unaffected by the “rational
principle” were photogenic, and just as the labour processes of workers
which flowed in accordance with these laws had been shown to be
photogenic, so a successful realization by the actor and director of a
montage (assembly) of movements that were purely organic in
themselves would be the most photogenic, “in so far as one can define
‘photogenic’ by paraphrasing Schopenhauer’s good old definition of
the ‘beautiful’.” In this example Eisenstein’s “level of organization” is
the degree of approximation of the actor and director to organic
movement. He goes on to express his appreciation of the uniforms of
the Japanese General Staff, and of working clothes (e.g., a diving suit),
as “functional forms” that can be considered “photogenic” (Taylor
57 See, for example, “The method of making a workers’ film” (1925), in Taylor
2010: 65–66.
58 On Arvatov, see Lodder 1983: 239; Zalambani 1999; and Bulgakowa 2001a.
59 See Arvatov 1925; Kiaer 1997: 105–118; and Albera 1990: 179–184. From
materials in the Bogdanov Family Archive we know that Arvatov borrowed books
on scientific subjects from Bogdanov.

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2010: 56–57). Here, as with Arvatov, we have a functionalist aesthetic

that is cognate with, if not identical to, Bogdanov’s “whatever raises
the level of organization of collective life ... in perceptions of the world
(mirovospriyatiya) is deemed to be beautiful” (Bogdanov 1922, 516;
Biggart 2016).
After the Proletkult
In an interview of 1926, Eisenstein denied that there had been

any conflict in his relations with his fellow-workers in the Proletkult:
“At that time, these workers were in complete agreement with my
artistic views and requirements, although I really belonged to another
class and had come to the same point of view only through purely
theoretical analysis.” His exasperation had been with the artistic
conservatism of the Proletkult leadership (Taylor 2010: 74). In a diary
entry for 24 February 1927 Eisenstein made it clear that by November
1924 he had had enough of what he disparagingly refers to as
“theatre”: ‘I did not want to do theatre in the Proletkult; I wanted to
design new templates to solve experimental problems—Agit-revues
(The Wise Man) or political agit-plays (Are you listening, Moscow?) to be
staged throughout the entire network of provincial Proletkults. The
Proletkult wanted to use our laboratory retorts to cook jam – to make
theatre (out of the plays of Pletnëv!) and professional theatre at that!
This was one of the biggest differences between us” (Yurenev 1985:
99).
Eisenstein’s career was not damaged by his departure from the
Proletkult; if anything, the contrary. In January 1925 he declared that
he was not prepared to cooperate with the Proletkult in the next seven
parts of the film series on the ‘Dictatorship’, which had been
contracted to the Proletkult, (Eisenstein 1925c). But that same month
the Commissar for Enlightenment and cultural ‘conservative’, Anatoly
Lunacharskiy, invited him to make a film celebrating the twentieth
anniversary of the revolution of 1905 under the direct auspices of
Goskino, an invitation which he accepted (Yurenev 1985: 106–109;
Bulgakowa 2001a: 56). Although both Eisenstein and Pletnëv were
appointed to the committee that was to oversee the project, it is
evident that they could not have worked together in the making of the
film.60 Eisenstein had by this time found a new patron in Kirill
Ivanovich Shutko, who had acted as his adviser at the request of
Goskino during the making of Strike, and who had acquired
60 Other members of the committee were Malevich, Meyerhold, Pletnëv, Shutko,
Krasin and the First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the RKP (b),
Vasiliy Mikhaylov. See Yurenev 1985: 106–109.

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responsibility for cinema in the same Agitprop Department of the

Central Committee that had excoriated Pletnëv. Eisenstein and N.F.
Agadzhanova-Shutko were appointed as authors of the script.61 His
reputation enhanced by the success of Strike, Eisenstein was now able
to embark upon a new stage in his career and upon new explorations
in theory.
References
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230.
----------- 1925. “Byt i kul’tura veshchei”. Edited and translated from Al’manakh
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Kniga.
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Bowlt, John E. (Ed.) 1991. Russian Art of the Avant Garde. Theory and Criticism. London:
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Braun, Edward. 1995. Meyerhold: A Revolution in Theatre. London: Methuen.
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Bulgakowa, Oksana. 2001a. Sergei Eisenstein. A Biography. Berlin, San Francisco:
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gestalt-psychologie”, in: Chateau, Dominique, François Jost, Martin Lefebvre
(Eds.), Eisenstein: l’ancien et le nouveau, Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 171-
183.
61 On this episode see Bulgkowa 2001a: 53, 56.

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----------- 2001c. “The Evolving Eisenstein. Three Theoretical Constructs of Sergei

Eisenstein”. In Eisenstein at 100. A reconsideration, edited by Al Lavalley and
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----------- 2014. “From expressive movement to the ‘basic problem’: the Vygotsky-
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Historical Psychology, edited by Anton Iasnitskii and René van der Veer.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 423–448.
Chakhotin, Sergey Stepanovich. 1924a. Evropeiskaya literatura po NOT. Moscow:
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politike. Moscow-Petrograd: Gos.izdat.
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Descaves, Lucien Alexandre. 1907. Flingot. Paris: A. Romagnol.
Deyateli SSSR i revoliutsionnogo dvizheniya Rossii 1989. Moscow: Sovetskaya
Entsiklopediya.
Douglas, Charlotte 2002. “Energetic abstractionism: Ostwald, Bogdanov, and
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Dalrymple Henderson, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Eisenstein, S.M. 1925a. “Beseda s rezh. S.M.Eyzenshteynom”. Kino-nedelya (4): 17.
----------- 1925b. “Pis’mo v redaktsiiu”. Kino-nedelya (10): 22.
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zritel’ (4), 27 January: 13–14.
----------- 1997. Memuary, I. Moscow: Redaktsiya gazety “Trud”. Muzey Kino.
Fitzpatrick, Sheila. 1970. The Commissariat of Enlightenment. Soviet Organization of
Education and the Arts under Lunacharsky. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press
Gastev, A. 1922. Stachka. Instsenirovka V.F.Pletnëva. Moscow: Izdanie Mosk.Kom.
RKSM.
Gorbunov, V.V. 1974. V.I.Lenin i Proletkul’t. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Politicheskoy
Literatury.
Yakovlev, Ya. 1922. “O ‘proletarskoy kul’ture’ i Proletkul’te”. Pravda, 24 & 25
October and in Voprosy kul’tury pri diktature proletariata 1925, 21–45.
-----------. 1923. “Men’shevizm v Proletkul’tovskoy odezhde”, Pravda 4 January .
Yampolskiy, Mikhail. 2009. “Ot Proletkul’ta k Platonu. Eizenshtein i proekt
smyslovoy samoorganizatsii zhizni”. Kinovedcheskie zapiski, Nr. 89.
www.kinozapiski.ru/no/sendvalues/960.
Yurenev, R.N. 1985. Sergey Eizenshteyn: Zamysly. Filmy. Metod. 1, 1898–1929. Moscow:
Iskusstvo.
K voprosu o politike RKP (b) v khudozhestvennoy literature, 1924. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo
“Krasnaya nov’”. Glavpolitprosvet.
Kerzhentsev, P.M. 1922. Printsipy organizatsii. Petrograd: Gos.izdat.
----------- 1923. Tvorcheskiy teatr. 5th edition, Moscow - Petrograd: Gos.izdat.
Kiaer, Christina. 1997. “Arvatov’s Socialist Objects”, October (81), 105–118.
Kratkaya Literaturnaya Entsiklopediya 1968. 5, Moscow: Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya
Leach, Robert. 1994. Revolutionary Theatre. London and New York: Taylor & Francis
Lenin, V.I & G. V. Plekhanov. 1923. Protiv A. Bogdanova. Moscow: Krasnaya nov’
Leyda, Jay (Ed.) 1968. Film Essays with a Lecture. Sergei Eisenstein. London: Dobson.
Literaturnaya Entsiklopediya 1934. VII, Moscow: Kommunisticheskaya Akademiya.

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Lodder, Christina. 1983. Russian Constructivism. New Haven and London: Yale
University Press.
Mally, Lynn. 1990. Culture of the Future. The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia.
Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press.
Nikitina, V.R. 1996. Dom oknami na zakat: Vospominaniya. Moscow: Intergraf Servis
Pletnëv, V.F. 1920. Mstitel’. Instsenirovka po rasskazu Kladelya v odnom deystvii.
Ekaterinburg: Gos.izdat.
----------- 1921a. Mstitel’ Leona Kladelya (Pamyati Parizhsoyi Kommuny 1871-1921).
Peterburg: Petropolitprosvet.
----------- 1921b. Lena. Proletarskaya drama v 5-ti deystviyakh. Rostov on Don: Gos.izdat.,
Donskoe otdelenie.
----------- 1921c. Stachki. Instsenirovka po rasskazu Gasteva. Moscow: Moskovskii
Proletkul’t.
----------- 1921d. Stachki. P’esa v 1 deystvii. Ekaterinburg: Gos.izdat.
----------- 1922a. “Na ideologicheskom fronte”. Pravda, 27 September, in V.I. Lenin o
literature i iskusstve, 3rd edition. 1967, 457-466.
----------- 1922b. Flengo. Dramaticheskiy epizod v 2-kh deystviyakh po rasskazu Lyus’ena Dekav.
Moscow: Biblioteka Vserossiisk. Proletkul’ta.
----------- 1923. Lena. Ocherk istorii Lenskikh sobytii (s prilozheniem). Moscow: Vserossiiskiy
Proletkul’t.
----------- 1924a. Lena. (4 aprelya 1912). Kursk: Supplement to Kurskaya Pravda.
----------- 1924b. Prav li t. Trotskiy? - Rechi o proletarskoy kul’ture. Moscow: Vserossiiskiy
Proletkul’t.
----------- 1925. “Otkrytoe pis’mo v redaktsiyu zhurnala “Kino-nedelya”, Kino-nedelya,
(6): 9.
Protokoly Pervoi Vserossiyskoy Konferentsii Proletarskikh kul’turno-prosvetitel”nykh organizatsii 15-
20 sentyabrya 1918.g. 1918. Moscow: Izd. Proletkul’ta.
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1910–1925. Ithica and London: Cornell University Press.
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Monde russe, 40/3, 415–446.

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BOGDANOV’S SOCIOLOGY OF THE ARTS

John Biggart________________________________________________________________
Whereas in his general theory of social consciousness Bogdanov

acknowledged his indebtedness to Marx, in his theory of the social
function of the arts, which he considered to be part of the social
consciousness, he differed from Marx, who, in his opinion, had
regarded the arts as a mere ‘embellishment of life’. Bogdanov
emphasized their organizing function and integrated the arts into
his general theory of the evolution of social formations. Bogdanov
saw proletarian culture as being a transitional culture that
corresponded to the backwardness of both the Russian and the
European working classes. It would be followed by socialist,
collectivist, or ‘all-human’ culture, the values of which he
enunciated in his article “New ethical norms” (Zakony novoi sovesti)
(Bogdanov 1924/1925). Bogdanov also drafted a new collectivist
aesthetics, the latent didacticism of which antagonized a number of
‘proletarian writers’ in the Proletkult.


ISBN 103204787103ABC
Biggart___________________SOCIOLOGY OF THE ARTS____________________Page 1 of 22

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Bogdanov, Marx, and the social function of the arts1
Writing on the relationship between thinking and economic

activity, Friedrich Engels, in a letter to Joseph Bloch of 1890, pointed
out that Marx’s understanding of this relationship was not to be
understood as a form of uni-directional determinism. “The economic
situation”, he wrote, “is the basis, but the various elements of the
superstructure … political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious
views, and their further development into systems of dogmas - also
exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in
many cases preponderate in determining their form.”2 We do not know
whether Bogdanov had read this letter, but Engels’s clarification was in
any case consistent with Bogdanov’s own understanding of Marx, as he
made clear in a number of his philosophical writings. For example in
The Philosophy of Living Experience (Bogdanov 1923, Chapters 1 and 5)
Bogdanov cited Marx’s third ‘Thesis on Feuerbach’ (1845) (Feuer 1959)
where Marx had asserted that “it is human beings who change
circumstances, and …the educator also needs educating”. Society was
not divided into two parts: “The coincidence of the changing of
circumstances and of human activity can be conceived and rationally
understood only as revolutionizing practice.”3 Bogdanov, who insisted
that he was an “historical materialist” (Bogdanov 1923a),4 at the same
time considered Marx to have been “a great forerunner” of his own
organization science (Bogdanov 1996: 104). However, when it came to
the social function of the arts he disagreed with Marx, who, he alleged,
had viewed art as a mere “embellishment of life”.5
1 In this paper, individual terms used by Bogdanov, as well as quotations from his
works, are indicated by double inverted commas.
2 Engels to Joseph Bloch, London, 21–22 September 1890. The letter was first
published in Der sozialistische Akademiker, 19 (Berlin, 1895). See Marx, Karl and
Frederick Engels 2001: 33–37. I am obliged to James D. White for this reference.
3 Georgii Gloveli has pointed out that M. Filippov, the editor of Nauchnoe Obozrenie,
had noted the ‘sociological’ as distinct from ‘economistic’ determinism of Marx as

early as 1897. See Gloveli 2009: 54–57.
4 Thesis No. XI of Bogdanov 1923a, in Bogdanov 2003: 461–462.
5 Bogdanov summarized what he considered to be the shortcomings of Marxist
theory, and his own innovations, in Part I of Tektology. He explicitly rejected Marx”s
understanding of art as a mere “embellishment of life” (“iskusstvo schital prostym
ukrasheniem zhizni”). See Bogdanov 2003: 80–81. Whether his understanding of Marx
on this point was correct is a question that need not concern us here. See, on this
question, Rose 1994. Bogdanov had been General Editor of a new translation by
V.A. Bazarov and I.I. Skvortsov-Stepanov of Marx’s Capital, published in 1907 and
1909. However, many of Marx’s works did not become available until after
Bogdanov’s death; for example the Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie was not
published in the Soviet Union until 1939.

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By the eve of the First World War, Bogdanov had developed a

sociology of ideas that was grounded in his ‘empiriomonist’
epistemology6, in an evolutionist history of social formations and in a
general theory of the dynamics of organization, equilibrium and change
in nature, thinking and society. In works written before 1917, when he
came to deal with the function of ideology in society, he would
frequently draw examples from the history of the arts. He considered
that the slogan of ‘proletarian culture’ had first been introduced into
socialist theory at the Social-Democratic Party School organized by the
Vpered group on the island of Capri in 1909, and in 1914 he had
written in an article intended for the journal Nasha zarya that “art was
one of the ideologies of a class – an element of its class consciousness”.7
However, this article was not published and it was not until the
founding of the Proletkult in September 1917 that Bogdanov began to
produce a body of work that focused specifically upon the social
function of the arts.8 The present paper will draw upon two of
Bogdanov’s works on ideology that that were published before the First
World War, The Philosophy of Living Experience. A Popular Outline (Bogdanov
1923b);9 and The Science of Social Consciousness. A Short Course in Ideological
Science in Questions and Answers (Bogdanov 1914).10 It will also make use of
the articles that Bogdanov gathered for the anthology On Proletarian
Culture 1904-1924 ( Bogdanov 1924/1925) most of which were written
during the Proletkult period. Bogdanov’s utopian novel Red Star
(Bogdanov 1908) and his Tektology. A General Organizational Science, the
first part of which was published in 1913, also provide insight into his
understanding of the arts.11
History as the evolution of ideologies
6 See “Poznanie s istoricheskoy tochki zreniya” (1900) in Bogdanov 1904 and
Bogdanov 1904–1906. For a review of works on Bogdanov’s philosophy, see Steila

1996 and 2013
7 See “Vozmozhno li proletarskoe iskusstvo?” (1914), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 204–
216. Bogdanov here does not mention that he disagrees with Marx. The article
formed part of a polemic with A.N.Potresov and G.A.Aleksinskiy. Potresov had
argued in Nasha zarya (1913) that art was an indulgence of the leisure class.
8 On the Proletkult, see Sochor 1988, Chapter 6, “School of Socialism: Proletkult”;
and Mally 1990.

9 The first edition was published in 1913. The third edition included the Appendix
“From religious to scientific monism”, a concise version of a lecture Bogdanov had

delivered to the Institute of Scientific Philosophy in February 1923.
10 The author’s preface is dated 16 November 1913. I have used the edition
republished in Bogdanov 1999: 261-470.

11 See Bogdanov 1913. The author’s preface to this first part is dated 15/28
December 1912.

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In The Philosophy of Living Experience and in The Science of Social

Consciousness, Bogdanov provided a concise outline of the evolutionary
progression of social formations and world views, from “authoritarian
ideologies”, through “individualistic ideologies”, to “collectivism”. In
the latter work, inverting what would have been the usual explanatory
structure for a Marxist social or economic historian, he characterized
each period in terms of its predominant “world view” (mirovozzrenie) or
“ideology” and only then went on to describe the technical, economic
and social conditions that corresponded to each of these ideologies. The
earliest period was that of “primeval ideologies” (pervobytnye ideologii).
This was the period of hunter-gatherer societies when humans first
acquired speech and which were characterized by a primitive, inchoate
and conservative collectivism, which Bogdanov hesitated to qualify as a
“world-view”. Next came the period of “authoritarian ideologies”,
which was divided into successive sub-periods of “patriarchal ideology”,
corresponding to the early development of agriculture and nomadic
livestock husbandry; and “feudalism”, characterized by settled
agriculture and livestock farming, the development of implements and
the growth of trade. Then came “individualistic ideologies”, typical of
societies of small producers practicing commodity exchange but also of
such transitional forms as i) the slave-owning societies of the classical
world, ii) serfdom, iii) craft-workshop economies and iv) commercial
capitalism. The ultimate (and emergent) ideology, Bogdanov argued,
would be “Collectivism” (Bogdanov 1914, passim). As he put it, very
concisely, in 1918: “The spirit of authoritarianism, the spirit of
individualism, the spirit of comradely solidarity (tovarishchestvo) - these are
the three types of culture.”12 This linear-evolutionist interpretation of
history was fundamental to Bogdanov’s understanding of proletarian
culture in general and of the arts in particular.
For Bogdanov, the special function of the arts (viewed as one of
a number of expressions of the ideology of any given social formation),
was that of cognition in the realm of sensory experience. In ancient
times people had acquired their understanding of the world in the form
of myths. With the development of philosophy and science, cognition
had acquired instruments suited to dealing with abstract thought, but
art had retained the function of contributing to a world view through
the organization of the feelings. As with other modes of cognition, the
social function of the arts was not passive; on the contrary, they
provided “social education”: whereas, in the past, this function had
12 “Chto takoe proletarskaya poeziya?” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 137.

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been performed by cave drawings, epic poetry or religious myths,13 in

more recent times, belles lettres (the novel, drama, poetry) and the visual
and plastic arts all served as a “schooling in life”.14
Art in the age of Collectivism15
It was the advent of machine production that had provided the

pre-conditions for the formation of a collectivist world view:
“The gathering of the proletariat in the cities and factories has a
great and complicated influence upon the proletarian psyché. It gives
rise to the realization that in labour, in the struggle with the elements
for existence, the individual is only a link in a great chain… The
individual ‘Ego’ is cut down to size and put in its place.” No less
importantly, since machine work required the exercise of both hand and
brain, the functions of ‘management’ and ‘implementation’, hitherto
separate, and mediated through relations of authority and
subordination, were now combined in “a fellowship of cooperation
(sotrudnichestvo), which is the principle upon which the proletariat
constructs its organization.”16
However, whilst collectivism would be the world-view of all
humanity in the future, it was not yet the outlook of a working class
which, for all its political and economic progress in both Western
Europe and Russia, still remained culturally backward. This conception
of the cultural backwardness of the working class was central to
Bogdanov’s theory, and he only ever spoke of embryonic “elements” of
proletarian culture in the art and literature of his day.17 In 1914 he cited
the poem of Aleksey Mashirov-Samobytnik, “To a new comrade”
(Novomu tovarishchu), and in 1918 his “To my fellow brethren” (Moim
13 Among Bogdanov’s favourite examples were the Mahabharata; the works of
Homer and Hesiod and the Hebrew Bible. In architecture, the Coliseum in Rome
was a metaphor for the pride and cruelty of an imperial people; the Gothic
cathedral, a metaphor for the world view of the Middle Ages – the rejection of this
earth and striving towards the after-life. See Bogdanov 1911, 14–18; and
“Proletariat i iskusstvo” (Speech to the First All-Russian Conference of the
Proletkult, 20 September 1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 117–118.
14 See “Sotsial’no-organizatsionnoe znachenie iskusstva” - Theses for a lecture
delivered by Alexander Bogdanov to the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences, 29

October 1921”, RGALI, f.941, op.1., ed. khr.3, in Bogdanov 2004: 5–9.
15 On ‘Collectivism’, see Sochor 1988: 136–138.
16 “Chto takoe proletarskaya poeziya?” (1918) in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 136. See
also the section “Tekhnicheskie i ekonomicheskie osnovy kollektivizma” in Nauka ob

obshestvennom soznanii (1914) in Bogdanov 1999: 446–452.
17 For Bogdanov, the capitulation of the working classes to the bourgeoisie during
the World War had amply demonstrated the “immaturity” of its outlook. See
“1918”, in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 101; and “O khudozhestvennom nasledstve”
(1918), Bogdanov 1924/1924: 144–145. On this point, see Sochor 1988: 95 and
White 2013: 52–70.

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sobrat’yam), as examples of “emerging” collectivism.18 By contrast, he

found only “elements” of proletarian culture in the work of Aleksey
Gastev, “Factory sirens” (Gudi’) and Vladimir Kirillov, “To the times
that lie ahead” (Gryadushchemu).19 Most disparagingly, he considered
Maksim Gorkiy, from whom he had been estranged since 1910, to be
merely “close to us in spirit and artistically stable (ustoychivyy)”.20
Criticism as selection and feed-back
Given the backwardness of the working class, how would

proletarian art evolve? It was incumbent upon both the artist and the
critic to select and utilize from the art of the past and of the present day
that which could be of benefit to the proletariat and to reject that which
was potentially harmful.21 In July of 1918 Bogdanov seemed to suggest
that this evolution would be a natural, self-regulating, organic process,
akin to natural selection: “the artist can give the most harmonious
arrangement to his living images when he does so freely, without
compulsion or direction ... The content of art is life without restrictions
or prohibitions.”22 However, this did not mean that the artist functioned
as an individual in opposition to society. In August 1918, he described
the incorporation of art into ideology as a feed-back mechanism
(vzaimnaya svyaz’, literally, ‘reciprocal link’):23 the artist’s selection of
images was regulated in the first instance by self-criticism, as the artist
strove to eliminate from a work everything that was not in harmony
with its central idea; there followed a process of spontaneous selection
or regulation (regulirovanie) by society, through the explicit, conscious
18 See “Vozmozhno li proletarskoe iskusstvo?” (1914) and “Proletariat i iskusstvo”
(1918) in Bogdanov1924/1925: 111–112 & 119.

19 The poems of Gastev and Kirillov are cited in “Chto takoe proletarskaya
poeziya?” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 139–140.

20 “Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva” (1918) in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 170. Gorky
never participated in the Proletkult.

21 “1918” (“Ot redaktsii”), Proletarskaya kul’tura, No.1 (July 1918), in Bogdanov
1924/1925: 102. See also Bogdanov 1920: 14.

22 “Chto takoe Proletarskaya poeziya?”, Proletarskaya kul’tura, No.1 (July, 1918), in
Bogdanov 1924/1925: 129.

23 See also Bogdanov’s explanation of how a critique of religion would reveal the
feedback mechanism that linked ideology and social development, in “O

khudozhestvennom nasledstve”, Proletarskaya kul’tura, No.2 (July, 1918), and Bogdanov
1924/1925: 149. See also “Puti proletarskogo tvorchestva. Tezisy” (1920), in
Bogdanov 1924/1925: 199. These theses, prepared for the First All-Russian
Congress of the Proletkults, were originally published in Proletarskaya kul’tura,
Nr.13/14 (January-March) and Nr.15/16 (April–July) 1920. Further theses on
artistic technique, from a lecture that had been delivered in May 1920 to a
Conference of Proletarian Writers, were included in the anthology Bogdanov
1924/1925.

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criticism of the work of art from a class point of view.24 He made this
point concisely in his speech to the First All-Russian Conference of the
Proletkult on 20 September 1918: “The artistic talent is individual, but
creation is a social phenomenon: it emerges out of the collective and
returns to the collective, serving its vital purposes.”25
The paradox of “tektological selection”
It would be a mistake, however, to infer that Bogdanov’s theory

of the evolution of ideologies was a mere application of Darwin’s theory
of natural selection to the social sphere. Bogdanov was not an
‘evolutionary’ socialist, in the sense of assuming that the development of
the forces of production, or the process of class struggle, would lead,
without some assistance, to the political, economic and cultural
ascendancy of the proletariat. As we know, Bogdanov considered that
evolutionary biology was mistaken in distinguishing rigidly between
natural selection (otbor) and artificial selection. This distinction, he tells
us, disguised the existence of an overarching tektological selection
mechanism (podbor) which was also at work in economic, social and
intellectual activity.26 “Natural selection” (Bogdanov places the term in
inverted commas), did not always operate in isolation: for many
thousands of years before “natural selection” had been discovered, it
had been assisted in human societies by the practice of artificial
selection.27
“As concerns the adjective ‘natural’, we shall discard it, for in
tektology the difference between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ processes is not
important. ...…All production, all social struggle, all the work of
thinking, proceeds constantly and steadfastly by means of selection
(podbor): by systematic support of the complexes corresponding to vital
human goals, and the elimination of those which contradict them.” 28
How then, during the transition period, would the ‘work of
thinking’, obtain ‘systematic support’? Bogdanov’s answer was that it
would be provided by educational institutions that functioned alongside
the state educational system, namely the Proletarian Workers’ Cultural-
Educational Organization (Proletkul’t) and the Proletarian University.
24 “Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva”, Proletarskaya kul’tura, Nr.3 (August, 1918), in
Bogdanov 1924/1925: 158.

25 “Proletariat i iskusstvo” (Speech to the First All-Russian Conference of the
Proletkult, 20 September 1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 123.

26 For the explanation in Tektology of “selection” (podbor) as a “tektological” process,
see Bogdanov 1996, Chapter 3: Basic Organizational Mechanisms. I have here also
used Bogdanov, 1922. On this subject, see Poustilnik 2009, especially 125–129.
27 Bogdanov 1996, Chapter 3: Basic Organizational Mechanisms, 179.
28 Bogdanov 1996, Chapter 3: Basic Organizational Mechanisms, 175.

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The function of these institutions would differ from that of traditional

pedagogy in which “the entire meaning of the educator’s activities [was]
to support and strengthen some elements of a child’s psyché and to
destroy or inhibit others”.29 A “collectivist education” would develop in
the psyché of the individual a “discipline of comradely relations” and a
“conscious acceptance of common interests and aims.”30
Bogdanov’s conception of the social function of the arts and of
art criticism is analogous to his conception of the function of the new
education. Art criticism, he tells us, should not be prescriptive, but this
did not meant that the critic was relegated to the role of mere reporter:
the critic should “monitor (reguliruet) the development of art”, and give
warning whenever “young art” succumbed to “alien influences”.31
Clearly, this kind of mentoring is fraught with the ambiguities inherent
in all forms of education. Let us ask what criteria Bogdanov wished to
be applied in the course of “tektological selection”; and whether he
thought that “regulation” would be carried out by proletarians
themselves or by others on their behalf.
Culture as mentalité?
i) The social origins of the artist

In 1910 Bogdanov had written: “The proletariat needs its own,
socialist art, permeated by its own feelings and aspirations and ideals.”32
In 1918 he wrote that, ideally, what the proletariat needed was a “pure-
class, proletarian poetry”.33 In 1920, he dismissed the Belgian, Emile
Verhaeren, and the Latvian, Jānis Rainis,34 as “poets of the toiling
democracy or socialist intellectuals”, who were “bound to the working
class by a common ideal, but they cannot directly express or organize
the proletarian artistic consciousness because they were reared in
another world.” 35 Such statements seem to imply an understanding of
working class culture as mentalité, as a function of social origins and
social milieu. However, as we shall see, for Bogdanov working class
origins or experience were necessary, but not sufficient conditions for
29 Bogdanov 1996, Chapter 3: Basic Organizational Mechanisms, 181–182.

30 “Ideal vospitaniya” (Lecture delivered to a Teachers’ Conference in Moscow,
May, 1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 236.
31 Bogdanov 1911: 87.
32 “Sotsializm v nastoyashchem” (1910), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 98.
33 “Chto takoe proletarskaya poeziya?” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 131.
34 Rainis had been published in 1916 an anthology Sbornik Latyshkoy literatury, edited
by Valeriy Bryusov and Maksim Gorkiy.

35 “Prostota ili utonchennost’?” (1920), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 178–179.

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the production of proletarian culture. Proletarian culture was also a

matter of values, of “world view”.
ii) The world view of the critic

The importance that Bogdanov attached to “world view”
enabled him to introduce the critic, pedagogue, or ideologue, into the
feed-back loop of cultural evolution. In 1923, he explained how
someone who had not been born into, or did not belong to, a working
class milieu could contribute to the development of proletarian culture:
“…The position of a class in the system of social life is an
objective fact, and it creates the possibility for an ideologue, even one
who does not belong to that class, to adopt its position theoretically and
from that position to obtain a new point of view. This is what Marx
succeeded in doing.”36
It was this notion of an historically appropriate world view as a
kind of accreditation that qualified an individual to participate in the
construction of proletarian culture that enabled Bogdanov to rationalize
his own role as a critic of culture; and, following in the footsteps of
Marx, to offer his General Organizational Science as a contribution to
the emerging ideology of collectivism. By the same logic he would
recommend that the first tutors of the Proletarian University should be
drawn from “the most able theorists of revolutionary socialism” and,
subsequently, from amongst graduates of the Socialist Academy.37
Building collectivist values
Bogdanov’s assessment of the value of a work of art was based

upon the extent to which it succeeded in its cognitive and educational
functions, which he described as its “organizational task”. This task was,
“firstly, to organize a particular sum of the elements of life, of
“experience” (opyt); and, secondly, to ensure that what is created serves
as an instrument for a particular collective.”38 It was with this dual
conception of the role of the artist and critic in mind that Bogdanov
devised what one might describe as a ‘utilitarian aesthetics’, the purpose
of which was to foster the development of collectivism within the
proletariat. His aesthetics addressed the issues of both content and form.
His declared criteria of judgment were, how far and in what respects
was the ‘material’ of a work of art of value to the proletariat and to the
36 “Ot monizma religioznogo k nauchnomu”, in Bogdanov 1923: 342.

37 “Proletarskiy Universitet” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 252. See also
Steinberg 2002: 60.
38 “O khudozhestvennom nasledstve” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 150.

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all-human (obshchechelovecheskiy collective in the future; how far were the

‘methods’ applied useful and appropriate (prigodny); and of what general
significance for the higher collective was the resolution of the
organizational task?39 In the building of collectivist norms or values,
these criteria were to be applied in selecting from the cultures of the
past and in evaluating works of the present day.
i) Content: selecting from the culture of the past

In an editorial to the first issue of Proletarskaya kul’tura Bogdanov
argued against any radical break with the culture of the past: “The
proletariat is the legitimate heir of all the valuable achievements of the
past, spiritual as much as material; it cannot and must not repudiate this
legacy.”40 In the third issue of the journal he deplored the
“Hindenburgian” tone adopted by Vladimir Kirillov, who had
proclaimed that “In the name of our tomorrow we shall burn Raphael,
destroy the museums, trample upon the flowers of art”.41 Of course, this
did not mean that the culture of the past should be embraced
uncritically: in evaluating the art of the past, the objective should be to
seek out the “hidden elements of collectivism”.42
ii) Content: selecting from the culture of the present

The construction of collectivism also required an ability to
identify values that were not progressive. This, in turn, required
attention to the fact that all art organized the social class to which the
artist belonged and articulated the point of view of that class. “Behind
the individual author is hidden the collective author, the author’s class;
and poetry is part of the self-awareness of this class.” In the nineteenth
century, the poetry of Afanasiy Fet had expressed the world-view of the
Russian nobility;43 Nikolay Nekrasov, who had spoken up for the
exploited peasantry, had at the same time articulated the aspirations,
39 See especially Thesis No.4 of “Tezisy doklada A.A.Bogdanov. ‘O proletarskoy

kritike’. na Vserossyiskom soveshchanii literaturnykh otdelov i otdelov
izobrazitel’nykh iskusstv proletarskikh kul’turno-prospevetitel’nykh organizatsii, 21
August 1921. RGALI, f.1230, op.1, d.457, l.8. I am obliged to Petr Plyutto for
making this document available.
40 “1918” in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 102. This had formerly been published as “Ot
redaktsii”, Proletarskaya kul’tura, Nr.1 (July 1918).

41 “Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 173.
42 See “O khudozhestvennom nasledstve” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925:
especially, 142–145; and Thesis Nr. 16 of “Puti proletarskogo tvorchestva” (1920) in

Bogdanov 1924/1925: 199.
43 Afanasiy Afanas’evich Fet (1820–1892). See “Chto takoe proletarskaya poeziya?”
(1918) in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 130. See also the section “Tekhnicheskie i

ekonomicheskie osnovy kollektivizma” of Nauka ob obshestvennom soznanii (1914) in
Bogdanov 1999: 452.
Biggart___________________SOCIOLOGY OF THE ARTS____________________Page 10 of

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ideas and sentiments of the urban intelligentsia to which he belonged by

occupation, and aspects of the psychology of the landlord estate to
which he belonged by birth.44 Indeed, the greater part of what, more
recently, purported to be “democratic” poetry in fact gave expression to
a “peasant-intellectual”, “worker-peasant” or “worker-peasant-
intellectual” view of the world.45
Progressive forms
i) “Simplicity” (prostota)
How, Bogdanov asked, was one to identify those writers of the
past who could serve as models for the kinds of technique to be adopted
by the creators of proletarian culture? In answering this question he
drew upon his evolutionary interpretation of history and upon his
organization theory. Every social formation and every ideology, he
argued, went through a life-cycle of birth, maturation, degeneration
(vyrozhdenie) and death. This could be observed not only in the content
but also in the forms of art.46 It was during the phase of growth and
maturity that the art of a civilization attained its most consummate
expression. Proletarian writers should therefore “learn the techniques of
art … from the great masters who came at the period of the rise and
flowering of those classes that are now withering away - the
revolutionary romantics and the classics of different times.”47 The
hallmark of art at its apogée was its ‘simplicity’.48 In 1918, Bogdanov
lauded the “simplicity, clarity and purity of forms” of Pushkin,
Lermontov, Gogol, Nekrasov and Tolstoy.49 In 1920 (when he added
Byron to this list), he wrote:
“What we find in the work of the great masters is a simplicity
that is associated with content that is grandiose, developing or highly
developed, but which has not yet begun to decay. Goethe and Schiller,
and, in Russia, Pushkin and Lermontov, reflected the birth and growth
of new conditions and new forces of life, the rise of a bourgeois culture
44 Nikolay Alekseevich Nekrasov (1821–1878). See “Chto takoe proletarskaya
poeziya?” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 131.

45 As an example, Bogdanov cites a poem by Alexei Gmyrev, Alaya. See “Chto takoe
proletarskaya poeziya?” (1918), in Bogdanov, 1924/1925: 132–133. See also the

references to Emile Verhaeren and Jānis Rainis, above.
47 “Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva” (1918) in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 170.
48 Cf. “Like most ancient Martian works of art, the most modern ones were
characterized by extreme simplicity and thematic unity”. Bogdanov 1984: 76.


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that was beginning to oust and supplant the old, feudal-aristocratic

culture.”50
ii) Rhyme and Rhythm

In his understanding of rhyme and rhythm, Bogdanov updated
romanticism for the machine age: these two devices served to integrate
the human community in its relationship with the rest of nature, and
also in work and thought: Asked by Leonid, in Red Star, whether “the
poetry of the socialist epoch should abandon and forget these inhibiting
rules”, Enno replies:
“Regular rhythm (pravil’noe-ritmicheskoe) seems beautiful to us not
at all because of any attachment to convention, but because it is in
profound harmony with the rhythmic regularity of the processes of our
life and consciousness. As for rhyme (rifma), whereby a series of
variations end in a single accord, does it not have a profound kinship
with that vital bond between people which enables them to overcome
their inherent diversity and achieve unity in the pleasure of love,
achieve unity from a rational objective in work, and a unity of feelings
through art? There can be no artistic form without rhythm (bez ritma). If
there is no rhythm of sounds it is all the more essential that there should
be a rhythm of images or ideas. And if rhyme (rifma) is really of feudal
origin, then so were many other good and beautiful things.”51
Degenerate form and content: “over-elaboration”

(utonchennost’)
True to his biological-evolutionary world view, Bogdanov was

disparaging of the forms and content of the kind of art that was
produced at the end of the life-cycle of a social formation. In 1908, in
Red Star he had written:
“[The art of] intermediate, transitional, epochs is of quite a
different character: there are impulses, passions, restless yearnings that
are sometimes suppressed in the divagations of erotic or religious
dreams, but which at other times erupt when tensions in the conflict
between body and soul reach the point of disequilibrium.” 52
Ten years later, he explained more fully:
50 “Prostota ili utonchennost’?” (1920), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 176–177.

51 My translation from Krasnaya Zvezda, Bogdanov 1929: 97, with reference to the
translation by Charles Rougle in Bogdanov 1984: 78.
52 My translation from Krasnaya Zvezda, Bogdanov 1929: 94, with reference to the
translation by Charles Rougle in Bogdanov 1984: 76.

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“…When a social class has accomplished its progressive role in

the historical process and begins to decline, the content of its art,
inevitably, also becomes decadent, as do, accordingly, the forms of art
which adapt to this content. The decay of a ruling class is usually
evident in a descent into parasitism. There is an onset of satiety, a
dulling of the sense of life. Life loses its main source for new, developing
content - socially creative activity. In order to fill this void, the members
of the dying class pursue ever new pleasures and sensations. Art
organizes this quest: in an attempt to stimulate fading sensibilities it
resorts to decadent perversions; in an attempt to elaborate and refine
aesthetic images it complicates and embellishes artistic forms through a
mass of petty contrivances. All of this has been observed in history more
than once, in the decline of various cultures - the Oriental, Classical and
Feudal, and it can be observed during recent decades in the
decomposition (razlozhenie) of bourgeois culture, in most of the new
trends in decadent ‘Modernism’ and ‘Futurism’. Russian bourgeois art
has dragged itself along in the wake of European art, in the image of
our anemic and flabby bourgeoisie which succeeded in withering
without ever having bloomed.”53
Zinaida Gippius was considered by Bogdanov to be typical of
those who “in periods of tranquil reaction contemplate their individual
feelings, aesthetic, erotic, mystical ... become fiery patriots in wartime
and are seized by the ardour of struggle during revolution, only to lapse
back into eroticism and all sorts of perversion and theosophy, etc., when
reaction returns.”54 Andreev, Bal’mont and Blok were “on our side one
moment and detached the next”.55 The work of Bryusov and Belyy was
“devoid of living content and devoted entirely to form”;56 Mayakovskiy
was “a posturing, self-advertising intellectual” (krivlyayushegosya intelligenta-
reklamista); Igor Severyanin was “the ideologue of gigolos and courtesans
(kokotok) and the talented embodiment of painted vulgarity.”57
53 “Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva” (1918) in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 169–170.

54 “Prostota ili utonchennost’?” (1920), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 178–179. See also
175–177.
56 “Prostota ili utonchennost’?” (1920), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 180. Here
Bogdanov is criticizing Gerasimov’s poem Mona Lisa.

57 “Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 170. Bogdanov
did not deny the talent of either Severyanin or Mayakovskiy. See his footnote on
Mayakovskiy, dated 1924, in this same article: 170. Ironically, Bogdanov’s principal
adversary, Lenin, shared his antipathy for the Futurists: on 6 May 1921 Lenin
rebuked Lunacharskiy for printing 5,000 copies of Mayakovskiy’s 150,000,000 and
implored M.N. Pokrovskiy to help him “fight Futurism”. See Lenin to A.V.
Lunacharskiy, 6 May 1921 and Lenin to M.N. Pokrovskiy, 6 May 1921, in Lenin
1970, 179–180.

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There was a risk that the art of the proletariat would be

contaminated by the Modernists’ experimentation with rhyme and
rhythm:
“In its first steps our workers’ poetry manifested a tendency to
regular rhythmic verse with simple rhymes. At present, it manifests a
tendency to free rhythms (svobodnye ritmy) and complex, interweaving,
new and often unexpected rhymes. This is clearly the influence of the
poetry of the new intelligentsia. It is hardly to be welcomed….” 58
By contrast, the science of “physiological psychology” had
shown how actions and resistances in work had a formative influence
upon the nervous system. It was therefore desirable that the rhythms of
poetry should correspond to the “directing rhythms” experienced by a
worker who was in harmony with the machine, and to the rhythms of
nature.59 Above all, there should be no striving for effect.60
Conscious, perhaps, that his views on culture might be
considered overly conservative, Bogdanov was, on occasion, prepared to
concede that “of course, new contents will inevitably work out new
forms”; it was merely “necessary to take the best of the past as a starting
point.”61 However, he was profoundly out of sympathy with
Modernism. In 1920 he felt entitled to remonstrate with Mikhail
Gerasimov (who, unlike Bogdanov, possessed genuine proletarian
credentials),62 for having succumbed, in his poem, Mona Lisa, to the
influence of the modern poets.63 He admonished as “naïve” the Smithy
(Kuznitsa) group of writers (Gerasimov and Vladimir Kirillov were
founder-members), who, in the first issue of their journal had declared
that, even if they were unable to write “proletarian poetry” (a barb
directed at the Proletkult), they would dedicate themselves to developing
a mastery of literary techniques.64 These writers, Bogdanov chided,
58 “Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 170–171.

59 “Powerful machines and their precise movements are aesthetically pleasing to us
in and of themselves…”. Enno, in Bogdanov 1984, 74.
60 “Prostota ili utonchennost’?” (1920), Bogdanov 1924/1925: 188–9.
61 “Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva” (1918), Bogdanov 1924/1925: 170.
62 Mikhail Prokof’evich Gerasimov (1889–1939), the son of a railwayman, had
worked in the railway, metal working and mining industries. Between 1910 and
1914 he was a member, alongside Lunacharskiy, A.K. Gastev and F.I. Kalinin of
the Paris-based Liga proletarskoy kul’tury. His works were published in Gorkiy’s
Prosveshchenie in 1913 and 1914; in an anthology edited by Il’ya Erenburg – Vechera
(Paris, 1914); in Sbornik proletarskikh pisateley (1914) which had a foreword by Gorkiy;
and in Sbornik proletarskikh poetov (1917). In 1917 a volume of his poetry, due to be
published by Gorkiy’s publishing house Parus, was banned by the censor. In March
1917 he was elected chair of the Samara Soviet of Soldiers’ Deputies and from 1918
he was chair of the Samara Proletkult. See Russkie pisateli 1989: 540–541.
63 “Prostota ili utonchennost’?” (1920), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 180.
64 Mikhail Gerasimov and Vladimir Kirillov were prominent in the Kuznitsa group
who held their founding meeting in February 1920. See Brown 1971: 10–12.

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should not “deck themselves out in the finery of the bourgeoisie”, but
seek the content of their poetry in comradely relations, in the
experience of workers’ organizations, and in the works of Marx. They
should trust in the collective and in its evolutionary ideology, and
amongst past writers seek out those who had “shown the way”.65
Organizational aesthetics
Another framework that Bogdanov applied in evaluating a work

of art, namely ‘degree of organization’ or ‘organized-ness (stepen’
organizovannosti),66 derived explicitly from his Tektology and seems to
supplement, if not replace, his binary opposition of ‘simplicity/over-
elaboration’. In Part III of the full version of Tektology (first published in
1922), in the chapter ‘Organizational Dialectics’, he wrote:
“All of the usual human evaluations that take the form of such
concepts as goodness, beauty and truth, that is, moral, aesthetic and
cognitive evaluations, have one common basis: all of them are
organizational evaluations. The fetishized forms of these evaluations,
which conceal their true nature from individualistic consciousness,
prevent the question of the degree of living-social organization (sotsial’no-
zhiznennoi organizovannosti) from being addressed. This means that
whatever raises the level of organization of collective life in the field of
degressive67 norms of human behaviour is deemed to be morally
superior; whatever has this effect in perceptions of the world
(mirovospriyatyia) is deemed to be beautiful; and whatever has this effect
when it comes to the systematization of experience is deemed to be
‘true’. Essentially, all such evaluations amount to a more or less crude,
approximate, and vaguely defined quantitative measure of the degree of
organization, in other words, to a “measurement” according to some
imprecise scale or template. For this reason, these evaluations must all
be subjected to scientific-organizational research and, in the course of
development, be replaced by scientific-organizational evaluations.”68
65 “Prostota ili utonchennost’?”, (1920), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 190–191. This
article was published in Proletarskaya kul’tura (1920), Nr.13–14. See also Bogdanov’s
review of the first issue (May, 1920) of the journal Kuznitsa, in Proletarskaya kul’tura
(1920), Nr.15–16: 91–92.
66 George Gorelik translated organizovannost’ as ‘system-ness’. See Gorelik 1984: 279.
Since Bogdanov does use the term sistematizatsiya, another possible translation might
be ‘degree of systematization’.
67 “Degression”, for Bogdanov, is the process that enables a particular form to
sustain its structure or viability in a relationship of dynamic equilibrium with its

environment. See Bogdanov 1922: Part II, Chapter VI, Section 3 – ‘Origin and
significance of degression’.
68 My translation from Bogdanov 1922: 516.

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In the same year, addressing a conference of writers and artists

of the Proletkult, Bogdanov made the same point, namely that
appreciation of the formal side of a work of art consisted in evaluating
the “degree of organization of that work as a living whole”.
Acknowledging that assessments made by different collectives would
vary according to their particular accumulation of organizational
experience, he argued that, nevertheless, “it is the degree of
organization of a work that is the measure of its profundity and of the
impact that it will have upon the collective, that is, of its potential for
contributing to the organizational education of the collective.”69 The
extent to which a work of art achieved a degree of organization also
determined its aesthetic effect, for “truth is the presence of organization
in the sphere of experience; the good is the presence of organization in
the sphere of action; and beauty is the presence of organization in the
sphere of the emotions.”70
A tektological criticism of Hamlet
Disappointingly, there is only one instance (that I can think of) in

which Bogdanov applies in any detail the methodology of
organizational science to the intrinsic criticism of a work of art or
literature, and that is in his commentary on “the great artist and
tektologist”, Shakespeare.71 The divided self of Hamlet, he tells us
(divided, on the one hand by his warrior upbringing and, on the other,
by his passive-aesthetic temperament), formed a “complex”, the
components of which were in a relationship of “disingression”, or
paralysis. The processes of selection set in motion by a hostile
environment could only result in the destruction of this complex (as in
the “insanity”, then death, of Hamlet), or in a recombination of the
elements of his psyché into a new “active-aesthetic” whole (the
restoration of order, or “system equilibrium”, in the character of
69 See Thesis Nr. 4 for his lecture “On proletarian literary criticism” delivered to an
All-Russian Conference of Literary Departments and Departments of the Visual

Arts of the Proletkult, 21 August 1921. RGALI, f.1230, op.1, d.457, l.8.
70 Bogdanov, Unpublished notebooks, RGASPI, f.259, cited by: Iu.P. Sharapov,
“‘Kul’turnye lyudi soznatel’no uchityvayut proshloe’”. Iz zapisnykh knizhek A.A.

Bogdanova”, Istoricheskiy arkhiv (1999), Nr. 3: 174.
71 The expression is employed in Bogdanov 1922, Part II, Chapter 5 “Divergence
and convergence of forms”, Section 6: “The division and restoration of unity of the
personality”, p.292. Part II of Tektology was first published in Moscow in 1917
(Preface dated 22 September 1916). Bogdanov also provides a commentary on
Hamlet in “O khudozhestvennom nasledstve” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 150–
154.

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Fortinbras).72 Hamlet, was an example of how a work of art could serve

not only the dominant ideology of its time, but also the purposes of
collectivism, in that Shakespeare’s depiction of the struggle for harmony
in a hostile environment, “provides the working class with a
comprehensive lesson and a comprehensive resolution of the
organizational task – and this is what is needed if the world-
organizational ideal is to be achieved.”73
Between learning and didacticism
Bogdanov was at pains to insist that no constraints should be

placed upon the creative work of the proletarian artist: there should be
“initiative, criticism, originality and the all-round development of
individual talents.” There should be no “blind submission to
authority”.74 He did not think that his own exercises in literary and
artistic criticism were prescriptive, but it is difficult to avoid the
conclusion that, sometimes, they were. In 1918, it is true, he rejected
the civic (grazhdanskoe) notion according to which art should promote
progressive tendencies in the struggles of life: there was “no need to
attach any aims to art – they are an unnecessary and harmful
constraint”.75 At the same time, he was himself of the opinion that
proletarian art should express an “aspiration towards the ideal” and
pointed to the example of the Venus de Milo which, he maintained,
represented the harmonious unity of spiritual and physical love;76 and to
Goethe’s Faust which depicted the human soul in its search for
harmony, eventually attained in a life devoted to working for the good
of society.77 Conscious, perhaps, that these judgments could, indeed, be
considered “civic”, he dissociated himself from the theory “recently
brought forward”, according to which art must be “unflaggingly
uplifting” (zhizneradostnoe) and “exultant” (vostorzhennoe). “We are sorry to
72 Bogdanov 1922, Part II, Chapter 5 “Divergence and convergence of forms”,

Section 6: “The division and restoration of unity of the personality”: 290–292.
73 “O khudozhestvennom nasledstve” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 154.
74 “Ideal vospitaniya” (Lecture delivered to a Teachers” Conference in Moscow,
May, 1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 236.

75 “Chto takoe proletarskaya poeziya” (1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 128–129.
See also Thesis Nr. 11: “The socio-organizational role of art is its objective meaning,
and this interpretation has nothing in common with the theory of civic art, whereby
art is harnessed to certain specific tasks of an ethical, political or other nature”, in
“Sotsial’no-organizatsionnoe znachenie iskusstva” (1921) in Bogdanov 2004: 5–9.
76 “Proletariat i iskusstvo” (Speech to the First All-Russian Conference of the
Proletkult, 20 September 1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 122–23.

77 “Proletariat i iskusstvo”, (Speech to the First All-Russian Conference of the
Proletkult, 20 September 1918), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 120–121; and “Prostota

ili utonchennost’?” (1920), in Bogdanov 1924/1925: 178.

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say that this theory is quite a favourite, especially with the younger and
less experienced proletarian poets, although it can only be called
childish.”78 Even so, in some of his writings, Bogdanov’s didactic
attitude is reminiscent of the philosopher of an earlier Enlightenment,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his Émile, ou De l’éducation (1762).
By 1920 Bogdanov had become aware that some proletarian
writers found his approach patronizing:
“Some Proletkultists have argued that artistic creation must be
free, and have questioned whether criticism, however scientific, and
however much it claimed to be the most proletarian, could point the
way… the journal Proletarskaya kul’tura has been depicted as a kind of
baby-sitter (“Chto za nyan’ki!”), constantly fretting about what is and what
isn’t proletarian culture”.79
In February 1920, exasperation with the paternalism of the
Proletkult led a group of writers led by Gerasimov to withdraw from its
Moscow branch and, under the auspices of the Commissariat for
Education, to organize their own literary group – Kuznitsa, complaining
that “the conditions of work in Proletkult ... for a variety of reasons,
restrict the creative potential of proletarian writers.”80 It was the
Kuznitsa group that in October 1920 organized the First All Russian
Congress of Proletarian Writers during which the All-Russian
Association of Proletarian Writers (VAPP) was founded.81 In December
1920, the replacement of Pavel Lebedev-Polyanskiy by Valerian Pletnëv
as Chair of the Central Committee of the Proletkult marked the
beginning of the end of Bogdanov’s influence inside the Proletkult. In
November 1921 he resigned from all positions in the Proletkult in order
to devote himself entirely to research in blood transfusion. However, the
matter did not end there: the critics of Bogdanov, in some cases acting
under the instructions of Lenin, now faced the task of producing an
alternative to his theory. During the later 1920s, Pletnëv, for one,
ostentatiously dissociated himself from Bogdanov and played his own
ignoble part in the creation of an new orthodoxy.82 On 9 May 1924 the
Press Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party
convened a conference on “The policy of the Party in artistic literature”

79 Bogdanov 1920: 87. On the resentment of some writers by 1920, see Steinberg
2002: 60–61.
80 See their letter to Pravda, 5 February 1920, reproduced in Gorbunov 1974: 122.
81 It was also in October 1920 that Lenin took steps to have the Proletkult
subordinated to the Commissariat for Education. These institutional changes in the

history of the movement for proletarian culture have been well documented by
Sheshukov 1970, Brown 1971 and Eimermacher 1972.
82 On the role of Pletnëv in the debate over cultural policy, see Biggart and
Bulgakowa 2016.

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and in 1925 published materials of this conference and other

contributions to the debate.83 In the same year Bogdanov defiantly
published an anthology of his own writings on the subject.84 He could
legitimately take the view that his ‘heresies’ had set the agenda for the
debate.
Conclusion
One does not look to Bogdanov for an understanding of the

mentalité of the ‘actually existing’ working class.85 His concern was not
with working class communities but with the ‘integral proletarian’, the
ideal-typical worker (Nikifor Vilonov, Fëdor Kalinin) of the future.86 In
this respect he was a utopian socialist (I do not use the term
pejoratively).
Bogdanov’s insistence that a ‘non-proletarian’ could make a
contribution to the development of proletarian culture clearly belongs to
the vexed controversy over the ambiguous relationship between socialist
intellectuals and workers by social origin.87 His conviction that his
status as a Collectivist qualified him as a builder of socialist culture is
questionable. Perhaps he should be understood as a member of the
‘organizational intelligentsia’, whose ascendancy he had himself
described. 88
Bogdanov’s aesthetic theories had the potential for development
in a number of directions, but some led up blind alleys. His binary
criterion of ‘simplicity/over-elaboration’ seems to have owed more to
his paternalistic solicitude for novices in the building of proletarian
culture and to his dislike of Modernism than to his organization theory.
It is difficult to see of what value these categories could be to anyone in
the appreciation, even, of some of the writers he approved of, for
example, Gogol. By contrast, his criticism of Hamlet illustrates the
83 See Voprosy kul’tury pri diktature proletariata 1925. Moscow & Leningrad: Gosizdat,
On this debate, see also Biggart 1992.
84 See O proletarskoy kul’ture 1904–1924. This inside title page of this anthology is
dated 1924 and the cover is dated 1925.

85 In general, it appears that the Russian Social Democrats, before 1917, produced
fewer social and economic studies of working class life than the agrarian socialists
did of the peasantry.
86 On Kalinin, see “Novy tip rabotnika” in Bogdanov 1920. Bogdanov quotes from
an unpublished work by Vilonov in his Introduction and in Chapter 6 of Filosofiya

zhivogo opyta 1913 and 1923. See also Scherrer 1980: 165–187; and, on Vilonov and
Kalinin, Gloveli 2004, 25–48.
87 See Biggart 1990: 265–282. On how workers and intellectuals worked together in
the Proletkult, see Mally 1990: 115–121.

88 See “Linii kul’tury XIX i XX veka” in Bogdanov 1995; in Vestnik Mezhdunarodnogo
Instituta Bogdanova 2000 (4): 28–53; and Gloveli 2009, 47–79.

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analytical potential of a tektological approach. However, Bogdanov was

aware of the experimental nature of his aesthetics, and he
acknowledged that all such “evaluations must be subjected to scientific-
organizational research and, in the course of development, be replaced
by scientific-organizational evaluations.”89 The Russian ‘language
barrier’ has, until recently, denied Bogdanov’s pioneering work in
cultural theory the attention that it merits outside of Russia. The
translation of his works into other languages will help to make good this
deficiency.
References
Biggart, John 1990. “Alexander Bogdanov and the theory of a “New Class”. Russian
Review (49, July): 265-282.
--------------- 1992. “Bukharin’s theory of cultural revolution” in The ideas of Nikolai
Bukharin, edited by Anthony Kemp-Welch, 131-158. Oxford: The Clarendon
Press.
Biggart, John and Oksana Bulgakowa 2016. “Eisenstein in the Proletkult. Helsinki:
Spherical Book. Culture as Organization in Early Soviet Thought.
Bogdanov, A. 1904. Iz psikhologii obshchestva. St. Petersburg: Izdanie S.Dorovatovskogo i
A.Charushnikova.
------------- 1904-1906. Empiriomonizm. Stat’i po filosofii, I-III. Moscow & St.Petersburg:
Izdanie S.Dorovatovskogo i A.Charushnikova.
------. 1908. Krasnaya zvezda (Utopiya). Saint-Petersburg: Tovarishchestvo khudozhnikov
pechati
------------- 1911. Kul’turnye zadachi nashego vremeni. Moscow: Izdanie S.Dorovatovskogo i
A.Charushnikova.
-------------1913. Vseobshchaya organizatsionnaya nauka: Tektologiya I. St.Petersburg: Izdanie
M.I.Semenova.
------------- 1914. Nauka ob obshestvennom soznanii. Kratkii kurs ideologicheskoy nauki v voprosakh
i otvetakh. Moscow: Knigoizdatel’stvo pisateley v Moskve.
------------- 1920 “Novyy tip rabotnika”, in Sbornik pamyati F.I.Kalinina. Rostov on Don:
Gosizdat.
------------- 1920. Elementy proletarskoy kul’tury v razvitii rabochego klassa. Lektsii prochitannye v
Moskovskom Proletkul’te vesnoyu 1919 goda. Moscow: Gosizdat.
------------- 1921 “Sotsial’no-organizatsionnoe znachenie iskusstva” - Theses for a
lecture delivered to the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences, 29 October
1921, with an introduction by Charlotte Douglas, Vestnik Mezhdunarodnogo
Instituta A. Bogdanova. 2004 (1): 17, 5-9.
------------- 1922. Tektologiya. Vseobshchaya organizatsionnaya nauka. Petersburg, Moscow,
Berlin: Grzhebin.
------------- 1923a. “Obshchestvenno-nauchnoe znachenie noveishikh tendentsii
estestvoznaniya” (Theses for lecture delivered in the Socialist Academy of
89 My translation from Bogdanov 2003: 392.

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Social Sciences, 24 May 1923). Arkhiv RAN, f.350 op.2, d.4, ll.13-78, in
Bogdanov 2003.
------------- 1923b. Filosofiya zhivogo opyta. Populyarnye ocherki. Materializm, Empiriokrititsizm,
Dialekticheskiy Materializm, Empiriomonizm, Nauka Budushchego. 3rd ed., Petrograd-
Moscow: Kniga.
------------- 1924/1925. O proletarskoy kul’ture 1904-1924. Leningrad-Moscow: Kniga
[This anthology carries the date “1924” on the inside title page and “1925” on
the cover.]
------------- 1929. Krasnaya Zvezda. Leningrad: Krasnaya gazeta [Reprinted in Krasnaya
zvezda: roman-utopiya; Inzhener Menni: fantasticheskiy roman. 1979. Bibliotheca
russica. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag].
------------- 1984. Essays in Tektology. The General Science of Organization. 2nd ed. Edited
and translated by George Gorelik. Seaside California: Intersystems Publications
Limited.
-------------- 1984. Red Star. The First Bolshevik Utopia. Edited by Loren R.Graham and
Richard Stites, translated by Charles Rougle. Bloomington, Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press.
------------- 1995. Stat’i, doklady, pis’ma i vospominaniya 1901-1928, in Neizvestnyy Bogdanov,
Kniga 1, edited by N.S.Antonova & N.V.Drozdova. Moscow: ITs AIRO - XX
------------- 1996. Bogdanov’s Tektology, Book 1. Edited and translated by Peter Dudley,
Vadim N. Sadovsky and Vladimir V. Kelle. University of Hull: Centre for
Systems Studies.
-------------- 1999. Poznanie s istoricheskoy tochki zreniya. Izbrannye psikhologicheskie trudy.
Moscow: Moskovskiy psikhologo-sotsial’nyy institut.
------------- 2003, Tektologiya. Vseobshchaya organizatsionnaya nauka. Moscow: Finansy.
-------------- 2004. “Sotsial’no-organizatsionnoe znachenie iskusstva” - Theses for a
lecture delivered by Alexander Bogdanov to the Russian Academy of Artistic
Sciences, 29 October 1921”, with an introduction by Charlotte Douglas in
Vestnik Mezhdunarodnogo Instituta A. Bogdanova (1): 17, 5-9.
Brown, Edward J. 1971. The proletarian episode in Russian literature, 1928-1932. New York:
Octagon Books.
Eimermacher, Karl. 1972. Dokumente zur sowjetischen Literaturpolitik 1917-1932. Stuttgart:
W. Kohlhammer.
Feuer, Lewis S. [Editor] 1959. Marx and Engels. Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy.
New York: Doubleday Anchor.
Gloveli, G.D. 2004. “‘Raduga dum i chuvstv’ i ‘krasochnaya shkola””, Vestnik
Mezhdunarodnogo Instituta A.Bogdanova Moscow, 18, 25-48.
---------------- 2009. “The sociology of Alexander Bogdanov and the theories of
progress in the 19th and early 20th centuries” in Oittinen, Vesa (Ed.), Aleksandr
Bogdanov Revisited Helsinki: Aleksanteri Series, 1, 47-79.
Gorbunov, V.V. 1974. Lenin i Proletkul’t. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoy literatury.
Lenin, V.I. 1970. Polnoe sobranie sochineniy, 52. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoy
literatury.
Mally, Lynn 1990. Culture of the Future. The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia.
Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press.
Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels 2001. Collected Works, 49. London: Lawrence and
Wishart.
Poustilnik, Simona 2009. “Tectology in the context of intellectual thought in Russia”,
in Vesa Oittinen, Editor, Aleksandr Bogdanov Revisited. Helsinki: Aleksanteri
Series, 1.
Rose, Margaret. A. 1994. Marx’s lost aesthetic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Russkie pisateli 1800-1917. Biograficheskiy slovar’, I 1989. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo

“Moskovskaya Entsiklopediya”.
Sbornik Latyshkoi literatury 1916. Pod redaktsiey Valeriya Bryusova i Maksima Gor’kogo,
s predisloviem Yanson Brauna. Publisher unknown.
Sbornik proletarskikh pisateley 1914. Petrograd: Priboy.
Scherrer, Jutta 1980. “Un philosophe-ouvrier russe. N.E.Vilonov”. Le Mouvement Social
(111): 165-187.
Sharapov, Iu.P. 1999. “‘Kul’turnye lyudi soznatel’no uchityvayut proshloe’. Iz
zapisnykh knizhek A.A.Bogdanova”. Istoricheskiy arkhiv (3).
Sochor, Zenovia A. 1988. Revolution and Culture. The Bogdanov-Lenin Controversy. Ithica
and London: Cornell University Press.
Steila, Daniela 1996. Scienza e rivoluzione. La recezione dell”empiriocriticismo nella cultura russa
1877-1910 Storia della filosofia e del pensiero scientifico. Torino: Universita degli
studi di Torino, Fondo di studi Parini-Chirio.
--------------- 2013. Nauka i revolyutsyia. Retseptsyia empiriokrititsizma v Russkoy kul’ture 1877-
1910 gg. Moscow: Akademicheskiy Proekt.
Steinberg, Mark D. 2002. Proletarian Imagination. Self, Modernity, and the Sacred in Russia,
1910-1925. Ithica and London: Cornell University Press.
White, James D. 2013. “Alexander Bogdanov’s Conception of Proletarian Culture”.
Revolutionary Russia (26): 52-70.

22
Articles with
No emphasis on Taylorism
No emphasis on Tektology
Spherical Book
BOGDANOV’S ‘SCIENCE AND THE WORKING CLASS’

Introduction: Fabian Tompsett________________________________________________
This text consists of fourteen “Theses” published in advance of a

presentation delivered by Aleksandr Bogdanov (1873–1928) on 17
September 1918 to the First All-Russian Conference of the Proletkults
held in Moscow from 15–20 September 1918. The “Theses” were
published in advance of the Conference in the journal Proletarskaya
kul’tura, No.2 (July, 1918), pp. 21–23.1
In his footnote to the “Theses”, Bogdanov states that the
theoretical foundations of his forthcoming presentation could be found in
the brochure ‘Science and the Working Class’, which was based on an
earlier presentation which he delivered to a Conference of the Moscow
Proletkults in February 1918. He is probably referring to Nauka i rabochiy
klass (Moscow, Soyuz rabochikh potrebitel’nykh obshchestv goroda
Moskvy i ee okrestnostey), 16 pp.
The text of the presentation of February 1918 can also be found
in:
Sotsializm nauki (Nauchnye zadachi proletariata) (Izdatel’stvo zhurnala
“Proletarskaya kul’tura”, Moscow, 1918);
Spherical Book titled ‘Nauka i rabochiy klass’, in O proletarskoy kul’ture 1904–1924
(Moscow & Leningrad, “Kniga”, 1925), pp.200–221;
Voprosy sotsializma. Raboty raznykh let (Izdatel’stvo Politicheskoy
EARLY SOVIET THOUGHT Literatury, Moscow, 1990).
The text of the presentation of 17 September 1918 was published
in the protocols of the Conference: Protokoly Pervoy Vserossiyskoy konferentsii
proletarskikh kul’turno-prosvetitel’nykh organizatsii, 15–20 sentyabrya 1918 g.
Editor-in-Chief: Pia Tikka (Edited by P.I.Lebedev-Polyanskiy (Moscow, Izdatel’stvo “Proletkarskaya
kul’tura”, 1918), pp. 31–36; and under the title ‘Nauka i proletaria’, in: O
Tangential Points Publications proletarskoy kul’ture. Stat’i 1904–1924 (Leningrad and Moscow, 1925),
Aalto University 2016 pp.222–230 [in this anthology, owing to a misprint, the presentation is
ISBN 103204787103ABC
dated “1913”].
A French translation ‘La science et la classe ouvrière’, by Blanche
Grinbaum of ‘Nauka i rabochiy klass’, appeared in La science, l’art et la
classe ouvrière (Bogdanov 1977). However the accompanying
bibliographical information was incorrect. We have added annotation to
the present translation for ease of comprehension for a modern
readership. Minor formatting changes have also been made.
Bogdanov___________SCIENCE AND THE WORKING CLASS ____________Page 1 of 6

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SCIENCE AND THE WORKING CLASS

Translation: Fabian Tompsett_________________________Aleksandr Bogdanov 1918
1. To say that the class character of science resides in the fact that
it defends the interests of a given class betrays either a journalistic
understanding of science or is a complete misrepresentation. An actually
existing science may be bourgeois or proletarian by its very “nature”, that
is to say in terms of its origin, its point of view, and the methods by which it is
elaborated and explained. In this fundamental sense, all the sciences, not only
the social sciences but all the other sciences, including mathematics and
logic, may be said to have, and actually do have, a class character.2
2. The nature of science resides in the fact that it is the organized,
collective experience of people and that it serves as the instrument of the organization
of the life of society. The current dominant science, in its various branches, is
bourgeois science: it has been developed, for the most part, by
representatives of the bourgeois intelligentsia, who have concentrated in
it the material experience that was available to the bourgeois classes; who
have understood it and interpreted it from the point of view of these
classes; and who have organized the processes and practices to which
these classes were accustomed, which were characteristic of them. As a
result, this science has served and continues to serve as an instrument of
the bourgeois structuring of society, firstly as an instrument of the struggle
with, and conquest of, the bourgeoisie over the classes that had had their
day; and then as an instrument of their rule over the labouring classes. At
all times this science has served as an instrument for the organization of
production and for all of the progress in production that has been
achieved under the leadership of the bourgeoisie. Such is the organizing
strength of this science. But here also resides its historical limitation.
3. This limitation is manifest in the very material of science, that is
to say in the content of experience that it organizes, and it is especially
evident in the social sciences. For example, in studying the relations of
production, bourgeois science could not grasp or discern a particular
form of cooperative labour, the comradely or collectivist form, which is in
fact the highest form, because this form was virtually unknown to the
bourgeois classes.
Even more significant is a fundamental limitation of point of view that
affects all of the bourgeois sciences and which is determined by the
1
See Biggart, Gloveli, and Yassour 1998.

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position of the bourgeois classes in the social system, and consequently,

by their very social being. This particular limitation derives from the
separation of science from its real basis: social labour.
4. This separation has its origins in a differentiation between
mental and physical labour. In itself, this differentiation does not preclude
an awareness of the indissoluble link between practice and theory in the
social process as an integral whole. But for the bourgeois classes the
integral nature of this link is invisible; it lies outside their field of vision.
They have been educated in terms of the individualistic economy, to
think in terms of private property and of market competition; they have
therefore acquired an individualistic consciousness, and the social nature of
science is incomprehensible to them. For them, science is not the
organized experience of collective labour and an instrument for the
organization of collective work; for them, knowledge is something in
itself, even something that is opposed to practice, something that is of an
“ideal” or “logical” nature, which, even when it manages and guides
practical activity, does so only by virtue of its higher nature, and not
because it has arisen out of practical activity or because it is been
acquired in order to be used in practical activity. This particular fetishism
can be described as the “abstract fetishism of knowledge”.
5. The bourgeois world developed, in every sphere of its creative
activity, the scientific sphere included, along lines of ever increasing
specialization. Science became fragmented into branches that increased in
number and diverged at the expense of vital interactions between these
branches. The individualistic separation of people accentuated this
process, because although specialists working in the same sphere still
needed to share their experience and ideas, specialists working in
different spheres were less bound by this necessity. The consequence was
a huge loss of coordination in science just as there was a loss of
coordination in capitalist society. The development of both science and
society followed the same anarchic path.
What all of this means is that bourgeois science, whilst it
accumulated in all its branches an enormous wealth of knowledge and of
methods for exploiting that knowledge, has been unable to assemble this
material into a planned, organized and integrated whole. Each specialism
has created a language of its own that has become incomprehensible not
only to the broad masses but even to scientists of another specialism. The
same correlations, the same links in experience, the same processes of
cognition are studied in different branches as if they are quite different
things. The methods of one branch only penetrate into other branches
2
For an alternative English translation of this first paragraph, see Lecourt 1977.

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with much delay and difficulty. This is the origin of the narrow,
professional outlook that develops amongst people working in science,
weakening and acting as a brake on their creative activity.
6. The development of machine production, which brought about
a unity of technical methods, stimulated a trend in science for the
unification of methods and an overcoming of the harmful aspects of
specialization. Much has been achieved along these lines, but as long as
the fundamental divide between the individual branches of science
remains, this trend will be effective only in some sectors, and will not
result in the integrated organization of science as a whole.
7. Bourgeois science, with its laborious, obscure and complicated
professional language is scarcely accessible to the working class.
Furthermore, in so far as it has become a commodity in capitalist society,
it sells at a high price. If individual representatives of the proletariat, at a
cost of enormous expenditure of energy, become masters of one or
another branch of science, the class character of science comes into play:
the gulf between science and the principle of collective work, make for an
estrangement in their lives from the interests and mentality of the
working community from which they emerged. Here, professional
narrowness and a tendency towards intellectual aristocratism converge.
In a word, bourgeois science, given that it is a bourgeois ideology in
origin3, organizes the soul of the proletariat according to the bourgeois
model.
8. What this means is that the working class has specific tasks to
carry out in relation to contemporary science:
science must be reinterpreted from a proletarian point of view, both in its
content and in the form in which it is taught;
the creation of a new organization, both for the elaboration of science and for
the dissemination of scientific knowledge amongst the working masses.
In most branches of science, accomplishing these tasks will entail a
methodical assimilation of the legacy of the old world; but in some
branches there will be a need for profound and far-reaching innovation.
9. A reinterpretation of the content of science must first of all
abolish the divide that separates science from the collective-labour
principle: the material of science must be understood and explained as
being the practical experience of humanity; the schemas, conclusions,
and formulae of science must be seen as tools for organizing the entire
3
“Our usual ideas about the social relations between people imply mutual understanding
as their first precondition. (…) What is the essence of this mutual understanding? It is
contained in a common language and the sum of concepts which are expressed by this
language, in what is called common “culture” or, more exactly, ideology” Bogdanov’s
Tektology Book I (Bogdanov 1996).

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social practice of people. At the moment, this work is being carried out
almost exclusively in the social sciences, but the approach is insufficiently
planned and organized; this work must be extended to all fields of
knowledge. This transformation will bring science close to the life of the
working class: astronomy as the science that explains the orientation of
work processes in time and space; physics as the science of the resistances
encountered in the course of the collective work of humanity; physiology
as the science of labour power; logic as the theory of the social
harmonization of ideas – given that ideas are also organizational
instruments of labour – all of these sciences will enter into the
consciousness of the proletariat more directly, more easily and more
deeply than they do in their present form.
10. We must also strive to overcome the fragmentation of science
that has come about in the course of specialization: our objective must be
the unity of scientific language and a convergence and generalizing of the
methods of the various branches of knowledge, not only within the sphere
of knowledge but also in relation to the various spheres of practice, so
that a total monistic system can be developed, comprising both domains.
The realization of this goal will be expressed in a universal organizational
science, a science that is needed by the proletariat as the future organizer
of the whole life of humanity in all of its aspects.
11. With regard to the forms in which science is taught, here,
what is needed is a degree of simplification, without prejudice to the
essence of what is being taught. Recently, the work of a number of
democratizers of science has shown how much can be achieved in this
respect, by discarding useless scholastic ballast and by avoiding repetition
of identical principles when they are encountered under different names
in related branches of science. A significant degree of simplification will
be achieved by the very reinterpretation of science from the point of view
of collective labour, since this will liberate science from the abstract
fetishism which, in the old mathematics, mechanics, logic, and other
sciences, frequently resulted in so many pseudo-problems and
unnecessary stratagems being presented as “evidence”.
12. A reinterpretation of the content and a transformation of the
external form of science will mean that “socialism” will become its
foundation, which is to say that science will become adapted to the tasks
of the struggle for, and construction of, socialism. The dissemination of
knowledge and of scientific work must be organized in parallel. The two
processes are inextricably linked. The means for actually achieving these
ends will be the Workers’ University and the Workers’ Encyclopaedia.
13. The Workers’ University must be a system of cultural-
educational institutions that operate at various levels and culminate in a

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single centre for the training and organization of scientific forces. At each
level of the system, general educational courses must be complemented
by special, practical and scientific-technical courses that are of use to
society. The unity of principle that underlies the programme, and links
together the various levels and complementary courses must not inhibit
initiatives to perfect particular programmes or particular teaching
methods. The basic form of relationship between teachers and students
should be comradely co-operation, in which the competence of the
former is not taken to justify an unaccountable exercise of authority, and
the trustfulness of the latter does not degenerate into passivity and an
inability to criticize. The principal goal of teaching should be a mastery of
methods.
14. The development of these educational courses, and the
publishing activity of scientific workers of the Workers’ University which
is part of this development, should be directed towards the creation of a
Workers’ Encyclopaedia, which should not be a mere compilation of the
findings of science, but a complete, harmoniously organized system of
explanation of the methods of practice and cognition and of the vital links
between them.
References
Biggart, John, Georgii Gloveli, and Avraham Yassour. 1998. Bogdanov and His Work: A
Guide to the Published and Unpublished Works of Aleksandr A. Bogdanov (Malinovsky)
1873–1928. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Bogdanov, Aleksandr. 1977. “La science et la classe ouvrière” translated by Blanche
Grinbaum, in La science, l’art et la classe ouvrière, edited by Dominique Lecourt and
Henri Deluy, 95–102. Paris: Maspero.
--------------- 1996. Bogdanov’s Tektology: Book 1. Foreword by Vadim N. Sadovsky &
Vladimir V. Kelle Edited and with an introduction by Peter Dudley. Hull: Hull
University Centre of Systems Studies.
Lecourt, Dominique. 1977. Proletarian Science? The Case of Lysenko. London: NLB.

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BOGDANOV AND EISENSTEIN ON EMOTIONS:

THE AFFECTIONAL, THEORY OF EXPRESSIVENESS,
AND EMOTIONAL SCRIPT
Lyubov Bugaeva______________________________________________________________
In Empiriomonism Aleksandr Bogdanov introduces the term

‘affectional’ that he borrowed from Avenarius but revised in the light
of William James’ theory of emotions. The ‘affectional’ is an index of
energy balance between suffering and pleasure. Employing
Bogdanov’s revised notions of the affectional as an element of any
organization or complex, Sergey Eisenstein develops the principles of
expressivity. He sees emotions as an organism’s embodied reaction
to its interaction with the environment. Eisenstein proposes a notion
of an emotional script, which is a narrative of a prospective viewer
telling what has impressed him. Aleksandr Rzheshevskiy, a
scriptwriter of Eisenstein’s never completed Bezhin Meadow (1937),
became an ‘emotional scriptwriter’ in practice. The paper
investigates the relations between Bogdanov’s notions of the
affectional, Eisenstein’s theory of expressiveness, and the emotional
script as conceived by Eisenstein and realized by Rzheshevskiy.

ISBN 103204787103ABC
Bugaeva___________BOGDANOV AND EISENSTEIN ON EMOTIONS____________Page 1 of 13

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The Affectional and Emotional Experience: Aleksandr

Bogdanov. In Empiriomonism: Articles on Philosophy (1904–1906)
Aleksandr Bogdanov introduces the term ‘affectional’ that he borrows
from Richard Avenarius. Delimiting the area of the affectional, he
analyzes and revises the notion of experience. While falling back on
Richard Avenarius’s Critique of Pure Experience (Kritik der reinen
Erfahrung 1888–1890)1 and The Human Concept of the World (Der
menschliche Weltbegriff 1891), Bogdanov yet points out that both
Avenarius and Ernst Mach, when connecting experience with sense
perception, missed the fact that in the process of cognition the senses,
i.e., sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch, are not separate complexes
but parallel lines of experience; being associated with each other they
are united into a single entity. On a more practical level, such an
approach means that one of these lines can serve as the indicator for the
whole complex; seeing just a finger or hearing someone walking can
lead to identifying the object of perception as a human being (Bogdanov
1904–1906/2003: 8–9). Besides, a line of experience can serve as an
organizer for the complex, e.g. on the basis of visual or tactile
perception as principle constituents of a complex it is possible to
reconstruct the whole complex, for example, a human body.
Developing the idea of organization Bogdanov, like Avenarius,
distinguishes between two types of lines of experience – dependent, i.e.,
reliant on the state of the nervous system, and independent, free from
such kind of reliance in the sense of not being reducible to sensations –
and looks into emotional complexes that he categorizes as psychic
processes. Although recognizing the distinctiveness of emotional
complexes Bogdanov nevertheless objects to singling them out as
something purely psychic within the system of experience, and he argues
that emotional complexes and psychophysical entities are constituted by
elements of an equivalent nature. Bogdanov does not endorse a mind-
body division, and his conception of experience is much richer than
understanding it simply in terms of sensation and perception. Rather
than mind-body division, he is more in line with synergetics, a theory of
self-organization in open systems, when he claims that the same
innervational and tactile elements, which are in various combinations
constituent of physical bodies, play a substantial role in emotions. He is
also more in tune with the American pragmatist William James, who saw
the universe we live in as chaotic, non-reducible to an uncomplicated
choice between physical interaction and complete inertness, but with
“room in it for the hybrid or ambiguous group of our affectional
1 Critique of Pure Experience was published in Russian translation in St.Petersburg,

Russia, in 1898; in 1905 it was published as a popular transcript and with a
commentary by Anatoliy Lunacharskiy.

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experiences, of our emotions and appreciative perception” (James 1905:

282).
Building the monistic theory of the physical and the psychic
Bogdanov seems highly concerned with placing emotions on a par with
other psychic and physical combinations. The idea of organization
presumes discriminating between dominant and non-dominant
constitutive elements of a complex while the idea of parallel lines of
experience supposes establishing systems of links among these elements.
When applied to emotional complexes the idea of organization eliminates
irreconcilable distinctions between elements in experience that are
dependent on the state of the nervous system and those that are
independent of it. Bogdanov divorces objectivity from the stability of a
physical body in individual experience. For him objectivity is the
experiential data that has communal significance; it is the
correspondence of individual experiences (Bogdanov 1904–1906/2003:
15). The virtue of such an interpretation of objectivity is that it brings to
the center of discussion the category of experience, which is in its turn
divided into experience organized socially and experience organized
individually. In a system of organization such as Bogdanov’s, there is no
ontological distinction between the real and unreal, or, more precisely,
between objects of external and internal perception. Bogdanov creates a
framework for locating differences and commonalities in emotional and
psychophysical complexes, arriving at the conclusion that special psychic
complexes, i.e., emotions, do not differ from psychophysical complexes
either by their elements or by their material. The crucial assumption for
his theory is that emotions result from physiological changes in a human
body – an idea that comes from American pragmatism and lies at the
core of the Jamesian theory of emotions.
In 1884 William James in his ‘What is an Emotion?’ claims that
“the emotional brain-processes not only resemble the ordinary sensorial
brain-processes”, but also “are nothing but such processes variously
combined” (James 1884: 188). For James, emotions have a distinct bodily
expression; the standard emotions he distinguishes, e.g. surprise,
curiosity, rapture, fear, anger, lust, greed, and the like, are manifested
through identifiable body language. James proposes a disputable thesis
that “the bodily changes follow directly the PERCEPTION of the
exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS
the emotion” (James 1884: 189–190). James is opposed to the view that
an emotion is mental perception and that bodily expression follows
mental affection. James says that such a sequential order is incorrect; he
argues that “we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid
because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble, because we
are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be” (James 1884: 190). In the
case of ignorance of the bodily component, a perception is purely

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cognitive in form and lacks emotional warmth. As he states, “We might

then see the bear, and judge it best to run, receive the insult and deem it
right to strike, but we could not actually feel afraid or angry” (James
1884: 190). Therefore, according to James’s theory, emotions emerge at
the physiological level as the result of motor and sensory activity, and as
such constitute individual experience.
In 1885, and independently of James, Danish physician Carl
Lange developed similar ideas that physiological reaction is followed by a
corresponding emotional reaction. The James–Lange theory attracts
Bogdanov’s attention as it fosters the idea that innervational and tactile
elements play a pivotal role in emotional complexes and in shaping
individual and collective experience. Moreover, the James–Lange theory
has become the crucial point for Bogdanov’s departure from
empiriocriticism as developed by Avenarius and his movement towards
the conception of empiriomonism, which supports the ideas of Spinoza
and brings Bogdanov close to American pragmatism with its conception
of experience, which is based on active perception and interaction with
the world.
Delimiting the concept of experience in accordance with the
James–Lange theory, Bogdanov borrows from Avenarius the notion of
the ‘affectional’ that he revises and imbues with new meaning. For
Avenarius the ‘affectional’ (from Latin affectus – ‘emotion, passion’) is
emotional evaluation connected with an assessment of events. Avenarius
emphasizes that in order to be able to speak of the affectional the subject
of perception should consciously sense changes in a situation or in
phenomena and be interested in those changes. In his understanding of
biopotential and its balance, i.e., the ongoing relation of a biological
individual and the environment, suffering follows changes in vital-
divergence, and, on the contrary, pleasure accompanies restoration of the
balance; thus, the affectional embraces emotions balancing between
ecstasy and agony; it is perception of phenomena and events
accompanied by feelings of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Bogdanov
labels balance as stagnation and argues that the “passion for the
balance”, which he finds in Avenarius’ conception, is a mistake.2 He
criticizes Anatoliy Lunacharskiy, who published an abridged edition of
Critique of Pure Experience accompanied by his commentaries in 19053, for
his failure to see a resemblance between the notion of balance and the
notion of stagnation.
Falling back on Spinoza’s treatment of emotions and Theodor
Meynert’s work on mental processes, Bogdanov arrives at the idea that
2 Bogdanov favors dynamics and evolution; for him absence of vital-differences is not
an ideal state but, on the contrary, a regression.
3 Anatoliy Lunacharskiy, Bogdanov’s collaborator and brother-in-law, attended the
lectures of Avenarius on philosophy in Zurich University in 1895.

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the affectional is connected to the accumulation and dissimilation

(expenditures) of energy; it is an emotional expression of increase and
decrease in energy that concurs with what Bogdanov calls the algebraic
sign of biopotential, a mathematical way of measuring relevant forms of
energy (Bogdanov 1904–1906/2003: 135). In other words, emotional
experience is not only positively or negatively affectional (feeling pleasure
or feeling suffering), but it also possesses intensity and is connected with
physiological processes. Similar to Spinoza’s distinction between active
and passive emotions, Bogdanov distinguishes between positive and
negative ‘affectionals’ in the dynamic process of psychic and social
selection; therefore emotions serve as indicators of energy balance.
Relations between the organism and the environment transfigure into
immediate experience that has emotional character and is built with
affectionals of different intensity. James in his famous quotation sees the
world “as one great blooming, buzzing confusion” (James 1890/1950, I:
488). Jamesian ‘buzzing confusion’ resembles Bogdanov’s affectional
experiencing of life.4 In Bogdanov’s empiriomonism life is an
interconnected whole of feelings (Bogdanov 1904–1906/2003: 77), where
emotional complexes of human beings ‘affectionally’ interact with each
other. Bogdanov’s approach, rooted in Spinoza’s treatment of emotions,
Theodor Meynert’s work on mental processes and the James–Lange
theory, explains emotional responses in the organism-environment
interaction through connecting psychic and physiological processes. This
approach played a significant role in Eisenstein’s conception of
expressiveness in cinema.
Theory of expressiveness: Sergey Eisenstein
Sergey Eisenstein started to develop the theory of expressiveness

in the early 1920s and continued in the 1930s. In the ‘Programme of
Theory and Practice of Film Directing’ that he crafted in the 1930s for
students of the State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow, alongside
the practical training of voice and body, attention was paid to the
theoretical basis of expressing emotions. Eisenstein was familiar with
Ausdruckbewegung und Gestaltungskraft (1913) by Ludwig Klages and with the
system of Ausdrucksgymnastik (1922) of Rudolf Bode, and he learned by
practice the principles of Vsevolod Meyerhold’s biomechanics (see
Bochow 2005). In the ‘Programme’, the theory of expressiveness and its
history became crucial for understanding the nature of ‘expressive
movement’. One of the themes for critical analysis (just before the study
of Klages and Bode) was the Jamesian theory of emotions. Eisenstein
connects emotional impact that the film produces on the spectator with a
4 Vladimir Lenin sensed the link between Bogdanov and James and in his work
Materialism and Empiriocriticism (1909) criticized them both.

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reflective mirroring of the actor’s movement that, according to

Eisenstein, should be natural and programmed at the same time. From
his point of view it is necessary to master the system of ‘expressive
movements’ in order to achieve a desirable reaction of the audience (on
Eisenstein and the theory of expressiveness see Bochow 2000: 57–68). In
his article “The Method of Making Workers’ Films” (1925) Eisenstein
defines film content as “the summary of all that is subjected to the series
of shocks to which in a particular order the audience is to be exposed (Or
more crudely: so much per cent of material to fix the attention, so much
to rouse the bitterness, etc.)” and requires its organization “in accordance
with a principle that leads to the desired affect” (Eisenstein 2014: 28).
Discussing emotional effects, Eisenstein regularly refers to the
Jamesian theory of emotions. In the article “Stanislavsky and Loyola”
(1937) he cites James, paraphrasing the famous quote: “we cry not
because we feel sorry but we feel sorry because we cry”. Eisenstein seems
not so much interested in explaining the principles that govern the
connection between bodily movements and emotions; he does not care
much whether it is a chain of associations or a reflective action. More
important for him is the pars pro toto rule that takes place in this case; pars
(a certain angle or a position) is bound to trigger toto, which is an emotion
(Eisenstein 2004b: 503–504). Eisenstein finds the phenomenon described
by James, i.e., the connection between bodily changes and emotions, in
G. E. Lessing’s Hamburgische Dramaturgie (1767–69). Lessing seeks a way to
connect intentional movements with emotions that are experienced
involuntarily. In Lessing’s description of two types of actors (an emotional
actor who is incapable of expressing his feelings through expressive
movements, and an emotionally indifferent actor who is nevertheless
capable of expressing emotions he does not feel), Eisenstein finds an
interchange with Jamesian ideas and identifies montage as the principle
that unites both approaches, those of James and Lessing. Breaking down
the expression of emotions by the actor into its constituent elements, he
claims that emotion is the result of montage and therefore the difference
between the Lessing–James mechanism of emotions, on the one hand,
and the system of Stanislavsky, on the other, is a difference in elements
within a similar construction (Eisenstein 2004b: 506–507). Eisenstein
chooses to emphasize proto-structures rather than differences.
In James one can find an initial stage of what would later become
a technique of acting; it is the transition from event to arousal, then to
interpretation, and finally to emotion. Reciting James’s famous example
of a meeting with a bear (“we meet a bear, are frightened and run”),
Eisenstein agrees with James’s statement of the importance of emotions in
human interaction with the world: “without the bodily states following on
the perception, the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale,
colorless, destitute of emotional warmth. We might then see the bear, and

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judge it best to run, receive the insult and deem it right to strike, but we
should not actually feel afraid or angry” (James 1884: 190). However, in
Eisenstein’s view, Jamesian theory is applicable not so much to the actor
as to the spectator. The spectator empathically co-participates in
whatever happens on stage or on screen. Through mirroring and
imitating an actor’s bodily dynamics, the spectator is to achieve a
desirable emotional state. His perception is active; he co-produces and,
therefore, co-authors a film. Eisenstein states in his lecture on
biomechanics in 1935, “James’s point of view has a correct expression in
the theatre in the audience. It’s not that the actor makes a correct
movement and experiences a proper emotion – the audience reproduces
that movement in a concentrated form and through it enters into the
emotional state the actor is demonstrating. The secret of form lies here”
(see Law; Gordon 1996: 208). Eisenstein, who was expelled from
Meyerhold’s theatre in 1922 and from his school in 1924, however,
adopted some of Meyerhold’s ideas and tried to interpret them through
the lenses of the Jamesian theory of emotions or Bogdanov’s
empiriomonism, which he probably came to know during his Proletkult
years (1920–1925).
Mikhail Yampolskiy unveils the closeness of Eisenstein’s aesthetic
views, particularly during his activity in Proletkult, to the ideas of
Bogdanov, who was one of the Proletkult ideologists at that time
(Yampolskiy 2009: 49–50; Tikka 2008: 64–68). In 1923, Eisenstein, as
Yampolskiy points out, tried to combine Meyerhold’s biomechanics with
Bogdanov’s monistic energy theory and interpreted Meyerhold’s acting as
“a mysterious and invisible function of individuality, which is discharging
of abundance of energy” (Yampolskiy 2009: 49). Yampolskiy points out
that Bogdanov based his monistic conception of world organization on
the interaction of active and reactive forces. In Bogdanov’s view, any
activity, decomposing or combinatorial, inevitably meets resistance, weak
or considerable. However, resistance is not a separate independent
notion; it is an antagonist to another activity. When two people are
fighting, the activity of the first one is the resistance for the second one
and vice versa (Bogdanov 1990: 427–428). Bogdanov’s ideas of vital-
divergence are concordant at large with the theory of expressiveness, if
one does, as did Eisenstein, see expressiveness as conflict, impulse and
struggle.
Eisenstein was familiar with Bogdanov’s concept of conflict and,
as was already discussed, he was also influenced by the James–Lange
theory, which serves as a conceptual base for Bogdanov’s theory of the
affectional. In an unnamed manuscript written in Almaty in 1943
Eisenstein reviews the fictitious and the factual in connection with the
Jamesian theory of emotions. In the situation of watching movies, the
spectator is an active perceiver; mirroring an actor’s expressive

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movements and experiencing situations on screen, he co-authors a film.

In this case one can speak of a fictive emotion-action; the entirety of
feelings (sensations) that the spectator experiences during the film or
performance creates an illusion that he has done some work and,
therefore, there is an illusion of an amount of abundant energy. Despite
the fictitious character of interaction with the environment on screen, the
spectator experiences a non-fictitious feeling of satisfaction with a film or
performance. The illusion that substitutes for a spectator (a viewer) a
normal organic activity can be explained in terms of vital-divergence with
Eisenstein’s emphasis on energy (Eisenstein 2002: 52–53). Eisenstein
understands emotions as embodied reactions to the interaction with the
environment (situation), and in a close reading of his writings it seems
that he applies Bogdanov’s notion of energy to those situations, though
without mentioning Bogdanov’s name.
In his Tenth Anniversary of Excommunication from Marxism, Bogdanov
finalizes the conception of universal substitution that he initially develops
in “Empiriomonism”. He explains the principle of universal empirical
substitution, which is for him a method of organizing human experience,
as “a replacement of an object (or an event) with another, real or
imaginary. For example, works of art are replaced with images, together
with feelings and moods that they cause in a reader, viewer or listener;
instead of a ray of the sun is the sum of color rays produced through a
prism. Such kind of replacement is to be intentional; it should be done
rationally and help to increase knowledge, understanding and
foreknowing of things. Then the substitution is objective, otherwise it is
incorrect’ (Bogdanov 1914/1995: 52–53). Bogdanov sees the origin of the
substitution in human communication, since we decipher the body
language of other people through the substitution of their movements
with feelings using the operation of mindreading. He claims the
continuity of substitution in experience and establishes the interrelation
between physiological and psychical processes (Bogdanov 1904–
1906/2003: 112–113; Bogdanov 1902: 251). Bogdanov singles out five
types of substitution, however, and for the theory of expressiveness the
most relevant ones are those that substitute the psychical with the
physical, or the physical with the psychical (Bogdanov 1904–1906/2003:
128–129). Bogdanov’s types of substitution with the physical correspond
with Eisenstein’s theory of expressive movements, including his attempt
to use what he called the ‘emotional script”, created by the scriptwriter
Aleksandr Rzheshevskiy.
In his essay on the form of a film script (1929) Eisenstein proposes
the notion of an ‘emotional script’, which is “an imaginary narrative of a
prospective viewer telling the story of a film that impressed him”
(Eisenstein 2004a: 465–466). The emotional script is not a step-by-step
narration of a story, and it does not provide detailed descriptions of film

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frames; it gives an emotional impulse to the film director that he will

employ in his work so as to evoke the projected emotions. The idea of an
emotional script, though it failed, was in the spirit of the artistic
experiments of the time that were aimed at the psychological involvement
of a spectator, creating works of art in which a viewer could be engaged
and whose emotional reactions could be guided.
Nikolay Zhinkin in his 1920s essay “Psychology of Film
Perception” develops the idea that the perception of artworks is not
necessarily a one-way communication. Perception is the way to open a
door for other people into an area otherwise inaccessible. The question
that interests Zhinkin is whether a reversed communication is possible in
the situation of watching movies. And if it is possible, then the next
question is where to search for it – in the behavior of a spectator or in the
intentions of a film director. It is obvious that in cinema the reaction of
the audience will not change his way of acting on screen, and therefore
the plot of a film is of importance; the plot determines the situation and
the structure of perception. Zhinkin reveals the paradoxical situation that
perception is not in the system of receiving devices but at the exit of the
scheme. However, he finds it is possible to predetermine the process of
film perception. Preceding the idea of inter-subjective synchronization
Zhinkin sees the main goal of filmmakers in finding ways to focus the
viewers’ attention and to increase their activity in the process of watching
movies. A film creator, e.g. a film director or a scriptwriter, should see a
film before it has been created as if through the eyes of a prospective
viewer (Zhinkin 1971: 214–254).
Eisenstein and Rzheshevskiy in Bezhin Meadow (1937) tried to
accomplish (though they never completed)5 the conception of an
emotional script that guides the creative process of a film director as well
as the perception of a prospective viewer. Rzheshevskiy saw a future film
as a unified whole (similar to Bogdanov’s organizational views), cemented
by the programmed emotions of a future spectator. A film with an
emotional script as its backbone requires a montage based on the
principle of association in order to evoke built-in emotions. Rzheshevskiy
could be seen as a fair example of a scriptwriter who seeks to influence a
film director, forcing him to pay attention to the acts and mental states of
characters. Episodes are connected not by chronological order but
because of the author’s associations and thought flow. The scriptwriter
was almost forcing a film director to see the future film through the
spectators’ eyes, e.g. in the episode in Bezhin Meadow where a drunk father
talks to his son Stepok:
5 One of the first emotional scripts and one of the first failures of Rzheshevskiy is A
Simple Case, filmed by Vsevolod Pudovkin (1930). Pudovkin says that when he first
read Rzheshevskiy’s emotional script he had a strange, unfamiliar feeling, as the script
was disturbing like a literary work (Pudovkin 1982: 353).

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“Eat up, my little son… Who brought you into this world?”, he
suddenly asked Stepok, very softly.
The boy continued eating.
“Who brought you into this world?? Me or somebody in the Political
Department? he asked again, softly.
“My mother”, answered Stepok, just as quietly, and calmly putting
down his spoon, he got up from the table but his father’s drunken words
followed after him.
“When our God created the heavens, the water and the earth and
people like you and me, my dear little son, he said…”
“What did he say?”, asked Stepok, smiling and gathering up his things,
not turning his head.
“He said”, said the voice of his father, “Be fruitful and multiply, but if
the son betrays his father, kill him like a dog, God says in the Holy Book, kill
him immediately”.
“Did he say that?”, said Stepok without turning his head, smiling and
moving towards the door…
Suddenly, his father, like a drunken bear, punched little Stepok in the
chest with his paws and whispered, his face distorted with indescribable hatred:
“I’ll light the stove… Do you hear me? Right now… I’ll chop you into pieces…
I’ll put you in the pot… Do you hear me? I’ll cook you… And eat you… All by
myself… With bread and pickles… (Rzheshevskiy 1982: 225).
The emotional line of the film narration and the emotional link
between the spectator and what is shown on screen unites Eisenstein’s
theory of expressiveness with Bogdanov’s theory of an ‘affectional’, which
is in turn based on the James–Lange theory.
Bogdanov, Eisenstein, and Neurofilmology
In contemporary neuroscience emotions are central to cognition.

Thus, Antonio Damasio, drawing on theories of James and Lange, argues
for the importance of emotions for the evolution of consciousness. For
Damasio emotions are bodily changes that trigger feelings, which he
defines as mapping such changes in brain structures,6 therefore “feelings
do not arise necessarily from the actual body states […] but rather from
actual maps constructed at any given moment in the body-sensing
regions” (Damasio 2003: 112). Asserting the importance of body
representations of the brain, Damasio explicates Spinoza’s views on the
affections of the body (corporis affections) as underlying the theory of
James and Lange. Spinoza, contrary to the Cartesian notion of the
passions, uses the term affect [affectum] that he understands as “affections
6This understanding leads him to distinguish among three closely related phenomena:
“an emotion, the feeling of that emotion, and knowing that we have a feeling of that emotion”
(Damasio 1999: 8).
Bugaeva___________BOGDANOV AND EISENSTEIN ON EMOTIONS____________Page 10 of

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[affectiones] of the body by which the body’s power [potentia] of acting is

increased or diminished, aided or restrained, and, at the same time, the
ideas of these perceptions” (Spinoza 1677/1996: E3d3). Bogdanov in
Empiriomonism endorses such understanding but replaces the notion of
power with the notion of energy. Damasio never refers to Bogdanov;
however, his recent explanation of the mechanism of emotions helps
retrospectively to understand Bogdanov’s conception of the affectional, as
both approaches are rooted in the James–Lange theory and Spinoza’s
corporis affections.
Today, the theoretical considerations of Eisenstein and Bogdanov
are relevant to 21st century scientists. They could be considered as
working theories, for instance for studying viewers watching movies. In
this case the perception of the ‘exciting fact’ on the screen comes first,
then this perception is followed by the bodily changes and afterwards
comes the feeling of these changes, which is, according to James, the
emotion. The viewer is immersed in the film milieu and identifies himself
with one or another character of the film. The interaction of the
character with the environment on the screen and his movement in space
due to the mirroring may cause bodily response in the viewer. Mirroring
here refers to a situation where a viewer subconsciously mimics and lives
through the bodily changes of the screen characters that he watches. He
may instinctively respond by moving aside or may wiggle, vibrate, fidget,
hum and flap in excitement or impatience. According to
neuropsychologist Jeffrey Zacks, though, when speaking about mirroring
in the situation of watching movies we miss an important point, namely
that mirroring, for instance, a facial expression is not necessarily the same
as feeling an emotion. Zacks further points out, “most surprising about
the experience of emotion in the movies is not the grimacing and smiling,
but the subjective experience of the emotion” (Zacks 2015: 67).
To describe the connection between visual images and motor
activity James uses the term ‘ideo-motor actions’: “Wherever movement
follows unhesitatingly and immediately the notion of it in the mind, we
have ideo-motor action” (James 1890/1950, II: 522). Zacks correlates the
Jamesian understanding of the mechanism of emotions and the notion of
ideo-motor actions with the way we associate an action with events in the
world (Zacks 2015: 4). Following this, Zacks proposes to distinguish
between two pathways that can produce an emotion from the action. The
first is the appraisal path that is an emotional response to the actor’s
mimics and motion and the situation. The second is the Jamesian path
that activates the emotional program linked to facial expressions and
ideo-motor actions. If one follows this line of thinking, namely that in
everyday existence we may distinguish several levels of the self, we may
also assume that these several levels are active also when watching
movies. Thus, depending on the level of consciousness involved in a

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certain period of the process of movie watching, we may speak about

emotional immersion (core consciousness) and back-to-reality surveillance
(extended consciousness). Consciousness of bodily changes and emotional
expressiveness emerges in the neocortical environment as an extension of
the organism’s unconscious awareness of the environment. The
immersion of the viewer in a cinematographic reality leads to the birth of
emotions caused by the interaction of the subject with the environment in
the virtual reality of the movie. At the basis of such an approach is the
assumption that cinematographic emotions have a biological basis, a view
to some extent recognized by contemporary cognitivist theories (Grodal
1999; Tikka 2008; Smith 2003). These views can be argued indirectly to
be indebted to the James–Lange theory of emotions, but one may also
point to a previously unrecognized link to Bogdanov’s conception of the
affectional and biopotential as part of this intellectual inheritance.
Bogdanov uses the metaphor of a phonograph in order to
describe the psychic processes that take place in communication. When
shared, experience is different from the original experience and at the
same time is related to it – the same way indentations in the foil of a
phonograph, on one hand, differ from the melody they reflect and, on the
other, are dependent on its structure. Through the movement of a
phonograph cylinder the indentations form a basis for reproducing the
melody. Similarly, other peoples’ articulations become a basis for
replicating their feelings and emotions, i.e., the second reflection of these
emotions (Bogdanov 1904–1906/2003: 80). This is where Eisenstein’s
theory of expressiveness comes into play. Films are forms of conveying
and transferring experience, including the emotional. Initially aimed at
expressing and causing certain emotions, Eisenstein’s films, using
expressive movements and exploiting the connection of the psychical and
the physiological, are creative and transformative of experience and
aspire to change mentality.
References
Bochow, Jörg. 2000. “Eisenstein – patognomic? Fisiognomicheskie aspekty v teorii

vyrazitel’nosti v filmakh Sergeya Eisensteina”. Kinovedcheskie zapiski 47: 57–68.
--------------. 2005. Das Theater Meyerholds und die Biomechanik. Berlin: Alexander Verlag.
Bogdanov, A.A. 1902. Filosofiya zhivogo opyta. Populyarnye ocherki: Materializm,
empiriocriticizm, dialekticheskiy materializm. Nauka budushchego. Peterburg: izdanie M. I.
Semenova.
--------------. 1904–1906/2003. Empiriomonizm. Stat’i po filosofii. Moscow: Respublika.
--------------. 1914/1995. ‘Desyatiletie otlucheniya ot marksizma. Yubileyniy sbornik.
1904–1914’. in Neizvestniy Bogdanov. Kniga 3 (1995). Edited by N.A. Antonova.
Moscow: AIRO – XX.
--------------. 1990. “Sistemnaya organizatsiya materii.” In Na perelome. Filosofiya i
mirovozzrenie. Filosofskie diskussii 20-kh godov. Moscow: Politizdat.

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Damasio, Antonio. 1999. The Feeling of What Happens. Orlando, FL: Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt.
--------------. 2003. Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. Orlando, FL:
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Eisenstein, Sergey. 2002. “S zaranee obdumannym namereniem (Montazh
attraktsionov)”. In Eisenstein, Sergey, Metod, 1. Moscow: Muzey kino.
--------------. 2004a. “O forme stsenariya”, in Eisenstein, Sergey. Neravnodushnaya priroda,
1. Moscow: Muzey kino.
--------------. 2004b. “Stanislavskiy i Loyola.” In Eisenstein, Sergey. Neravnodushnaya
priroda, 1. Moscow: Muzei kino.
--------------. 2014. “The Method of Making Workers’ Films.” In Film Manifestos and
Global Cinema Cultures: A Critical Anthology, edited by Scott MacKenzie. University
of California Press.
Grodal, Torben. 1999. Moving Pictures: A New Theory of Film Genres, Feelings and Cognition.
Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
James, William. 1884. “What is an Emotion?” Mind 9, 34: 188–205.
--------------. 1890/1950. The Principles of Psychology. New York: Dover Publications, Vol.
I–II.
---------------. 1905. “The Place of Affectional Facts in a World of Pure Experience”. The
Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 2, 11: 281–287.
Law, Alma, and Mel Gordon. 1996. Meyerhold, Eisenstein and Biomechanics: Actor Training in
Revolutionary Russia. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc.
Pudovkin, Vsevolod. 1982. “Tvorchestvo literatora v kino. O kinematograficheskom
stsenarii Rzheshevskogo”. In A. G. Rzheshevskiy. Zhizn’. Kino. Moskva: Iskusstvo:
353–358.
Rzheshevskiy, A. G. 1982. “Stsenarii. Bezhin lug.” In A. G. Rzheshevskiy. Zhizn’. Kino.
Moscow: Iskusstvo, 215–298.
Smith, Greg M. 2003. The Film Structure and the Emotional System. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Spinoza, Benedict de. 1677/1996. Ethics. London: Penguin Classics.
Tan, Ed S. 1995. Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film: Film As An Emotion Machine.
London: Routledge.
Tikka, Pia. 2008. Enactive Cinema: Simulatorium Eisensteinense. Helsinki: Aalto University
Press.
Yampolskiy, Мikhail. 2009. “Ot Proletkul’ta k Platonu: Eisenstein i proekt smyslovoy
samoorganizatsii zhizni”. Kinovedcheskie zapiski 89: 45–89.
Zacks, Jeffrey M. 2015. Flicker: Your Brain On Movies. Oxford, NY: Oxford University
Press.
Zhinkin, N. I. 1971. “Psikhologiya kinovospriyatiya”. Kinematograf segodnya 2. Moscow:
Iskusstvo: 214–254.

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BOGDANOV’S PODBOR AND PROLETKULT:

AN ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS PERSPECTIVE
Peter Dudley_______________________________________________________________
If one accepts (following Poustilnik 1995 and 1998) that Bogdanov's

intention in using the term podbor over otbor aimed at defining the
process by which the ‘system in its environment’ comes into and
continues in existence, one is also constrained to accept that such
systems are active agents in the definition of self. Systems that
create and maintain themselves in this way, actively ‘assemble’ or
construct themselves in reference to the nature of their
relationship with their environments, rather than passively
survive in relation to environmental conditions. By extending this
interpretation (of the choice of podbor over otbor) to the
proletariat, as individually and collectively adaptive system, it
becomes possible to visualize the Proletkult as a conscious project
to create an environment where it (the proletariat) could construct
and adapt itself as a politically active, relevant and dominant

class. Thereby, placing creative and cultural workers in the
forefront of radical social change.

ISBN 103204787103ABC
Dudley__________________PODBOR AND PROLETKULT_________________Page 1 of 15

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Introduction
Adaptive systems do not exist in isolation, they are always, and

of necessity, embedded in an environment with which they interact.
Understood in this way adaptive systems are identifiable as those that
are capable of changing their behaviour and their structure in
response to environmental conditions. Such changes can be taken to
be indicative of some internal stress caused by the interaction of the
system with its environment; and that the purpose of such systems (to
the extent that any given system under consideration can be said to be
purposeful) will be to act such as to bring about the reduction or
removal of that stress.
It is suggested that the Proletkult (Proletarian Cultural-
Educational Organization) as part of a wider social change movement
can usefully be conceived of as integral part of an adaptive system.
And that Aleksandr Bogdanov, whilst he may or may not have
conceived it in this way, had the intellectual models available from
Tektology 1913 – 1922 to be able to recognize its utility when viewed as
a theoretical and historical necessity to the ongoing viability of the
revolutionary movement. Bogdanov was certainly aware of the
importance of the impact of culturally defined habits and diversions on
the ability of Labour to revitalize itself, for example, where the
“cultural needs of workers acquire [a] pressing character” (Bogdanov
1996: 287) cultural considerations such as “living connexion with
nature … theatres, museums, books … must come into the
calculation” (Bogdanov 1996: 295). From this it can be argued that
three particular insights from Tektology, i.e., ‘bi-regulator’, podbor and
‘crisis’, provide a basis for analyzing the conception of the function of
the Proletkult. The Proletkult can be viewed less as a crude anti-
bourgeois reaction and more as one which allows the conception of
culture (regardless of its detailed content), specifically a consciously
designed cultural movement, as a structural and political tool for the
delivery and continuation of socio-political change.
Antonio Gramsci’s notion of cultural hegemony on the part of
the dominant group, class, or ideology suggests that any cultural form
that seeks to engender socio-political change will of necessity sit on the
margins of what is considered to be cultural. A contemporary Marxist
consideration of the political aspects of theatrical form taken from

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Augusto Boal’s analysis in Theatre of the Oppressed (Boal 1979)1 of the

development of theatrical forms is examined here as proxy for cultural
form. Boal’s work provides an insight into how this particular
[cultural] form has been used to serve political ends from Aristotle’s
conception of ‘coercive tragedy’ to his own ‘poetics of the oppressed’ -
and are rightly to be regarded as indicators of the cultural dominance
inherent in cultural forms.
The paper proceeds in four parts:

1. Political aspects of culture: a consideration of the ways, and
the extent to, which cultural products (in this case theatre) influence
society;
2. Elements of tektology: a consideration of those elements of
tektology that may have allowed Bogdanov to regard the Proletkult as
part of a wider adaptive system;
3. Adaptive systems: a consideration of the principles of
adaptive theory and their relevance to social change; and
4. Reflections: a consideration of the challenges the adaptive
approach poses to the idea of culture as socio-political change agent.
1. Man making Society …
“… all theatre is necessarily political … a weapon. A very

efficient weapon” (Boal1979.
In these lines from the first pages of Boal’s book on political
theatre, a clear reflection of the comparison that Stalin drew between
ideas and weaponry can be seen.2 In the wrong hands (or heads) all
ideas, most especially those that speak of change or that run counter to
the established order, are more dangerous than guns.
Whether these beliefs are viewed from the standpoint of ideas in
general, or, in Boal’s case, the more specific notion of the theatre as a
particular mode of the expression of ideas, they share a common
recognition that any danger inherent in ideas is in the extent to which
they inspire or inform action. To paraphrase Marx: Not just to interpret
the world, but to change it. Thus, danger to the dominant faction or class
arises both on the part of those that originate ideas, and, on the part of

1 A Brazilian theatre director, Augusto Boal coined the notion of the ‘theatre of the
oppressed’ in the 1950s, and later published a series of analyses based on his
practical work.
2
Reflection in more ways than one, as Boal’s intention is exactly the reverse of
Stalin’s. Nevertheless the recognition of the power of ideas is the same.

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those that are exposed to and may act on them. And, by extension, if
ideas are to be rendered safe, they must be controlled - either by
controlling the means of the production of ideas, e.g., directed
advancement or inhibition of idea producing individuals, or by
manipulating or distorting language such that ideas cannot be formed,
e.g., Orwell’s Newspeak; or by controlling the means by which ideas are
promulgated, i.e., censorship in any of its many forms.
These mechanisms of control are apparent in Boal’s analysis of
theatrical forms. Beginning in ancient Greece, where, in order to take
control of the Dionysian feast, which traditional followed the
completion of the harvest, Boal (quoting Hauser 1957) has the
tragedians in the pay of the state, retained to create a restraining
structure around the workers’ potentially dangerous revelry.
“The tragedians are in fact state bursars and state purveyors –
the state pays them for the plays that are performed, but naturally
does not allow pieces to be performed that would run counter to its
policies or the interests of the governing classes” (Boal 1979:
Introduction).
According to Boal, the Aristotelian theory of tragedy casts it as
a form of social control designed to ensure that the workers were
brought to a point where they understood their social failings in
relation to the state and landowners, and were encouraged, by way of
the didactic elements of plays, to self-impose limits on their behaviour.
For Boal, “Aristotle constructs the first, extremely powerful poetic-
political system for the intimidation of the spectator” (Boal 1979:
Introduction).
In the Aristotelian form of tragedy the hero, or main
protagonist, has a single, fatal, tragic flaw which eventually brings about
his or her downfall - According to Boal, it is by recognizing this flaw in
themselves and witnessing the hero’s downfall that the audience is
brought to a point of catharsis – partly due to terror at the sight of the
hero’s destruction and partly due to the release of tension caused as
order is restored.
In this coercive form of theatre the spectators “delegate power
to the characters to act and think in their place [and] in so doing …
purge themselves of their tragic flaw … of something capable of
changing society” (Boal 1979: 155).
Here, Boal is defining a particular cultural product as a
method by which to enforce social change. And, although he is
defining that power as conservative, as serving the interest of the status
quo, it is behavioural change nevertheless. It forces a change in the

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internal or authentic standards by which behaviour is judged – from

standards that may be in the best interest of the self to those that are in
the best interests of the dominant group.
From here Boal moves forward through mediaeval theatre on
which he comments that, in so far as the point of Aristotelian tragedy
“was its cathartic function, its function as a purifier of the citizen [and]
in this sense, the medieval theatre was Aristotelian” (Boal 1979: 56).
And onto bourgeois theatre which “While its principal
opposition was to the feudal nobility… directed its energies towards
the exaltation of individual man - that same man who was later
submitted to severe reduction, by that same bourgeoisie, when its
principal opponent came to be the proletariat” (Boal 1979: 65).
Until this point in his analysis Boal seems to be asserting that
theatre has been controlled by and served the purposes of the
dominant group in any given society. Whether this group be the
aristocracy of ancient Greece, the Church, the feudal aristocracy, or
the bourgeoisie, the role of theatre seems to have been two-fold: it
served the purpose of both the lens, through which the individual
viewed society, and the mirror, through which he or she saw
themselves reflected as members of that society. It functioned as a
mechanism by which individuals could self-correct any failings on
their part, and thus become more appropriate members of that
society. Thus, following Boal, conventional theatre situated both
temporally and societaly, will always function as a lens whereby the
audience can be in no doubt as to both the acceptable and
unacceptable values of that society, and as a mirror whereby the
audience can see themselves and their behaviours reflected in relation
to the values of that society, and, furthermore, a mechanism by which
they can (vicariously through their empathy with the protagonists)
purge themselves of any failings in relation to the values of that society.
In this way theatre can be viewed as conservative enculturation device.
Yet Brechtian theatre is where Boal begins his consideration of
what radical theatre may look like: “Brecht’s poetics is that of the
enlightened vanguard: the world is revealed as subject to change …
the spectator does not delegate power to the characters to think in his
place, although he continues to delegate power … to act …” (Boal,
1979: 155).
Here Boal describes an inversion of previous forms of theatre
and the ideas of society to which they were appropriate. Where
conventional, or conservative, theatre was deemed to assume the
audience or the individual members of society were malleable, Boal's

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analysis of Brecht moves this malleability to society. No longer is the

corrective direction from the dominant group in society to its
disempowered members, society itself has become the object of
change. But however much it is possible for a disempowered group to
imagine a different future, they are not empowered to create it for
themselves. Brechtian theatre retains to itself the right to action; it is “a
preparation for action” (Boal 1979: 155), but it does not provide the
disempowered with the means to act themselves.
Boal completes his review of theatrical forms with his own
‘theatre of the oppressed’, which he describes as [T]he poetics of
liberation: the spectator no longer delegates power to the characters
either to think or to act in his place. The spectator frees himself; he
thinks and acts for himself! Theatre is action! (Boal 1979:155).
In the ‘theatre of the oppressed’, the spectators become the
actors. They become an integral part of the production able to both
question the motivations of the characters presented and to change the
course of the action, and, in this way are empowered to define the
production in such a manner that it reflects their experience and their
desires. As Boal says: “the theatre is not revolutionary in itself; but
have no doubts, it is a rehearsal of revolution!” (Boal 1979: 155).
Boal, in presenting his analysis of theatrical forms in relation to
the social structures they support, also, by definition, provides an
analysis of social forms that can be represented as set out in the
diagram below. And, by considering mechanisms by which this can be
achieved, that is, that coercive theatre is suited to a monothetic
acquisitive society and that what he describes as liberating theatre is
suited to a more distributive society and, what is more, the extent to
which this liberating theatre can be used to instigate the change from
one form to the other, demonstrates that cultural forms and cultural
products can be used to bring about, or, at least, prepare for social
change.
Locus Monothetic Antithetic Polythetic
Divine Right or Intellectualist Didactic

External
Natural Order Socialism Utopianism
Internal Acquisition Labour Synthesis

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From this demonstration it seems reasonable to assert that

culture or cultural products mediate the interaction of the individual
with society, whether this be coercive tragedy in the Aristotelian sense
which presumes the malleability of the mass citizenry and uses
intimidatory drama in order to force them to align their desires with
those of the dominant faction; or Boal’s liberational drama which
assumes the malleability of society and uses dramatic technique in
order to politicize the citizenry in order that they are able change it.
The existence of both cases alongside each other suggests that both
individual and society be considered malleable and that the form each
takes is the result of a dynamic interplay each with the other with this
interplay mediated by whichever cultural form is dominant.
2. Elements of tektology
It is clear that Bogdanov recognised the role of culture and

cultural products as, at the very least, a form of the replenishment of
labour power (see above). The argument that will be proposed in this
section is that, whether or not Bogdanov understood the role of
culture as part of an interactive system - comprised of the individual
and society - and, therefore, as a tool for the advancement and
maintenance of the revolution, he certainly had conceptual models
available (from Tektology) that would allow him to construct it as part of
an adaptive system and, therefore, conceptualize the necessity of the
Proletkult as an overtly political tool.
Podbor is generally translated in Tektology (even my edition of
1996 of Book I) as ‘selection’ in the Darwinian sense. However
Poustilnik has asserted that this rendering de-natures the term which is
more akin to ‘assemblage’ or, perhaps, (self) construction when used
by Bogdanov (Poustilnik 1995). This interpretation suggests a reading
of his ‘complexes’, especially complexes that are subject to what
Bogdanov calls “progressive podbor” (Bogdanov 1996: 190 ff.) as
dynamic, and subject to change in relation to their interactions with
their environments. What is more, this change is cumulative – such
that, although each change in isolation could be considered
equilibrating, i.e., tending towards a more (local and immediate)
equilibrial state, over time the accumulation of such changes could
lead to fundamental changes in the nature of the complex. For
Bogdanov, under the conditions of progressive podbor, “the structure of
a complex … [is] what is changing …[pointing to] the growing

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complexity and in-homogeneity of the inner correlations” (Bogdanov

1996: 196-197) or, in conditions of adversity, its reverse.
For Bogdanov, podbor was to be understood as more than
simply passive growth in the size of a complex, it was the potential for
structural change. And that this structural change was not a direct
function of changes in its environment but a function of changes in the
environment as mediated by the relationships between the internal components of
the complex and between the complex as a whole and its environment.
That is, under conditions of progressive podbor – whether
positive or negative – the cumulative complexification (or
simplification) caused by the interaction of the complexes with their
environment eventually drives them to a point where their current
structure is no longer able to maintain integrity and they are forced to
adopt a new and more appropriate structural form. They reach a
point of crisis, where “they cease to be what they were … and form
some new system” (Bogdanov 1996:157).
The last element of tektology relevant to this section is the “bi-
regulator” which Bogdanov describes as a “combination in which two
complexes mutually regulate each other” (Bogdanov 1989, Book 2:
97). That is, in the context of the above, each stands as the (sufficiently
dominant element of the) environment of the other.
The bi-regulator
When two complexes, each subject to the processes of
progressive podbor, and therefore the potential for structural crises
consequent thereon, are brought into a relationship of bi-regulation,
the nature of the relationship will be such that, however else and
however much they are impacted by their wider environments, each
will act to modify or constrain the behaviour of the other to the extent
that their relationship is maintained.
A traditional interpretation of this would be that, in effect,
internal crises (in either of the participants) are prevented, or that such
crises as occur leave the participant in which they occur better
adapted to the needs of the other. That is, either the complex as a
whole achieves a state of ongoing stability, or, following an internal
crisis, the participant subject to structural change takes on a form in
which it can (perhaps minimally) survive whilst reducing the internal
stress this places on its counterpart. Where neither of these outcomes is
the case there is either a complete disruption of the bi-regulative
arrangement (the pair separate) or, where the arrangement continues,
a radical redefinition of the relationship between them.

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It is relatively straightforward to see from this that, in the

second case, where the two participants of the bi-regulator cannot
completely separate, the radical redefinition of their relationship can
be seen to be (an outcome of) revolution. And that, following
revolution, in circumstances where new trajectories have become
possible, the former case is relevant. That is, that, it is possible for the
two participants to co-determine each other's future by acting in such
a way as to maintain some form of dynamic internal balance between
them. And to the extent that the Proletkult was intended to provide a
“distinctly proletarian culture which must arise and replace the
doomed culture of the bourgeoisie … [and the extent that it was held
that] Art organizes social experience by means of living images, not
only in the sphere of cognition, but also in that of feeling and desires.
As a consequence it is a most powerful weapon for the organization of
collective forces, and in a class society, of class forces” (SovLit).
It can reasonably be asserted that the original founders of the
Proletkult movement considered it to function in much the same way
as Boal considered his theatre, if not as revolution in itself, then, at the
very least as a permanent preparation for, or perpetuation of,
revolution.
To the extent to which “the Proletkult organized literary
studios to provide working-class readers with an elementary literary
education” (SovLit), it can be argued that its aim was to provide the
ability for the proletariat to devise and develop the mechanisms
through which it represented both society and itself and, therefore,
created the conditions whereby the proletariat was able to create an
art form which was able to perpetuate the proletarian revolution.
However, it is also interesting to reflect on the extent to which
the desire of the Proletkult for autonomy from the formal state
apparatus, and the resistance this met from the People’s Commissariat
for Enlightenment, eventually defined the extent to which the goals of
any new proletarian culture, as enacted, came to be internally or
externally generated. This is to ask whether the state changed to suit
the proletariat or the proletariat was changed to suit the state.

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3. Adaptive Systems
The purpose of a system is what it does …And what the viable

system does is to survive (Beer). 3
Writing earlier, in the cybernetics literature, the psychiatrist W.
Ross Ashby, quoting E. H. Starling, has this to say:
“Organism and environment form a whole and must be
viewed as such” (Ashby 1960: 8).4
It is clear from this that Ashby is thinking of much the same
structure as Bogdanov. The notion of organism in the environment
that Ashby introduces - one where “the organism affects the
environment, and the environment affects the organism …” (Ashby
1960: 37) - is again a reflection of Bogdanov’s bi-regulator.
The theme of ‘system-in-environment’ is fundamental to
adaptive theory and it is one that is consistent with both Bogdanov’s
bi-regulator and the Marxian notion that man and society co-create
each other.
Ashby’s Ultrastable System

Many of the adaptive models are informed by a general area of
study called cybernetics, some form or other of which always lies at the
core of adaptive theory. The word itself is a development of the Greek
word kybernetes meaning, roughly, steersmanship, and was used by Plato
in the Republic5 around 370 BC to compare the activities of social
governance or statesmanship with those of a person steering a boat
across open water, needing to make small corrective adjustments to
take account of the ebb and flow of the tides and currents in order to
achieve the goal of arriving safely into port. The Latin equivalent of
kybernetes is gubernator – the root of the English word ‘governor’ which
reveals its mixed origins by referring to both ‘a ruler’ and that part of a
self-regulating device that does the regulating, e.g., the thermostat on a
central heating or air-conditioning device.
Ashby’s work in cybernetics led to the to the definition of the
‘Law of Requisite Variety’ (Ashby 1964) and the ‘Ultrastable system’
(Ashby 1960). Ashby’s research into the construction of learning

3 The term ‘viable system’, which is implicit in the works by Beer cited in the
references, was often used by him in public addresses but is not found in his
published works.
4 Note that Ashby, who includes Starling in the index to Design for a Brain, does not
give a bibliographic reference.

5 See the translation of Waterfield 1994.

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machines using cybernetic principles led to the insight that the basic
model needed to be extended to include a second feedback loop – one
that assessed not the success or failure of a particular activity but the
impact of that activity, or, more correctly, the impact of the
environmental response to that activity, on the acting system or
organization. With the introduction of the ultrastable system Ashby
makes it explicit that action cannot exist in a vacuum; rather, in a
sentient or perceiving system, it exists in the context of the benefit of
the system as a whole.
Where Ashby’s model identifies the need for a systemic or
organizational context to be present in order for learning to occur,
Beer’s Viable System Model (VSM) extends the notion of the ‘reacting
system’ (Beer 1985). His extension takes it from being a simple or
single homogeneous activity and defines the conditions necessary to
manage a complex of potentially heterogeneous activities which,
collectively and individually, contribute to the creation of the systemic
whole. Beer also extends the ability for organizational learning and/or
adaptation by introducing the concept of “’recursion’ (structural
similarity between levels of organizational complexity) which allows
for some degree of autonomy in the making of local adaptive change
so long as it does not compromise the integrity of the whole.
Beer’s Viable System Model

What is clear when comparing the models is that they share
two common threads. The first is structural, i.e., that Ashby’s ‘essential
variables’, ‘second feedback loop’ and ‘reacting system’ parallel Beer’s
‘systems 5, 4, and 3’;6 the second is the function of their proxies for
organizational identity (i.e., the ‘essential variables’ and ‘system 5’). In
both cases these function as external (and therefore unchangeable)
arbiters of rightness. Identity (and, therefore rightness) is fixed for the
lifetime of the system or organization. Whilst this may hold in
mechanical or individual biological systems it is clearly not the case at
the level of (biological) population evolution or those of psychological,
social or cultural change where ‘what-good-looks-like’ is dynamic, the
result of learning, experience and changing desire.

6
This is figuratively, rather than strictly, correct because of the additional
complexity introduced in the VSM which requires the formal separation of
“System 3” as a unifying management function. Because it utilizes only a single
“reacting system” this is not necessary in Ashby’s model.

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The trialogue
The trialogue, developed by Dudley (Dudley 2000; 2007) as an
extension of the models of Ashby and Beer, overcomes this problem
by rendering organizational identity ‘plastic’ – an emergent and
dynamic entity existing at the intersection of environmental and
structural possibility. There is an obvious (if latent) problem with this:
in the absence of an established moral or strategic compass, there is
the possibility that the organization becomes capricious, wantonly
opportunistic, or possibly catatonic. However when it is accepted that
the trialogue operates as the management element of a viable system
and is therefore subject to the embededness implied by Beer’s notion
of recursion, it becomes apparent that there will be both ethico-moral
and performativity imperatives (as an accepted function of
membership) which will tend to hold local behaviours away from
(accepted as) dysfunctional extremes.
Understood in this way, the trialogue can be said to provide a
basis for understanding the changes that take place (in systemic
identity) along a psycho-social continuum running from self-directed
or experiential learning through formal education and/or socialization
on to the more directive forms of psychotherapy. All of which can be
seen as responses to, or manipulation of, environmental and/or
internal factors in such a manner as to render currently held notions of
identity problematic; thereby instigating, and then supporting,
adaptive or desirable change.
Embedding the trialogue in the Viable System Model

It is possible to place Bogdanov’s notions within this trialogue
structure:
Any adaptive system conceived in the trialogue way is
necessarily in a bi-regulative relationship with its environment. At the
lower level of the model the individual activities that the system or
complex undertakes are activities that impact on the environment and
respond to environmental reactions - by which local performance is
assessed; and, the impact of wider environmental response on the
system as a whole affects the (systemic internal) construction of the
context in which those activities are undertaken at the higher (or meta-
systemic) level of the model. Podbor can be viewed as the process of the
operational level of the system or complex within the context of the
values established at the meta-level; and, crisis can be viewed as the
name Bogdanov gives to a change of identity, i.e., a radical re-
definition of the system or complex by virtue of a radical re-definition

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of the context in which the system or complex has meaning as a

system or complex. And which, in parallel with the mechanisms of bi-
regulation and podbor, therefore initiates a new trajectory of systemic
development.
Reflections (I)
“The proletariat must have its own class art to organize its own
forces in social labor, struggle, and construction” (Roberts 1998: 16).
That the Proletkult was conceived as a movement for
consolidating revolutionary momentum following the revolution
proper (in counter-position to Boal’s rehearsal for revolution’) seems
beyond doubt, as is the general conclusion that culture in general, and
cultural products in particular, can be used as political ‘weapons’.
In the light of the discussion above, it is also clear that it would
have been possible for Bogdanov to have conceptualized the
revolution as a societal level crisis – as the radical re-definition of the
relationship between the ruling class and the masses and the re-
establishment of a new relationship between the proletariat and the
Bolshevik leadership; and, as a result of this, the establishment of a
new developmental trajectory for society as a movement of progressive
podbor, controlled by virtue of tektological understanding.
Proletarian culture then becomes a method for ensuring that,
as this societal podbor progresses, it continues along a path that cements
the social gains made possible by the revolution. Here again, as with
Boal, culture is acting to mediate between those who make up society
and the society which they create. Indeed, the extent to which “the
Proletkult organized literary studios to provide working-class readers
with an elementary literary education” (SovLit), suggests a
commitment (of the kind outlined by Boal) to providing the ability to
create cultural products to those who are directly affected by the
society such products will help to create.
When an analysis is undertaken using adaptive systems theory,
however, a number of points arise.
At the most obvious level it is possible to envisage a (politico-
economic model of) society as a high-level system with the systems of
production and the system of labour as two interacting (i.e., bi-
regulating) sub-systems operating according to the rules that set the
context for performance, or interaction being determined by the
higher level. Culture, according to both Bogdanov and Boal, functions
in order to refresh, or recreate society in a manner that ensures that

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the dominant class remains dominant (e.g., Aristotle’s conception of

‘coercive tragedy’).
Revolution, as the radical re-definition of the identity of the
higher-level system changes the context of the interaction of the sub-
systems and, thereby, redefines the basis of their bi-regulation. This, in
turn creates the potential for a new developmental trajectory of
progressive podbor. At this point, culture, as a political weapon,
becomes key.
Adaptive systems have a somewhat counter-intuitive capability
– because, as per Ashby’s ‘second feedback loop’, the relationship
between the system and its environment is, actually, between their
identity and the environment, they can change in order to stay the same –
that is that, when an adaptive system is presented with a challenge
from the environment, it will alter itself and/or its behaviour in such
way as to maintain the relationship between its identity and the
currently prevalent environmental conditions. Culture, and individual
cultural products viewed as adaptive systems, can either reinforce the
conservative tendency, create the conditions for the ongoing
problematization of it, or create the conditions for the creation of a
new orthodoxy.
Reflections (II)
I have already stated that culture was the lens, through which the
individual viewed society, and the mirror, through which individuals saw themselves
reflected as members of that society, but that culture does not exist in a
vacuum; it is always historically, ideologically, and theoretically
determined. That is, any form of didactic cultural product is motivated
by the beliefs of its producer.
This tends to suggest that, following the revolution – and the
radical redefinition of the identity of the politico-economic system –
the bi-regulating elements of means of production and labour were not
miraculously made free (from bourgeois domination) and equal (in
terms of perceived productive value) to defining their own new world,
but were immediately re-constrained in a different (if opposite) wider
system, one that too externally determined the nature of the legitimacy
of their bi-regulating interactions; and therefore also determined what
would be acceptable as legitimate cultural forms or products.
When it comes to cultural critique, or the attempt to use
cultural products to bring about directed social change, it seems that
emancipatory culture, including its cultural products and forms, is

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legitimately able only to provide the means for forming the questions
that problematize the current status quo, and therefore create the
conditions that might lead to or perpetuate – but not create – social
change. There is a very fine line between didactic liberation and
propaganda.
It could be argued that Bogdanov, in attempting to hand
control of the production of cultural forms directly to the proletariat,
was attempting to avoid this re-taking of control; and that the
resistance to the attempts of the Proletkult to maintain autonomy from
the central apparatus was symptomatic of the existence and operation
of such a wider system.
References
Ashby, W. R. 1960. Design for a Brain. London: Chapman and Hall.

Ashby, W. R. 1964. An Introduction to Cybernetics. London: Methuen.
Beer, S. 1979. The Heart of Enterprise. Chichester: Wiley.
---------- 1981. The Brain of the Firm. Chichester: Wiley.
----------1985. Diagnosing the System for Organizations. Chichester: Wiley.
Boal, A. 1979 (2nd ed. 2000). Theatre of the Oppressed. London: Pluto Press.
Bogdanov, A. A. 1989. Tektologiya: Vseobshaya Organizatsionaya Nauka Books 1 –3
Moscow: Ekonomika.
----------1996. Bogdanov’s Tektology Book 1 (Editor: P. Dudley). Hull: Centre for Systems
Studies Press.
Dudley, P. 2000. Management Quality or Quality Management? Doctoral Dissertation.
University of Hull.
Dudley, P. and Young, M. 2007. Leadership and Cybernetics. Oxford: Oxford Saïd
Business School.
Hauser, A. 1957. The Social History of Art (Translation: F.P.B. Godman). New York:
Vintage Books.
Maturana, H. and Varela, F. 1980. Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living.
Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
Neumann, J. von. 1966. Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata. Urbana; London:
University of Illinois Press.
Poustilnik, S. N. 1995. “Assemblage as the Basis of Bogdanov’s Tektology”, Voprosy
filosofii. 8 (in Russian).
---------- 1998. “Biological Ideas in Tektology.” In Alexander Bogdanov and the Origins of
Systems Thinking in Russia. Edited by J.Biggart, P.Dudley, and F.King.
Aldershot: Ashgate.
Roberts, J. 1998. The Art of Interruption. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Waterfield, R. (Translator) 1994. Plato. Republic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
SovLit: http://www.sovlit.net/bios/proletkult.html. accessed 07/05/2014.

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EISENSTEIN’S ‘MAGIC OF ART’

Introduction: Julia Vassilieva______________________________________________
‘The Magic of Art’, written a few months before Eisenstein’s

death in February of 1948, is a condensed and sometimes cryptic
artistic manifesto that I discovered in the private archive of Alexandr
Luria, a close friend of Eisenstein. It was first published in the
journal Kinovedcheskie zapiski (Moscow 1990), No.8 and later included
in Eisenstein’s posthumously published magnum opus, Method
(Moscow 2002) as a prologue. The importance of the piece is that it
forcefully reiterates several key themes that recur throughout
Eisenstein’s theoretical output.
First, Eisenstein here revisits his earlier ideas, formulated in
his now canonical essay ‘The Montage of Attractions’, concerning
audience engagement and spectatorial reaction. His rethinking of the
role of the spectator as an essential element of art in general and
especially of cinema, and his understanding of the viewer as an
This chapter is peer-reviewed and edited for active, creative agent, anticipate the subsequent emergence of
reception studies in critical theory. Secondly, this concern with the
spectator is tied in with another of Eisenstein’s important theoretical
positions, namely, his insistence that art should not be mimetic but
kinetic – that it should not ‘reflect’ the world but transform it – a
contention that has reverberated throughout debates between
Bogdanov, Eisenstein, and the Proletkult realism and formalism in cinema over the twentieth century and into
the present.
Editor-in-Chief: Pia Tikka Furthermore, Eisenstein here formulates in a nutshell the
Editorial Board: John Biggart, Vesa Oittinen, pivotal argument of what he termed Grundproblem – the main
problem of art, researched and elaborated in Method – which for him
consists in the ability of a work of art to mobilize two opposing
ISBN 103204787103ABC impulses: one towards a rational, intellectual insight and enrichment,
realized mainly at the level of the content of the work, and another
towards the engagement of the whole sensory, affective and
emotional sphere and achieved mainly through the form of art. The
latter, in turn, only becomes possible, according to Eisenstein,
because the language of form is based on a plethora of mechanisms
developed throughout the cultural history of humankind and its
evolutionary prehistory as a species. These mechanisms include such
phenomena as synaesthesia; the ability to perceive a part as
Eisenstein__________________THE MAGIC OF ART_____________________Page 1 of 5

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representing the whole; rhythmical repetition, and so on —

mechanisms that, working in combination with one another, create
the ‘magic’ of art. This magic has almost involuntary power over a
spectator, and yet it coincides, for Eisenstein, with the process by
which the formation of subjectivity and agency begins.
THE MAGIC OF ART

Translation: Julia Vassilieva______________________Sergei M. Eisenstein 1947
Moscow, 8.VII.19471
Art has never been ‘art for art’s sake’ for me.
Nor has it been a way of creating something that would not
resemble the world – ‘a world of my own’.
And yet it has never had the aim of ‘reflecting’ the existing
world, either.
I have always taken on the task of deploying of influence to
impact upon feelings and thoughts, to exert influence upon the
psyche and exercise this influence to mould the spectator’s
consciousness in the desired, needed, selected direction.
This was clearly stated in the first published declaration of
my credo. And it has remained an all-encompassing orientation
throughout my work.
I shall quote from LEF (1923), No 3 (June–July):
“It is the spectator who constitutes the basic material of the

theatre; the objective of every utilitarian theatre is to guide the
spectator in the desired direction (frame of mind)…
…The means of achieving this are all the component parts of
the theatrical apparatus…
...Attraction ... is the primary element in the construction of a
theatrical production – a molecular unit of the efficiency of the
theatre...

1 First published in Kinovedcheskie zapiski (Moscow 1990), No.8. Later included in
Method, Vol. 1, ‘Grundproblem’, pp. 46–47 (instead of an introduction), Moscow

2002: Eisenstein-Centre.

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…. A trick … since it signifies something absolute and

complete in itself, … is the direct opposite of an attraction, which is
based exclusively on an interrelation - on the reaction of the
audience.
….instead of a static ‘reflection’ …. montage of arbitrarily selected
independent effects (attractions) but with a view to establishing a certain final
thematic effect – montage of attractions.
…The way of completely freeing the theatre from the weight
of the ‘illusory imitativeness’ and ‘representationality’, which up until
now has been definitive, inevitable, and solely possible… ”2
From ‘external’ attractions I have gradually shifted to a

system of means that would influence the spectators’ subconscious
region – the ‘sub-sensory’ sphere – in other words, exert influence
not only over consciousness or the raw emotional and sensory
faculties of my spectator, but also exert influences of which the
viewer is unconscious.
A source of such devices turned out to be the laws of pre-
logical thought, and the sphere of their application the form of the
work of art itself.
But it is interesting that these means are not only related to the
stage of sensuous or ‘magical ‘ thought. They are also magical in the
sense of overtaking the will of the perceiving subject.3

2 Quoted using the following translation of ‘Montage of Attraction’ by
Daniel Gerould. The Drama Review: TDR, Vol. 18, No. 1, Popular Entertainments
(March 1974): 77–85.
3 [S. Eisenstein’s note:] “Magic, here, is not an empty figure of speech.
For art (the real thing) artificially returns the spectator to the primitive
stage of sensuous thinking, to its norms and types, and this stage is in reality a
stage of magical connection with nature.
When you have achieved, par exemple, a synaesthetic merging of sound
and image, you have subjected the viewer’s perception to sensuous thinking
conditions, where the synaesthetic perception is the only possible one – there is
still no differentiation of perception.
And you have the spectator ‘re-oriented’, not to the norms of today’s
perception, but to the norms of a primordially sensuous one – he is “returned”
to the magical stage of sensation.
And the idea that has been realized by a system of such influences,
embodied in a form by such means – irresistibly controls the emotions.
For the feelings and consciousness in this case are submissive and
manageable, almost as if one were in a trance.
And from a passive magical state which perceives art synaesthetically –
it is possible to move to an actively magical one in which the spectator is
possessed and managed by a magician-creator.
The former is worked on by the latter.”

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My orientation has shown – and still bears a vestige of – how

art’s predecessor, ritual, was used, namely:
– to conquer – by exerting influence – to override, to
subordinate to one’s will.
There (and then) – nature and the forces of nature.
Now, in the case of art, the spectator’s psychology (and
feelings) are taken possession of, and his ideology is overridden and
transformed by my own ideology as a propagandist (by my idea, my
conception, my worldview).
The project of ‘reflection’ has always appeared to me as
passive and unworthy.
I always imagined art as ‘one of the means of violence’ –
always as a tool (weapon) for transforming the world by changing
people’s consciousness.
It is interesting that this is directly linked with the process of
personality-formation in nature, whereas ‘reflection’ is linked with
primary automatism, with the eidetic ability to reproduce, which is a
stage lower than personality formation – a purely imitative
instinctual phase and directly associated with the lowest reproductive
stage – the biological reproduction of oneself in ... descendants: both
in animals and in plants.
These two consecutive developmental phases coincide at
their zero points: the magical capture is achieved by means of reproduction.
(The idol of a god made by me is god, and this god gradually
falls into my hands: I flog him when he doesn’t deliver a harvest!)
In the mimicry dance of creatures such as bees, or in an
eidetic drawing (very early) or (later) in ‘pars pro toto’4 in the
substitutional ‘part’ (later on – sign), taking-over is conceived
through reproduction.
Then the functions diverge.
Later they overlap.
They may be completely oriented in one direction (Repin,
Shishkin – the extreme of passive reflection).5
Later on, not only is the objective world reflected, but what is
reflected ‘on the canvas’ is a distorted reflection of the world in the
psychopath’s dysfunctional psyché (for example, Salvador Dali) etc.

4 ‘the
part taken for the whole’.
5 Il’ya
Efimovich Repin (1844 – 1930) and Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin (1832 –
1898) were Russian realist painters.

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The hypertrophy of the other line can be found in that

‘aggressive’ view of art that I have (and had).
In its realization the unity with reflection is indissoluble.
In the beginning this process is fully visible – and can be only
visible in cinema: in our credo-films of the 1920s.
A minimally distorted ‘in itself’ fragment of reality is
presented on its own in the frame (the ‘nec plus ultra’ of reflection6).
And a maximum expression of author’s will through the
juxtaposition of fragments, in this context, forces – ‘where needed’
(in the desired direction) – the spectator’s consciousness (through his
feelings and sensations).
All this has been noted to show that the very purpose of my
art is, in its ‘profundity’, linked to the primary functions of ritual at a
time when art had not yet been singled out as a separate domain
from other human activities.

6 ‘the ultimate example of reflection’.

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EISENSTEIN’S ‘CINEMA OF THE MASSES’
Introduction: Oksana Bulgakowa & John Biggart_____________________________
In 1925, Sergei Eisenstein delivered to the Russian journalist

and poet, Aleksandr Belenson, a text containing a theoretical
exposition of his ideas on expressive movement, the Proletkult, the
reflexology of Pavlov and Bekhterev, on film and on montage.
However, in his book, Kino segodnya (Film Today), published in the same
year, Belenson presented a slightly edited version of Eisenstein’s text,
under his own name, which purported to be the record of a
1
conversation he had had with the director. Eisenstein wrote an open
2
letter to the newspaper Kino protesting against this abuse.
After the première of Battleship Potëmkin in December 1925,
Eisenstein’s attitude towards journalists changed and in the course of
several months he gave around 25 interviews for the Soviet and
foreign press. In 1927, around the time of the tenth anniversary of the
October Revolution, more and more foreign visitors to Moscow came
to see him. These included Stefan Zweig, Sinclair Lewis, Theodor
Dreiser, John Dos Passos, James Abbe (photographer of the stars), Le
Corbusier, Diego Rivera, and the Harvard Professor, Henry Dana.
Eisenstein also gave a long interview to Joseph Freeman, an American
correspondent for the left-wing paper, New Masses, who was working
on his book Voices of October. Freeman incorporated this interview into
3
his chapter on film.
According to Marie Seton, Eisenstein in 1927 also
Editor-in-Chief: Pia Tikka “collaborated with Louis Fischer, then the Moscow correspondent of
America’s leading liberal weekly, The Nation, on the first
comprehensive article explaining his current attitude towards
ISBN 103204787103ABC

1 A. E.Belenson, Kino segodnya. Ocherki Sovetskogo kino-iskusstva [Kuleshov-Vertov-
Eizenshtein]. Moscow: Author’s Edition, 1925. Aleksandr Belenson (Beilenson,
1890–1949), was also the editor of the Futurist review, Strelets. After the revolution
of 1917 he wrote lyrics for popular and patriotic songs.
2 Eisenstein, “Po lichnomu voprosu”, in: Iz tvorcheskogo naslediya S.M. Eyzenshteyna.
Materialy i soobshcheniya, eds. Leonid Kozlov, Naum Kleyman, Moscow: VNIIK

1986, 30–36.
3 Joseph Freeman, Joshua Kunitz, Louis Lozowick. Voices of October. Art and
Literature in Soviet Russia, New York: Vanguard Press, 1930.
Eisenstein__________________CINEMA OF THE MASSES_________________Page 1 of 5

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4
cinematography.” Conceivably, Eisenstein’s experience with Belenson
explains the fact that “Mass Movies”, when it was published in The
Nation on 9 November 1927 was presented not as an interview but as
an article by Eisenstein himself: there was no mention of Fischer,
5
either as interviewer or translator.
“Mass Movies” is a comprehensive and popular explanation of
what Eisenstein understood to be his original contribution to the art of
film and is free of complicated references to psychology, physiology,
and Marxism. Possibly it was Eisenstein’s response to the German
critic, Oskar A. H. Schmitz, who had denied that The Battleship
Potëmkin had any artistic merit, given that the individual was, in this
‘mass movie’, completely absent. Schmitz’s review had been published
in Literarische Welt of 11 March 1927 and had provoked a reply by
Walter Benjamin who offered a very surprising and very accurate
comparison of the film with, not the Bildungsroman, but American
slapstick. Like Potëmkin, that genre of grotesque cinema had invented a
new formula that represented progress in art and had moved in step
6
with the technological revolution.
Later that year, in its issue No.49 dated 6 December, the
German journal Die Weltbühne: Wochenschrift für Politik, Kunst, Wirtschaft,
published, as one of a number of items devoted to Soviet Russia, an
article by Eisenstein under the title “Massenkino” that purported to be
an ‘authorized translation’ by the Austrian literary journalist and poet,
7
Otto Basil. This was, clearly, much the same material that had been
published in The Nation. However, it was not stated in Die Weltbühne
whether Basil’s translation was of the text that had been published in
The Nation, or of a Russian text that he or the editors of Die Weltbühne
had obtained, directly or indirectly, from Eisenstein.
No original Russian texts of the articles that appeared in The
Nation and Die Weltbühne are extant. Neither Fischer nor Basil was
entirely conversant with the terminology of film production and there

4 Marie Seton. Sergei M. Eisenstein. A Biography. London: The Bodley Head 1952,
119. In fact, Eisenstein had already published “The montage of attractions” in
LEF (1923), No.3.
5 Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein, “Mass Movies”, The Nation, Vol. CXXV, No.
3253, 9 November 1927. This was a special issue devoted to “Soviet Russia 1917–
1927”.
6 The texts of Schmitz and Benjamin are reprinted in: Fritz Mierau. Russen in
Berlin. Literatur, Malerei, Theater, Film 1918–1933. Leipzig: Reclam 1990, 515–24.
7 “‘Massenkino’ von S.M. Eisenstein”, Die Weltbühne: Wochenschrift für Politik, Kunst,
Wirtschaft, No.49, 6 December 1927, 858–860. Basil’s text was later republished,
without comment, in Filmwissenschaftliche Mitteilungen (Berlin/GDR), 1967 No. 3.
On Otto Basil (1901–1983), see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Basil

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are passages in both the English and German texts that are obscure.
However, given Basil’s claim that his translation was ‘authorized’, the
German text was taken as the starting point for this new English
translation by Richard Abraham. This new version takes into account
what we now know of Eisenstein’s cinematic theory, film technique
and vocabulary.
CINEMA OF THE MASSES

Translation: Richard Abraham_________________________S. M. Eisenstein 1927
I am a civil engineer and a mathematician by profession. I

approach the creation of a film in the same way that I would the
design of a poultry farm or the installation of water pipes. My attitude
is thoroughly utilitarian, rational and materialist.
When the small collective that I lead undertakes some project
we don’t get together in an office and design plans. Nor do I set out on
my own and wait under an oak tree for poetic inspiration. Our slogan
is “Down with intuitive creation!” Instead of dreaming, we take to the
road of life. The subject of our latest production The General Line is the
village; so we are currently burying ourselves in the archives of the
Commissariat of Agriculture; we are assessing thousands of peasant
complaints. We attend meetings of the rural Soviets and immerse
ourselves in village gossip. The film, which will be ready on 1 January,
demonstrates the power of the earth over people and will give the
town people an affection for, and an understanding of our peasants.
We recruit our actors from the flop houses; we pick them up on the
streets. The ‘heroine’ must plough the land and milk a cow.
Our films never deal with an individual or a love triangle. We
want to depict the masses not the actor. This is a manifestation of the
collective spirit that prevails throughout the country. Nor do we ever
try to arouse sympathy for the lives of the protagonists in the drama.
That would be a concession to sentiment. The achievement of the
cinema will be much greater and it will make a much stronger impact
if it depicts things and bodies and not feelings. We photograph an
echo and the ‘rat-a-tat’ of a machine gun. The effect is physiological.
Our psychological method is based, on the one hand, on the work of

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the distinguished Russian scientist, Pavlov, on the operation of the
reflexes; and, on the other, on the teachings of Freud.
Let us take, for example the scene in Potëmkin, in which the
Cossacks slowly, deliberately, descend the Odessa harbour steps, firing
into the masses. Through a deliberate composition of the elements of
limbs, steps, blood, people, we create an impression, but of what kind?
The spectator is not immediately transported to the Odessa wharves of
1905; but as the soldiers’ boots march relentlessly down the steps the
spectator recoils involuntarily, so as to escape from the field of fire.
And when the pram of the panic-stricken mother goes tumbling down
the steps, the spectator grips his cinema seat convulsively, so as to
avoid falling into the sea.
8
Our method of montage is an additional tool for achieving
such effects. In some countries where the film industry is highly
developed, montage is rarely, if ever, practiced. For example, a sledge
will be shown hurtling down a snow-covered toboggan slope, until it
reaches the bottom. But we photograph the bumping of the sledge,
and the spectator feels and even hears this, in the same way that the
9
throbbing of the engines of the Battleship Potëmkin as it steamed into
battle had been felt and heard. This means that the movement of
things and of machines is not a secondary or insignificant aspect of our
films, but a process of fundamental importance. Technical detail, the
alternation of object and close-up, side-view, superimposition,
constitutes the most important part of our work. Such methods cannot
be employed in the theatre. I arrived at the theatre by way of the
Proletkult, but soon went over to film. I believe that the theatre is a
dying industry. It is (for me) a field for the insignificant artisan. Film is
a heavy, highly-organized industry.
We always give great thought to both the visual impact and the
conceptual impact. We never begin a film without a clear idea of our
purpose. Potëmkin was an episode from the heroic struggle of the
revolution, filmed with the intention of electrifying the masses. The
General Line aims to strengthen the link between town and countryside,
one of the political objectives of Bolshevism. October, a film that will
soon be seen everywhere, portrays the ten days in autumn 1917 that

8 The term used by Eisenstein was sborka.
9 In the German text – ‘Panzerkreuzer’. Eisenstein’s Bronenosets Potëmkin was
distributed in Germany under the title Panzerkreuzer Potëmkin and for the English-
speaking world as The Battleship Potëmkin. The original ship, the Knyaz’ Potëmkin
Tavricheskiy, was a battleship of the pre-dreadnought class.

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shook the world. It depicts an episode in world history, made by the
man in the street, by the worker in the factory, by the lice-infected
soldiers from the trenches. It identifies the masses with world history.
Of course, certain conditions make our work a bit easier. In
October, we worked night after night with four or five thousand
Leningrad workers who had volunteered to take part in the storming
of the Winter Palace. The government provided weapons and
uniforms, as did the army. To supplement the workers and the soldiers
we needed a crowd. The word soon got around and a couple of hours
later the militia had their hands full controlling a throng of ten
thousand.
For Potëmkin, the Black Sea Fleet was placed at our disposal.
10
On 7 November 1917, the Avrora, flagship of the Baltic Fleet, went
over to the Communists and steamed up-river on the Neva to
bombard the Winter Palace. The state lent us the ship for the filming
of this scene in October.
Just as we take our materials from life, so we take our scenery
from real life. We never construct streets, towns or villages. Those that
already exist are more authentic. Permission to film is readily granted.
No private property-owner can protest against the use of his land or
demand payment for its use. Naturally, these things considerably
reduce production costs.
Potëmkin was a staging post. The General Line and October are a
step forward. They are closer to life. We are constantly learning. We
know that our method is the only correct one and that its potential is
limitless.
[The version of Eisenstein’s article that was published in The
Nation concluded with the following paragraph, which does not appear
in the German version.]
“Our method and America’s highly developed movie
technique ought to be a powerful combination. For this reason we are
interested in an invitation to work in the United States during the next
year. If our activities here permit, and we are granted freedom of
11
action in the United States, we may soon be there.”

10 The cruiser Avrora had formed part of a ‘second squadron’ that operated in the
Baltic Sea during the First World War, but it does not appear to have been a
flagship, in the sense of having served as the headquarters of the squadron
commander. At of the end of 1916 the Avrora was in dock in St. Petersburg for
repairs. Its crew played an active part in the revolutions of February and October
in 1917. See http://www.aurora.org.ru/eng/index.php@theme=info.
11 In the intervening years Eisenstein travelled widely in Europe but it was May
1930 before he arrived in the United States.

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BOGDANOV AND LENIN ON

‘THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES’
Vesa Oittinen______________________________________________________________
Questions of the theory of cognition formed one of the focal points

in the dispute between orthodox Russian Marxists and Aleksandr
Bogdanov and his followers. Bogdanov was an adherent of Mach’s
theory, which abandoned Kant’s concept of ‘things-in-themselves’
(Ding an sich) outside the cognizing subject. According to Mach and
Bogdanov, there is no need to duplicate human experience in
appearances given in the senses and things behind these
appearances. The orthodox Marxists, Lenin as well as Plekhanov,
insisted that Kant’s concept of things-in-themselves should be
retained, but in a modified form: the things-in-themselves do not
form a limit for our knowledge as Kant (allegedly) thought, but turn
This chapter is peer-reviewed and edited for into ‘things-for-us’ in the everyday process of material and scientific
production. Both solutions, the Machian as well as the orthodox
Marxist, have their problems. In the Soviet era, Lenin was depicted
as the winner of the dispute. But a closer examination of
EARLY SOVIET THOUGHT Bogdanov’s arguments shows that he actually hit upon some weak
Bogdanov, Eisenstein, and the Proletkult points in Lenin’s conception. This does not, however, mean that
Lenin’s critique of Bogdanov as a subjectivist in his theory of
Editor-in-Chief: Pia Tikka cognition was groundless.
ISBN 103204787103ABC
Oittinen_________________ON ‘THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES’________________Page 1 of 13
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Пусть ни Аксельрод, ни Дан

В нашем опыте дан.
Дан же в нем один Богданов –
Существует ли «в себе» Плеханов?
Безусловно, нет, он не существует «в себе». а вне себя,

Ибо само существование Богданова выводит его из себя!
(Anonymous Russian epigram, 1908)1
Many researchers have wondered why the Russian Marxists in the

beginning of the twentieth century were so enthused by philosophical
matters in general and Kant’s theory of cognition in particular. Even
such nowadays quite forgotten late eighteenth-century German
philosophers as Aenesidemus-Schulze were cited and discussed
feverishly. One is reminded of Marx’s old dictum, according to which
the Frenchmen did a political revolution and the Germans a
philosophical one – with the addition that the Russians appeared to
want to do both revolutions at once.
But the seemingly abstract interest had quite understandable
practical motives. At the end of the day, it was the role of the so-called
‘subjective factor’ in history, which was at stake. This was a problem
with which already some generations of Russian revolutionaries had
struggled since the mid-nineteenth century. Just before the
breakthrough of Marxism in the last decade of the 19th century, the
‘subjective sociology’ of Pëtr Lavrov and Nikolai Mikhailovskiy had
been much en vogue in the radical wing of the Russian intelligentsia.
Mikhailovskiy and his supporters insisted upon the decisive role of
personal initiative in the historical process, and from this point of view
they fought against what they interpreted as the ‘determinism’ and
‘fatalism’ of Marxism.
The dispute between Lenin (the orthodox Marxists) and
Bogdanov (the Machian Marxist) must be viewed against this
background, otherwise its intensity and high-pitch emotionality will
remain enigmatic. The Russian empirio-criticism would, seen from the
viewpoint of history of ideas, best be characterized as a variant of the so
called ‘second’ positivism (after the ‘first’ one by Comte), but this does
1 From: Yagodinskiy 2006: 45. The author of the epigram is not mentioned by
name.
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not yet explain the essence of the phenomenon. In her excellent analysis
of the Russian empirio-criticism, Daniela Steila stressed the specific
traits of how European philosophical currents were recopied in Russia:
this reception has never been purely academic; instead, the Russians
have always sought solutions for the actual problems of their society.
It is, moreover, quite possible to interpret the empirio-critical
revision of Marxism (dubbed by Bogdanov himself as Empiriomonism),
which became very influential in the left current of Russian Social
Democracy – so influential that many contemporaries were ready to
take it as the philosophy proper of Bolshevism – as a continuation of the
subjectivism of the Narodniki. What Mikhailovskiy had claimed in the
1870’s, namely that the subjective factor decides the outcome of the
historical process, seemed now to resurge in the philosophy of
Bogdanov which denounced the determinism of many Marxists. This
explains, why the leaders of Menshevism as well as Bolshevism,
Plekhanov and Lenin, were to a large extent unanimous in their critique
of Bogdanov. It even seemed that the Russian Machists brought the
Narodnik subjectivism to a head, to the extent that they – as Lenin
wrote – approached the subjective-idealist and solipsist positions of
Bishop Berkeley.
The thing-in-itself
For Bogdanov, the Kantian concept of a ‘thing-in-itself’ is but an

“obsolete philosophical idea”, which his own theory has been able to
overcome, as he declared in the second part of Empiriomonizm (1905)
(Bogdanov 2003: 131). This volume of Bogdanov’s chef-d’oeuvre has as an
introduction a detailed overview of the problematics of the thing-in-
itself. Already the first lines of the text make clear that the German
researcher Dieter Grille was quite right, when he, in his seminal
monography on Bogdanov, wrote that the Russian empiriomonist was
‘biologizing’ the history of mind by turning philosophical problems into
psychological ones (Grille 1966: 143).
In other words, Bogdanov simply refuses to treat philosophical
questions as ‘philosophical’: instead, he converts them into questions of
the psychology of the senses, of social psychology, or of social
anthropology. The philosophical dualism of appearances and things-in-
themselves, put forth by Kant, is for Bogdanov nothing but a “pale,
vanishing reflection of another, clear and vigorous dualism […] – the
dualism of the animists”. In the same manner as the primitive animist
imagined that behind his everyday milieu there exists yet another world,
the realm of spirits, so the philosopher, too, imagined things-in-
themselves which should exist behind the appearances. “When the
dualism which evolved from the animistic ideas, was extended to the
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whole world, the result was the ‘thing-in-itself’…” (Bogdanov 2003:

111). Kant took only the last step in this process, as he stripped the
thing-in-itself from all anthropomorphism. In Kant, “the thing-in-itself
lost all of its empirical content and became incognizable” (Bogdanov
2003: 111).
Despite the fact that the Russian intelligentsia in general was not
so much interested in Neo-Kantianism, it was, however, compelled to
comment on many Kantian themes. Already in the 1890s Plekhanov
had criticised in Die Neue Zeit, the theoretical organ of the German
Social Democrats, the Neo-Kantian views of Bernstein and Conrad
Schmidt. A little later, in the first years of the new century, he could
pick up on the empiriocritical interpretation of Marxism by Bogdanov
with essentially the same arguments.
A recurrent theme in the critiques of Plekhanov was the question
of the cognizability of the world and thus even the status of the famous
Kantian ‘thing-in-itself’. Daniela Steila has pointed to the seemingly
disproportionate role of this central concept of the Critical philosophy
in the discussions between the orthodox Marxists and Machists (see
Steila 1996: 191sqq.).
In the article Conrad Schmidt versus Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,
published in Neue Zeit in October 1898, Plekhanov rebuffs the ‘Kantian’
agnosticism (although it would have been better to speak of a Neo-
Kantian interpretations) of Bernstein’s pupil Schmidt. Plekhanov
referred to Engels’s comment, according to which the daily practical
activity of men and especially the progress of industry are the best ways
to disprove the (allegedly) Kantian doctrine of an unknowable thing-in-
itself. Being somewhat cheeky, Engels quoted the old English saying
“The proof of the pudding is in the eating” and thought the same
applies to the process of cognition in general. Plekhanov continues:
“I shall try to explain the matter to him [Schmidt – V.O.] in the
simplest of terms. What is a phenomenon? It is a condition of our
consciousness evoked by the effect on us of things-in-themselves. That is what Kant
says. From this definition it follows that anticipating a given
phenomenon means anticipating the effect that a thing-in-itself will
have on our consciousness” (Plekhanov 1976, II:381).
According to Plekhanov, man’s everyday scientific and
technological practice, its very success, is a proof that “we can anticipate
certain phenomena”. He concludes: “So if we are aware of some
properties of things-in-themselves, we have no right to call those things
unknowable. This ‘sophistry’ of Kant falls to the ground, shattered by
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the logic of his own doctrine. That is what Engels meant by his
‘pudding’” (Plekhanov 1976, II:381).2
The quotation shows us the blueprint of Plekhanov’s
argumentation, which he applied again, after a decade, in Materialismus
militans (1908) against another opponent, Bogdanov. In his book
Empiriomonizm (vol. III, 1906) Bogdanov had reproached Plekhanov for
defining the matter as things-in-themselves which affect our organs of
sense. In his ‘second letter’ to his adversary, Plekhanov first quotes
Bogdanov’s reproach:
“Thus [you write smilingly], ‘matter’ (or ‘nature’ in its antithesis
to ‘spirit’) is defined through ‘things-in-themselves’ and through their
capacity to ‘arouse sensations by acting on our sense-organs’. But what
are these ‘things-in-themselves’? ‘That which acts on our sense-organs
and arouses in us various sensations.’ That is all. You will find that
Comrade Beltov has no other definition, if you leave out of account the
probably implied negative characteristics: non-‘sensation’, non-
‘phenomenon’, non-‘experience’ “.3
Then Plekhanov answers – seemingly irritated:
“I don’t define matter ‘through’ things-in-themselves at all. I
assert only that all things-in-themselves are material. By the materiality
of things, I understand – and here you are right – their ability one way
or another, directly or indirectly, to act on our senses and thus arouse in
us sensations of one kind or another.” Plekhanov continued by
explaining, that Kant himself had been inconsequent in defining the
things-in-themselves. On the first page of his Critique of Pure Reason Kant
had acknowledged things-in-themselves to be the source of our
sensations. However, “at the same time he was by no means averse to
recognizing these things as something immaterial, that is to say,
inaccessible to our senses” (Plekhanov 1976, III: 212).
A bit farther in his exposition Plekhanov concedes that “the
expression ‘things-in-themselves exist outside our experience’ is not a
very happy one. It could mean that things in general are inaccessible to
our experience. This is how Kant understood it… “ (Plekhanov 1976,
III: 219). Be it as it may, Plekhanov insists that it is necessary to
relinquish the Kantian agnosticism. This implies that the Marxists
should “employ the term ‘thing-in-itself’ in a quite different sense from
the Kantians and Machists” (Plekhanov 1976, III: 212—213).
2 Actually, in Plekhanov’s discussion of Kant (as already in Engels’s ‘pudding thesis’)

there is a circulus in demonstrando, which is easily discerned. From the fact of a
successful anticipation of phenomena, Plekhanov concludes unjustifiably that there
exists a causal relation between things-in-themselves and the cognizing subject.
3 The references Plekhanov gives here are to the first edition of Empiriomonizm, Book
III, St.Peterburg 1906: xiii
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As one sees, Plekhanov thinks that the concept of a thing-in-itself

is useful – only it should be used in another sense than Kant and other
agnostics use it. In fact, this concept seems to be for Plekhanov
indispensable for a materialist theory of cognition. A materialist must,
however, abandon the false and agnostic, allegedly Kantian idea of the
impossibility to have any knowledge about the thing-in-itself.
Plekhanov thus seeks an unequivocal definition of the relations
of the cognizing subject to the things-in-themselves – not a dialectical
one, which would have taken into account the contradictory nature of
the human cognitive process. Cognizing the world, the subject aims to
get knowledge of something which is objective, that is, independent of
the subject. It was precisely this “dialectics” which produced ambiguities
in Kant’s original discussion of things-in-themselves.
Lenin and Bogdanov
In his critique of Bogdanov, presented in the the notorious

philosophical pamphlet Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1909), Lenin
relies to a great part on Plekhanov’s arguments against the subjectivist
interpretations of Marxism by the Neo-Kantians and Bogdanov. Lenin,
too, feels that he has to defend the concept of a thing-in-itself, although
interpreted according to the doctrine of materialism:
“The ‘thing-in-itself’ is a veritable bête noire with Bogdanov and
Valentinov, Bazarov and Chernov, Berman and Yushkevich. There is
no abuse they have not hurled at it, there is no ridicule they have not
showered on it. And against whom are they breaking lances because of
this luckless ‘thing-in-itself’? Here a division of the philosophers of
Russian Machism according to political parties begins. All the would-be
Marxists among the Machians are combating Plekhanov’s ‘thing-in-
itself’; they accuse Plekhanov of having become entangled and straying
into Kantianism, and of having forsaken Engels” (Lenin 1977:98).
Lenin denied that Engels had refuted the thing-in-itself in
general. According to him, Engels had refuted only the Kantian
interpretation of it: “[I]t is not true that Engels ‘is producing a
refutation of the thing-in-itself.’ Engels said explicitly and clearly that he
was refuting the Kantian ungraspable (or unknowable) thing-in-itself“
(Lenin 1977:102). Kant’s error was, according to Lenin, that he
separated in a principal manner the appearances from the things-in-
themselves, like the sceptic David Hume before him, and created thus
between the (subjective) appearances and (objective) things-in-
themselves a chasm that could not be bridged.
After having analyzed the arguments of the Machists, in first
instance as they were presented by Bogdanov, Lenin makes his three
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important conclusions as regards to the theory of knowledge (Lenin

1977:103 sqq.):
“1) Things exist independently of our consciousness,
independently of our perceptions, outside of us […]
2) There is definitely no difference in principle between the
phenomenon and the thing-in-itself, and there can be no such
difference. The only difference is between what is known and
what is not yet known. […]
3) In the theory of knowledge […] we must think dialectically,
that is, we must not regard our knowledge as ready-made and
unalterable, but must determine […] how incomplete, inexact
knowledge becomes more complete and more exact.”
A further aspect of Lenin’s interpretation of things-in-themselves
as put forth in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism is the thesis – which he
develops with a reference to Feuerbach – that in the process of
cognition the things-in-themselves (Dinge an sich) constantly turn into
things-for-us (Dinge für uns):
“The an sich (of itself, or ‘in itself’) of Feuerbach is the direct
opposite of the an sich of Kant […] The objects of our ideas are distinct
from our ideas, the thing-in-itself is distinct from the thing-for-us, for the
latter is only a part, or only one aspect, of the former […] All the
mysterious, sage and subtle distinctions between the phenomenon and
the thing-in-itself are sheer philosophical balderdash” (Lenin 1977:
120).
In his book Empiriomonizm Bogdanov had written that the point
of view of such a materialistically re-interpreted thing-in-itself is nothing
but a repetition of “the standpoint of the French materialists of the
eighteenth century and among the modern philosophers – Engels and
his Russian follower, Beltov [i.e. Plekhanov – V.O.]” (quoted here
according to Lenin 1977: 121).
Lenin’s reply to this assertion is interesting: “The reason for
Bogdanov’s distortion of materialism lies in his failure to understand the
relation of absolute truth to relative truth” (Lenin 1977: 122). In other
words: in order to defend the independence of the things-in-themselves,
an independence which Bogdanov doubts, it is necessary to recur to the
idea of an absolute truth. Otherwise the scepticism of Hume and Berkeley
cannot be resisted. In this way, the dispute about the things-in-
themselves transforms into another dispute: does there exist an absolute
truth or not? Bogdanov is here very explicit: “As I understand it,
Marxism contains a denial of the unconditional objectivity of any truth
whatsoever, the denial of all eternal truths.” (Bogdanov, Empiriomonizm,
Book III, pp. IV–V. quoted here according to Lenin 1977:122).
The positions of Lenin and Bogdanov on questions of the theory
of cognition stood thus in opposition to each other in a clear-cut
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manner. Whilst Bogdanov denied wholly the concept of a thing-in-itself,

seeing in it only an anthropological and psychological problem, which
will become obsolete as the sciences progress, both Plekhanov and
Lenin wanted to retain it, albeit not in the ‘agnostic’ form it had
received in the Critical philosophy of Kant and his followers. One could
thus claim that when Lenin attacked Bogdanov in his Materialism and
Empirio-Criticism, the sparring partners entered the fight with quite
different premises. For Lenin, the dispute was eminently philosophical,
for Bogdanov it was, rather, about matters of empirical science.
The outcome of the dispute was thus, in a way, predetermined.
Lenin got a philosophical victory over Bogdanov. This was mainly due
to the fact that Bogdanov did not want a philosophical dispute at all, but
was more interested in what he conceived as a new scientific world
outlook which should replace the old philosophy and metaphysics with
deeper, more contemporary insights.
In the Soviet period, the results of Lenin’s examination in
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism were declared as official truth. The
‘Bogdanov case’ was put ad acta and it was, for ideological reasons, not
possible to take it into reconsideration. Even the best study on the
Lenin-Bogdanov dispute published in the Soviet era, A.I. Volodin’s Boy
absolyutno neizbezhen, accepts the official version and restricts itself to the
presentation of how Lenin’s philosophical work was written and
prepared for print. It was ignored that Bogdanov wrote yet a further
answer to Lenin and its arguments were not analyzed (cf. Volodin
1982).
Bogdanov’s muzzled answer to Lenin
Indeed, Bogdanov wrote a reply to Lenin’s critique as early as

the following year. In 1910 he published a volume containing two
extensive works, Padenie velikogo fetishizma and Vera i nauka. The latter-
mentioned had as its subtitle ’O knige V. Il’ina “Materializm i
empiriokrititsizm”’. A further answer to Lenin’s book was contained in
Bogdanov’s later work Desyatiletie otlucheniya ot marksizma (1904—1914),
which has the character of memoirs, but as it was published only
posthumously in 1995, I do not analyze here.4
In Vera i nauka Bogdanov, still regarding himself as a ‘historical
materialist’ (cf. Bogdanov 1910: 146), begins his answer to Lenin with a
definition of religious thought: it is, according to him, nothing else but
an authoritarian way of thinking, and is brought about simply by labour
4See Bordyugov (General Editor) 1995. The volume was edited by N.S. Antonova
and has a foreword written by Daniela Steila.
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processes led in an authoritarian way. Faith (vera)5 is nothing but “Man’s

relation to an authority approved by him” (Bogdanov 1910: 147). But
this kind of authoritarianism is characteristic even for Lenin, who had
claimed that there exists an absolute truth. Bogdanov seizes the example
of an absolute truth given by Lenin, the sentence ‘Napoleon died in St.
Helena in 5th of May 1821’, and attempts to show that even this
sentence, which according to Lenin should be absolutely valid, will after
a more close scrutiny come across as a relative assertion. So for example
already the date ‘5th of May’ would presuppose the Gregorian calendar
– and even the concept of ‘death’ is not so easy to define medicinally.
(Bogdanov 1910: 154 sqq.)
These arguments, as unconvincing as they might appear, were
nevertheless intended only as an illustration to Bogdanov’s main idea:
human thinking and consequently even the concept of truth are
dependent upon the historically changeable social organization of
labour. He drives home his point:
“I dare to assure the esteemed author [V. Il’in, i.e. Lenin –
V.O.] that such complex, generalizing concepts as ‘Autumn’, ‘Winter’,
‘Spring’ etc. actually are not given to us in experience, but shaped by
history [vyrabotany istoricheski]. For example, experience has given us a
great many elements of ‘cold’, in combination [soedinenie] with elements
which formed the complexes of ‘snow’, ‘ice’ […]. The recurrence of
these or other sums of experiences, with tiny variations, has served as
material for the organizing ‘idea’ or ‘law’: After the Winter, there will be
Spring. There is nothing absolute in these conceptions, or in the law
which connects them” (Bogdanov 1910: 182).
Lenin had objected, that if the truth would be – as Bogdanov
claimed – nothing but ‘an organizing form of human experience’, so
from this would follow, for example, that the doctrine of Catholicism,
with all its dogmas such as transubstantiation, would be true in the most
literal sense.
To this ironical remark, Bogdanov now answers defiantly:
“Catholicism would be a truth, if it were capable of organizing the
present-day social experience of humanity in a harmonious and well-
structured [stroyno] way, without contradictions […] Catholicism would
be a truth for the epoch, the experience of which it could organize
successfully and completely; this fact no Il’in, with his muttering, can
overcome” (Bogdanov 1910: 184).
Bogdanov expresses his position in a concise way, asserting once
again his quite subjectivist theory of cognition: “the ‘objectivity’ [of
physical experience] is nothing but its general meaning [obshcheznachimost’]
5 In the Russian language, ‘faith’ (in the religious sense) and ‘belief’ are not clearly
distinguished; the noun vera covers both meanings.
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for humanity” (Bogdanov 1910: 185). It is thus obvious, that, as regards

the general positions of his philosophy, Bogdanov restricts himself to a
repetition of his earlier views expressed already, e. g., in the three
volumes of Empiriomonizm. In this respect, his answer to Lenin’s
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism is indeed not of much interest. However,
in Bogdanov’s Vera i nauka there is one very intriguing observation
concerning Lenin’s doctrine of things-in-themselves.
According to Bogdanov, Lenin is operating in Materialism and
Empirio-Criticism at once with three different concepts of the thing-in-
itself. These three concepts “correspond to the three philosophical
schools, whose ideas have been spread among the Russian Marxists”
(Bogdanov 1910: 163).
The first of these comes from Feuerbach and Dietzgen, two
materialist philosophers whom Lenin has cited copiously in order to
prove the idea that “the world is a Being given to the senses and that in
this regard there is no essential difference between the ‘thing-in-itself’
and the ‘thing for us’, between ‘matter’ and ‘appearance’” (Bogdanov
1910: 163).
Bogdanov refers here to how Lenin had in Materialism and
Empirio-Criticism quoted old Feuerbach’s work Über Spiritualismus und
Materialismus from 1866. In this work, the German philosopher
reproached the idealists who believed that they had been able to crush
materialism by accusing it of dogmatism: the materialists assume the
sensuous world as an undisputed objective truth. In other words, they
assume “that it is a world in itself (an sich), i.e., as existing without us,
while in reality the world is only a product of spirit” (Lenin 1977:118).
After quoting the passage, Lenin comments triumphantly,
identifying himself with Feuerbach’s position:
“This materialism of Feuerbach’s, like the materialism of the
seventeenth century contested by Bishop Berkeley, consisted in the
recognition that ‘objects in themselves’ exist outside our mind. The an
sich (of itself, or ‘in itself’) of Feuerbach is the direct opposite of the an
sich of Kant […] Feuerbach very ingeniously and clearly explains how
ridiculous it is to postulate a ‘transcendence’ from the world of
phenomena to the world in itself, a sort of impassable gulf created by
the priests and taken over from them by the professors of philosophy”
(Lenin 1977:118).
Bogdanov remarks: “It seems I do not need to quote further.
Only the existence for the senses is recognized, and as a part of it, the
appearance, or human experience. This view is put forth against the
‘Machists’, who recognize only ‘experience’, only ‘the world of the
elements’, which according to V. Il’in is but idealism, metaphysics et
cetera” (Bogdanov 1910: 164).
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Bogdanov continues by noting that Lenin in fact slips into the

positions of his adversary, as he defends, following Feuerbach, the idea
that the “world in itself” is accessible by the “world of phenomena”.
Because there is no impassable gulf between them, so this must mean,
that we cognize through our sensuous experience the world as is it in
itself. How then, asks Bogdanov, can Lenin at the same time reject the
Machian thesis that the existence of the external world consists of
nothing else but of our sense-impressions? “[W]hat really are these
‘elements of experience’ which V. Il’in rejects in favour of ‘sensuous
experience’? They are colours, tunes, the hard, the soft, the warm […]
and so on. […] Colours, tones, hardness, forms – all right, but are not
these sensuous elements or elements of the existence for the senses? Obviously, yes!
Is there thus any difference between V. Il’in and the ‘Machists’?
Obviously, not!” (Bogdanov 1910: 164–165).
Bogdanov has here indeed hit on a locus minoris resistentiae in
Lenin’s idea of a thing-in-itself. Lenin had, relying upon Feuerbach and
upon a yet older materialist tradition, insisted that there is no essential
difference between things-in-themselves and appearances. According to
his interpretation, in the process of cognition things-in-themselves turn
into appearances (i.e. things-for-us) so that there remains nothing one
could call a ‘transcensus’. Lenin makes this assertion in order to avoid
the alleged ‘agnosticism’ of Kant, i.e., the thesis that things are, when
regarded in themselves, impossible to be cognized. What Lenin here
does not pay attention to, is that if the principal boundary between in-
itself and for-us is diluted in this manner, then even the boundary
between subjective and objective gets likewise diluted. If the things-in-
themselves really change so effortlessly into things-for-us, as Lenin
asserts, so must likewise objectivity easily change into something
subjective.
So Bogdanov is able to exclaim: “Thus here V. Il’in is taking the
same position as the ‘Machists’ he hates so much. When he is speaking
about ‘things for us’, which are ‘a part or an aspect of the thing-in-itself’,
and both have a quite ‘sensuous’ character, then he is only repeating
with other words the same ideas that the Machists, too, adhere to”
(Bogdanov 1910: 165).
It is true that Bogdanov has here found an inconsequence
expressly in Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, the later canonical
book of Soviet Diamat. But one has immediately to add to this the fact
that Bogdanov’s own position does not by this discovery become in any
way more consistent. A couple of pages later he writes:
“Mach and the Empirio-Criticists have a realist understanding
of experience: experience consists of things and images [obrazy], of
physical and psychical complexes. In both cases the elements are the
same. In the first-mentioned complexes the elements are elements of things,
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in the latter ones they are elements of images, or sensations. The elements
of things (or of the ‘environment’) are colours, forms, hardness, softness
and so on, are taken as being independent of the individual [subject –
V. O.], in a connection that is objective: in the complex ‘petal of a rose’,
the colour red is united with the softness, the oval form, pleasant smell
etc. in an objective way, as an ‘object’, quite independently of whether ‘I’
am looking at this petal or not.” (Bogdanov 1910: 167)
The big problem in this argument consists of the following: if
one chooses to understand experience in a ‘realistic’ (materialistic) way,
one cannot cope with the task without the concept of a thing-in-itself,
which is independent of the cognizing and experiencing ‘I’. But for
Bogdanov, this possibility does not exist, since for him there are no
things-in-themselves – everything is but “organized experience”. In
other words, his ‘experience’ does not have a well-defined, independent
‘opposite’: in the quotation above he says outright that the “elements”
of the subjective experience are “the same” as the objective elements. In
other words, although Bogdanov quite rightly finds inconsequences in
Lenin’s use of the concept of a thing-in-itself, this does not mean that
the concept as such would become obsolete.
As to the two other versions of things-in-themselves that
Bogdanov finds in Lenin, the second is derived from Plekhanov. In
general, one can find in Plekhanov more sympathy towards Kantian
argumentation than in Lenin. Plekhanov did not treat the thing-in-itself
and thing-for-us as concepts of the same level as Lenin did in the above-
cited passages. According to Plekhanov, things-in-themselves should be
conceived as a kind on ‘species’ (vid), which lies outside of the experience
but nevertheless affects our senses. This is a reading rather close to Kant
(who, however, never called his things-in-themselves a ‘species’). In
some parts of Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Lenin adheres to
Plekhanov’s interpretation, but is not, according to Bogdanov, able to
distinguish his position from that of Plekhanov, and therefore remains,
even here, inconsistent (Bogdanov 1910: 172).
The third version of Lenin’s concept of thing-in-itself is not very
clearly formulated in Bogdanov’s critique, but even here he is able to
make an interesting and intriguing comment. He notes that despite the
fact that Lenin at times seems to embrace Plekhanov’s interpretation of
thing-in-itself, there however remains “a big difference between
Plekhanov and Lenin, which one is not allowed to lose from sight. For
Plekhanov, the things-in-themselves do not at all have a sensuous
character. Only their ‘appearances’ have this character […] For Il’in,
on the contrary, as he repeatedly asserts, there ‘does not exist any other
existence than a sensuous existence’, and the things-in-themselves are
principally of the same quality as the appearances” (Bogdanov 1910:
173).
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In other words, Plekhanov’s concept of the thing-in-itself is

metaphysical, whereas Lenin’s concept is empiricist. This is a good remark.
Nevertheless, when one tries to summarize the results of the Lenin—
Bogdanov controversy, one has to conclude that despite the fact that
Bogdanov succeeded in showing up some inconsequences in Lenin’s
concept, he did not succeed in the main task – in his attempt to show
that the idea of a thing-in-itself is generally obsolete. His own
philosophy (if he at all wanted to call it a ‘philosophy’) was not
conceptually commensurate with such a task.
References
Bordyugov, G.A. (General Editor) 1995. Neizvestnyy Bogdanov, kn. 3: A.A. Bogdanov,
Desyatiletiye otluchenija ot marksizma, Moskva: AIRO—XX.
Bogdanov, A.A. 1910. Padenie velikogo fetishizma. Vera i nauka. Moskva: V. Rikhter.
--------------------. 2003. Empiriomonizm. Stat’i po filosofii. Moskva: Iz-vo “Respublika”.
Grille, Dieter. 1966. Lenins Rivale. Bogdanov und seine Philosophie. Köln: Vlg. Wissenschaft
und Politik (Abhandlungen des Bundesinstituts für ostwissenschaftliche und
internationale Studien), Bd. XII.
Lenin, V.I. 1977. Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. In: Lenin, V. I., Collected Works vol.
14, Moscow: Progress Publishers 1977
Plekhanov, G. V. 1976 ‟Conrad Schmidt versus Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.” In:
G. V. Plekhanov, Selected Philosophical Works in Five Volumes. Vol. II. Moscow:
Progress.
--------------------. 1976. “Materialismus militans”. In: Selected Philosophical Works in Five
Volumes, Vol. III, Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Steila, Daniela. 1996. Scienza e rivoluzione. La recezione dell’empiriocriticismo nella cultura russa
(1870—1910), Torino: Casa Editrice Le Lettere.
Steyla, Daniela. 2013. Nauka i revolyutsiya. Retseptsiya empiriokrititsizma v russkoy kul’ture
(1877–1910 gg.), Moskva: Akademicheskiy Proekt (This is a new, expanded
edition, in Russian, of the edition of 1996).
Volodin, A.I. 1982. “Boy absolyutno neizbezhen”. Istoriko-filosofskie ocherki o knige V.I. Lenina
“Materializm i empiriokrititsizm”. Moskva: Politizdat.
Yagodinskiy. V.N. 2006. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Bogdanov (Malinovskiy) 1873–
1928. Moskva: Nauka.
An extended version of this paper has been previously published in German in Vesa
Oittinen (ed.), Aleksandr Bogdanov revisited, Helsinki 2006.
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ALEKSANDR BOGDANOV'S TEKTOLOGY:
A SCIENCE OF CONSTRUCTION
Simona Poustilnik_________________________________________________________
Russian Darwinism developed without Malthus – without the

struggle for existence. There is a remarkable link connecting the
understanding of the Russian Darwinists of “natural podbor” as
‘fine-tuning’ by nature and Bogdanov’s concept of tektological
‘podbor’ (‘assembling’) as the universal mechanism of the
construction of any organization. Bogdanov’s conception of the
universal phenomenon of ‘organization’ as an expedient
combination of active elements, and his attempt to construct a
collective tektological ‘personality-organization’ possessed a
conceptual creative power and influenced the work of the Soviet
Constructivists. Conceptions of ‘assembling’ similar to those
expressed in Tektology provided Constructivists with a scientific
rationale, projects and terminology for their experiments in a new
‘production art’. They constructed expedient and functional art
Spherical Book titled objects from a tektological point of view - as organizational art
objects.

ISBN 103204787103ABC
Poustilnik_______________A SCIENCE OF CONSTRUCTIONS______________Page 1 of 17

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…the symbols and formulas of the Glass Bead Game combined

structurally, musically, and philosophically within the framework of a universal
language, were nourished by all the sciences and arts, and strove in play to achieve
perfection, pure being, the fullness of reality (Herman Hesse, The Glass Bead
Game)
“Furor tectologicus”
Rephrasing René Descartes, Aleksandr Bogdanov once said of

himself: “I am organized therefore I exist.” He viewed the
phenomenon of “organization” as a focal and creative point of the
universe and Tektology as a universal science of organization of a better
world and humankind. He admitted:
“I have some kind of disease – furor tectologicus – as soon as I see
a task which is difficult to solve, or a combination I do not understand
– so immediately appears the insurmountable aspiration if not to solve
it, then to determine in principle its solution, and so for me nothing is
sacrosanct.” (Bogdanov 1913: 211–212).
Tektology: Universal Organizational science1 (1913–1922) signified
the birth of a new science of organization (systems science in modern
language) and a new cognitive model – a systems model.2 It would
come fully into existence only several decades later, in the middle of
the XX century, with the development of Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s
General Systems Theory (GST) and Norbert Wiener’s cybernetics.3 But
the true beginning of the systems paradigm was for a long time
forgotten until Bogdanov’s Tektology was rediscovered.4 The starting

1 There is some disagreement regarding the date of the publication of the first part
of Tektology (1912 or 1913). The original was not dated beyond the foreword
(December, 1912) and Bogdanov himself occasionally referred to 1912. The
definite date of publication (1913) is provided by the Knizhnaya letopis’ in
Rossiiskaya knizhnaya palata - year 1913, No 32, page 4, entry number 19802.
2 The term “cognitive model” was introduced by the Russian philosopher,
Alexander Ogurtsov, in 1980 and developed by the Russian historian of science,

Yuriy Chaikovskiy. See Chaikovskiy 2008: 225–227.
3 Bertalanffy had arrived at his basic concept by the end of the 1930s, but
published it only after end of the war, having earlier believed that the scientific
community was not ready to accept it.
4 Tektology was a unique conception of the general science of organization which
brought into focus the systems notions of all main macroparadigms which

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point of Tektology was the universally applicable idea of “organization”
or “complex” as an expedient unity, a combination of elements -
“activities-resistances” and a universal set of organizational laws for all
complexes of the world. As Bogdanov stated:
“My starting point … consists in that structural relations can
be generalized to the same degree of formal schematic clarity as the
relations of quantities in mathematics and on such basis organizational
tasks can be solved using methods analogous to the mathematical”.
(Bogdanov 1989: Book 2, 310).
This apparently purely scientific and innocent scientific
doctrine gave rise to a great outburst of “proletarian” debates and
influenced the development, shaping and interpretation of proletarian
ideology and culture in early Soviet Russia. This is not surprising since
Tektology was designed as a monistic organizational proletarian science
and such a project was possible only in Russia and only at this time.
Bogdanov was deeply influenced by classical science and by the
monistic tradition in philosophy. The idea of the unity of nature and
of its simplicity was one of the first scientific and philosophical notions.
It held that the diversity of nature was full of amazing and numerous
analogies and repetitions – therefore there should be simple and
universal laws of nature to explain all phenomena. The epoch of
classical science was an era of aspiration for creation of “global
formulae” – universal and simple monistic models and concepts of the
world. For pre-twentieth science, the unity of knowledge was equal to
monism of knowledge – by ascending to more and more abstract levels
of existence it would be possible eventually to arrive at unified all-
embracing laws of existence (as in the Mathesis universalis of Leibniz or
the Divine Calculator of Laplace).5
This old monistic tradition was still very powerful during
Bogdanov’s lifetime.6 As the influential German biologist Ernest
appeared at different stages in the development of the systems movement of the

XX century. See Poustilnik 1998.
5 This idea was expressed in many ways in relation both to the simplicity of nature
and the simplicity of its explanation (Ockham’s Razor, Fermat’s principle of the
reflection and refraction of light, Maupertuis’ general principle of least action,
Goethe’s protophenomena, etc.).
6 At this time scientists were still preoccupied with analogies between the simple
and the complex, and with the construction of numerous simple models of nature.
For example, the analogy of the cell with the crystal was highly popular. See a
Russian translation by Przhibram, G. 1913. “Obzor mnenii avtorov o znachenii
analogii mezdu kristallom i organizmom”, in What Is Life. New in Biology.

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Haeckel7 put it, monism was an evident characteristic of the sciences
and philosophical thought of the end of the nineteenth century. He
believed that the approaching twentieth century would construct “a
system of pure monism” and achieve the “long-desired unity of world-
conception” (Haeckel 1900: XV&390).
Bogdanov designed his new science of organization in
accordance with the monistic assumptions of his era – Tektology’s
subtitle; Universal Organizational Science implied a monistic universal
science. Tektology was to be a monistic science of world-organization,
viewing and summing up the entire universe in terms of and through
organization.8 Bogdanov’s ingenious scientific discovery –“everything
is organization” led him to the conclusion that everything was only
organization – being a “monist” he believed he had created a new
monistic organizational science.9
As a Russian Marxist, Aleksandr Bogdanov was committed to
the scientific reconstruction of society, which appeared to him to be
the highest form of organization. Implementing Marxist-positivistic
practical aspirations, Tektology was to be not merely a monistic
organizational science but a science of monistic organizational
experience. Tektology was meant to be a practical science, its
formulae - “practical global formulae” were intended for the “practical
mastery” of nature, and to be “a powerful instrument of the real
organization of humankind into a single collective.” (Bogdanov 1989:
Book 1, 110).
Tektological ‘podbor’ - the creative power
St.Peterburg: Collection 1, 19–47. We find this analogy in the first pages of

Tektology. See Bogdanov 1989: Book 1, 72. For Bogdanov it was very important
since it demonstrated the possibility of his general organizational approach.
7 Bogdanov took the term Tektology from Ernst Haeckel’s Generalle Tektologie oder
Allgemeine Structurlehre der Organismen (1866) expanding this term. In Greek, “tekton”
means “theory of construction” and for Bogdanov” “construction” was “the most
general and suitable synonym for the modern notion of organization.” See
Bogdanov 1989: Book 1, 112.
8 The German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald, Haeckel’s most important successor as a
monist, attempted to develop the concept of “energetic monism”, based on the

universal principle of energy. This gave to Bogdanov the idea of applying the notion
of “organization” in a similar way.
9 Bogdanov identified three types of monistic word view in the history of society:
religious, philosophical-abstract and scientific and considered Tektology to be the

ultimate “scientific-monistic” worldview.

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Russian Marxism had seen the revolution and class struggle as
the way towards achieving a new social order. Bogdanov had an
opposite vision; the idea of struggle did not fit in with Bogdanov’s
organizational and harmonic vision of the world. Tektology was an “all-
human science” for the gathering together of man and of the world, to
produce a scientifically organized collective by stage of self-
organization without class struggle. The collectivistic organizational
logic of Tektology was based on Bogdanov’s biological worldview, fused
with a Russian philosophical Weltanschauung, which had always been
penetrated by ideas of the harmony of the world and did not accept
the principle of struggle as the moving force of evolution.
Bogdanov introduced the term “complex” as “expedient unity”
(tselesoobrasnost’)10 to denote a combination of elements or “activities-
resistances” and interpreted this in terms of the biological concept of
constant interaction with the environment and adaptation to it
(Bogdanov 1989 Book 1: 112–125).
Following Darwin, Bogdanov conceived of development as the
adaptation of a complex to its environment. The universal regulating
mechanism of tektological development and its adaptation was ‘podbor’.
Bogdanov believed his tektological ‘podbor’ to be merely a logical
extension of Darwin’s principle of “natural selection” discarding the
epithet “natural” (Bogdanov 1989, Book 1: 189–190). But this was not
the case.
How far did Bogdanov really follow Darwin? Is his conception
of selection really an extension of that of Darwin?
Darwin’s theory of evolution “by means of natural selection”
was greatly influenced by the English economist Thomas Malthus and
his theory of population growth exceeding resources. Malthus’s
metaphor of the “struggle for existence” was the matrix for Darwin’s
theory of evolution based on competition. Darwin wrote: “Nothing is
easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for
life” (Darwin 1902: 77).
Russian naturalists perceived nature very differently from
Western naturalists, seeing in nature not over-population but under-
population. Russian philosophy with its humanistic and collectivistic

10 Bogdanov identified three types of “complex” - “organized”, “disorganized” and
“neutral” since an increase in the degree of organization (“organized” complex)

was just one possible outcome of organizational processes; however, he was mostly
interested in the “organized” complex.

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tendencies believed in the best sides of both human nature and society.
The same attitude was applied to nature. As the Russian writer and
publicist Aleksandr Herzen put it, everybody has to have a place at
nature’s feast.
For Russian intellectuals, the constructions of Malthus were
offensive and even repugnant, and contrary to the Russian humanistic
tradition, which believed in high human moral ideals and strove for
the improvement of human society11. These intellectuals transferred
the same negative assessment to Darwin and Darwinism. Russian
intellectuals perceived Darwin’s theory as being the concept of a ruling
élite, for the benefit of the ruling élite. For example, the leading
Russian biologist of that time, Nikolay Danilevskiy, described
Darwinism as a “purely English doctrine”, in which is included not
just the features of the English mind but all the features of the English
spirit (Danilevskiy 1885: 178).
In the first Russian translation of Darwin’s Origin of Species
(Rachinskiy 1864) Darwin’s term “natural selection” was translated as
“estestvenniy podbor” (‘podbor’ - “assembling” in re-translation). This
fundamentally changed the meaning of Darwin’s concept of evolution
and removed its emphasis on competition and struggle for existence.
As a result, Russian Darwinism developed without Malthus – without
the struggle for existence. Russian Darwinists and intellectuals
discussed Darwin’s theory of evolution in terms of “assembling” or
“choice” – as nature’s choice of individual traits to uphold its divine
and marvelous order; adaptation represented a kind of reciprocal
“fine-tuning” or creative construction by nature (Chaikovskiy 1989:
121–141).
The correct translation of Darwin’s term “natural selection” –
“estestvenniy otbor” appeared in Russia at the end of the nineteenth
century,12 but the idea of competition as a moving force of evolution
was not really adopted. Most Russian thinkers, philosophers and
scientists of different backgrounds and political views of the generation
of Bogdanov believed that Darwin’s concept of evolution reflected the
negative influence of Malthus. Russian thinkers tried to create
different theories of mutual aid in order to achieve “genuine

11 As Todes has noted, Malthus was seen in Russia as a “hack writer”(Lev Tolstoi),
whose doctrine was a “morally repugnant” (Beketov) expression of the secret

desires of the wealth-producing classes (Kropotkin). See Todes 1989: 169.
12 In the translation of The Origin of Species by the famous Russian botanist Kliment
Timiryazev (1896).

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Darwinism”. In 1902 the famous Russian anarchist and biologist,
Prince Petr Kropotkin, devised an alternative concept of evolution:
Mutual Aid as Factor of Evolution.13 In this work, Kropotkin wrote:
“I failed to find – although I was eagerly looking for it – that
bitter struggle for the means of existence, among animals belonging to
the same species, which was considered by most Darwinists… as the
dominant characteristic of the struggle for life, and the main factor of
evolution”. (Kropotkin 1914: 7).
Instead he found “a great deal of mutual aid where Darwin
and Wallace see only struggle.” (1914: 9).
Kropotkin did not deny the existence of competition within the
same species or Darwin’s concept of the “survival of the fittest”.
But he believed that the “fittest” are animals that cooperate with each
other. Kropotkin viewed human morality as a product of the solidarity
and self-sacrifice that originated from the cooperative instincts of the
animal world. 14
It was in conformity with this Russian anti-Malthusian
assessment and tradition, that Bogdanov wrote in Tektology that the
principle of Darwin is a “scientific truth” and that the views of
Malthus should be disregarded “as being fundamentally mistaken”
(Bogdanov 1989: Book 2, 190) and he deliberately adopted the
archaic, by that time, translation ‘podbor’15 since, for him, the term
‘podbor’ corresponded to genuine Darwinism. He believed he was
merely expanding the relevance of the term in Tektology; but in a fact,
tektological ‘podbor’ (“assembling”) – is not an extension of Darwin’s
“natural selection”.
Darwin’s evolution works only through heredity in succession
of generations. Darwin’s “natural selection” meant selective biological
reproduction; each generation continues its evolutionary direction by
taking the next evolutionary step. In Bogdanov’s tektological

13 Petr Kropotkin 1914. Kropotkin wrote his book as a response to Social
Darwinism, particularly that of Thomas Henry Huxley (known as “Darwin’s

Bulldog)” and his book The Struggle for Existence in Human Society (1988).
14 Another great example of Russian collectivistic thinking is the Russian religious
philosopher Nikolay Fyodorov, the father of Russian cosmism. In The Philosophy of

the Common Task he proposed bringing all people together in the global task of
resurrection of all “fathers” by the “sons” through the application of science, in
order to achieve immortality and the brotherhood of all generations in future
cosmic humankind.
15 Bogdanov was familiar with the correct translation of Darwin’s term “natural
selection” as ‘otbor’ since he was a student of Timiryazev and he applied the term
‘otbor’ in Tektology on several occasions.

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organizational scheme the mechanism of ‘podbor’ was applied to the
development of any kind of organization, regardless of biological
heredity.
The further and the most important difference resides in the
systems character of tektological ‘podbor’, which, in this respect, is the
direct opposite of Darwin’s “natural selection”. Darwin’s “natural
selection” meant the selecting-survival of individuals through the
adaptation of one particular feature or another in the course of the
struggle for existence. Bogdanov’s ‘podbor’ meant the assembling-
creation of the organization through the concordance of its parts and
expediency (Bogdanov 1989: Book 1, 113) without reference to the
idea of competition. Tektological ‘podbor’ creates the mutual
correspondence of all complexes as parts of a single world-organism –
in line with the understanding of the Russian Darwinists of “natural
podbor” as “fine-tuning” in nature. 16
Tektological ‘podbor’ appears as the universal mechanism of the
construction of any organization and its expediency. In 2008
Chaikovskiy in his fundamental research on the theory of evolution
devoted a special chapter to ‘Podbor’ according to Bogdanov, where he
discussed the importance of Bogdanov’s ‘podbor’ as the foundation the
idea of the universal phenomenon of self-organization in nature
(Chaikovskiy 2008: 363–370). Tektological ‘podbor’ as the universal
organizing principle assembling the complex through the concordance
of its parts was taken up later in the work of the Soviet Constructivists,
as we shall see.
“Tektological Socialism” according to Bogdanov
It was not so much the functioning of organizations, which

interested Bogdanov, as the principles by which an organization as
“expedient integrity” (‘tselesoobrasnost’) was constructed. Organization
figures in Tektology more as a process than as a state - the new
“constructive” science was to be a science of the organizational laws
that determine the construction of elements into an integral unity.
Bogdanov choose the category of “organization” not by
chance. The philosophical term “organization” had acquired in
Marxism a special meaning as “social organization”. For Russian

16 The modern understanding of “selection” in the context of global evolutionism
corresponds to Bogdanov’s ‘podbor’. See Poustilnik 2008: 134.

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Marxists the idea of the construction of a new rational social
organization based on science was central – and science played a
primary role in Bogdanov’s conception of scientifically organized
humankind. But he viewed the science of the old world as full of
contradictions, too complicated and fragmented, and therefore not
suitable for the purpose of managing the “grandiose task…the triple
organization - of things, people and ideas” the objective of which was
to achieve a new social organization (Bogdanov 1989: Book 1, 106).
Bogdanov considered Marx to be the “great forerunner of
organizational science”. As White has put it, Bogdanov’s concept of
socialism as the “gathering of man” was close to the original idea of
Karl Marx. Marx believed that socialism would create an integral
human community, which would end the fragmentation of the human
psyché brought about by the division of labour and specialization.
Bogdanov conceived of the future collective in a similar fashion – all of
its members would be able to transfer from specialty to specialty.
Science would be available to everyone and the human collective
would be able to control it. But for Marx, the future socialist society
was to result from the inherent social nature of Mankind, whereas for
Bogdanov it would result from the active self-organization of society
(White 1998: 37–38).
Bogdanov’s answer was Tektology as the “socialism of science”.
In his early work, The Gathering of Man (Sobiraniye cheloveka, 1904)
Bogdanov formulated the task of changing “a fractured man” into
“integral man” when knowledge would be the property not of an élite,
but of all members of the collective. It was the hope of replacing the
existing necessity of collective belief by the collective possession of
knowledge that motivated Bogdanov in his path towards Tektology. 17
The class struggle did not fit into Bogdanov’s organizational
vision of a harmonious world. As he explained in Problems of socialism

17 In Engineer Menni (1912), Bogdanov’s second science fiction novel about
“tektological society” on the “Red Planet”, Mars, he gives expression to his

innermost aspirations; one of the protagonists asks “What must we do so that we
ourselves can know and see, and not just constantly believe?” adding that
“Modern “science is just like the society that has created it: powerful, but
splintered…Because of this fragmentation the individual branches of science have
developed separately and lost all vital connection with each other… Each branch
has its special language which is the privilege of the initiated and serves to exclude
everyone else.” See Bogdanov 1984: 186–187. On Bogdanov novels, see
Shushpanov 2009: 259–281.

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(Voprosy sotsializma, 1918) “the class struggle… ignores the organization
stability of the social mechanism.” (Bogdanov 1918: 42). He goes on:
“According to the old notions, socialism first conquers and
then comes into being.... We see things differently – socialistic
development will be completed by a socialistic revolution.” (1918:
101–102). The creative implementation of a socialist, class-based order
will bring the proletariat to a victory that will transform that order into
an all-human order (‘obshchechelovecheskiy stroi’).
Bogdanov completely discarded the notion of class struggle –
now the construction of a new social organization could be achieved
only through a long stage of cultural self-organization of the
proletariat.18 Bogdanov designed a programme for this transition – the
Programme of Proletarian Culture (Proletkult).19 At the core of the
project of the Proletkult there was Tektology, the organizational proletarian
science. To master culture meant to master Tektology, which contained
all the organizational experience and knowledge of humankind. For
Bogdanov, Tektology was the ultimate tool for the construction of new
kinds of relationships between members of the social organization in
the advance towards socialism.20
When Bogdanov says Tektology, he means proletarian science,
and vice versa. Tektology was a proletarian science that had simplified all
sciences from an organizational point of view and so became available
to every member of the collective, and not only to the educated élite. This
science of organization was a proletarian science and a real instrument
for the peaceful transition towards the unified human collective of the
future. In Bogdanov’s own words, Tektology was an “all-human
science” – an instrument for the organization of humankind into
“single intelligent human organism”21 and the purpose of the Proletkult
was to open the path towards socialism by serving as an enabling

18 This explains why he left active political life in 1911 and became Lenin’s most
serious intellectual antagonist and rival.
19 On the Proletkult, see Sochor 1988.
20 Bogdanov was obsessed with this idea. In 1918, at the First All-Russian
Conference of the Proletkult, in his speech Science and the Proletariat (Nauka i
proletariat) Bogdanov spoke of the need to master tektology as a means towards
socialism (the Proletkult catered not for everyone, but primarily for the proletarian
vanguard or proletarian élite).
21 Bogdanov tried to achieve “physiological collectivism” in practice, through
exchange blood transfusions, seeing this as a way of eliminating the “weak link” of
each organism and, most interestingly, of achieving an “outcome beyond the limits
of individuality” (Bogdanov 1989: Book 2, p. 86). At that time many scientists
believed in heredity via blood. See Krementsov 2011.

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institution for cultural self-organization and the mastering of
Tektology.22
The Proletkult represented a fusion of Bogdanov’s utopian
aspirations – the scientific utopia of a universal monistic discipline that
was capable of mastering any combination of elements and the social
utopia of the construction of “tektological socialism”.
Project of Man and Project of Art
How did Bogdanov’s view of the world via the prism of

organization influence Russian intellectuals in the first decades of the
20th century? Vesa Oittinen in his preface to Alexandr Bogdanov Revisited
has discussed the long history of Bogdanov’s “rivalry” with Lenin and
the powerful influence of this rivalry on the formation of Leninism and
of early Soviet state ideology, cultural politics and art (Oittinen 2009:
7–20).
The post-revolutionary era in Russia witnessed the advent of a
project to create a “new Soviet man”. This ideological construct, was
no longer an individual but a collective proletarian. Many strands of
this project were rooted in Tektology, which during the early years of
the Soviet regime was used by Russian Marxists as a creative
intellectual tool. Political leaders and the “proletarian” élite, both
before the revolution and after, in their searching for a new men and a
new society model, closely studied Red Star (Bogdanov 1908).
Bogdanov’s first science fiction novel about “tektological communism”
on Mars. During the first years after the revolution Bogdanov was very
popular; Tektology was a mandatory subject of study in the courses of
Narkompros (the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment).23 During
the relative freedom of the 1920s Bogdanov was still able to publish
and express his views and ideas.24 The First All-Russian Initiative
Conference on the Scientific Organization of Labour and Production (NOT), 1921
opened with a presentation by Bogdanov: “Organization Science and

22 In the 1920s official Soviet Marxists distorted Bogdanov’s notion of
organizational proletarian science and used it to divide science into “proletarian”

and “bourgeois”.
23 See Udal’tsov 1922: 82–83. The program of the Proletkult abandoned
traditional authoritarian teaching and relationships and encouraged students to

work as a collective.
24 Particularly, in the journals “Gryadushchee” (The Future) and “Proletarskaya
Kul’tura” (Proletarian Culture). Bogdanov was the editor in chief of

“Proletarskaya Kul’tura”.

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the planning of the economy” in which he advocated the development
of Soviet economy according to tektological principles (the law of the
least, the principle of equilibrium, etc.).25
In 1924, in the journal Under Banner of Marxism (‘Pod znamenem
marksizma’) it was noted that one of the immediate tasks was – a close
examination and criticism of Tektology from the standpoint of
dialectical materialism (Veinstein 1924: 90) – indeed, critical reviews
of Tektology appeared in this journal on a regular basis.26 In 1930 in the
journal Revolution and Culture (‘Revolyutsiya i kultura’) it was emphasised
once again that “the influence of Bogdanov’s doctrine…necessitates its
serious and deep criticism”.27 In the same year there appeared a
critical review of the economist Bazarov, one of Bogdanov’s followers
in economics, in which it was sarcastically noted: “What can we say
about a naturalist who, on the grounds that a table has four “legs”, like
a cow, would declare that a table is the model of a cow?” (Sobol’ 1930:
60).
Slava Gerovitch, in discussing the evolution of the Soviet
notion of self, has pointed out:
“The “totalitarian model” of Soviet society traditionally
considered “the cog in a wheel” as a central metaphor for the new
Soviet man. This metaphor embodied the notion of the passive
individual subsumed under the collective…” (Gerovitch 2007: 137).
Recently, however, scholars have begun to challenge the
passive nature of the Soviet “totalitarian self”. They argue that the
“new Soviet man” was not just a passive recipient of official ideology.
He made active attempts to construct a new identity for himself,
aspiring after the alluring ideal of the new Soviet man (Gerovitch
2007).
Proletarian collectivism was an essential feature of this identity
and all aspects of a new “proletarian” life - and a necessary

25 It is interesting that Bogdanov introduced the term ‘Soviet exhaustion’
(‘Sovetskaya iznoshennost’), which he considered to be a consequence of the

“enthusiasm of socialistic construction.” See Bogdanov 1928: 22.
26 For example, tektology was evaluated as reactionary concept because it
“interfered with the revolutionary tactics of the proletariat”(Veinstein Ibid.); the

tektological principle of ‘weak link’ (‘printsip slabogo zvena’) provoked the
“Marxist” response that “our Party successfully leads the peasantry towards
socialism, which is, “ from Bogdanov’s point of view is an impossible case” since
for Bogdanov it is the “weak link” that determines development (Karev 1926: 43);
Tektology “results in almost mystical concepts because of the mechanical transfer
of models from one area to another”( Ibid., 27).
27 “Ob itogach i novych zadachakh na filosofskom fronte” 1930: 109.

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precondition of the construction of a new proletarian art. Bogdanov’s
slogan of “organization” and organizational laws, and his attempt to
construct a collective integral personality-organization possessed a
conceptual creative power. As Susiluoto has pointed out, in Russia,
systems thinking arose as a comprehensive challenge without proof,
through philosophy and theoretical concepts and possessed a “utopian
creative power to influence and change the entire world, now and at
once.” (Susiluoto 2009: 86).
Tektology as a science of the organization of rational
combinations was a powerful and creative instrument, and its ideas
were promoted and available to Soviet intellectuals, artists, and the
mass membership of the Proletkult. Many links were forged between
groups of the Proletkult and Constructivists after the founding of
Constructivism in March 1921.28
The Art Deco style of the early twentieth century was a
celebration of the rise of commerce and machine art, and the human
being was included in the universe of the machine and viewed as a
technical system. During the early Soviet period, life was synonymous
with art, and art became life. New “proletarian” art and “proletarian”
art objects were to be imbued with the idea of a purpose that was
understandable for the proletariat and clearly connected with
everyday life and work experience.29
The Constructivists were dedicated to creating art objects that
would organize the new Soviet man in a collective direction towards
socialism. They were seeking to create the projects and objects of
proletarian constructivist art as a fusion of human being, technique,
science and everyday life based on the principle of concordance of the
parts, forms and materials.30
Tektology provided Constructivists with a scientific rationale,
and with terminology and models for their experiments in a new
“production art”. Bogdanov viewed expediency as being the universal
principle of every form of organization, and that it derived from the
inherent activity of all complexes:

28 For example, Boris Arvatov taught at the Central Proletkult in Moscow.
29 Aleksandr Rodchenko in writing about the new essence of proletarian items of
daily life, referred to “the capitalistic world’s “opium of things”.
30 Alekseiy Gan designated the three principal elements of Constructivism as
“construction”, “faktura” and the “tectonic”.

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“Any practical or theoretical task comes up against a
tektological question: how to organize most expediently a collection of
elements, whether real or ideal.” (Bogdanov 1989: Book 1, 142).
For the Constructivists the conception of “organization” as an
expedient combination of active elements was a powerful idea and
stimulus. Tektological models demonstrated the practical ways for
artists to construct an expedient complex of “production art” in order
to fulfill the political command which required proletarian artists to
deliver practical and functional proletarian art objects.
In 1922 Alekseiy Gan published the groundbreaking work
Constructivism (Gan 1922), in which he pronounced the slogan “labour,
technique and organization!” and “expediency” was proclaimed as a
formal artistic dogma and goal. As Tikka has pointed out:
“In line with the tectological thinking…the constructivist
theorist Alekseiy Gan…elaborated his “Tectonics” on the idea of
“fluidity” (tekuchest’) as a formulation of the workers’ “active social
force” (Tikka 2008: 222).31
Bogdanov spoke of the “worker-organizer”, the Constructivists
– of the “artist- organizer” – both models implied collective work.
Bogdanov conceived of Tektology as the ultimate tool that would
contribute to the attainment of socialism. The Constructivists saw
collective artistic labour as a path towards socialism. Bogdanov did not
make a distinction between creation and labour – and the
Constructivists focused on practical objects inspired by labour,
technique and everyday life.
The Constructivist artist was an “artist-organizer”, an “artist-
worker” – a member of the proletarian collective, organizing and
creating an object of organized art in collective production.32 The
product of constructivist work-art figured as an organized complex in
Bogdanov’s sense of the term created by the proletarian collective and
representing the proletarian collective as “workers-organizers”.
Tektological ‘podbor’-“assembling” as a universal mechanism
for construction, provided the Constructivists with a real method for
constructing an expedient art-object by way of a “cinematic assembly”

31 The term “tectonic” (‘tektonika’) was also used by Constructivists Varvara
Stepanova and Alexandr Rodchenko. Varvara Stepanova in her lecture on
Constructivism in 1921 discussed “tectonic construction” and the role of the artist
as an organizer.
32 For example, Rodchenko asked his students to create the objects, which would
organize the collective.

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of the elements – in the manner of assembling by tektological ‘podbor’.
In 1922 the Constructivist Dziga Vertov proclaimed:
“Cinema is the art of the fictional motion of things in space
that meet the requirements of science”; ‘kinochestvo’ is “the art of
organizing the necessary movements of things in space and time in a
rhythmical artistic whole.”33
In 1923 The Council of Three (‘Sovet troich’), led by Vertov,

proposed assembling “visual events” into “a tectonic whole” “in a
great craft of montage.” In this conception, the constructivist
filmmaker would apply methods resembling tektological ‘podbor’ and
tektological models as a means of creating organized film-
construction.34 As regards tektological ‘podbor’ – assembling – Tikka
has drawn attention to the ideas of Sergei Eisenstein on the cinematic
‘assembly line’ and to his “notion of montage as a tectological method
for organizing human experience” (Tikka 2009 op.cit: 229).
Conclusion
I have argued that there is a remarkable link connecting the

understanding of the Russian Darwinists of “natural podbor” as “fine-
tuning” by nature, Bogdanov’s concept of tektological ‘podbor’ as a
universal principle of “assembling” in organization and, through what
seems to have been the dissemination of his ideas, the concept of the
“cinematic assembly “of the Soviet Constructivists. In my view this
continuity can be attributed to the immanent collectivism of the
Russian and Soviet Weltanschauung.
The conception of a new class of organizers of socialism as a
“proletarian” collectivity – Bogdanov’s Tektology as organizer and
Constructivist production art as organizer – were not acceptable to the
Soviet political leadership since they did not integrate the leadership’s
conception of Marxism into their organizational constructions and
models. The fraught relationship between these two great Utopian
projects of the XX century has yet fully to be investigated.

33See Vertov, 1922. Variant Manifesta “My”: http://vertov.ru/Dziga_Vertov/
34 Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929) is a great example of
Tektology-inspired constructivist cinematic technique in which organized film is
placed at the service of the organized collective. Vertov included in his films
moments of editing of the film, making explicit the process of construction.

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References
Bogdanov, Aleksandr. 1908. Krasnaya zvezda (Roman-utopiya). Saint-Petersburg:

Tovarishchestvo khudozhnikov pechati.
-------------1913. “Pis’mo V.V.Veresaevu”, 3 November 1913. In Trudy Komissii po
nauchnomu naslediyu A.A.Bogdanova, 211–212 Moscow: Institut Ekonomiki.
1992.
-------------- 1918. Voprosy sotsialisma. Moscow: Knigoisdatel'stvo Pisatelei v Moskve.
-------------- 1928. “Perviy god raboty Instituta perelivaniya krovi.” In Na novom pole.
Moscow: Gos.Nauchnij Institut perelivaniya krovi, 1: 1–45.
--------------1984. Red Star. The First Bolshevik Utopia, edited by Loren Graham, and
Richard Stites. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
------------------- 1989. Tektologiya:Vseobshchaya organizatsionnaya nauka. Moscow:
Economika, 1–2.
Chaikovskii, Yuriy. V. 1989. “Pervye shagi darvinisma v Rossii.” Istoriko-biologicheskie
issledovaniya, Moscow 10: 121–141.
------------------- 2008. Aktivnyy svyaznyy mir. Moscow: Tovarishchestvo nauchnuch
izdanii KMK.
Danilevskii, Nikolay Ya. 1885. Darvinism. Kriticheskoe Issledovanie. SPb: Izdanie
Merkuriya Eleazarovicha-Komarova, Vol.1, Part. 2.
Darwin, Charles. 1902. The Origin of Species by means of natural selection or The preservation
of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray.
Gan, Alexeiy. 1922. Konstruktivizm,Tver': Tverskoe izdatel'stvo.
Gerovitch, Slava. 2007. “New Soviet Man” Inside Machine: Human Engineering,
Spacecraft Design, and the Construction of Communism.” In The Self as
Project: Politics and the Human Sciences in the Twentieth Century, edited by Greg
Eghigian, Andreas Killen, and Christine Leuenberger, Osiris 22(1): 135–157.
University of Chicago Press.
Haeckel, Ernst. 1900. The Riddle of the Universe. London: Rationalist Press.
Karev, Nikolay. 1926. “Tektologiya ili dialektika.” Pod znamenem marskizma, Moscow,
4.
Krementsov, Nikolai. 2011. A Martian Stranded on Earth: Alexander Bogdanov, Blood
Transfusions, and Proletarian Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kropotkin, Petr. 1914. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. London: William Heinemann.
Deborin, Abram. 1930. “Ob itogach i novych zadachakh na filosofskom fronte.”
Revolutsiya i kul’tura, Moscow, 9–10: 107–112.
Oittinen, Vesa. 2009. “Preface.” In Aleksandr Bogdanov Revisited, edited by Vesa
Oittinen, 7-20.Helsinki: Aleksanteri Series.
Poustilnik, Simona. 1998. “Biological Ideas in Tektology.” In Alexander Bogdanov and
the Origins of Systems Thinking in Russia, edited by John Biggart, Peter Dudley,
and Francis King, 63–73. Aldershot: Ashgate.
---------------------- 2008. “Bogdanov’s Tektology and the Genesis of Systems
Theory.” In Alexander Bogdanov. Theoretiker für das 20. Jahrhundert, edited by
Stefan Plaggenborg, and Maja Soboleva, 116–140 Jahrhundert. München:
Sagner.

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Shushpanov, Aleksandr N. 2009. “Alternative Social Ideas in Russian Utopian
Novels and Science Fiction at the Beginning of the 20th Century.” In
Aleksandr Bogdanov Revisited, edited by Vesa Oittinen, 259–281. Helsinki:
Aleksanteri Series, 1.
Sobol’, Valerian.1930. “Teoriya planirovaniya vreditelya Bazarova.” Revolutsiya i
kultura, Moscow, 21–22: 59–66.
Sochor, Zenovia. 1988. Revolution and Culture. The Bogdanov-Lenin Controversy. Ithica and
London: Cornell University Press.
Susiluoto, Ilmari. 2009. “The Unfulfilled Promise: Tectology and “Socialist Cybernetics.” In
Tikka, Pia. 2009. “Tracing Tectology in Sergei Eisenstein’s Holistic Thinking.” In
Todes, Daniel. 1989. Darwin Without Malthus: The Struggle for Existence in Russian
Evolutionary Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Udal’tsov, Aleksandr. 1922. “K kritike teorii klassov u A.Bogdanova.” Pod znamenem
marksizma, Moscow, 7–8: 82–100.
Veinstein, Israel. 1924. “Tektologiya i taktika.” Pod znamenem marksizma, Moscow
1924, 6–7: 90–96.
Vertov, Dziga. 2008. “My. Variant Manifesta.” In Dziga Vertov. Iz naslediya. Moscow:
Eisenstein-tsentr, 2.
White, James. 1998. “Sources and precursors of Bogdanov’s Tektology.” In Alexander
Bogdanov and the Origins of Systems Thinking in Russia, edited by John Biggart,
Peter Dudley, and Francis King, 25–42. Aldershot: Ashgate.

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SHARING IN ACTION:
BOGDANOV, THE LIVING EXPERIENCE AND
THE SYSTEMIC CONCEPT OF THE ENVIRONMENT
Giulia Rispoli______________________________________________________________
This paper discusses the novelty of Aleksandr Bogdanov’s

approach, which combines the systemic and cybernetic
perspectives employed in his Tektology, the general science of
organization (1913–1922). In this work Bogdanov places particular
emphasis on the concept of the environment and situates the
process of ‘organization’ in a shared social context. The interaction
among social agents, and between them and their contextual
surroundings, implies a cybernetic relationship. The environment
is, in fact, regarded both in terms of its influence in shaping human
living conditions and in its plasticity in being transformed by
human labour for specific purposes. Likewise, in Tektology,
This chapter is peer-reviewed and edited for Bogdanov considers not only the social context but also biological
and ecological systems that foster an emergent relationship
between organisms and their environments. On the one hand, the
environment favours biological organisms most well adapted to its
EARLY SOVIET THOUGHT conditions; on the other hand, the environment is seen as a portion
Bogdanov, Eisenstein, and the Proletkult of space (ecosystem) in which populations live and continuously
modify the biogeochemical conditions of that system. By referring
Editor-in-Chief: Pia Tikka to biological, ecological and cognitive levels of cybernetic
organization, I argue that Bogdanov’s tektological polymorphic idea
Tangential Points Publications of the environment embraces different dimensions of the systemic
ISBN 103204787103ABC
discourse, and can also be useful to understand the process of
knowledge creation underlying the idea of a proletarian culture.
Rispoli___________________SHARING IN ACTION____________________Page 1 of 13
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One or more ways to represent the world
Contemporary interpretations of Bogdanov as a pioneer of

cybernetics and systems theory see his contributions only as precursors
to later perspectives. As James White and Vadim Sadovskiy pointed out,
Bogdanov’s early thinking, and in particular his epistemology, deeply
influenced the rise of the General science of organization and his
Empiriomonism should be considered the philosophical foundation of
Tektology (White 1998; Sadovskiy 1992). By reversing the perspective
that sees Bogdanov’s empiriomonistic ideas as the theoretical ground for
Tektology, I will use, instead, the biological and ecological concepts
described in his later work on the universal science of organization to
illuminate his earlier discourse about the production of knowledge in a
social context.
During the constitution of the Russian Social Democratic
Labour Party in 1898, new cultural ferments from Europe reached
Saint Petersburg to influence the political ideas and activities of a rich
group of intellectuals. These intellectuals were fascinated by the
epistemological revolution that the physicist Ernst Mach and the
philosopher Richard Avenarius carried out in Europe and decided to
introduce these ‘ambiguous’ philosophical notions to the Bolsheviks.
The followers of Avenarius and Mach thus ignited an ideological debate
between revolutionaries. The split was much more than a simple
political controversy – it had the power to shake the columns of the
entire theoretical apparatus on which Russian Marxism had been
founded (Tagliagambe & Rispoli 2016; Plaggenborg & Soboleva 2009;
Strada 1994).
One of the most important interrogatives on which the Russian
‘Machists’ and the dialectical materialists diverged regarded the way we
produce knowledge and the means by which we know and represent the
external world1.
In Empiriomonism, Bogdanov illustrated that his philosophical
theory was opposed to Lenin’s dialectical materialism and was inspired
instead by Richard Avenarius’ empiriocriticism and Ernst Mach’s
psychophysiology. Both theories were largely responsible for the rapid
growth of empiricism that took place in the twentieth century.
Avenarius and Mach claimed that knowledge should be limited to
sensations and that the only accurate description of the natural world is
that which is experienced by one or more of the five senses (Hirschheim
1992: 19). Sensation is seen by Mach as a biological adaptation of the
1 See the article of Daniela Steila (2016) published in this volume.
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organism to the environment2. Man’s sensations are in fact absolute and

certain. But what can man know through his sensations? What does he
primarily assume during the process of knowing? Can he assume the
real existence of the external world?
Following Avenarius’s argument, when a person has an
experience, three things are immediately assumed by that person: the
environment as a portion of space where other individuals live; other
human beings expressing their verbal assumptions about the
environment, and he finally assumes that what a person experiences
somehow depends on the connection between these two kingdoms.
Thus, during the process of knowledge creation, man assumes the
existence of different individuals who communicate with each other, the
environment constituted and organized by those individuals, and the
dialectic process established among them (Avenarius 1972).
As in Jan C. Smuts’s analysis, Life, Mind and Matter are
elements that utterly co-exist and compound with each other (Smuts
1972; f.e. 1926), for Avenarius, the above conditions represent the
original nucleus around which all the experiences, thoughts and
speculations, regardless of their sophistication, gather. These three
elements represent the alphabet of knowledge.
Experiencing the environment in Avenarius’s

empiriocriticism
In the book Critique of Pure Experience (Kritik der Reinen Erfahrung)

(1888), Avenarius asks whether a so-called ‘pure experience’, which is
an experience not characterized by any specific determination, can exist
(Verdino 1972). Experience depends on what the individual concretely
experiences — the external environment — and that knowledge is not
independent of what is supposed to be grasped, which is again the
environment and its components. Avenarius states that pure experience
does not exist because it would be completely outside human capability
and independent of human agency. Two issues are very important in
Avenarius’s empiriocriticism: the first is the interconnection between
individuals and the environment, and the second is that knowledge
exists only in the continuous communication of experiences among
individuals in a shared environment (Avenarius 1972). As a result, the
process of knowing is open and never fully accomplished; nobody can
pretend to know the absolute truth. Knowledge fluctuates in the middle
2 Mach wrote this in his Analysis of Sensations, published in 1886, which laid the
foundation of Empirism. Science, he said, can only attain certainty if it is built on
sensations. See Hirschheim 1992: 19.
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of a process that involves the person having the experience, the

individuals and the environment. Only what is being communicated
could be considered an experience. In other words, experience and
communication of that experience overlap and the possibility of
knowing implies a continuous process of interaction and exchange of
assertions that are never held once and for all. On the contrary, they are
constantly reinvested into new experiences and new verbal
communications. In this view, the environment is not simply a physical
space but is embodied in a process of information sharing among
individuals. Therefore, according to Avenarius, all mental processes
should be investigated using a reverse viewpoint: instead of primarily
approaching mental functional relations from an internal, cognitive
perspective, we need to focus on the inputs coming from the
environment where the exchange among individuals occurs.
The process of knowledge creation is not a passive recording of
external phenomena but an active behaviour aimed at understanding
and grasping ‘facts’ of nature that belong to the group and are
collectively learned. However, Avenarius seems to regard the process of
communication prior to the process of ‘adaptation’ to the environment.
In his view, the possibility of knowing implies a process of assimilation
of the spatial and social environment through inter-communication of
individual experiences. Likely, Avenarius contemplates mostly human
knowledge in his theory because it was directly linked to his main
interest in human psychology. Mach, on the other side, takes into
account elementary biological organisms as well, showing how
sensations do not belong only to humankind. A sensation, which is a
product of biological evolution, is not just about individual sentient
beings and their psycho-cognitive structures; rather, it is a global process
that affects the whole body. It also occurs in less complex elementary
organisms in which cognitive structures are almost absent. In such cases,
Mach speaks about whole perceptual behaviours arrangements. A
sensation, in Mach’s view, is a relational mechanism and propagates
itself along multiple sensory connections (Mach 1915).
In the next section, we shall investigate Bogdanov’s
interpretation of the relationship between organisms and the
environment in the framework of modern evolutionary theories. Then,
we shall consider the process of knowledge in Bogdanov’s view and
conclude with his idea of culture as living experience.
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Organisms and the environment as a cybernetic system
In Bogdanov’s view organisms, regardless of their biological

complexity — whether ants or human beings — build their social and
natural environments by modifying them, step by step, in ways that are
beneficial to themselves. However, the environment, far from being
passive, is constituted by individual works as a set of circumstances that
put a pressure on a community, and this reduces the spectrum of
activities that a community can possibly undertake. The
interdependency between organisms in nature and the constraints that
nature imposes on economic life is important in Tektology. The
relationship established between organisms and environments, or
following Bogdanov, “among different organized complexes” (Gare
1994), is mutual and correlative instead of unidirectional and
deterministic.
About twenty years after Bogdanov wrote Tektology, the idea of a
holistic and anti-reductionist view of the relationship between organisms
and the environment in Western evolutionary biology still represented a
challenge. During the period of Neo-Darwinism, as the Modern
Evolutionary Synthesis developed, the properties of the environment
were drastically oversimplified for example in the understanding of
natural selection, which was at times conceived as a mere mechanical
factor (Rashevskiy 1960). This paradigm, which tried to reconcile
Mendelian genetics with gradual biological evolution by means of
natural selection acting on mutations, has been a dominant one within
evolutionary biology since 1950. However, the definition of ‘modern
synthesis’, a term that had already been coined by Julian Huxley as
early as 1942, explained natural selection as a powerful causal agent of
evolution and over time this became seen as its exclusive force (Gould
1984).
The paradigm shift did not take place until the 1970s when
several biologists, Richard Lewontin among them, started to criticize
the idea that the environment can be understood as being independent
of the organisms themselves. According to Lewontin, in discussing the
interaction between organisms and the environment, Neo-Darwinists
had started from two definite and independent entities: the genome and
the physical environment, describing the development of the organism
as a result of both of them. But in doing so, they never considered that
during this process, the environment is continually being redefined and
reshaped by the developing organism (Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin
1984: 277). For example, Robert Brandon, who is largely known for his
contribution to eco-evolutionary theories, shows that all organisms in a
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particular region of space and time share the ‘external environment’,

but to understand the particular selective forces acting on one lineage of
organisms, it is necessary to pick out a specific ‘ecological environment’,
so that the ecological environment of a fly will be quite different from
that of a tree, even if they occupy the same external environment
(Griffiths 2014). Thus, we can investigate the environment at different
layers according to the functional and physiological relations that occur
between different organisms and environments in a specific niche. Even
if we study one single organism in the course of its development instead
of many organisms, we should think in terms of multiple environments.
As Bogdanov wrote in Tektology:
“Here is a germ of plant. As its cells reproduce, they turn to be

in increasingly dissimilar environments: some go down into the soil,
others rise into air; originally similar, they inevitably modify in terms of
the increasing divergence. The principal point is that the dominant
materials for assimilation are dissimilar: in soil, these are mainly water
and salt; in air carbon dioxide, oxygen, and radiant solar energy. All the
above materials, however, are part of the structures of all cells, i.e.
assimilated and dissimilated by all parts of the system. In what direction
then must the selection regulate the development? What correlations of
the diverging parts will be most stable? Its parts complement one
another, and this is quite possible precisely thanks to the preservation of
their connection which is kept intact by the common internal medium,
the motion and the exchange of the plant’s sap” (Bogdanov 1988: 157–
158).
Thus, the development of a plant proceeds in accordance with

the environmental circumstances of that plant’s components during its
development. In Tektology Bogdanov emphasizes the role of the
environment within the evolution of biological systems also from the
point of view of developmental and embryological explanations.
As Milan Zeleny pointed out, Bogdanov’s system cannot be
separated from its environment because it does not simply exist or
interact within its environment: “it is structurally coupled with it and
thus evolves in its own environment while co-evolving with it” (Zeleny
1988: 333). This also explains why Bogdanov coined the use of
‘complex’ instead of ‘system’ that emphasizes a final state of natural
things (Zeleny 1988: 333).
Bogdanov did not relegate the environment to the status of an
element of disturbance to be kept under control. Similarly, this
conception would frequently be reconsidered in further studies in
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cybernetics and systems theory: according to Wiener and Bertalanffy

the environment is often mistakenly regarded as a perturbation that
leads the system to a state far from equilibrium, whereas equilibrium is
supposed to be the purpose to which a self-organized system should
aim. Signals coming from the environment are put aside because they
might create a deficiency in the organization of the system. The idea of
the environment as an element of disturbance marks the General
System Theory as inferior when compared to Tektology (Zeleny 1988).
According to Pushkin and Ursul (1994) there are two distinct
levels by which we can interpret the attitude of systems, such as
organisms, toward their environment: self-regulation and the self-
organization. Self-regulation is inherent to systems that maintain the
status quo, which means a static state of equilibrium that can be
formalized through a mathematical explanation. A self-organizing
system, however, which Bogdanov describes as one that shifts from the
static to the processual aspect of the objects, maintains a more complex
relationship with the environment because it assimilates material that
then creates the conditions for that material to emerge and evolve to a
different stage, in a new configuration, which in turn modifies the
surrounding environment through the release of different outputs. Thus,
the latter it is a more dynamic process that involves the notion of
feedback, which exists in those cases in which each part of the system
affects the other, and each part acts in a different way according to the
stimulus it receives3. The interconnectedness of all the elements of
nature depends upon a continuous process of aggregation and
disaggregation or conjugation and separation of systems. Not only does
the environment control the system, the system also controls the
environment; they establish a cybernetic interaction (Rispoli 2015).
Bogdanov insists emphatically upon the role of evolutionary
relations in the dialectic between the inside and the outside, a
distinction that sometimes is hard to state, especially when we take
microorganisms, organisms like worms or even bio-geo-chemical
processes such as photosynthesis as examples. “Only a very small
fraction of the environment of an organism is inorganic. The largest
part of that environment is formed by other organisms [...]” (Rashevskiy
1960: 246)4. Almost every organism depends for its existence on the
3 Regarding Bogdanov’s feedback as a “bi-regulative” process, see Peter Dudley

(2016) in this volume.
4 As Bogdanov stated: “Living organism is characterized as a machine which not
only regulates itself but also repairs itself. As the elements of tissues of organism wear
off it replaces them with material taken from the environment and ‘assimilated’ […].
The dead matter taken from (outside) is transformed by the protoplasm into its
living matter, chemically identical” (Bogdanov, Chapter V, sections 7: 95–99). This
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presence of other organisms. A good example, and one which challenges

the conventional Neo-Darwinian comprehension of the relationship
between organisms and environments, is the phenomenon of symbiosis,
a mutualistic association between two or more organisms. Bogdanov
uses this example to elucidate the features of the process of
complementary correlation. He shows that some cellular algae live in
symbiosis with unicellular animals, and that they cyclically exchange
chemical components and nutrients. The animal consumes oxygen and
excretes carbon dioxide, while the plant decomposes carbon dioxide
releasing oxygen which is immediately absorbed by the animal. Here,
the closest environment of an organism is substantially the other
organism, and, at the external environment only at a different scale. In
symbiosis, the relationship between organisms and the environment is
akin to interpenetration because the boundaries are basically
permeable, and the organisms are so closely associated that they form a
new integrity5.
According to Bogdanov, organized systems require a changing
environment and a system under development involves an environment
under development. The environment plays a constitutive and
constructive role in the process of the structural evolution of those
(Pushkin and Ursul 1994). Plasticity is therefore an important feature of
tektological complexes, which can be analysed as evolving unities thanks
to the continuous exchange of matter and energy with the environment.
Many years after Bogdanov’s work, this idea is still found
challenging. In the science of ecology, the interaction between the
biological community and the environment tended to be viewed as
unidirectional. It was assumed that the species evolved in the
environment and “the reciprocal phenomenon, the reaction and
evolution of the environment in response to species, was put aside”
(Lewontin & Levins 1980: 49). A static complex, be it the system, or be
it the environment, does not exist in nature so the development of the
system and of the environment co-evolve. They are part of a single
complex that is differentiated in its functions and organizations. The
existence of this complex depends upon its organization in relation to all
other external systems; it is therefore not fruitful to study them in
isolation since in isolation they do not even exist. As Sadovskiy pointed
out, “the complex is a bogdanovian version of the modern concept of
the system, which, in addition, is not interpreted as a set of interrelated
quotation has been taken from a collection of unpublished materials of Bogdanov’s

Tektology made available thanks to Peter Dudley.
5 Not surprisingly, symbiogenesis, the evolutionary origin of new morphologies and
physiologies by symbiosis, has been in the forefront of Russian concept of evolution

since the last century. See Margulis and Fester 1991.
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elements but as a process of their organization’s change, dependent on

the structural linkage of the complex and its environment” (Sadovskiy
1992: 7). According to Bogdanov, the fluctuation of a system
attributable to the intrusion of variables from outside should not be
interpreted exclusively as disruptions to harmonies but as factors that
can bring new possibilities of existence by stimulating the emergence of
new properties and, in this way, the establishment of new organized
entities.
Having in mind Bogdanov’s powerful contribution in the
framework of contemporary systems theories as applied to the
correlative and co-evolving relation between organisms and
environment, we shall now come back to his monistic interpretation of
knowledge.
Bogdanov’s monistic shift: culture as active experience
In proposing his empiriomonistic theory on the genesis of

knowledge, Bogdanov starts from similar epistemological premises as
Avenarius – namely asserting the existence of a dialectical relation
among three elements: the environment, the individuals comprising the
spatial environment and the inter-dependence between their verbal
expressions and the external environment. However, Bogdanov
distinguishes his theory from those formulated by empiriocritics in one
aspect in particular. He argues that the process of knowledge
production has to be seen in terms of shared activities in the context of
collective work driven by common purposes, rather than as inter-verbal
communication in a shared environment. A person’s experience of the
external environment primarily refers to another individual’s action
rather than to his verbal message. Before individuals communicate what
they are experiencing, they must already have had the experience that
would later be summarized and communicated. First of all, knowledge
presupposes a concrete action in the world that can be seen as a practice
of mastering the environment. Therefore, what is firstly exchanged,
prior to any enunciation, is knowledge in the form of a technical skill
(White 1998; Tagliagambe 2004). Moreover, according to Bogdanov,
empiriocriticism is too passive and focused on individual sensations.
Experiencing implies an active, socially structured, interaction with the
environment. The active nature of experience is stressed over passive
perception (Rowley 2016).
Regarding knowledge as a sociological rather than
epistemological phenomenon, Bogdanov argued that an analysis of
cooperation within individual groups provides the basis for the study of
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the development of knowledge (Gare 1994). Different activities in

concert mean for Bogdanov nothing other than ‘general organization’,
and this is a key issue in his Tektology. Bogdanov shows that knowledge is
the result of the organization of nature by labour; in turn, the
organization is the tool by which individuals interact to transform the
environment to better fit their needs. Knowledge is the organization of
experience that is transmitted from generations to generations. Thus, in
Bogdanov’s view, organization can be seen as a collective process of
construction of the surrounding environment that is considered both a
biological and a cultural medium. These two dimensions are not
separable and communicate with each other. As Maja Soboleva pointed
out, there is no contradiction between the terms ‘nature’ and ‘culture’
for Bogdanov (Soboleva 2016: 3). In this respect, organization,
described in Tektology as the universal mechanism of nature, also
underpins the evolution of human culture conceived as an all-
embracing, living and evolving experience. Every kind of knowledge,
from science, to philosophy to art and literature, is the result of man’s
organization over the environment that has taken place during his
whole history and stem from the very basic element of experience –
action. Bogdanov had inherited the idea of action as a primary source
for the origin of language and cognition by the German/French
philosopher Ludwig Noiré (1829–1889) who argued that “action” is the
first rudimentary form of people’s interaction in the social context of
labour. The principles that Bogdanov derived from Noiré are described
in White’s article (1998). For Bogdanov, there was neither contradiction
between nature and culture, nor between knowledge and practice. The
experience of learning is, in fact, embodied in the process of sharing
technical skills, tools and practices in a social, material context.
Bogdanov replaced “individual sensation with collective experience”
and regarded knowledge as a collective task (Rowley 2016: 10).
Bogdanov tried to apply his empiriomonistic ideas within the
proletarian, cultural and educational institution (Proletkult) that he
contributed to establish in 1917 with the aim of forging a real
proletarian culture destined to and produced by workers6. In that
context, Bogdanov could experiment his vision of knowledge production
in the form of collective experience and collaborative, experimental
practice. As McKenzie Wark pointed out, for Bogdanov scientists,
artists and philosophers were ‘organizers of experience’ and the
proletariat was called to organize its own culture instead of relying on
knowledge and labour produced by other classes (Wark 2015).
6 On the history of the Proletkult see Mally (1990).
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The Proletkult offered a way for workers to self-organize and

self-govern their agenda both in sciences and humanities and became
the center of a major intellectual activity that was rooted in a strong
tektological approach. It made the development of a new creativity
possible by building up a space for active cooperation toward the
creation of a new culture. Ultimately, it was predicated on a new way of
living and knowing that reveals its leader’s theoretical ambitions to put
the action before the Machian elements of experience and the
organization of labor at the base of knowledge evolution.
Conclusion
I have argued that the complex and systemic idea of the

environment that Bogdanov deploys in his works provides a framework
for his scientific ideas and undertakings. It is a framework that
eventually enables him to bring into focus organization as a universal
process of nature.
Bogdanov’s polymorphic concept of the environment, which he
considered neither empty physical space waiting to be shaped by
evolving living organisms nor a collection of structural conditions that
rigorously and uni-directionally determine the life of the community
from all points of view, offers a compelling narrative to understand also
his ideas of culture as organization.
What is interesting is that Bogdanov provides us with an ample
array of possible interpretations of the role of the environment across
different disciplines and levels of analysis. These analyses include
biological and ecological as well as cognitive and social dimensions. As
Nikolay Krementsov has pointed out, an examination of Bogdanov’s
work provides a unique window into the interplay of the revolution in
life sciences in its institutional, intellectual and cultural dimensions
(Krementsov 2011).
I have showed that his work exposes the shortcomings of a
reductionist approach towards the relationship between individuals and
the environment that had been the predominant model for the
understanding of evolutionary biology during the first half of the
twentieth century. Emphasizing the co-determinant dynamics of
systems and environments, Bogdanov brings into focus the construction
of niches by biological communities, the interaction of cells and
microbial communities within organisms. Importantly, he introduced
the notion of the internal environment (the milieu intérieur), which is
currently defined as ‘microbiome’ in scientific literature on epigenetic
studies of the interaction between the genome and collections of
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microorganisms that constitute its environment. The concept of the

environment featuring in Tektology can also be used when it comes to
explore the social context and the way man produce knowledge. In this
respect, we have seen that knowledge and the construction of cognition
starts from the exchange of information in a learning, material context.
In this case, the environment is seen as a space of knowledge — the
space of collectively organized experience. In effect, the interpretation
of the environment as a space where knowledge is made and shared is
pervasive both in Bogdanov’s earliest works, such as Empiriomonism or
The Philosophy of Living Experience7, and in his latest ones such as Tektology
(at least the II and the III volume) and O proletarskoy Kul’ture. It is applied
in cases when Bogdanov examines ecological systems and argues that
the determinant dynamics of systems and the environment call for an
understanding of a single living system of divergence in which
organisms and environments, nature and culture, pertain to different
levels of organization but are parts of the same material world.
References
Avenarius, Richard. 1972. Critica dell’esperienza pura. Bari: Laterza.

--------------- 1888. Kritik der Reinen Erfahrung. Leipzig: Fues’s Verlag (R. Reisland).
Bogdanov, Aleksandr A. 1988. Saggi di scienza generale dell'organizzazione. Napoli:
Theoria.
--------------- 2003. Vseobshchaya organizatsionnaya nauka. Tektologiya. Moskva: Finance.
--------------- 2010. Empiriomonizm. Stat’i po filosofii. Moskva: Respublika.
--------------- 2016. The Philosophy of Living Experience, edited by David G. Rowley.
Leiden: Brill.
--------------- 1924. O proletarskoy kul’ture 1904–1924. Leningrad-Moscow: Kniga.
Dudley, Peter. 2016. “Podbor and Proletkult: An Adaptive Systems Perspective.” In
Culture as Organization in Early Soviet Thought, edited by Pia Tikka et al. Helsinki:
Aalto University.
Gare, Arran. 1994. “Aleksandr Bogdanov: Proletkult and Conservation.” CNS 5: 65–
94.
Gould, Stephen J. 1988-89. “Challenges to Neo- Darwinism and Their Meaning for a
Revised View of Human Consciousness.” The Tanner Lecture on Human Values,
http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/lecture-library.php
Griffiths, Paul. 2014. “Philosophy of Biology.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/biology-philosophy/.
Hirschheim, Rudolf A. 1992. 2 Information Systems Epistemology: a Historical Perspective. 9-
33., http://ifipwg82.org/sites/ifipwg82.org/files/Hirschheim_0.pdf
Krementsov, Nikolai. 2011. A Martian Stranded on Earth: Alexander Bogdanov, Blood
Transfusions, and Proletarian Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
7This work, written by Bogdanov between the 1910 and the 1911, was probably
based on lectures he gave at the proletarian schools in Capri and Bologna. See
Rowley 2016.
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Lewontin, Richard, and Levins Robert. 1980. “Dialectics and Reductionism in

Ecology.” Synthese 43 (1) Conceptual issues in Ecology, Part I: 47–78.
Lewontin, Richard, Rose Steven, and Kamin Leon. 1984. Not in our genes: biology,
ideology and human nature. New York: Pantheon.
Mach, Ernst. 1914. The Analysis of Sensations. Chicago and London: The Open Court
Publishing Company. (f.e. 1897),
https://archive.org/details/analysisofsensat00mach
--------------- 1915. The Science of Mechanics, a Critical and Historical Account to its Development.
Chicago and London: The Open Court Publishing Company (f.e. 1883),
https://ia600209.us.archive.org/13/items/sciemechacritica00machrich/sciem
echacritica00machrich.pdf.
Mally, Lynn. 1990. The Culture of the Future. The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia.
Berkley, Los Angeles, Oxford: The University of California Press.
Margulis, Lynn, and Fester René. 1991. Symbiosis as a source of evolutionary innovations.
Cambridge Massachussets: the MIT Press.
Plaggenborg, Stefan, and Soboleva Maja. 2009. Alexander Bogdanov. Theoretiker für das 20.
Jahrhundert. München: Verlag Otto Sagner.
Pushkin, Vladimir G., and Ursul Arkadij D. 1994. Sistemnoe myshlenie i upravlenie.
Tektologiya A. Bogdanova i kibernetika N. Vinera. Moskva: Noosferno-ecologicheskiy
Institut. Akademiya Noosfery.
Rashevskiy, Nicolas. 1960. Mathematical Biophysics. New York: Dover Publication.
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A. A. Bogdanova.” Filosofskie Nauki 12/2014: 50–65.
Rowley, David G. 2016. “Editor’s Introduction.” In Aleksandr Bogdanov, The
Philosophy of Living Experience. Leiden: Brill.
Sadovskiy, Vadim. 1992. “Systems Thinking on the threshold of a 3rd Millenium.”
Systemist 14(1): 6–14.
Soboleva, Maja. 2016. “The Culture as System, the System of Culture.” In Culture as
Organization in Early Soviet Thought, edited by Pia Tikka et al. Helsinki: Aalto
University.
Steila, Daniela. 2016. “Knowledge as Film vs Knowledge as Photo. Alternative
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Strada, Vittorio. 1994. L'altra Rivoluzione. Capri: La Conchiglia.
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Tagliagambe, Silvano, and Rispoli Giulia. 2016. La divergenza nella Rivoluzione. Scienza,
filosofia e teologia in Russia (1920–1940). Brescia: La Scuola.
Tagliagambe, Silvano. 2004. “Bogdanov tra costruttivismo e scienza dell’
organizzazione”. In Aleksandr Bogdanov, Quattro dialoghi su scienza e filosofia.
Roma: Odradek, 95–137.
Verdino, Antonio. 1972. “Fortune e sfortune della scuola empiriocritica.” In Richard
Avenarius, Critica dell’esperienza pura. Bari: Laterza.
Wark, McKenzie. 2015. Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene. London, New York:
Verso.
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Zeleny, Milan. 1988. “Tektology.” General Systems. 14: 331–343.
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BOGDANOV'S CONCEPT OF CULTURE:

FROM WORKERS’ CIRCLES TO
THE PROLETKULT MOVEMENT
Jutta Scherrer__________________________________________________________________
This paper analyses of the historical genesis of Bogdanov’s

conception of proletarian culture. In particular, the author deals with
Bogdanov’s activity during his exile in Vologda, the organization of the
Vpered group, and the debates over cultural politics amongst Russian
Marxism. The systematic focus of the paper is on the concept of culture
as based on the material and non-material capacities of the
comprehension and the working and living conditions of the worker.
The role of art in a system of culture is another important systematic
focus of these studies.

ISBN 103204787103ABC
Scherrer_______________BOGDANOV’S CONCEPT OF CULTURE________________Page 1 of 12

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In the middle of the 1890s when Aleksandr Bogdanov (Malinovskiy),

still a student of medicine, was organizing workers’ study circles in Tula, the
notion of workers’ culture was rarely debated by Russian revolutionaries and
Marxists. The situation in Russia was very different from that in Germany
where social-democracy constituted already a mass party with a highly
structured network of organizations devoted to the educational and cultural
tasks of the workers. Here, the term Arbeiterkultur was widespread and leading
social-democrats considered the party not only as a carrier of the economic
and political emancipation of the proletariat, but also as a broad working
class cultural movement.1 In general, their understanding of Arbeiterkultur was
oriented towards bourgeois culture and did not differentiate substantially
between culture and way of life. Literature conceived by workers themselves
was mostly rejected, and this not because of its socialist tendencies, but
because of its low aesthetic level. In Russia, where the founding members of
the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party were immediately arrested
after its illegal foundation (1898), the party had to struggle for its
organizational survival.
In 1897 Bogdanov published the lectures that he had delivered at the
workers’ schools in Tula as A Short Course in Economic Science. This became the
most popular textbook on Marxist political economy and it was reedited and
enlarged ten times until the 1920s. In teaching workers the basics of Marxist
political economy, Bogdanov had structured his course into questions and
answers, a method which he employed also in later courses designed for a
working class public. His first teaching experience had made him aware of
the particular effort of his worker-pupils to “connect technical and economic
phenomena with the forms of spiritual culture arising out of them, like links
in a single complex chain of development” (Bogdanov 1924: 240).2 It is
exactly this observation of the specific spiritual needs of the Russian worker
in comprehending the content, the presentation and the reflection of a given
material as a totality, that constituted the starting point of what Bogdanov
conceptualized more than a decade later as ‘proletarian culture’: a culture
based on the material and non-material (spiritual) capacities and on the
comprehension of the working and living conditions of the workers
themselves. In other words: not a culture derived from the hegemonial
1 The large network of cultural organizations of the working class was considered as
2 Quoted by Gloveli 1998: 42.

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bourgeoisie and adapted to the needs of the worker - an understanding

implied by the German notion of Arbeiterkultur.
In what follows, I shall briefly show the most important steps in
Bogdanov’s general understanding of culture, which led to his particular
conceptualization of proletarian culture. I shall not discuss here Bogdanov’s
political biography, his role in the consolidation of the Bolshevik
organization and his rivalry with Lenin. There is, however, no doubt, that
Lenin’s, and even more so, Plekhanov’s rigid conception of Marxism and, in
particular, of historical materialism greatly influenced Bogdanov’s
conceptualization of an independent, hegemonial, proletarian culture.
During his periods of residence or exile in Tula, Kaluga and
Vologda (1895–1904), Bogdanov discussed with his comrades Bazarov,
Skvortsov-Stepanov and Lunacharskiy what they called the philosophical
aspect of Marx’s system. As Bogdanov wrote in his preface to the third
volume of Empiriomonizm: since Marxism was not yet philosophically
founded, they wanted to establish its philosophical foundation. In
Lunacharskiy’s words: they wanted to reinforce Marxism’s gnoseological
and ethical aspects independently of Plekhanov’s reduction of Marxism to
the materialism of the French encyclopaedists (Lunacharskiy 1919: 22).3
They denied from the outset that Marxism was a system of explanation of
social reality, valid for all the time. Marxism, in their opinion, ought to
evolve, progress, and be modernized with the most recent developments in
science and philosophy by new, contemporary ideas. “The tradition of Marx
and Engels must remain dear to us, not in the letter, but in its spirit”
(Bogdanov 1908: 66). Bogdanov’s proposition became the epistemological
postulate of their group, which considered the empiriocriticism of Avenarius
and Mach to be one of the most important openings of Marxism to modern
science. It became the foundation of Bogdanov’s system of empiriomonism.
In Vologda, which was the meeting place of a whole colony of
political exiles (among them N.A. Berdyaev, B.V. Savinkov, A.M. Remizov,
B.A. Kistyakovskiy, P.P. Rumyantsev), the group around Bogdanov clarified
its conception of materialism (‘realism’) in theoretical confrontations with
the ‘idealists’, among them, first of all, Berdyaev. The result was their
collective volume Ocherki realisticheskogo mirovozzreniya [Essays on realistic
philosophy] which appeared in 1904 as an answer to the collective volume
Problemy idealizma [Problems of idealism] which contained major articles by
the former so called Legal Marxists Berdyaev, Bulgakov, Frank and others
3 Lunacharskiy’s essay was written as early as 1918.

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and had appeared at the end of 1902 (Scherrer 1981: 113–152; Steila
1996:156–166). By a realistic worldview the group around Bogdanov
understood the rejection of any metaphysical absolute and of any pretension
of absolute truth (istina) in favor of the monistic ideal of cognition. In their
collective volume they pleaded for the unity of theory and praxis, and the
question of how one should understand ‘superstructure’ which later became
fundamental for Bogdanov’s conception of culture, was addressed.
In a collection of essays published in 1905 under the title Novyy mir
(New World) Bogdanov developed his concept of collectivism. What he
called sobiranie cheloveka (integration of man) implied the creative potential of
each individual person in the collective. The education of the proletariat
appeared already in this context as the highest goal. Twenty years later, in
1924, in the preface to a collection of his articles on proletarian culture
Bogdanov referred to his early articles “as having already outlined the
highest cultural type of life - the socialist type, which has its source in
proletarian class culture” (Bogdanov 1924: 10). In other words, proletarian
culture contains only elements of socialist culture: proletarian culture is
socialist or collectivist culture in the process of evolution.
Bogdanov’s analysis of the failure of the revolution 1905 and his
confrontation with Lenin over Bolshevik strategy after 1905 made it evident
for him (and his comrades in ideas), that for organizational purposes the
workers needed their own intelligentsia, a rabochaya intelligentsiya (workers’
intelligentsia), and for ideological reasons they needed to become aware of
their own class-consciousness which not only included the workers’
behaviour, thinking, and ideology, but also philosophy, science, and the arts.
In articles and pamphlets written after 1907, Bogdanov advocated the
development of the cultural hegemony of the proletariat prior to its seizure
of power. In a pamphlet directed straight at Lenin Ne nado zatemnyat’ (‘Do not
obscure matters’) Bogdanov asserted that “Bolshevism is not simply a
political phenomenon, it is as much socio-cultural” (Maksimov 1909: 5). This
kind of reasoning had led Bogdanov, Gorkiy, Lunacharskiy and other left
bolsheviks to the founding of two social-democratic party schools for
Russian workers which took place in Capri (August–December 1909) and
Bologna (November 1910–March 1911). In the Capri school, as Bogdanov
remembered 1918 in his article “Proletarian University“ the term
proletarian culture was first openly formulated (Bogdanov 1924: 10). All the
teaching, comprising courses on political economy, socialism, trade
unionism, history, philosophy, literature and art sought to interpret the
entire history of the activity and thought of humanity not only from the

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point of view of the working being – what the worker could conceive – but
even more as a complete product of the experience of the working human
being. The goal of the party schools for workers was the development and
organization of the class-consciousness of the proletariat, which for
Bogdanov was identical with the proletariat’s creative potential, namely
proletarian culture.
One of the results of the Capri-school was the creation of the Vpered
group, an independent socio-cultural political faction of the Russian Social
Democratic Workers’ Party, founded by the lecturers and the majority of the
worker-pupils of the Capri school in defence of a ‘pure’, ‘authentic’ and
‘true’ Bolshevism, in opposition to the authoritarian individualism of Lenin’s
style of leadership. In the platform of the Vpered group, essentially drafted by
Bogdanov, the notion of proletarian culture appears for the first time as a
political watchword.
Let me quote a longer passage from the platform of the Vpered group,
which, significantly enough, was taken up by Bogdanov in 1918 when
pleading for a proletarian university:
“The bourgeois world, with its developed culture which has left its
imprint upon modern science, art, and philosophy, rears us imperceptibly in
its fold, while the class struggle and our social ideal draws us in the opposite
direction. We should not break entirely with this culture, which is of the
fabric of history, for we can and should discover in it a powerful weapon in
the struggle against this same old world. To receive it as it is would mean
conserving in ourselves this past against which the struggle is waged. There
is but one solution: to use the previous bourgeois culture to create, in order
to combat bourgeois culture, and to diffuse among the masses, a new
proletarian culture: to develop a proletarian science, reinforce authentically
fraternal relations in the proletarian milieu, elaborate a proletarian
philosophy, and direct art towards the aspirations of the proletariat and its
experience. This is the only route to attaining a universal socialist education,
which would avoid the innumerable contradictions of our life and work, and
which would augment considerably our forces in the struggle, and
approximate at the same time to our ideal of socialism, while elaborating
more and more of its elements in the present” (Sovremennoe polozhenie
1909/1910: 16–17).
In opposition to what Bogdanov considered to be the theoretical
conservatism of Lenin and Plekhanov (Bogdanov 1911: 29–30), the platform
of Vpered group called for the attainment of the cultural hegemony of the
proletariat alongside its political hegemony because politics formed an

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organic whole with the other aspects of ideological life of society. For
Bogdanov, the socialist ideal included both political and cultural liberation.
Socialism would be possible only when the proletariat developed its own
intellectual and moral awareness, which could be counter-posed to the old
cultural world (Bogdanov 1911; Sochor 1988: 185).
In an article written at the beginning of 1911 for the Vpered group,
Sotsializm v nastoyashchem (Socialism in the present day) Bogdanov developed
his theory of comradely collaboration, or fraternal union at work
(tovarishcheskoe sotrudnichestvo), which bound the proletariat together at work,
stimulated its sense of psychological unity, of the organic consciousness of
unity – in short, collectivism. What Bogdanov termed collectivism was the
psychology of the working class, its consciousness of itself as a class. In fact, it
was in the process of collective work that the fundamental type of
organization of a whole class was constituted, which made the proletariat
capable of elaborating new forms of life and thought, in brief, its culture.
These fraternal and collectivist relations inside the working collective should
become the organizational base of the party as much as of the proletarian
family structure; they should serve for the elaboration of a new science, a
new philosophy and a new art – that of proletarian culture.
In 1911 Bogdanov left the Vpered group because of émigré infighting
and politicking. Some of his former comrades did not find it realistic “to
create as of now on in the midst of existing society a great proletarian
culture, stronger and more structured than the decaying culture of the
bourgeois classes and immeasurably more free and creative” (Maksimov
1909: 5). In fact, a group around Aleksinskiy wished to revert to traditional
political-economic as opposed to cultural priorities. From this moment on
Bogdanov concentrated on his theoretical work. The first result was the 92-
page long treaty Kult’urnye zadachi nashego vremeni (Cultural tasks of our time),
which appeared that same year. Drawing on his experiences in the party
schools, Bogdanov elaborated here for the first time, systematically, the
concept of proletarian culture which contained essentially all the aspects of
proletarian culture that he had conceptualized until then and which he was
to develop later (Bogdanov 1911).
Here, as in other writings, Bogdanov distinguished three successive
types of culture, each of which depended on a type of organization of
labour, that is, of a technological level of society in different states of
development: authoritarian culture, individualist culture, and collectivist
culture.

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It was the collective experience acquired during the work process

that had given rise not only to the first acquisition of technological and
scientific knowledge, but also to myths, religious legends, songs, poetry and
to the classics of literature. The experiences of active man in the process of
labour were at the source of all these creations. Scholars and artists, as
individuals, often of non-proletarian origin, do no more than transcend the
experience of the working collective. They are, in fact, the conveyor belt of
the collectivity. Each discovery in astronomy or physics, each literary
creation like an Othello, Hamlet, Faust, or William Tell, thus leads back to
an experience of collective work. The true creator of spiritual culture
(dukhovnaya kul’tura) is not, therefore, the solitary individual with his arbitrary
act (proizvol) but the working being in the collectivity of work. The author,
the creator, or the genius is quite simply the point (tochka prilozheniya) where
the creative forces of society are concentrated in order to produce new
forces through its consciousness. The author thus may be the creator,
subjectively speaking, but objectively it is society (Bogdanov 1911: 41).
Bogdanov demarcated three essential areas in which the proletariat
should create for itself a cultural system free of fetishism and individualist
bourgeois norms (which were totally alienated from the social praxis of
man), morality, arts and science. As the foundation of new social norms,
Bogdanov fixed on the proletarian moral principle of fraternal solidarity
(tovarishcheskaya solidarnost’), mentioned above. The new social norms would
correspond to the technical norms of work; they would be stripped of their
abstract character and would be reduced to the organizational principles of
human relations. All would depend on the needs of the collectivity, and all
would be done according to its interests. The norms of morality, law and
custom, as developed by proletarian class life, would correspond only to
their utility for the collectivity and to its social needs. It would be necessary
to devise a new terminology, for words like ‘law’, ‘morality’ or ‘religion’,
which, as attributes of absolute authority no longer had any meaning. At the
same time, expressions like ‘proletarian morality’ or ‘proletarian right’ were
inadequate: new cultural forms necessitated new concepts. Truth was
defined here by the experience of work and by the praxis of the collective.
In like manner, the new proletarian art had to integrate experiences
of the collectivity of work. The proletariat lived its own life distinct from that
of any other class; hence it needed its own art imbued with its own feelings,
aspirations and ideals. Bogdanov here energetically refuted the objections of
those who held that the difficult conditions of working class existence and
the still more arduous circumstances of the social struggle could hinder its

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assuming responsibility for its own art, at least as long as it was not in power.
On the contrary, art organizes social experience through living images, not
only in the domain of knowledge, but even more in the domains of feelings
and wants. Since it discharges in this way an organizational function in the
life of the collectivity, and by the fact that it harmonizes the feelings and
ideals of the masses, it becomes the most powerful motor of the development
and finally of the victory of the collectivity. The cohesion of the class would
become the greater by the fact of art embracing a field larger than that of
economy and polity.
In Kul’turnye zadachi nashego vremeni Bogdanov was not explicit on the
forms of the new proletarian art. “I leave this to others who are more
competent than I on such questions” (Bogdanov 1911: 77). But, from the
point of view of content, he deemed it especially false and naïve to think that
proletarian art ought to describe the life of workers, their byt (forms and
mode of everyday life) and their struggle. The universe of the experiences of
class, which is the object of the art of the class, is not for that reason in the
least limited; it embraces all the being and all the byt of society just as much
as all of nature. The proletariat lives alongside other classes, whether foreign
or hostile, to which it is bound by numerous threads, spiritual, economic,
and social. Many of these elements had been, consciously or otherwise,
assimilated by the proletariat. And even if it combats them, they are after all
a heritage of the classes of which the proletariat is the issue: the petite
bourgeoisie (meshchanstvo) and the peasantry. Now, the more it knows these
classes, their psychology, organization, and interests, the less the danger of
submitting to their cultural influences; and it will be that much easier for the
proletariat to imbibe from their culture what is useful and progressive. From
the fact of the organizational function of art, “putting into form and
consolidating a definite social organization” (Bogdanov 1911: 51),
proletarian art would be able to show to workers at work, in their social
struggle, and in their daily life, much of what escapes from their
consciousness in the first instance. Thus art is a constitutive element of the
consciousness of self (samosoznanie) of the proletarian class.
Since art organizes the human experience of labour, not in abstract
concepts but in concrete, live images (zhivye obrazy), it is more democratic
than science, more accessible to the masses. Yet, Bogdanov saw in the
“democratization of scientific knowledge” the most urgent cultural task of
the proletariat of his time. According to him it was not a question of literacy
or of the assimilation of the specialized knowledge of distinct disciplines or of
its popularization through pamphlets and public lectures, in the manner

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typical of bourgeois culture, but of wide knowledge. It was a question of

realizing the “sum” of knowledge, hitherto split up in partial domains, of
returning from specialization to general experience, and, by that, to the
general system of human labour. The workers needed a global and unifying
scientific explanation, which would furnish them with a general awareness of
the existing relation between the different technical methods, which they
would apply with their own hands in production, and of the different
methods, social, economic, and ideological, that were important for the
organization of the class and for the fate of workers. The workers, therefore,
should have access to the systematization of the different domains of
scientific experience and to transcend specialist discourse. Hence the idea of
creating a Proletarian University (of which the schools of Capri and Bologna
were the precursors) that would embrace all the fundamental sectors of
science in its teaching.
It was with the same concern to systematize all the scientific
experience of his time and to make it accessible to the working class that
Bogdanov returned to the project of a workers’ encyclopaedia that had been
launched during the Capri school. Just as the Great Encyclopaedia of the
eighteenth century had co-ordinated the fragmented knowledge and
experience of the era of the bourgeoisie, the new encyclopaedia would now
explain the science and philosophy of labouring mankind as the means
towards the organization of the collective activity of man.
The proletarian democratization of knowledge, that is, the creation
of a proletarian science and of a proletarian philosophy was undertaken by
Bogdanov in the following years in his Tektology or Universal science of
organization (Vseobshchaya organizatsionnaya nauka), the first volume of which
appeared in 1912, and in which he proposed to lay the foundation of a
science which aimed to unify the entire organizational experience of all of
humanity, and to synthesize all the knowledge accumulated by specialized
disciplines.
In general it can be said that proletarian culture as conceived by
Bogdanov before 1917 was not ‘popular culture’ or the culture of the
popular masses. It was not defined by popular arts and traditions or by
folklore. It had nothing to do with making the masses literate, educating
them or simply appropriating or assimilating bourgeois culture any more
than with rejecting the cultural heritage. It did not propose, either, a true
aesthetics: one would search in vain for a precise aesthetic approach in
Bogdanov’s dilettantish analyses, in which the concrete content of
proletarian culture remained rather abstract. For him it was above all matter

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of making the proletariat conscious of what was inherent in its “byt”, to

deliver its internal culture. This was an internal comprehension of
themselves: their life, labour, feelings, emotions, ideals, attitudes, and
mentality, in short, that they should acquire a consciousness of self
(samosoznanie) by appealing tirelessly to the collective will, which was for
Bogdanov the same as combative creativity. Only the elaboration of this
independent culture could guarantee to the proletariat its entire
independence and autonomy.
These conditions were not fulfilled in 1917. Bogdanov did not
contest the achievements of the October revolution but he did question its
socialist character, given the lack of cultural maturity of the proletariat as a
whole. During 1917 he worked in the Cultural and Educational Department
of the Moscow Soviet and between 1918 and 1921 he devoted himself to the
Russian Proletarian Cultural Educational Association or Proletkul’t which was
founded in Petrograd in October 1917 and of whose Central Committee he
was a member. Here he worked together with his former comrades from the
Vpered group who had created in 1913 in Paris and Geneva under the
direction of Lunacharskiy a Circle of Proletarian Culture with P. Bessalko,
M. Gerasimov, A. Gastev, F. Kalinin, P. Kerzhentsev, P. Lebedev-
Polyanskiy and a number of proletarian poets and writers who now played a
major role in the Proletkult organization. Lunacharskiy, Commissar of
Education, was at least in the beginning helpful in protecting the Proletkult’s
autonomy.
Bogdanov’s commitment to the Proletkult organization, which I
cannot describe here in detail, was based on his conviction that the key to
socialism lay in the sphere of culture: unless socialism meant cultural
liberation, it meant very little. In the pages of Proletarskaya kul’tura,
Proletkult’s main journal to whose editorial board Bolgdanov belonged, he
argued that the Proletkult organization should be open only to the most
highly qualified workers of the leading industrial sectors as well as to the
most mature and active workers. Only they could organize the cultural and
ideological leadership, the hegemony of the political bloc over the petty
bourgeois and peasant culture produced by the broad masses. Just as the
party could not accept that its political line would be determined by the least
conscious workers, Bogdanov argued, so also the Proletkult could not admit
that its cultural line should be determined by the least conscious workers.
The Proletkult should become, by analogy with the party, an organization
for the cultural vanguard of the working class and also represent in
Bogdanov’s terms, a sort of “laboratory of the pure proletarian ideology”

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(Bogdanov 1919: 26–29). Bogdanov’s particular understanding of culture

brought him again into opposition to Lenin who argued, as is generally
known, that in the particular conditions of Russia’s backwardness a true
bourgeois culture should suffice as the basis of a workers’ education.
As before 1917, Bogdanov was less interested in concrete, applied
aesthetics and forms of proletarian art, but much more in theoretical and
organizational questions of the Proletkult. As before, proletarian culture
meant for him, in the first instance, the independent creativity of the
proletariat to acquire its own consciousness. For the socialization of science,
the core issue of proletarian culture, a Proletarian University, a proletarian
encyclopaedia and a proletarian library for scientific-philosophical works
were founded, inspired by the experiences acquired in the Capri and
Bologna party schools. Among Bogdanov’s numerous writings on behalf of
the Proletkult, none was written in support of the maximalist tendency of
some of the Proletkult representatives such as V. T. Kirillov who wished to
abandon the entire cultural heritage of former generations – a reproach
made of Bogdanov by Lenin and subsequent Soviet historiography until its
very end, with the intention to discredit him.
It was certainly the merit of Proletkult and of Bogdanov to have
posed the question of culture as central for the revolution. But Bogdanov
and the Proletkult were unable to mobilize for their goal the proletarian
vanguard and to develop an independent Proletkult aesthetics.
In general, it can be said that Bogdanov, “like the early
anthropologists understood culture in the broadest sense, as encompassing
tools, means of cooperation, speech, knowledge, art, customs, laws, ethics
and so on – in other words, all the products, material and nonmaterial, of
human labour” (Sochor 1988: 68). Mostly, however, he referred to culture
in the narrower sense, what he called ‘spiritual culture’, which included
worldviews, artistic creativity, aesthetics, and political relations. He used
culture in this sense synonymously with ideology or science of ideas which
he defined as the social consciousness of people (Bogdanov 1911: 3; Sochor
1988: 68). Bogdanov’s principal idea was that culture in its many forms,
whether speech, knowledge, customs, or art had an internal structure, an
implicit organizational function. Culture plays a real, practical role in
society, an organizational role. Rather than treat culture as an
epiphenomenon, as implied in Marx’s use of the term superstructure,
Bogdanov defined culture as a type of infrastructure in society with its own
specific role (Sochor 1988: 70).

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There is no doubt that independently from his more praxis oriented

conceptualization of proletarian culture Bogdanov developed also a more
anthropological understanding of culture in works such as Filosofiya zhivogo
opyta, Nauka ob obshchestvennom soznanii and Tektologiya. But this would be
another topic.
References
Bogdanov, A.A. 1908. Priklyuchenie odnoj filosofskoj shkoly. St. Petersburg.

-------------- 1911. Kul’turnye zadachi nashego vremeni. Moskva: S. Dorovatovskiy and A.
Charushnikov.
--------------1919. “Plan organizatsii Proletkul’ta”. Proletarkaya kul’tura. No. 6 (February).
-------------- 1924. O proletarskoy kul’ture. Moskva-Leningrad: Kniga.
Gloveli, Georgii. 1998. Bogdanov as Scientist and Utopian. In Bogdanov and His Work. A guide
to the published and unpublished works of Alexander A. Bogdanov (Malinovsky) 1873–1928,
edited by John Biggart, Georgii Gloveli, Avraham Yassour. Ashgate: Aldershot
1998.
Lunacharskiy, A. V. 1919. Moe partiynoe proshloe. In Lunacharskiy, A. V. Velikiy perevorot
(Oktyabrskaya revolyutsiya). Part 1. Peterburg: Izd. Z.I. Grzhebina.
Maksimov, N. 1909. “Ne nado zatemnyat’” , in Ko vsem tovarishcham! Paris: RSDRP (before 28
November /11 December).
Ritter, Gerhard A. 1979. Arbeiterkultur. Taunus: Königstein.
Scherrer, Jutta. 1981. “L’intelligentsia russe: sa quête de la ‘vérité religieuse du
socialisme“, in Le temps de la réflexion II. Paris: Gallimard.
Sovremennoe polozhenie i zadachi partii. No date (end 1909/ beginning 1910). Paris: Izdanie
gruppy Vpered.
Sochor, Zenovia A. 1988. Revolution and Culture. The Bogdanov-Lenin controversy. Ithaca and
London: Cornell Press University.
Steila, Daniela. 1996. Scienza e rivoluzione: La recezione dell'empiriocriticismo nella cultura russa
(1877–1910). Firence: Le Lettere.

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SEIWERT’S ‘OPEN LETTER’ TO BOGDANOV

Introduction: Fabian Tompsett_______________________________________________
This text, by Franz Seiwert (1894–1933) was published as

‘Offener Brief an den Genossen A. Bogdanow’ in the journal Die Aktion in
July 1921 (Seiwert 1921). At the time Seiwert was aligned with this
literary and political journal which was edited by Franz Pfemfert and
published in Berlin between 1911 and 1932. From 1920 Die Aktion was
supportive of the Kommunistische Arbeiter-Partei Deutschlands (KAPD) and was
becoming increasingly critical not only of the Kommunistische Partei
Deutschlands (KPD), but also of the very concept of a political party.
Earlier in 1921, in May and June respectively, Die Aktion had published
two translations of Bogdanov: ‘Über proletarische Dichtung’ (Bogdanov
1921a) and ‘Beispiel proletarischer Dichtung’ (1921b).1
The interest of Seiwert and of Die Aktion in the work of Bogdanov
enables us to add these titles, and several others, to the list of German
translations of his work that appears in Bogdanov and His Work: A Guide to
the Published and Unpublished Works of Alexander A. Bogdanov (Malinovsky)
This chapter is peer-reviewed and edited for 1873-1928 (Biggart, Gloveli & Yassour 1998). Here there is reference
only to the translation of ‘Chto takoe proletarskaya poeziya?’ that was
published in 1920 under the title ‘Was ist proletarische Dichtung?’, as
part of the series Kleine Bibliothek der russischen Korrespondenz, by A. Seehof &
CULTURE AS ORGANIZATION IN Co. This series was closely aligned with the Kommunistische Partei
Deutschlands (KPD). However, even before 1920, Bogdanov’s work had
Bogdanov, Eisenstein, and the Proletkult been promoted in Die Aktion.
In June and July 1919 Die Aktion repeatedly advertised a text by
Bogdanov: Die Wissenschaft und die Arbeiter (‘Science and the Worker’)
(Bogdanov 1919a) which they announced would be available in August
Giulia Rispoli, Maja Soboleva 1919. Efforts to locate a copy of this have proved fruitless. A few weeks
later the journal published a short text of Bogdanov under the title Die
ISBN 103204787103ABC
Wissenschaft und die Arbeiterklasse (Bogdanov 1919b). This preceded the
publication of a 29 page pamphlet with the same title by the Verlag der
Wochenschrift Die Aktion in 1920 with a preface by Pfemfert2 (Bogdanov
1 A comparison of the articles published in these two issues suggests that the first
contains the text of Bogdanov’s Chto takoe proletarskaya poeziya? (1918) and the second
translations of the poems contained in the original. It is not inconceivable that this
material was published in Die Aktion at the suggestion of Bogdanov, given that Otto
Rühle had been in Moscow in June 1920 to attend the Second Congress of the
Comintern, as reported in Die Aktion in October 1920 (Rühle n.d.).
2See Thomas Moebius, Russische Sozialutopien von Peter I. bis Stalin (2015, 252) who
quotes Pfemfert as follows: “Bogdanov’s work is very valuable. It not only shows the
Seiwert____________________OPEN LETTER TO BOGDANOV____________Page 1 of 6

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1920). We can date publication of the book more precisely by reference

to a notice that appeared in Die Aktion No. 13/14 for 3 April 1920,
according to which the title had been despatched but that many bulk
orders had been “lost”.
Was there any relationship between the German translations of
What is proletarian poetry? and those that appeared in English three years
later in Labour Monthly (Bogdanov 1923)? On the face of it, the English
translations do not seem to have been based on the translations that had
already been published in Die Aktion. Seiwert was certainly in contact with
the Workers’ Socialist Federation who published some of his illustrations
in their magazine Workers’ Dreadnought. Indeed his comrade Ret Marut
had left Düsseldorf for London in 1923 and was aided by Sylvia
Pankhurst, editor of Workers’ Dreadnought (Goldwasser 1993). But like the
KAPD, the Workers’ Socialist Federation was forced out of the
Communist International for failing to accept Lenin’s dictum on
accepting parliamentarianism. As in Germany, relations between the
expelled Left Communists and the official Leninist Communist Party
were often less than cordial.
The English translation of Seiwert’s article that follows is based on
the version published in Der Schritt, der einmal getan wurde, wird nicht
züruckgenommen, an anthology of Franz Seiwert’s writing edited by Uli
Bohnen and Dirke Backes (Bohnen and Backes 1978). For a full list of
contributions to Die Aktion see Wikisource (Wikisource 2016).
The title is reminiscent of Herman Gorter’s Open Letter to Comrade
Lenin (Gorter 1920) which also castigates the Central Communists (KPD
Zentral) in relation to what both Gorter and Seiwert viewed as the
betrayal of the Ruhr Uprising. Seiwert’s use of term of address
“Comrade” (Genossen) shows a level of political proximity which is quite
different from that of Lenin: in his opening speech at the First All-Russia
Congress on Adult Education (May 6, 1917) Lenin attacked Bogdanov as
one of a “plethora of bourgeois intellectuals” whom he accused of testing
their absurd ideas under the pretence of promoting a purely proletarian
art and proletarian culture (Lenin 1972). This can be compared with the
polemic of George Plekhanov (1856–1918) with Bogdanov, in the course
of which Plekhanov said “you are no comrade of mine because you and I
represent two directly opposed world-outlooks” (Plekhanov 1937).
way and goal, [...] there is more: the security and certainty that the proletarian
worldview is a brilliant idea for humanity.”

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OPEN LETTER TO
COMRADE A. BOGDANOV
Translation: Fabian Tompsett _______________________________Franz Seiwert 1921
Your work “On Proletarian Poetry” does not address a substantial

part of poetry and the arts. I essentially agree with you, because you, in as
much as you are able, reveal the truest ethos of the artworks, as well as
showing how the symptoms of disorder of the capitalist system best reveal
the order of this system, against which the ruling class are powerless.
“The more a social activity, a series of social processes, becomes too
powerful for men’s conscious control and grows above their heads, and
the more it appears a matter of pure chance, then all the more surely
within this chance the laws peculiar to it and inherent in it assert
themselves as if by natural necessity” wrote Friedrich Engels.3 Art is a
social activity, a social process and that part of the art that you, Comrade
Bogdanov, disregard, is that which is too powerful for the conscious control
of man, which is most truly revealed as the coincidence of the singular
and inherent laws of the artwork, the tendency of the artwork.
Contemporary art is divided into the content which is displayed
and the form in which the content is displayed. The content has to
reshape the form, content and form must be the struggle, solidarity, class
consciousness of the proletariat. And the work, in which this occurs will
be created from the collective consciousness where the ego that creates
the work, is no longer an isolated bourgeois-individualist, but rather an
expressive instrument of the collective. Marx taught us to recognise the
equality of all co-existing things with every other thing, to see the
common law inherent in them. This knowledge is not only applied with
hindsight (social-democratic opportunist Marxism), but also concerns art
in that as regards proletarian art, it only arises when content and form are
proletarian.
It seems to me that the context in which proletarian finds itself,
when the proletarian content is articulated through a bourgeois Artform, is
quite social democratic, with the term social democratic including the
Central Communists.4 The same attitude is asserted when it is claimed
3 From The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State Chapter IX, Barbarism and
Civilisation (Engels 1942).
4 By “Central Communists” Seiwert is referring to the leaders of the Kommunistische
Partei Deutschlands (KPD) who had expelled the more radical Kommunistische Arbeiterpartei
Deutschlands (KAPD) in October 1919. Paul Levi (1883–1930) was their leader. See
also Worum handelt sich? (Seiwert 1920) where Seiwert is particularly bitter about their
role in the Peace of Münster (31st October 1920) where two KPD leaders consented

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that the continuation of the production process in the capitalist-

centralised sense, from top to bottom, can be used as the production
system of communist society, the same attitude which claims that through
so-called Unity schools, bourgeois science can escape the bourgeois
scientific methods, in the belief that science created in the service of the
bourgeoisie could be proclaimed free, independent and objectively true in
relation to this class viewpoint simply by being taken out of hands of the
bourgeoisie, to become the science for the proletariat. Yes, for the
proletariat because it remains a proletarian mass, however, not of the
proletariat, whereby it frees itself through overcoming itself as the
proletariat. Only then is it necessary and sufficient for the proletariat to
assert its entitlement in the face of the history of humanity, to expropriate
from the hands of the bourgeoisie, production, the insights of the
technical sciences, which I also expect to include medicine, to make use
of the bourgeois artform as a means for propaganda, and if so desired, to
create the proletarian organisation of production, the proletarian science and
proletarian art.
Communist society and proletarian culture are not created
through seizing capitalist society and bourgeois culture. Rather, we have
to create them. Thus to the extent that proletarian culture displays in its
form an expression of organisation and the sense of solidarity of the
masses, these are displayed in the artworks, as visible forces, movement,
equilibrium, in short the “nature”, the world, both jointly and severally,
to compellingly appear to the individuals as necessary for the
development of their self-consciousness, their creativity and their
participation in the totality. Thus there can be no longer be a duality of
content and form more, because content and form are one.
So, Comrade Bogdanov, it is not as easy as you think to
determine whether a work is created from the collective consciousness or
not. It is not a matter of whether the label says “I” or “we”. There is
always the question of whether “We” has been achieved, whether the “We”
has been realised in the artwork, and the “I” has become indifferent.
Explored in this context, who is the “most distinguished in Germany, or
even Europe”, George Grosz sitting in the dock or the chairman of the
KPD in the same place5. It’s the same picture and a mutual confirmation.
to the disarmament of the Red Army of the Ruhr. By the 8th April 1920, the
Freikorps had killed over 1,000 militants of the Red Army.
5 George Grosz (1893–1959) was a German Dadaist and Communist activist. In 1921
he was put on trial for Gott mit Uns (Grosz 1920) a portfolio of 9 drawings attacking the
German military for their brutal repression of the Workers’Councils. He and his
publisher were found guilty and fined.

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Consider alongside Max Hölz one of the many nameless proletarian

whose “mouthpeice” he was.6 This is also a confirmation!
Comrade Bogdanov! For me, it is increasingly clear that the
proletarian society generally will not know these parts into which
bourgeois culture is disintegrating: science, art, and again their parts:
poetry, music, painting and so on. Form and content will not be known
but only work created from the true collective consciousness in which
everyone becomes a creator, in which everyone is a creator. The only
past that exists is that which enters the collective consciousness, where its
is again recreated. Only the bourgeoisie gain from this. Everything comes
together, united in the desire for socialism for communism. Communist
society nowhere tolerates leaders and gods, everyone must and will be
their own leader, their own creator. That is the council structure build as
opposed to the future state7 of Social Democracy.
References
Bebel, August. 1879. Die Frau und der Sozialismus Hottingen-Zürich: Verlag der
Volksbuchhandlung.
Biggart, John. 1989. Alexander Bogdanov, Left Bolshevism and the Proletkult 1904–1932.
http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.328854 accessed 1st
January 2014
Guide to the Published and Unpublished Works of Alexander A. Bogdanov (Malinovsky)
1873–1928. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Bogdanov Alexander. 1919a. ‘Die Wissenschaft und die Arbeiter’. Advertised for
publication in Die Aktion.
----------- 1919b. ‘Die Wissenschaft und die Arbeiterklasse’. Die Aktion No. 35/36 Year 9,
6 September 1919: 596–601.
----------- 1920. Die Wissenschaft und die Arbeiterklasse” Berlin: Verlag der Wochenschrift
Die Aktion.
----------- 1921a. ‘Über proletarische Dichtung’. Die Aktion. Nos. 21/22 Year 11, 28 May
1921: 303–309.
----------- 1921b. ‘Beispiel proletarischer Dichtung’. Die Aktion. Nos. 23/24 Year 11, 11
June 1921; 337–340.
6 Max Hölz (1889–1933) was a German Communist activist who organised a Red
Army in Vogtland, near the border with Czechoslovakia at the time of the Ruhr
Uprising in 1920. In 1921 he once again took part in military activity in the March
Action of 1921. He was aligned with the KAPD which supported an attempt to
overthrow the Weimar Republic. He was eventually captured and his trial began in
May 1921 (Kuhn 2012). However, many of the AAUE grouped around Die Aktion were
critical: Otto Rühle had published an article critical of Hölz who responded in his
memoirs (Hölz 2012).
7 Zukunftsstaat: August Bebel (1840–1913) devoted over 100 pages to this concept in
his Die Frau und der Sozialismus (1879) which advocated the application of science and
rational planning to resolving the problems of implementing socialism. See Kenneth
Calkins (1982)

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----------- 1923. “Proletarian Poetry”, translated in Labour Monthly Vol. IV, 5 (May,
1923): 276–285, and Vol. IV, 6 (June 1923): 357–362.
Bohnen, Uli. 1978. Franz W. Seiwert 1894–1933. Leben und Werk. Köln: Kölnischer
Kunstverein.
Bohnen, Uli and Backes, Dirk. 1978. Der Schritt, der einmal getan wurde, wird nicht
züruckgenommen: Franz w. Shriften. Berlin: Jarin Krammer Verlag.
Calkins, Kenneth. 1982. ‘The Uses of Utopianism: The Millenarian Dream in Central
European Social Democracy before 1914’. Central European History. 15: 124–148
Die Aktion. 1921. ‘Bericht von der Einheitskonferenz der AAU (Einheitsorganisation)’.
Die Aktion No. 41/42, 15 October 1921.
Engels Freidrich. 1942. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, translated by
Alick West as revised by the Marx/Engels Internet Archive.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ accessed
31 October 2015
Goldwasser, James. 1993. ‘Ret Marut: The Early B. Traven’. The Germanic Review:
Literature, Culture, Theory 68, 3: 133–142.
Gorter, Herman. 1920/1921. ‘Open letter to comrade Lenin, A reply to “left-wing”
communism, an infantile disorder’. Workers’ Dreadnought. London. 12 March–11
June 1921; https://www.marxists.org/archive/gorter/1920/open-letter/
accessed 31 October 2015
Grosz, George. 1920. Gott mit Uns. Berlin: Der Malik-Verlag.
Hölz, Max. 2012. From the “White Cross” to the Red Flag, translated by Gabriel Kuhn
in All Power to the Councils! A Documentary History of the German Revolution of 1918–
1919, edited by Gabriel Kuhn. Oakland: PM Press.
Kuhn, Gabriel. 2012. All Power to the Councils!: A Documentary History of the German
Revolution. Oakland, Ca.: PM Press.
Lenin, Vladimir. 1972. Two Speeches at the First All-Russia Congress on Adult
Education, translated by George Hanna. In Lenin’s Collected Works. 4th English
Edition. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Volume 29, 333–376.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/may/06.htm#bk01
accessed 31 October 2015
Moebius, Thomas. 2015 Russische Sozialutopien von Peter I. bis Stalin. Münster: Lit Verlag.
Plekhanov, Georgi. 1976. ‘Materialismus Militans: Reply to Mr Bogdanov’. In Georgi
Plekhanov’, Selected Philosophical Works. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Volume 3,
188–283. https://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1907/materialismus-
militans.htm#n2 accessed 31 October 2015
Rühle, Otto. 1921. ‘Das Ende der mitteldeutschen Kämpfe’. Die Aktion Nos. 15/16 Year
11, 6 April 1921: 215–223.
----------- n.d. ‘Moscow and Ourselves’, translated by Mike Jones marxists.org accessed 5
November 2015. https://www.marxists.org/archive/ruhle/1920/moscow-and-
ourselves.htm.
Seiwert, Franz. 1920. ‘Worum handelt sich?’. Die Aktion Nos. 37/38 Year 10, 18
September 1920: 514.
----------- 1921. ‘Offener Brief an den Genossen Bogdanow’. Die Aktion Nos. 15/16 Year
11, Nos. 27/28; 373–374.
Wikisource 2016 . ‘Die Aktion’
https://de.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Die_Aktion&oldid=2540295
accessed 27 Jan 2016.

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TOWARDS A TEKTOLOGY OF TEKTOLOGY

FabianTompsett______________________________________________________________
A diffractive response to Ken Wark’s Molecular Red (Wark 2015). A

‘second slit’ is opened up as regards the synthesis of Marxism and
Machism: This essay explores the diffractive relationship between
Aleksandr Bogdanov and Otto Neurath. Using a diffractive
methodology derived from Karen Barad, these two thinkers are
brought into relationship through their impact upon the German
Figurative Constructivists, a political-art movement which emerged
from the Council Communist current grouped around the Berlin
review Die Aktion. This yields a contextualization of both Bogdanov
and Neurath within the political environment that arose within Social
Democracy in the first third of the twentieth century. This
interpretation provides a basis for how tektological approaches can be
implemented in the age of digitized information.

ISBN 103204787103ABC
Tompsett___________TOWARDS A TEKTOLOGY OF TEKTOLOGY____________Page 1 of 17

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“For an international hypertext system to be worthwhile, of course, many people would

have to post information. The physicist would not find much on quarks, nor the art
student on Van Gogh, if many people and organizations did not make their information
available in the first place.” (Berners-Lee 1999: 41)
Introduction
This is a conjugative-diffractive response to Ken Wark’s Molecular

Red: Theory for the Anthropocene (Wark 2015), which I foresee playing a
significant role in drawing attention to the work of Bogdanov. This book
seeks to elaborate a revival of Marxism, through Bogdanov, as we enter a
period when the impact of human activity is the dominant force in
reshaping the very geology of planet earth. Wark places Bogdanov in the
context of contemporary Californian feminist theorists Donna Haraway
and Karen Barad. He mobilizes Barad’s scientific methodology – rooted in
the philosophy-physics of Niels Bohr (Barad 2007) – and Haraway’s Cyborg
Manifesto (Haraway 1983). This all works very well, for reasons, which will
emerge below. Unfortunately Wark has gone seriously astray when he is
completely dismissive of the “logical positivists of the Vienna Circle” (Wark
2015: 126). Wark appears to be misled by what Thomas Uebel (1991: 4)
has called the “received view” of logical positivism.
However, this led me to the use of tektology as method, in exploring
the relationship between Bogdanov and Otto Neurath both of whom
endeavoured to synthesize Marxism and Machism. [For a discussion of
Bogdanov in relation to Ernst Mach and positivist scientific methodology,
see “From Empiriomonism to Tektology” (Sadovsky 1998)]. This response
does not only open up a “second slit” by considering Neurath but also
brings into focus Franz Seiwert, the leading figure amongst the Figurative
Constructivists. We shall also look at the subsequent development of
similar ideas by the Situationniste Internationale (Carstern Juhl 1973). An
intrinsic part of this process is disrupting the separation of “art studies” and
“science studies”. A full analysis of the relationship between the thought of
Seiwert and Bogdanov lies outside the scope of this short essay. However
this methodological approach will led to some suggestions as to how future
research in this area might be conducted.

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Conjugation-Diffraction
“[T]wo conjugating complexes (…) are in the process of ‘interaction’, their elements-
activities merge, ‘influence’ each other, in general, ‘combine’, pass from one complex to
another” (Bogdanov 1996: 112–3)
Karen Barad developed her methodology from Bohr’s Philosophy-

Physics. Her agential realism challenges the representationalist focus on the
correspondence of description to reality, and then promotes a post-
humanist performative approach which concentrates on practice, doings
and action (Barad 2007). She adapts Donna Haraway’s notion of diffraction,
which is in fact precisely the image that Bogdanov uses as an example of
“conjugation” (Bogdanov 1996: 113-4). Haraway describes diffraction as a
metaphor (Haraway 1997: 16), which is perhaps another way of saying
that the writer appreciates language as a dynamic system. This was
certainly how Bogdanov saw things. He theorized a basic metaphor whereby
there is a transfer of meaning: “Natural actions were described using the
same words as those for human ones” (Bogdanov 1996: 16). Indeed this
was key to his understanding of poetry as originating in spontaneous
utterances which helped organize the work process and were the embryos
of words: “they were natural and intelligible indications of those actions
during which they sprang up” (Bogdanov 1923: 277). Thus Bogdanov’s use
of conjugation, a word he appropriates from biology, and Haraway’s and
Barad’s use of the term diffraction, appropriated from optics, are metaphors
and examples of themselves, in that in all three instances they are used to
develop language as a living system by stretching meaning from one set of
circumstances to another set of circumstances. In time, if widely adopted,
these words acquire the secondary meaning, which loses its characteristic
as metaphor and becomes stabilized as bearing this new meaning,
particularly when the original meaning becomes obsolete.
But let us take another pass on this. Barad is re-appropriating
Haraway’s metaphorical use of diffraction as a particle physicist now
engaged in Feminist Studies, Philosophy and the History of Consciousness.
She embraces Niels Bohr’s rejection of classical physics, Cartesian dualism
and atomistic metaphysics. Arguing that Bohr’s epistemology is not based
on “independent objects with inherent boundaries and properties but
rather phenomena” she develops agential realism according to which
“phenomena are the ontological inseparability of agentially intra-acting
‘components’” (Barad 2003: 815). She argues that the boundaries and

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properties of these components are not predetermined but emergent

through an “agential cut” occurring within the phenomenon. She eschews
a simple understanding of apparatuses as laboratory setups, but rather as
open ended material-discursive practices. They are not static structures but
dynamic re-configurings of the world (Barad 2007: 146). We shall now
open the second slit of conjugated “Machist-Marxism”, and discuss Otto
Neurath’s collaborative role with Bohr in his development of
complementarity.
Ingression
“If two things lacking common elements are being joined together, their structures must be
altered so that common elements appear. (…) In such situations the method of
ingression is commonly used, that is the method of ‘introduced’ or ‘intermediate’
complexes.” (Bogdanov 1996: 128–9)
Just as Bogdanov describes how philologists uncover the genetic

relationships between words (Bogdanov 1996: 162), through following a
chain of mutually related words, we shall now use a similar process to
uncover a genetic link connecting Bogdanov to Bohr through a shared
back story in the conjugation of Marx and Mach. For this first iteration,
the key person is Otto Neurath (1882-1945) who grew up in Viennese
academic circles. He was active in the Vienna Circle from the beginning:
he joined Philipp Frank and Hans Hahn in the First Vienna Circle (1907–
1910).
Prior to the First World War Neurath had started researching the
economic impact of warfare and during the First World War he obtained a
pivotal position spending half his time with the Austro-Hungarian War
office and the other half collating statistics of the German Empire at a war
economy museum in Leipzig. This experience fuelled his interest in an
economy in kind, and when the revolutions spread across the Central
Powers as mutinies and strikes brought the war to an end, he became a
paid official running the economic administration of the short lived
Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919. For this he was put on trial for High
Treason. Although his friends in the Austrian Social Democratic Party
secured his early release, it meant that he was now barred from pursing the
academic career for which he had seemed destined (Cartwright, Cat,
Fleck, and Uebel 1996).

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He returned to Vienna and became active in the squatting

movement, which arose as masses of Austrians took to the land to grow
food in the face of widespread starvation. As the situation normalized he
first created a museum for this squatting movement, and then, with the
support of the Social Democratic Viennese municipal authorities, he
started the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum (GeWiMu) – a socio-economic
museum which aimed to make social statistics intelligible to the whole
population, regardless of their level of literacy. This led him to increasingly
consider how information could be handled graphically (Vossoughian
2008). Another of his achievements was to be a key organizer of the
Vienna Circle, which had as its goal the unification of science (Neurath
1973a), something also advocated by Bogdanov (Bogdanov 1918; 2016).
He did this in the context of developing an approach to sociology that was,
like that of Bogdanov, rooted in Marxism and Machism, and which he
called Logical Empiricism. This is best illustrated in his major theoretical
work on sociology, Empirical Sociology (Neurath 1973b).
The Vienna Circle was active in organizing a series of International
Congresses for the Unity of Science. The second of these was held in
Copenhagen in Neils Bohr’s residence in June 1936. Indeed, it was here
that Bohr delivered one of the key papers in which he develops his concept
of complementarity: “Causality and Complementarity” (Bohr 1937). Bohr
was an important advocate of the Unity of Science, serving on the ongoing
advisory committee for the congresses and contributing to the first volume
of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science that Neurath was organizing
(Bohr 1938). Edward McKinnon has argued that the Unity of Science was
of central importance to Bohr, and that his innovation of complementarity
is evidence of this: it allows for both particle and wave theory to co-exist in
a unified way, rather than creating a contradiction which must be resolved
in one way or another (McKinnon 1980). It is the apparatus which plays
an active part in the conduct of the experiment. Jan Faye has further
argued from an examination of the correspondence between Neurath and
Bohr, that Neurath played a significant role in supporting Bohr in the
creation of his philosophy-physics from a Logical Empiricist perspective
(Faye 2008).
Thus, this ingression has revealed the intermediate complex of
Neurath, which allows the conjugation. However, further conjugation will
not be possible until we have manoeuvred around a case of disingression.

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Disingression
“It is really quite opposite to ingression. During ingression activities which were not
connected earlier join together forming a “linkage” of conjugating complexes. During
disingression they mutually paralyze one another which results in the formation of a
“boundary”, that is separateness.” (Bogdanov 1996: 201)
Neurath makes scant reference to Bogdanov. The one reference in

Empirical Sociology (Neurath 1973b) is unsympathetic:
“The scientific tool is not as unambiguous as one often assumes. If,
without immediate necessity somebody introduces new formulations which
can ease a coalition with former opponents, then an experienced and
sharp-sighted politician may sense that with such philosophical change a
political change is being prepared. Lenin’s fierce attack on the philosophy
of Bogdanov (of 1906)1 may be explained from Lenin’s basic political
attitude, which made him ward off any idealistic deviations” (Neurath
1973b: 386).
It would appear from this that Neurath had not actually studied
Bogdanov’s philosophy. He seems all too ready to accept Lenin’s critique
in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (Lenin 1909) and does not discuss exactly
what “coalition with former opponents” he was suggesting. Neurath’s view
may well have arisen consequent to the publication of the German
translation of Materializm i Empiriokrititsizm (Lenin 1927), four years before
Empirical Sociology.
Despite exhibiting a certain resonance with Bogdanov’s Tektology
in his approach, Neurath never seriously discussed Bogdanov’s work. This
occurred despite several key works by Bogdanov being made available in
German throughout the 1920s (Biggart, Gloveli, Yassour 1998). But
Neurath did not engage with Bogdanov’s theses. Leaving this mystery aside
we must recognize “the formation of a boundary, that is separateness” - i.e.
Disingression. Before investigating this disjuncture we need to step back for
a more tektological view of the situation.
1 This is the reference supplied by Neurath. This probably refers to

Empiriomonizm the third volume of which appeared in 1906 (Biggart, Gloveli, Yassour
1998: 151).
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Tektology as Form and Content
“[F]orm and content are one” (Franz Seiwert 2015)
The revival of interest in tektology needs to be more than nostalgic:

it can offer a methodology. As Bogdanov wrote in 1912 “from its very
beginning, tektology is able to go beyond the field of abstract cognition and
assume an active role in life” (Bogdanov 1996: i). Thus a purely abstract
representation of tektology is oxymoronic. Bogdanov argued that tektology
was not something new but rather a “necessary continuation of what is and
has been done by people in their theory and practice” (Bogdanov 1996: i).
Writing nine years later in the Preface of 19 November 1921 to the Second
Edition of Tektology (Bogdanov 1996: iii–iv) – before the consolidation of
Bolshevik power and Lenin’s campaign against him had yet to put an end
to the independence of Proletkult – Bogdanov’s tone was very positive,
speaking of a growing number of scientists becoming engaged in tektology:
no doubt he was referring to Proletkult and more specifically the Socialist
Academy, as the Communist Academy was originally called.
In “Proletarian University”, published in 1918, Bogdanov sketches
out the structure of this institution (Bogdanov 1977). Here there are three
stages: after a preparatory and foundational cycle, the final stage for
students is a specialist’s cycle, which however includes a course on General
Organizational Science (i.e., Tektology) common to all faculties. This
scientific enterprise will be carried out in a collective and collaborative
manner. This is necessitated by the disparate nature of bourgeois science.
From Science Studies to Art Studies
“Science is split into an ever larger number of branches, increasingly divergent, always
weakening the living relationship that existed between them. (…) It is further necessary to
do everything possible to eliminate the disparate nature of science that has led to the
increase of specialization; the unity of scientific language must be the objective, matching
and generalizing the methods of the various branches of knowledge, not only in relation to
each other, but as regards the methods of all other areas of practice, developing of a
complete monism of them all.” (Bogdanov 1918; 2016)
Our next application of Tektology as method involves jumping

from ‘science studies’ to ‘art studies’. Geographically our area of focus will
be Germany. Firstly, we need to consider that German science was above

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all bourgeois science – i.e. it was politically constructed as can be evinced

by the problems Hans Reichenbach encountered when getting tenure as a
Professor of Mathematics in Berlin. His political activism with his brother
Bernard Reichenbach and their friend Alexander Schwab (Biographische
Datenbanken 2008) led to opposition to his appointment, which was only
overcome when Albert Einstein intervened on his behalf. Unlike in the
Netherlands where the astronomer, Anton Pannekoek could combine an
academic career with his political activism as a Left Communist, this was
impossible in Germany. Hans Reichenbach had to give up his overt
political activism, which then enabled him to establish the Berlin Circle as
a parallel organization to Neurath’s Vienna Circle, the two organizations
proceeding to play a dynamic role in the development of mathematics and
also of the Unity of Science Movement.
Meanwhile Bernard Reichenbach and Schwab became active in
the Communist Workers’ Party of Germany (KAPD), a Left Communist
organization which broke away from the Communist Party of Germany
(KPD) in 1920. Bernard Reichenbach even briefly serving on the
Executive Committee of the Communist International (1920–21) before
the KAPD was expelled from the Third International. Sabatier (1974)
found no trace of Proletkult-type institutions in Germany, and Biggart
disputes her suggestion that “the cultural policy of the KAPD was closer to
that of the Proletkult than was that of the KPD”, on the grounds that, by
her own account, the KAPD advocated only the assimilation of bourgeois
culture” (Biggart 1989: Chapter 20, Note 6). However, we need to take
account of the role of the political faction grouped around Franz Pfemfert
which started as an underground organization, the Anti-national Socialist
Party in 1915, which became public following the German Revolution of
November 1918 and subsequently moved through the Spartakus League,
the KPD and the KAPD, before re-constituting itself as the Allgemeine
Arbeiter Union – Einheitsorganization (AAUE) i.e. General Workers Union –
Unitary Organization. One important feature of this current is that it drew
in a range of significant artists, it discussed education and questions of art,
poetry and aesthetics, rejecting the need for a political party (one of Lenin’s
critiques of Bogdanov) and published Bogdanov and Lunacharskiy
amongst discussions of Proletkult and Proletarian culture more generally.
We shall now focus on Franz Seiwert, a major figure in this
current, a leading figure in the Figurative Constructivist movement and an
active collaborator with Otto Neurath following 1928 until Seiwert’s death
in 1933.

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Franz Seiwert and the ‘Aufbau der Proletarischen Kultur’
“The Spectacle becomes dance” (Seiwert 1920b)
Seiwert was simultaneously active as an artist and as a political

militant. His first appearance in the radical art journal, Die Aktion, was a
woodcut in September 1917. This was followed by four others in the
period leading to the German Revolution of November 1918. Whether he
was involved in the Antinational Socialist Party, which had been founded
by Franz Pfemfert in 1915 prior to the revolution is unclear, but he
became a prominent member in the days following the revolution and was
involved in organizing an Artists’ Council in Cologne (Crockett 1999, 77).
Here I shall focus on his more critical articles, which emerged in Die Aktion
following their increasingly negative stance as regards the Bolsheviks,
particularly after Otto Rühle’s trip to Moscow in 1920. On his return
Rühle reported the situation he found in Russia as differing from what he
expected a socialist society to be like (Rühle n.d.).
Seiwert took an active part in the discussions as regards the
relationship between culture and revolution. Seiwert had participated in
the Ruhr Uprising (17 March – 8 April 1920). He had written a bitter
polemic attacking the role of the political parties, particularly in
relationship to the political divisions, which led to suppression of the Red
Army of the Ruhr with over 1,000 dead (Seiwert 1920a). Here he had
called on workers to remember the goal of social revolution. In the
“Aufbau der Proletarischen Kultur” (Seiwert 1920b), he set out to spell out
exactly what he saw that goal as meaning, what his comrades had fought
and died for. Here we shall focus on the role he saw for Art through a few
extracts:
“The progressive realization of the communist idea is synonymous
with the destruction of the modern concept of art. The true artistic
creation and the realization of communism come from the same source.”
(Seiwert 1920b: 723)
“In communist society there are no professional artists. The word
artist is an insult and a human debasement. When the Spirit moves you
then you will create works of art.” (Seiwert 1920b:)
“The spectacle becomes dance” (Seiwert 1920b: 723).
“The Artworks will be on the street. The streets are so bleak. Here
completely new possibilities arise. The houses can be painted, whole streets

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can be painted. Useless advertising hoardings can become pictographs and

sculptures.” (Seiwert 1920b: 724)
“The artwork, artistic creation is open. Everyone has the right to
every work. There is no ownership of art works.” (Seiwert 1920b: 724)
“Engineers are artists, artists will be engineers. All workers will be
artists, because art is no longer what is nicely done, but everything that is
truthful.” (Seiwert 1920b: 724)
Seiwert wrote this in the heat of the failed Council (Räte)
Revolution in Germany. In July 1921 his “Open Letter to Comrade
Bogdanov” (Seiwert 2015) was published. (The use of the term ‘comrade’
was at odds with the abusive terms used by Lenin to characterize
Bogdanov.) Here Seiwert says he agrees with Bogdanov ‘in essence’ but
criticizes Bogdanov’s monism as not going far enough: form and content
are one.
“Comrade Bogdanov! For me, it is increasingly clear that the
proletarian society generally will not know these parts into which bourgeois
culture is disintegrating: science, art, and again, their constituent parts:
poetry, music, painting and so on. Form and content will not be known,
but only work created from the true collective consciousness in which
everyone becomes a creator, in which everyone is a creator.” (Seiwert
2015)
From Figurative Constructivism to Triolectics
“Artistic research is identical to ‘human science’” (Asger Jorn 2011b)
Seiwert’s views continued to develop despite the failure of

Communist World Revolution following the First World War. With his
comrades in the AAUE, he shared the view that the Soviet Union was
nothing but a development within capitalism. Indeed Rühle’s went so far
as to draw a parallel between Bolshevism and General Ludendorff’s “war
socialism” (Rühle n.d.), a position similar to that of Bogdanov (Tompsett
2014). By 1927, Seiwert no longer spoke of proletarian culture in a positive
manner. The culture of the future socialist society would not exist in
embryo under capitalism: he rejected all attempts to pretend so, as this
would contaminate the revolutionary struggle. But in the future society art
and culture would be close to the mechanics and technology of work:
“Bogdanov called this the science of the organization of human labor. If
we understand work correctly as the preservation of life of both the

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individual and of the totality, then art is nothing more than an emergent
work-image (werk-, bildgewordene) organization of labour, of life.” (Seiwert
1978: 39)
Notwithstanding his critique of constructivism (Seiwert 1978),
Seiwert supported El Lisitskiy when he came to Cologne for the
International Pressa exhibition in 1928. The Soviet pavilion here did much
to establish Lisitskiy’s reputation in Western Europe. Augustin Tschinkel, a
Czech contributor to Die Aktion also attended. It was here that the
negotiations were concluded which gave both Tschinkel and Seiwert’s
long-time friend and collaborator, Gerd Arntz, steady work with
employment at the (GeWiMu) that Otto Neurath ran in Vienna. Another
associate, Peter Alma was also employed. Arntz and Tschinkel were
regular contributors to A bis Z, a journal Seiwert edited between October
1929 and February 1933. But there was a tension between their paid work
and their politics: “The working of the [GeWiMu] fitted quite definitely
into my political vision. It was above all the enlightenment on social
relationships in which I could give shape to my ideas. Only I was a bit
more revolutionary, more to the left than the socialists in Vienna” (Arntz
quoted in Benus 2013: 234).
There were also tensions between the theory of factography as
developed by El Lisitskiy as a means to assemble facts through such means
as photomontage (Anysley 1994), and the “sociological graphics”
developed by Seiwert and his fellow Figurative Constructivists: their goal
was to “present people as products of their relationships (…) show
individual people as actual constituent parts of an operation which the
employer can calculate numerically, like other inventory” (Tschinkel
2013). In its intentional way of overlooking any distinction between living
and non-living things, this approach can be seen as pre-figurative of both
cybernetics and the methodologies developed by Barad and Haraway
(Tompsett 2015). However, before completing this circuit, we shall make a
further ingression, this time introducing the triolectics of Asger Jorn and its
impact on Situationism in the 1950s, twenty years after Seiwert’s death.
Jorn gave a talk at the International Congress of Industrial Design,
Milan 1954, where he advocated a new concept of truth based on Bohr’s
complementarity and, as with Seiwert, goes beyond the distinction
between art and science. He echoes Seiwert again: “the word art (Kunst)
means that which we can do, our capacity (können) in any domain. Thus we
are all artists, and all techniques are arts.” (Jorn 2011b: 273). In his “Notes

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on the Formation of an Imaginist Bauhaus” he declared “Artistic research

is identical to ‘human science’” (ibid, 275).
Further, Jorn developed the Triolectic from his critical examination
of Bohr’s Copenhagen Interpretation. In his introduction to Naturens Orden
Jorn explains that this work is as much equally a critique of Neils Bohr’s
complementarity and Dialectical Materialism arguing that they both share
an identification of the instrument and actuality (Jorn 2002: 18). He argues
that this duality can only be resolved by the introduction of a third element
and generates a triple viewpoint of instrument: the artistic, the technical
and the scientific. He further developed this analysis in Signes Gravés
producing a series of Triolectic Schemas: This manner of thinking
persisted with Jorn through his period in the Situationniste Internationale
(1957–1960) into his subsequent activity
Tektology, Figurative Constructivism and Situationism
“The slave of proletarian culture is the machine” (Seiwert 1920b).
“Facing the masters/slaves stand the men of refusal, the new proletariat, rich in
revolutionary traditions. From these the masters without slaves will emerge, together with
a superior type of society in which the lived project of childhood and the historical project
of the great aristocrats will be realized” (Vaneigem 1979).
In the 1950s Jorn started collaborating with Guy Debord, who saw
revolution not merely in terms of “politics” or “culture” but in terms of “a
superior organization of the world” (Debord 1981). They were key figures
in the foundation of the Situationniste Internationale (SI) although Jorn was to
leave in 1960. The organization continued until 1972, and subsequently
has been deemed to be very influential as regards avant-gardism in art and
politics.
Many elements of Seiwert’s thought can be seen resurfacing within
the programme of the Situationists particularly in their manifesto
(Situationniste Internationale 1994):
total participation against the spectacle

the organization of the directly lived moment against preserved art
global practice and collective production against particularized art
an art of interaction against unilateral art

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Vaneigem’s The Revolution of Everyday Life (Vaneigem 1979)

developed Situationist ideas as regards the possibilities of restoring the
creative aspects of art into the interstices of daily life in the context of a
critical attitude to cybernetics.
Conclusion
This has been an exercise in applied tektology. I have used formal

categories developed by Bogdanov in his tektology to research tektology
through an exercise in applied tektology. I have found a substantial range
of correspondences, such as between Bogdanov’s conjugation and Barad’s
diffraction – to which we could add Jorn’s “conjunction”, a term Jorn
develops in relations to his theory of the “situation” but one which he does
not really develop beyond that (Jorn 1963: 218).
What has not been produced is a mechanical set of causal relations,
whereby subsequent events or theories are determined by anterior
activities. It is not that the tektological methodology does not require such
an outcome, rather it is antithetical to such a result. Neurath was very keen
to make clear that in his promotion of the unity of science, he was not
seeking to centralize all science in a hierarchy, whether derived from
physics or maths. Siewert and his comrades in Die Aktion fought the
centralizing process even when run by those with whom they shared many
ideas. Bogdanov, once one of the key leaders of the Bolsheviks, later
dropped out of any party involvement. Debord was much more ambiguous
about leadership, in terms of his actions in relation to his organizational
pronouncements in the Situationniste Internationale. However, Jorn was much
more consistent in rejecting any centralizing structure.
I have constructed a more diffuse set of relationships, sometimes
finding textual evidence for a relationship, at other times relying on a more
tangential relationship where there is no indication that a subsequent
thinker was aware of their predecessor. In applying my interpretation of
the concepts of tektology I have uncovered some hard evidence – i.e., the
textual references made by Seiwert, which had eluded previous Bogdanov
scholars. However, in comparing the Situationists with Seiwert, whilst I
have uncovered circumstantial evidence of similarity, I have found no
unchallengeable links. Nevertheless I regard both cases as being successful:
after all this is not a forensic investigation.

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If some phenomenon is real, is actually a constituent part of social

relations amongst which we live, then when different groups of people
stumble across such a phenomenon, then the fact that they do so
independently should reassure us of the phenomenon’s generality. In
contradistinction to a world where claims for priority are a feature of both
scientific research and artistic practice, such claims are not relevant for the
tektological approach.
This has a political impact, which both Seiwert and the
Situationists were at the forefront of proclaiming, long before the advent of
open source programming and the development of the creative commons.
Both saw that open collaboration was essential for a truly participatory
approach to culture. In this they were much more explicit than Bogdanov,
in whose thinking it is much more implicit, certainly as far as one can
judge from the limited range of his works available in English. Likewise it is
important to reject the centralized scholastic thinking that first appeared
within “Leninism” and can perhaps be identified as appearing with Lenin’s
attack on Bogdanov in 1909 in Materialism and Empiriocriticism (Lenin 1909;
1927). Bogdanov’s criticism of Lenin’s method as being authoritarian can
be compared with Jorn’s interpretation of complementarity which states
that we can never find a singular truth, but that as humans we must
balance the different instrumental methods at our disposal (Jorn 2011a).
With the innovation of the World Wide Web, as the initial quote
from Tim Berners Lee shows, the aggregation of information is not
constrained by the division between art and science. This technology has
provided an extensive material base for realizing the proposals put forward
by people like Bogdanov and Seiwert nearly 100 years ago. Likewise, the
collaborative processes outlined by Seiwert and the SI can be seen in the
contemporary practices known as commons-based peer production
(Benkler 2002). Now, more than ever, the assertion of intellectual property
rights, the maintenance and even the periodical extension of copyright and
patents serve as a hindrance, cutting of vast numbers of people from
adequate access to knowledge in order to protect the profits of various
corporations. Capitalism has shown itself sufficiently adaptable that it
would be foolish to imagine that simply liberating ourselves from
intellectual property relations would be sufficient to bring capitalism to an
end. It may, however, be impossible bring capitalism to an end without such
a liberation.

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PARADISE ORGANIZED.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL DIMENSION OF ALEXANDER
BOGDANOV’S UTOPIAN NOVEL, RED STAR
James D. White_______________________________________________________________
The utopian novel Red Star is one of the best known and most
accessible of Alexander Bogdanov’s writings. In the guise of
describing the lives of the inhabitants of Mars, Bogdanov sets out his
ideas on the nature of a future socialist society. While the format of a
novel is an unaccustomed one for Bogdanov’s writings, nevertheless
the ideas contained in it are themes that appear in his more avowedly
theoretical works. It is even possible that Bogdanov had in mind a
readership for his novel that was familiar with his other publications.
It is certainly true that to understand Red Star in all its depth it is
necessary to appreciate the many references in it to ideas and
concepts that the author had elaborated prior to the writing of his
novel. The purpose of this paper is to examine this philosophical and
This chapter is peer-reviewed and edited for ideological dimension of Red Star and to suggest what its place in
Bogdanov’s wider system of thought might be.

ISBN 103204787103ABC
White__________________PARADISE ORGANIZED_______________________Page 1 of 15
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Chronology
When Red Star was published in 1908 Bogdanov had already

achieved a considerable standing as a socialist theoretician and Social-
Democrat leader (Bogdanov 1908). He had been active in the workers’
movement since 1894, and had stood at the head of the Bolshevik fraction
during the 1905 revolution in St Petersburg. As a member of the St.
Petersburg Soviet, he had been arrested and imprisoned until May 1906.
In the following year he had gone into exile in Finland, where Red Star
was written (Grille 1966: 159). By 1908 Bogdanov already had published
a number of books and articles, whose influence can be seen in the novel.
These include his textbook on economics, A Short Course of Economic Science
(Bogdanov 1897; 1906b), his two early philosophical works The Basic
Elements of the Historical View of Nature (Bogdanov 1899) and Perception from a
Historical Point of View (Bogdanov 1901), the collection of articles From the
Psychology of Society (1906) (Bogdanov 1897; 1906a) and his main
philosophical work of the period Empiriomonism (1904-06) (Bogdanov
2003).
When Red Star was written, however, Bogdanov had still to publish
his celebrated Tektology: A Universal Science of Organization, but in Red Star
one can observe how the idea for Tektology was evolving out of his earlier
philosophical ideas.
The action of Red Star itself is set in 1908 and Bogdanov locates it
precisely in the times through the eyes of his hero, Leonid. It is in the
wake of the failed revolution of 1905, when the workers have been
resoundingly defeated and the peasant movement is being mercilessly
repressed. Despite the despair that had infiltrated the ranks of his former
comrades, Leonid is convinced that a new revolutionary upsurge was
near at hand. It was in this context that through one of the characters,
Bogdanov indicates the role that his utopian novel was to play: “Blood is
being shed for the sake of a better future... But in order to wage the
struggle one must know what that better future is.” (Bogdanov 1979: 48;
Bogdanov 1984: 47)
Bogdanov’s Dynamic Ideal
Bogdanov calls Red Star a ‘utopia’, that is, it represents for him an
ideal world. And it was in the context of a discussion on ideals that the
idea for Red Star had its origins. The discussion in question took place
during Bogdanov’s period of exile in Vologda between 1901 and 1903.
This period was one of intense intellectual development for Bogdanov,
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and much of it was stimulated by debates with his fellow exile, the
philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (Biggart 1980). Berdyaev belonged to the
group of thinkers, which included Sergei Bulgakov, Petr Struve and
Mikhail Tugan-Baranovskiy, who had become disillusioned with the
variety of Marxism that had been propounded by Plekhanov and turned
instead to Kant and other idealist philosophers.
In Vologda Berdyaev gave a series of lectures, and in an article
entitled ‘The Struggle for Idealism’, presented a critique of the Marxism
which he had recently abandoned. He found Marxism poor in its spiritual
and moral content. It rejected goodness, morality and beauty, all the most
elevated aspects of human existence. He deplored the idea that the new
society would emerge as a result of a social cataclysm, a Zusammenbruch.
This would take place mechanically, in such a way that there would be no
place for idealism. Moreover, “the new society that would emerge from
this dialectical movement would most probably be as self-satisfied,
complacent and philistine as the one it had replaced” (Berdyaev
1901: 17–18).
Although Bogdanov polemicized against Berdyaev, it was not to
defend the kind of Marxism that Berdyaev had rejected, but to interpret
Marx’s ideas in such a way that they would answer the objections that
Berdyaev had raised. In the article ‘What is Idealism?’ Bogdanov took up
the points that Berdyaev had raised, including the accusation that the new
society would be self-satisfied, complacent and philistine. He agreed that
a socialist society should not be a static one, and as an example of how it
should not be, gave the image of the future society as depicted by Edward
Bellamy in his utopian novel Looking Backward 200-1887 (Bellamy 1888),
which was popular at the time. What Bogdanov says about Bellamy’s
novel provides an insight into the approach he took in writing Red Star.
This is:
“Bellamy’s ideal - the future society portrayed in his novel -
obviously corresponds to the idea of ‘progressiveness.’ But progress is only
progress as long as it is carried out continuously, as long as the harmony
and fullness of life continues to increase. Bellamy’s society is one that has
become petrified in satisfaction and complacency, placidly resting on its
laurels following the victories gained by preceding generations over
nature, both social and external - such a society does not incorporate any
stimulus for further development - it in itself is not progressive.
Consequently, Bellamy’s utopia in the last analysis is not a progressive
ideal, and present-day idealists regard it as a philistine caricature of their
own ideals” (Bogdanov 1906a: 22).
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In the light of Bogdanov’s critique of Bellamy, one knows in

advance that a prominent feature of his own novel is going to be a serious
challenge posed by the forces of nature to the socialist society of the
future.
An indication that Bogdanov’s attitude to static ideals did not only
apply to Bellamy’s novel, but was an integral part of his philosophical
system of thought emerges from his polemic with Lunacharskiy on the
pages of Empiriomonism. From Avenarius, Lunacharskiy had taken the
concept of the ‘perfect constant’, a state in which the organism is in
complete equilibrium with its environment, comparable to a foetus in the
womb. This, Lunacharskiy believed, was a worthy ideal, and thought it a
pity that Bogdanov had not accepted it. Bogdanov, however, replied that
he did not consider this ideal at all worthy, and regarded Avenarius’s
conception of progress as a relic of a conservative and static view of life
(Bogdanov 2003: 204–205). The exchange of views also shows that
whereas Lunacharskiy’s conception of the ideal was the complete
reconciliation of humanity with nature, Bogdanov saw humanity and
nature as eternally at odds.
The dynamic conception of the socialist ideal was incorporated in
the corresponding section of Bogdanov’s Kratkiy kurs ekonomicheskoy nauki
(Short Course in Economic Science) published in 1906. There he explained that
the needs of humanity would grow in the very process of labour and
experience. Each new victory over nature and its mysteries would
stimulate new challenges and fresh discoveries. Power over nature meant
the continual accumulation of the energy of society acquired by it from
external nature, and this energy would seek an outlet and find it in the
creation of new forces of labour and knowledge (Bogdanov 1906b: 285).
In the light of this dynamic conception of the socialist society, one
duly finds in Red Star that though Martian society has overcome
individualism and established comradely relations between people, the
struggle with nature goes on. As one of the characters explains:
“Happy? Peaceful? Where did you get that impression? True,
peace reigns among people, but there cannot be peace with the natural
elements. Even a victory over such a foe can pose a new threat. During
the most recent period of our history we have intensified the exploitation
of the planet tenfold, our population is growing, and our needs are
increasing even faster. The danger of exhausting our natural resources
and energy has repeatedly confronted various branches of our industry”
(Bogdanov 1984: 79; Bogdanov 1979: 98).
Commentators have been at a loss to explain this passage. Loren
Graham poses the question: “Why does this pessimism show up so clearly
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in Bogdanov’s writings?” He absolves Bogdanov of being secretly out of

sympathy with Marxism, or of being, like George Orwell, an early apostle
of the dangers of socialism. His conclusion is that Bogdanov was prescient
enough to recognize the problems faced by ‘post-industrial societies’
(Bogdanov 1984: 242–243). Graham does not realise that the struggle
with the natural elements Bogdanov describes is not meant to detract
from his utopia, but to be an essential part of it.
The Structure of Red Star
The consideration that Martian society must have important

challenges to face in its struggle with nature is one that to some degree
determines the structure of the Red Star. On the whole, however,
Bogdanov follows the template of Edward Bellamy’s novel rather closely.
In Looking Backward the hero, the young American Julian West, falls into a
deep hypnosis-induced sleep and wakes up 113 years later in 2000. While
he has been asleep the United States has been turned into a socialist
utopia in which all the industry has been nationalized and there is a
moneyless economy. West is fortunate enough to have the new system
explained to him by his host Dr Leete. A romantic element is supplied
when West falls in love with Leete’s daughter Edith. Towards the end of
the novel a note of ambiguity is introduced when West ostensibly wakes
up back in the nineteenth century, doubting if he has ever been in the
future at all. But this is resolved when it turns out that he has only dreamt
about returning to his own times, and that in reality he is still in the future
and is able to marry Edith.
In Bogdanov’s novel, Leonid’s trip to Mars plays the same role as
Julian West’s transference to future times. Leonid, the hero, is befriended
by a mysterious character Menni, who reveals himself to be a Martian
who has come to earth to look for suitable humans to take back to Mars
to instruct on life there and to help the Martians better understand life on
earth. The main focus of the novel is the description of the collectivist
society on Mars. Leonid falls in love with the Martian girl Netta, but
because, in a fit of rage he kills Sterni, her former husband, he is banished
to his native Earth. There Leonid suffers hallucinations and is treated in a
psychiatric hospital, where he suspects that his visit to Mars has been an
illusion. Leonid throws himself into the revolutionary struggle and is
severely wounded, but almost on the point of death he is rescued by Netta
and transported back to Mars.
The close parallel with Bellamy’s novel raises the question: why
didn’t Bogdanov set his novel at some point in the future on Earth? Or, to
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put this another way: what was the advantage to Bogdanov of locating his
utopia in a Martian rather than in an Earthly setting? The answer must
be that it gave him greater freedom, since he did not have to refer to any
specific places or times, or to make predictions that would later turn out
to be mistaken. In particular, he would not have to explain how socialism
on Earth had come about, something that, as emerges from the novel, he
was uncertain about.
Comradely Cooperation
In his introduction to the 1929 publication of Red Star Boris

Legran reminds his readers that in 1908 when Red Star was published
Louis Bleriot had still to make his epoch-making flight across the English
Channel (Bogdanov 1979: 5). Judged against the technological level of the
real world, Bogdanov’s anticipation in Red Star of space travel and other
future scientific developments seems truly remarkable. On his trip to
Mars Leonid experiences weightlessness, which Bogdanov describes as if
he had actually witnessed how human bodies and liquids behave in a
spacecraft outside Earth's gravity. On Mars Leonid finds that the
Martians are familiar with nuclear energy, anti-matter, synthetic fabrics,
3-d films and speech-to-text devices. In the field of medicine they make
wide use of blood transfusions, still a recent development in 1908.
However, it is not Martian technical achievements that form the centre-
piece of Bogdanov’s utopia, but the fabric of socialist society, which in his
philosophical writings he termed ‘comradely cooperation.’
Bogdanov illustrates this cooperation by recounting an episode in
which Leonid is operating a machine while working at a Martian factory.
When his concentration lapses, he is immediately helped by his fellow-
workers. Leonid discovers that the Martian workers do the same for each
other as a matter of course. The incident brings home to Leonid that
although he has been judged suitable by Menni to be taken to Mars
because of his lack of individualism, he is nevertheless much more
individualistic than the collectivist Martians (Bogdanov 1979: 125–130;
Bogdanov 1984: 96–99).
There are several aspects to Bogdanov’s concept of collectivism,
reflecting different strands in his thought. One of these is the elimination
of the organizer/executive division that is the distinction between people
who organize and those who carry out orders. For Bogdanov this is the
earliest and most fundamental social division, which afflicted mankind,
one, w hich preceded the formation of social classes. It was responsible
for authoritarian thinking and for the dualist view of the world that
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divided phenomena into the physical and the psychic. In socialist society
this division is overcome, and the monist view of the world is restored
(Bogdanov 2003: 34–35).
Even on the trip to Mars Leonid discovers that Martian society is
not authoritarian. Menni is the captain of the spacecraft, but he does not
have the power of command. His instructions are followed because he
happens to be the most experienced pilot of the spacecraft (Bogdanov
1984: 38). On Mars itself the comradely relations prevailed between the
individuals, with a directness and absence of formality. Great individuals
are not commemorated, only important events.
A second aspect of Bogdanov’s concept of collectivism is the
elimination of specialization into trades and professions. The analysis of
the human predicament that pervades Bogdanov’s writings is the
fragmentation of human society brought about through specialization and
the division of labour. The concomitant of this fragmentation is
authoritarian relationships and outlooks, fetishism, including commodity
fetishism, and the compartmentalization of experience and knowledge.
The obverse side of this analysis is Bogdanov’s quest for means to heal
these divisions and to re-integrate society, the human personality and the
various sciences into a harmonious whole. Bogdanov’s vision of the
socialist utopia is one in which the fragmentation of all previous forms of
social organization are overcome.
From his earliest works Bogdanov was concerned to find a means
by which this fragmentation of society and experience by the division of
labour could be overcome. The solution that he proposed was “the
elaboration of general methods in all spheres of production.” With the
development of machine industry, in which machines would become
more specialized, while the labour of the workers became more
homogeneous, the formulation of these general methods would become
increasingly feasible. They would break down the barriers between the
workers that the division of labour had erected, and foster the
development of ‘synthetic cooperation’ (which Bogdanov later termed
‘comradely cooperation’) (Bogdanov 1901: 201–203). There is thus a
close association between ‘general methods’ and the formation of
comradely cooperation among the workers. This close association is
carried over into Red Star.
In the novel Leonid undergoes training in such general methods
when he goes to work at a Martian clothing factory. He had to study the
established scientific principles of industrial organization, as well as the
structure of the factory in which he was employed. He had to acquire a
general notion of all the machines in use there, and know in detail the one
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with which he would be working (Bogdanov 1984: 96; Bogdanov

1979: 126). Leonid worked by turns in all sections of the factory,
supervising the operation of the various machines. In an article written in
1910 Bogdanov expanded on the connection between the mastery of
general methods and the development of comradely cooperation:
The proletariat needs a science in its life and struggle, but not the
one which is accessible to people only in fragments and leads to mutual
misunderstanding between them. In conscious comradely relations the
most important thing is, on the contrary, the complete understanding of
one another. The working out of socialist knowledge must, therefore,
aspire to the simplification and unification of science, to finding the
general methods of investigation, which would give the key to the most
varied specialisms and would allow the rapid mastery of them – as the
worker in machine production, who knows by experience the general
features and general methods of his technique can comparatively easily
transfer from one specialism to another (Bogdanov 1990: 102).
By the time Bogdanov had published his second novel, Engineer
Menni, in 1912, he had begun to elaborate his science of general methods,
to which he had given the name ‘Tektology.’ In Engineer Menni Tektology
is introduced in a context of overcoming the specialisms engendered in
individualist society that obstructed mutual understanding.
A third aspect of Bogdanov’s concept of collectivism is the absence
of any legal or moral compulsion. This is an idea that appears from the
earliest of Bogdanov’s writings, where he argues that legal or moral norms
are fetishes that first appeared in primitive clan society. In capitalist
society, which was divided into organizers and the organized, law,
morality and manners were framed in the interests of the former, the
group responsible for the distribution of the social product (Bogdanov
1899: 194–197). It was Bogdanov’s belief that in a socialist society no
element of compulsion should determine people’s behaviour; what they
did should be entirely voluntary. No formal code of behaviour would be
necessary when the relations between people were characterized by
comradely cooperation.
In a rare autobiographical passage Bogdanov recalls how his ideas
on morality had got him into trouble while a member of a Social
Democrat group in Khar’kov while he was studying medicine there
between 1895 and 1899 (White 1981).
“On discovering what kind of questions were being posed, I
declared that I considered myself to be a ‘vulgar’ Marxist and that as far
as moral principles went I could only see in them social fetishism
conditioned by the relations of production. I barely escaped paying dearly
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for my audacity. My moral comrades met in my absence and discussed

whether to expel me from the organization for immorality. They were
tending towards the affirmative, because a person who thought that
morality was a fetish was obviously immoral. It was only by a stroke of
luck that, having quarreled with the leaders, I managed to resign from the
organization before the decision was taken. It was only later, from one of
the members, that I learnt how near the pleasant prospect had been of
receiving the rank and title ‘expelled for immorality’” (Bogdanov
1911: 82).
Red Star begins with the separation between Leonid and his
Earthly girlfriend Anna, arising out of a similar difference of opinion on
morality. While Anna believes that the class ethics of the proletariat
would necessarily become the universal moral code, Leonid held that the
proletariat was moving towards the destruction of all morals, and that the
comradely feeling uniting people would not develop fully until it had cast
off the fetishistic husk of morality (Bogdanov 1979: 15; Bogdanov
1984: 25).
In respect of the question of morality, Red Star goes further than
Bogdanov’s philosophical writings, since Leonid did not recognize fidelity
to his partner as an obligation, considering polygamy in principle superior
to monogamy, since it provided for both a richer private life and a greater
variety of genetic combinations. He is supported in these views by Menni,
indicating that Leonid’s conception of morality is generally accepted on
Mars. In the course of the novel, Leonid not only forms a relationship
with Netta, but also, in her absence, with her friend Enno. From Enno
Leonid learns that Netta has been married to two people at the same
time. It is clear from the novel that Bogdanov upholds the principle of
sexual equality, though this too is not an issue that is prominent in his
other writings.
Bogdanov does not mention the point specifically in Red Star,
though he does in the the chapter on Socialist Society in Short Course in
Economic Science,, that Mars has no state structure or other political
institutions (Bogdanov 1906b: 284). These are rendered unnecessary
because people’s behaviour is regulated by considerations of mutual
understanding and sympathy. There are very few limits to the freedom
Martians enjoy. One of them is the necessity to impose restrictions on
patients suffering from nervous disorders. Netti, however, emphasizes that
the use of such compulsion in these cases is very different from the way it
would be applied on Earth. There all practices are codified into laws,
regulations and moral codes which dominate people and constantly
oppress them. On Mars force did exist, but it was either a symptom of
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illness or as the rational response in a given situation, but in neither case

was any formal code of law or morals involved (Bogdanov 1979: 104).
Leonid finds that Mars is so lacking in any restrictions to freedom of any
kind that he is surprised to find that Martian poetry observes laws of
rhyme and meter (Bogdanov 1984: 78).
The Socialist Economy
For Bogdanov it is the relations between people that was the

essential element in his concept of socialism. It is this relationship that
determines how both the production of products on Mars is organized
and also how they are distributed.
Production
For Bogdanov machines play a major part in the socialist
economy, and in doing so fill several roles: they eliminate the age-old
organizer/executive divide; they overcome the division of labour; they
harness the power of nature (Bogdanov 1906b: 279–280). In Red Star
Bogdanov devotes some evocative passages to the relationship of the
machines to the people:
Hundreds of workers moved confidently among the machines,
their footsteps and voices drowned in a sea of sound. There was not a
trace of tense anxiety on their faces, whose only expression was of quiet
concentration. They seem to be inquisitive, learned observers who had no
real part in all that was going on around them. It was as if they simply
found it interesting to watch how the enormous pieces of metal glided out
beneath the transparent dome on moving platforms and fell into the
steely embrace of dark monsters...It seemed altogether natural that the
steel monsters should not harm the small, big-eyed spectators strolling
confidently among them: the giants simply scorned the frail humans as
quarry unworthy of their awesome might (Bogdanov 1979: 75).
In Bogdanov’s description the colossal machines perform a variety
of operations on the blocks of steel, indicating the different human trades
and specialisations that they have replaced.
Distribution
In an essay entitled ‘Exchange and Technology’ published in 1904
Bogdanov had argued that the form of distribution developed historically
as an adaptation to the society in which it took place. In patriarchal
society products were distributed by the patriarch; in capitalist society
exchange was the form of distribution of the products of social labour. It
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was noticeable that in this form of distribution the organizers of labour

were much better rewarded than the executives of labour (Ocherki...,
1904: 279–288). In a socialist society the organizer of distribution was
society as a whole. Society would distribute labour and also the product of
that labour. In the chapter on Socialist Society in his Short Course in
Economic Science Bogdanov stated that the complexity of the organization
of distribution demanded a level of statistical and information technology
which was still distant in his own times (Bogdanov 1906b: 282). The
Martians, however, had attained this level. As Menni explained to
Leonid:
The Institute of Statistics has agencies everywhere which keep
track of the flow of goods into and out of the stockpiles and monitor the
productivity of all enterprises and the changes in the number of workers
in them. In that way it can be calculated what and how much must be
produced for any given period and the number of man hours required for
the task. It then remains for the Institute to calculate the difference
between what there is and what there should be, and to make this known
to everyone. A flow of volunteers then re-establishes the equilibrium
(Bogdanov 1979: 78).
To Leonid's inquiry if there was any restriction on the
consumption of goods, Menni informed him that there was none;
everyone took whatever was needed in whatever quantities they desired.
There was no need for money, documentation or any form of
compulsion; all labour was voluntary.
The Martian economic planning system had the necessary
flexibility to respond to changed circumstances. As Menni explained, the
Institute of Statistics had to be alert to new inventions and changes in
environmental conditions that might affect industry. Labour might have
to be transferred to different branches of industry, necessitating a re-
calculation taking the new factors into account, if not with absolute
precision, then at least with an adequate degree of approximation
The Socialist Revolution
A significant aspect of Red Star is Bogdanov’s conception of two

types of socialist revolution: that by which the socialist utopia was
achieved on Mars, and the one by which a socialist society might be
achieved on Earth. These two scenarios represent an evolution in
Bogdanov’s thinking.
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On his way to Mars in the spacecraft Leonid passes his time

profitably by studying Martian history. He discovers that Mars has
undergone the same kind of historical evolution as Earth has: from
feudalism to capitalism and subsequently to socialism. But because the
topography of Mars is more homogeneous than Earth, the people were
much less divided into separate races, nationalities and linguistic groups
than the inhabitants of Earth. As a result, the socialist revolution on Mars
had been a relatively peaceful affair. Strikes had been the workers’ main
weapon; the uprisings that had occurred were restricted to a few, almost
exclusively agricultural regions. The possessing classes had bowed before
the inevitable, and even when the government had fallen into the hands
of the workers’ party, had not attempted to assert their interests by force
The revolution Bogdanov is describing here, in which strikes were
the main weapon, was the one in which he himself had been involved in
1905. The difference was that in Russia the ruling classes had not given in
so easily, and the revolution had been mercilessly crushed. The
implication was that Bogdanov’s hopes for a successful outcome of the
1905 revolution had been dashed, because the revolution had taken place
in conditions of great social disparity, where class divisions were deep and
antagonistic.
The ferocity of the 1905 revolution and the relentlessness of its
suppression must have been a rude awakening for Bogdanov, and this is
reflected in Red Star. In his writings before 1905 the revolution to
introduce a socialist society is presented as a fairly smooth and
mechanical process -- as a realignment of the superstructure of society
with its base (Bogdanov 1906a: 105–106).But after the experience of the
actual revolution his views changed considerably. The opposition to the
revolution had been too determined, the radical intelligentsia had
deserted when the reaction had begun to triumph, and Bogdanov had
found that among the workers authoritarian attitudes were by no means
absent (Bogdanov 1910: 116; Bogdanov 1990: 101). In 1908 Bogdanov
was aware that the coming revolutionary upsurge might not be the
prelude to the establishment of a society based on comradely cooperation.
This impression is reinforced by the lengthy disquisition on the
prospects for a socialist revolution on Earth that Bogdanov puts into the
mouth of Sterni, the advocate of colonizing the Earth. Sterni is pessimistic
about the chances of a successful socialist revolution on Earth in view of
the obstacles to it which exist there. Earth is riven by political and social
divisions. This means that instead of following a single uniform pattern of
development, the struggle for socialism is split into a variety of
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autonomous processes in individual societies with distinct political

systems, languages and nationalities. In view of this, one had to expect not
one, but a number of revolutions taking place in different countries at
different times. Sterni could imagine that the individual advanced
countries where socialism had triumphed would be like islands in a hostile
capitalist and even pre-capitalist sea. In those circumstances, where
socialism survived, its character was likely to be distorted by the years of
encirclement. This socialism would not be like Martian socialism.
Moreover, Sterni pointed out:
“Centuries of national division, a mutual lack of understanding,
the brutal and bloody struggle will all have left deep scars on the
psychology of liberated Earthly humanity. We do not know how much
barbarity and narrow-mindedness the socialists of Earth will bring with
them into their new society” (Bogdanov 1979: 156).
At various junctures in his speech Sterni also drew his audience’s
attention to the fact that the incessant internal bickering of the peoples of
the Earth had led to the development of the psychological peculiarity
which they called patriotism. This feature made any co-existence of
Martians and Earthlings impossible, and meant that if the colonization of
Earth were to be undertaken, the inhabitants of Earth would have to be
annihilated. Fortunately for the Earthlings, Netta presented a convincing
argument to counter Sterni’s, and it was agreed to attempt the
colonisation of Venus rather than Earth (Bogdanov 1984: 116–119).
There are a number of significant things about Sterni’s speech.
The most striking is that it is remarkably prophetic, something that
present day readers of Red Star can appreciate more than those of 1908.
Bogdanov accurately predicted the phenomenon of socialism in one
country, the hostility towards it, and the attendant barbarities and
narrow-mindedness. While other critics of the Soviet state have argued
about the precise juncture at which it degenerated, Bogdanov’s analysis in
Red Star could foresee that the kind of revolution which socialists were
trying to bring about would be degenerate from its very inception.
Socialism on a world scale, the socialism of comradely cooperation, would
not be achieved unless something specific were done to ensure its success.
By the time Bogdanov wrote his article ‘Socialism of the Present’
in 1910 he had become convinced that the way to eliminate the
authoritarian thinking and the narrow mindedness among the workers
was “to create newer and newer elements of socialism in the proletariat
itself, in its internal relations and its everyday conditions of life: to work
out a socialist proletarian culture.” (Bogdanov 1990: 101) That is, he
believed that comradely cooperation was not only a characteristic of a
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socialist society, but also the means by which that society would be
achieved. Thus, Bogdanov’s concept of Proletarian Culture was a solution
to the problem of carrying out a socialist revolution that he had raised in
Red Star (White 2013).
Conclusions
Bogdanov was a writer particularly suited to supply Russian Social

Democracy with its utopia in the novel Red Star. From his earliest writings
he had analyzed the human predicament in terms of the fragmentation of
society: the division into those who gave orders and those who carried
them out, the compartmentalization of people into trades and professions,
and the antagonism of social classes. He also analyzed the perverted view
of the world to which this social fragmentation gave rise. Implicit in this
analysis was the aspiration that at some point in the future these divisions
would be overcome and society made whole. This is the vision which Red
Star provides; it imagines a society in which the divisions of the past have
been healed, and humanity has finally become integrated.
The fact that Bogdanov’s main ideas of the period could be
integrated so seamlessly into the format of a novel is indicative of the
unity of Bogdanov’s thinking and the mutual compatibility of his ideas. At
the centre is the concept of comradely cooperation. This is a relationship
free of any form of compulsion in which people have a mutual
understanding and sympathy, which determines how they behave
towards each other. Much of their experience is shared experience, and
this is facilitated by the absence of special trades or professions, and by
the integration of knowledge into a general science of organization, which
subsumes all the other sciences.
Red Star is a culmination of what had gone before; it embodies
Bogdanov’s philosophical ideas of the previous decade, and presents them
in the concrete and accessible form of a narrative. But Red Star also looks
to the future, indicating areas in which Bogdanov would develop his ideas
in subsequent years. One can see how the concept of ‘general methods’
that would span different areas of knowledge would evolve into
Tektology, and the need to foster in the workers the principles of
comradely cooperation to prepare them for the socialist society of the
future would prompt Bogdanov to elaborate his ideas on Proletarian
Culture. In its unique way Red Star marks an important juncture in
Bogdanov’s intellectual development; it is the work in which his existing
system of thought is re-evaluated in the light of the 1905 revolution and
the progression towards Tektology and Proletarian Culture is begun.
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References
Bellamy, E. 1888. Looking Backward 200–1887. Boston: Ticknor & Co.

Berdyaev, N. 1901. “Bor’ba za idealizm”: Mir Bozhiy10(6), June.
Biggart, J. 1980. “Bogdanov and Lunacharskiy in Vologda”: Sbornik (Yearbook of the Study
Group on the Russian Revolution) 5: 28-40.
Bogdanov, A. A. 1897. Kratkiy kurs ekonomicheskoy nauki. Moscow: Izd.knizhnago sklada
A.M.Murinovoi
------ .1899. Osnovnye elementy istoricheskogo vzglyada na prirodu. St Petersburg: Izdatel’.
------. 1901. Poznanie s istoricheskoy tochki zreniya. St Petersburg: Tipografiya A. Leiferta.
------. 1906a. Iz psikhologii obshchestva. St Petersburg: Delo.
------. 1906b. Kratkiy kurs ekonomicheskoy nauki. 7th augmented edition, Moscow: S.
Dorovatovskiy and A. Charushnikov.
------. 1908. Krasnaya zvezda (Utopiya). Saint-Petersburg: Tovarishchestvo khudozhnikov
pechati
------. 1910. Padenie velikogo fetishizma (sovremennyy krizis ideologii). Vera i nauka (O knige V.
Il’ina “Materializm i empiriokrititsizma”). Moscow: S. Dorovatovskiy and A.
Charushnikov.
------. 1911. Kul’turnye zadachi nashego vremeni. Moscow: S. Dorovatovskiy and A.
Charushnikov.
------. 1979. Krasnaya zvezda: roman-utopiya; Inzhener Menni: fantasticheskiy roman. Bibliotheca
russica. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag.
------. 1984. Red star: the first Bolshevik utopia. Ed. L. R. Graham and R. Stites. Trans.
C. Rougle. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
------. 1990. Voprosy sotsializma: Raboty raznykh let. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoy
literatury.
------. 2003. Empiriomonizm: Stat’i po filosofii. Moscow: Respublika.
Grille, D. 1966. Lenins Rivale: Bogdanov und seine Philosophie. Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft
und Politik.
Ocherki realisticheskogo mirovozzreniya. Sbornik statey po filosofii, obshchestvennoy nauki i zhizni.
1904. St Petersburg: S. Dorovatovskiy and A. Charushnikov.
White, J. D. 1981. “Bogdanov in Tula”: Studies in Soviet Thought 22 (June): 33–58.
------. 2013. “Alexander Bogdanov’s Conception of Proletarian Culture”: Revolutionary
Russia 26(1): 52–70.
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THE CULTURE AS SYSTEM, THE SYSTEM OF

CULTURE
Maja Soboleva___________________________________________________________
In my paper, I shall, first, focus on Bogdanov’s systems

theoretical understanding of culture and highlight the
tektological foundations of culture. In this part, I shall analyze
his tektological account for culture. Tektology will be interpreted
as a study of social dimensions of culture and a study of cultural
dimensions of society. Second, I shall discuss the term of
proletarian culture, its definition and its role in Bogdanov’s
theory of socialism. I argue that Bogdanov’s vision of a future
socialist society is connected with establishing a socialist
culture. He considers the proletariat as a bearer of socialist
ideology and deduces this unique political role of the proletariat
from its unique position in the system of social knowledge. With
his idea of proletarian culture, Bogdanov drafts a program of the
proletarian evolution which challenges Lenin’s program of the
proletarian revolution. My last step concerns Bogdanov’s

account for proletarian art. I argue that in order to understand
Bogdanov’s concept of art properly, we should differentiate
EARLY SOVIET THOUGHT between the terms ‘culture’ and ‘art’. The category of culture
appears to be a form of life of a social group, and the category of
art is a form of aesthetic self-understanding and self-expression
of a social group. My analysis focuses on the proletarian art as a
Editorial Board: John Biggart, Vesa Oittinen, form of ideology of the working class.
ISBN 103204787103ABC
Soboleva_________________THE CULTURE AS SYSTEM________________Page 1 of 16

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Tektological Foundations of Culture
Amongst Bogdanov’s numerous scientific and philosophical

texts, Tektology, the universal organizational science, is undoubtedly
his most significant contribution to world culture. This work is
usually considered as the first fundamental variant of general systems
theory and as a precursor of cybernetics.1 In my book on Bogdanov’s
philosophy, I argue that it is also the first project of total socialist
modernization of society on a scientific basis with its own tactics and
strategies (Soboleva 2007: 146–172). Now I like to stress one more
aspect of this work, namely, its relevance for the theory of culture.
The key word of my approach can be formulated as ‘culture as a
system’.
The tektological account for culture has some distinct features
which must be articulated. First of all, there is no contradiction
between the terms ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ here. Bogdanov argues:
“Nature is the first and the greatest organizer; and a human being is
only one of its organized creations. The simplest living cell,
observable only when magnified a thousand times by a microscope,
far exceeds everything that man is able to organize in terms of the
complexity and perfection of its organization. Man is just the student
of nature, and so far a poor one” (Bogdanov 1996: 7). So, nature in
general and human being in particular are organized phenomena.
Therefore the means of spontaneous organization in nature and the
methods of conscious organizational work of human beings can be
subject to the same scientific generalizations.
Tektology, which Bogdanov conceived as the ‘science of
sciences’, is primarily concerned with discovering a formal unity of the
world – that is, a unity of the laws of organization. Accordingly, the
whole universe is supposed to consist of complexes which in turn
consist of elements inter-related and organized in specific ways. The
term ‘complex’ is Bogdanov’s synonym for the modern term ‘system’.
It means the way things exist, whereupon existence is a process and,
at the same time, a result of organization. The term ‘complex’ refers
to an unspecific generalization which can be applied to the description of
all possible material and ideal objects with inner structure.
Bogdanov introduces a dynamic model of the world that
describes it as an eternal, continual organizational process, as an
infinitely unfolding canvas of forms of different types and levels of
organization – from the simplest elements of inorganic nature to
human collectives and cosmic systems. One important aspect of this
tektological ontology is that a complex cannot be separated from its
1 Sadovskiy 1995; Biggart 1998; Pustil’nik 1995; Dudley & Poustilnik 1996.

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environment; moreover, it can be differentiated and defined only

against the background of its environment. A complex is not a
constant substance but rather a changeable structure which can
belong to different systems depending on the researcher’s point of
view. Thus, Bogdanov’s ontology can be characterized as a structural
ontology that deals not with individual objects but with the underlying
structures of these objects, including their inner and outer
formations.
Bogdanov’s holistic, monistic and formal understanding of
the universe is the reason why Tektology is aimed at the discovery of
the general laws of organization. It does not describe and explain the
details of isolated phenomena but rather studies the complex
structures taken in their totality and their dynamic interactions with
each other. That is why Bogdanov’s new science aspires to work out
a universal methodology, and it does not make any sharp divisions into
branches and disciplines. Tektology is interdisciplinary and embraces
not only chemistry, physics, biology and mathematics, but also
economics, cultural theory, education, psychology, medicine,
linguistics, sociology and political sciences. Every phenomenon can
be analyzed from the organizational point of view – that is, as a
system of organizational and de-organizational processes.
In my reconstruction of Bogdanov’s conception of culture, I
like to stress that his account of culture is founded on functionalist
presumptions and implies that culture is a special organizational
complex that can be understood by means of general scientific
methods. The theory of organization can, hence, contribute to the
cognition of cultural phenomena as a special case of the
organizational activity of humanity. The tektological definition of culture
can be based on the premise that culture as a system possesses its
own standards of logical consistency and semantic congruence, and it
is essentially connected with the social and economic organization of
society. According to the proposed definition, culture finds its
objective reality in the interactively established and coordinated
collective representations and depends upon the social orientations
and social structures that influence these representations.
Bogdanov’s understanding of social organization is sometimes
regarded as a scientist’s or even naturalist’s version of cultural reductionism
that tries to explain different phenomena in virtue of homogeneous
structural-functional methods. From this perspective, he was
criticized, for example, by Johann Plenge (1874–1963). In his book
review of the German translation of Tektology published in 1925,
Plenge excoriates Bogdanov for the universalism of his theory which
gives “an inorganic picture of the mechanical-materialist reality of

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universal organization” (das “unorganische Bild einer mechanistisch-

materialistischen Gesamtwirklichkeit universaler Organisation”)
(Plenge 1927: 24). Its shortage is the “unlimited generalization” and
the “simplified view of reality” (Plenge 1927: 20). In contrast to
Bogdanov, Plenge develops his own theory of organization not as “a
general structural theory of all being”, but as a social science. He
claims: “The real theory of organisation needs a foundation in a
living spirit” (“Die wirkliche Organisationslehre braucht das
Fundament des lebendigen Geistes”) (Plenge 1927: 24). According to
him, the task of this theory is “to centralize human will and to
activate it as a whole” (“menschlichen Willen zur Einheit
zusammenzufassen und als Einheit zu betätigen”) (Plenge 1965: 28–
29).
In defence of Bogdanov against this criticism one could say
that the tektological approach does not rule out the dialectic of the
general and particular. In conformity with this dialectic, every system
– natural or social – operates according to its own particular
structural laws. When applied to culture, Tektology changes its focus: it
becomes a study of social dimensions of culture and a study of cultural
dimensions of society. It assumes that the cultural system is determined
by socio-structural organization, and it is aimed at exploring the
complex connections between culture and other social systems such
as a type of organization of labour. The same is true of the
assumption that cultural traditions and cultural entities are objective
only insofar as they represent developing social structures. By
accenting the importance of culture for the organization of society,
Tektology made a significant contribution to Marxian philosophy.
Bogdanov stresses that the sphere of culture has a logic of its
own and describes this logic in terms of “social causality”. The
category “social causality” must demonstrate the dependence of
cultural phenomena (conceptions, norms, traditions, worldview)
upon social and labour practices, methods and relations. In his short
historical excursion into social epistemology, Bogdanov highlights the
correlation between organization of thinking and organization of
labour. In the sphere of labour, he differentiates mental and manual
labour as well as organizational and executive forms of actions. For
him, labour specialization connected with the separation of
organizers from those who carry out orders determined some
historical models of social cognition, which was based upon
epistemological individualism, authoritarianism, conservatism,
traditionalism and pragmatism. Correspondently, knowledge had a
fragmentied character and could not satisfy the developing society;
therefore, such a cognitive situation should be overcome. In his

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analysis, Bogdanov stresses that cognition and cultural praxis,

knowledge and culture reflect social experience, whereupon
organization of labour impacts the structure of knowledge and the
cultural landscape of historical society. He uses the term
“sociomorphism” to describe this correlation between
representations and underlying labour activity. 2
Bogdanov’s universal mechanism of organization of cultural

experience is “substitution”. The substitution can be seen as a
complex, stepwise, expanding process of constructing symbolic
reality through the subordination of some mental complexes to other
or, in other words, by means of a consistent building of a picture of
the world, proceeding from a set of initial simple statements. In
general, ‘psychic phenomena’ become ‘physical phenomena’ through
the substitution, which means that the immediate sensitive
perceptions of individuals become intersubjectively3 organized,
meaningful things. A certain sum of elements is selectively combined,
corresponding to the needs and interests of different social groups.
Therefore, the social experience and knowledge are always
conditional and relative.4
Identifying knowledge and culture with collective experience,
Bogdanov moves to a social epistemology that is a radical departure
from classical individualistic epistemology. He holds a constructivist
view on cognition in general and on culture in particular. His
epistemological constructivism means that socially structured human
activity discovers, causes and sustains scientific facts and cultural
norms, and justifies truth about the world. He argues:
“The organized nature of human collectives is determined by
all things that give them the unity of the practical direction of
thoughts and attitudes. And this is done not only by the formal
organizations. The organizing form is much wider and more general,
and without it those organizations would not even be possible. This is
the whole intellectual culture of the collective: the combination of its
customs, morals, laws, its knowledge and its art, immersed in one
2 The term ‘sociomorphism’ can be traced back to the ‘basic metaphor’ of Max
Müller that stresses the universal application of anthropological patterns in
cognition of the world. According to Bogdanov, “the basic metaphor is the embryo
and prototype of the unity of the organizational point of view of the Universe”
3 For example, in his work Empiriomonizm Bogdanov analysed the concept
‘objectivity’ and argued that ‘objective’ means “concordance of experience”

(“soglasovannost’ opyta”) (Bogdanov 2003: 15) and “intercourse with other
people” (“obshchenie s drugimi lyud’mi”) (Bogdanov 2003: 19).
4 A significant research into the term “substitution” is delivered by Daniela Steila
in her paper “From Experience to Organisation: Bogdanov’s Unpublished Letters

to Bazarov” in (Oittinen 2009: 151–172).

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and the same world-outlook specific to it – its outlook on life and its
method of constructing life” (Bogdanov 1990: 136).
The term ‘organization’ builds the quintessence of
Bogdanov’s constructivist approach to cognition in particular and to
culture in general. Everything – sensual data, everyday meanings
and theoretical concepts – are products of the social organization of
collective experience based on working conditions. Bogdanov is
convinced of the social nature of knowledge.
His approach to cultural studies combines structural
functionalism and historical methods.5 He posits society as an
organising institution and defines culture as a developing system of
normative beliefs, as “ideology” that is represented by historical
social groups and institutions. The scope of ideology is very broad; it
embraces theoretical and practical knowledge, religious and moral
norms, aesthetical ideas and worldviews. The practical problem that
Bogdanov confronts is the heterogeneity of cultural patterns within a
class society depending on what groups are legitimate bearers of
ideological states like knowledge or religious belief. According to
him, the cultural split within society is an important limiting factor
for its progressive development. Therefore Tektology is expected to
pursue its practical agenda by transforming the culture of the
modern society from capitalist to socialist.
Bogdanov’s Idea of Proletarian Culture
Assuming that culture is a form of systematization of social

cognitive experience and that every social group desires to organize
the world in accordance with its own purpose, Bogdanov concludes
that culture plays an essential role in the organization of social life.
For the modification of cultural systems, the organizational structure
of society must be changed. However, this doesn’t exclude that, in
turn, the system of culture can induce social transformations.
Bogdanov’s vision of a future society is connected with
establishing a socialist culture. He considers the proletariat as a
bearer of socialist ideology and an executor of the socialist
reorganization of society.6 He deduces this unique political role of
the proletariat from its unique position in the system of social
knowledge. He argues that, given its involvement in the highly
5This claim can be proved by analysis of such works as Bogdanov 1904, 1918.
6 One has to differentiate between the real working class and the concept
‘proletariat’ in Bogdanov’s works. According to him, the real working class in
Russia is not socialist because of its mixed social origin and technological
backwardness. In his theoretical argumentations, Bogdanov uses the concept
‘proletariat’, i.e. he means the ideal proletariat.

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technological process of production, the proletariat is becoming the

most educated part of modern society. Moreover, the concentration
of industry caused the proletariat to acquire a collectivist mentality,
solidarity and cooperative behaviour, making it the most integrated
and educated part of society. Bogdanov tries to substantiate these
qualities ontologically in the very nature of the working class which is
defined by the methods of its work. He argues that the very logic of
cultural and scientific-technical development determines that the
proletariat cultivates both collectivist and rational thinking. And
because of its scientifically founded rationality and solidarity, the
proletariat can play a leading role in the political transformation of
society. It spontaneously expands the norms of rationality on all
spheres of social life, including politics. The ability of objective and
collectivist thinking makes the proletariat a ‘universal class’ that can
represent the interests of the whole society. It is quite obvious that
the term ‘proletariat’ in Bogdanov’s theory is not just a social-
economic and political term used to describe the class of wage-
earners in a capitalist society whose only possession is their labour-
power. Rather, it is a term of social epistemology that defines the
proletariat as a bearer of the norms of scientific rationality and the
collective consciousness which will influence the cognitive processes
and practical activity.
Bogdanov’s most famous contribution to the theory of culture
is the concept of proletarian culture. I think that his program of
proletarian culture is signified through three tasks which are working
out a) a scientific ideology, b) a rationality based on the “norms of
expediency” and c) a “conscious collectivism”. Proletarian culture
should prepare the modern industrial, rationally regulated society for
the peaceful conversion of capitalism into socialism. In this way,
Bogdanov moves the revolutionary problems from the field of
economy and politics into the field of ideological structure.7 These
ideas can be evaluated as the modernization of Marxism. Instead of
the proletarian revolution, Bogdanov drafts in his texts on
proletarian culture a program of the proletarian evolution. According to
this conception, the working class must create and adapt proletarian
culture, whose essence is a collectivist and rationalist consciousness
and comradely relationships, before the revolution. To Marx,
‘communist consciousness’ was a product of the social revolution, not
its prerequisite (Marx & Engels 1974: 44). To Bogdanov, proletarian
7 This opinion is also represented by Rullkoetter (Rullkötter 1974: XIV).

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culture is not a consequence but a condition of socialist modernization

of society.8
The debates over proletarian culture continued in the period
between 1905 and 1932. Bogdanov’s most significant opponents
were Trotsky and Lenin. In contrast to Bogdanov, Trotsky believes
that “there is no proletarian culture, and that there never will be any
and in fact there is no reason to regret this. The proletariat acquires
power for the purpose of doing away forever with class culture and to
make way for human culture” (Trotsky 1960: 185–186). According
to him, the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat is temporary,
and it is necessary only for the transition from one social system to
another, from capitalism to socialism. There are many political and
economic problems that must be solved during this transition period.
Trotsky is convinced that “at any rate, the twenty, thirty, or fifty
years of proletarian world revolution will go down in history as the
most difficult climb from one system to another, but in no case as an
independent epoch of proletarian culture” (Trotsky 1960: 190).
According to him, what marks this transition period is the
coexistence of different types of culture.
In Trotsky’s opinion, “such terms as ‘proletarian literature’
and ‘proletarian culture’ are dangerous, because they erroneously
compress the culture of the future into the narrow limits of the
present day” (Trotsky 1960: 205). Instead of the term ‘proletarian
culture’, he suggests to use the terms ‘revolutionary culture’ and
‘socialist culture’. The first is to be applied to the contemporary
period of time; the latter describes an ideal future society. Trotsky’s
rejection of the term ‘proletarian culture’ can be explained by his
understanding of culture. He defines culture as “the organic sum of
knowledge and capacity which characterizes the entire society, or at
least its ruling class. It embraces and penetrates all fields of human
work and unifies them into a system. Individual achievements rise
above this level and elevate it gradually” (Trotsky 1960: 200).
For all discrepancies between Bogdanov and Trotsky in
understanding of the notion ‘proletarian culture’ – for the former
proletarian culture is a necessary condition of socialism, and for the
latter it is a consequence of socialism – there are some points which
unite them. It is, first of all, an understanding of culture in general as
ideology that influences a mass consciousness and underlies and
penetrates all social structures and social praxis. The term ‘culture’
implies the way people relate to the world and to each other. In the
sense of Bogdanov and Trotsky, the concept of culture refers to a
8 Marx uses the terms ‘proletariat’ and ‘working class’ as synonyms. For
Bogdanov, working class has a goal to form itself as ‘proletariat’.

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consciousness, a dominant worldview and a lifestyle (praxis); it refers

to the forms of knowledge, skills, values, dispositions and
expectations. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s terminology, culture in
Bogdanov and Trotsky’s theories can be characterized as a habitus of
a dominant social group.9 The habitus of an individual appears to be
a result of the objectification of a social structure at the level of
individual subjectivity. Therefore, in order to renew a human being
the whole social structure must be renewed. The creation of
proletarian culture demands the creation of new elements of
socialism in the proletariat itself, in its conditions of life and in its
internal and external relations.
As is well known, Lenin’s attitude to proletarian culture was
very different. According to him, the task of the proletariat was not
to create a new culture within capitalism, but rather to overthrow
capitalism through a revolution for a new socialist culture. He
admitted that the October Revolution had political character and
saw the most important task of the Bolshevik party in the creation of
supporters for the Soviet regime by means of forming a specific
mentality and specific morality amongst the people. In his
uncompleted draft “Concerning the mixing politics and pedagogics”,
he writes: “In the political activity of the social-democratic party
there is and will be a certain element of pedagogics: we must educate
the working class toward its role as a fighter for freedom of humanity
from exploitation … The social-democrat who would forget this,
would not be a social-democrat” (Lenin 1967: 357). It is obvious that
he promotes the idea of political pedagogics. Lenin’s attention to the
proletarian culture movement after the October Revolution can be
explained through his vision of establishing a new political-
pedagogical space.
In fact, the proletarian culture movement fulfilled the
functions of social-political pedagogics aiming to transform Russian
inhabitants into Soviet citizens (in terms of Andrey Zhdanov). The
Proletcult movement did not just advocate a new popular art by
opening studios, theatres, clubs, workshops and artistic classes, by
creating a new language and new forms of aesthetic expressions. It
dedicated itself to literacy, to adult education, to matters as
elementary as proper hygiene, family relations, the struggle against
alcoholism and the struggle for a civil everyday life. The movement
for proletarian culture spread across Soviet Russia in the early years
of the revolution and acquired a complex social and intellectual
character. It was most directly inspired by the ideas of Bogdanov,
9 Trotsky expressed this idea as following: “Style is class, not alone in art, but
above all in politics.” (Trotsky 1960: 206)

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who believed that the proletariat had to build a new cultural system
– that is, to promote a new morality, a new politics and a new art in
order to succeed in the building of socialism. But this new movement
proved to be very far removed from Bogdanov’s original project of a
social, cultural and moral renovation of the working class.
Bogdanov’s reaction to the October Revolution was very
critical. In his open letter to Bukharin in 1921 he admitted: “During
the Bolshevik communist turn I split with the party on an important
theoretical question: it considered the world revolution coming out of
the war as socialist, but I came to the different conclusion.”
(Bordyugov 1995, 1: 204–205) For him the social reality after the
October 1917 was a “disgusting caricature arising out of the war and
the old system” (Bogdanov 1990: 104). The essence of this caricature
is a “state capitalism”. As a “political organization of the military
democracy” and a “perverted form”, the new Soviet Republic
(Bogdanov 1990, 1: 199) was an antipode of Bogdanov’s idea of
socialism. He contrasted regress as a law of the present socialism with
progress as a law of his ideal socialism (Bogdanov 1990: 79). The
present socialism was “first of all, a special form of social
consumption, the authoritarian organization of mass parasitism and
destruction”; on the contrary, the ideal socialism “is, first of all, a
new type of cooperation – the comradely organization of work”
(Bogdanov 1990: 87). For the present socialism, an authoritarian and
even religious way of thinking was inherent; for the ideal socialism, a
free and scientific way of thinking is intrinsic (Bogdanov 1990: 76).
There is a strong correlation between what Bogdanov
thought the Bolsheviks’ socialism was and how he viewed the real
proletarian culture in Russia. It seemed to him that the revolution’s
failure stemmed from organic weaknesses in the working class itself,
its ideological immaturity and a lack of ideological autonomy. He
believed that the working class was inevitably unprepared for or even
unworthy of its revolutionary role. This conviction in the cultural
backwardness of the working class can explain Bogdanov’s attitude
toward the real Proletcult. There were definite limits, produced by
the objective historical conditions, to his engagement. Bogdanov’s
participation at the Proletcult can be seen as a compromise.
Nevertheless, he worked toward the cultural, political and moral
education of the working class. In his article “The Program of
Culture” (1917), Bogdanov recommends to the proletariat “to direct
all its efforts toward mastering of the organizational means and their
systematic working out according to the scale of the problems”
(Bogdanov 1990: 332). He repeated constantly that the working class,
because of its exploited and oppressed condition and because it was

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culturally deprived, would not come forward politically if it does not

collect organizational experience and adopt organizational tools.
Proletarian Art
Bogdanov’s conception of proletarian art is mostly formulated

in such articles as “Is Proletarian Art Possible?”, “Proletariat and
Art”, “On Art Heritage”, “Critique on Proletarian Art” and
“Simplicity or Subtlety”. It includes two important insights for the
theory of culture: tektological foundations of art and its organizing role in
society. In his article “Is proletarian Art Possible?”, Bogdanov argues
that art is not just a “decoration of life”, but that it is “one of the
ideologies of a class, an element of its class consciousness; therefore, it
is an organizational form of a class life, a way of association and
consolidation of the class forces” (Bogdanov 1990: 413). Thus, he
stresses the social function of art. Assuming that art is a form of
organization of collective experience, he reasons that every social
group must have its own art.
To understand Bogdanov’s concept of art properly, we
should differentiate between the terms ‘culture’ and ‘art’. The
category of culture appears to be a form of life of a social group, and
the category of art is a form of aesthetic self-understanding and self-
expression of a social group.10 According to Bogdanov, there must be
a correlation between these categories.
Culture and art are also a means of social self-identification of
a social group and a sign of its political maturity and autonomy.
Therefore, if we assert that the proletariat should be a dominant and
politically self-sufficient social group, we should expect that it must
have its own culture and its own art. Bogdanov demands that the
post-revolutionary working class create its own proletarian art, which
will be a part of a new proletarian culture directed to the building of
a socialist society. He emphasizes that “the proletariat needs
collectivist art which would bring up people in the spirit of deep
solidarity, comradely cooperation, a close brotherhood of fighters
and builders connected by the general ideal” (Bogdanov 1990: 422).
The main issue of proletarian art is, hence, a specific ideal.
This ideal must correspond with the ontological nature of the
working class that consists in the ability to organize the world’s
society on the new ideological and scientific fundament. For
Bogdanov, the proletariat organizes an external matter in a product
through its work, it organizes itself in a creative and fighting
10 For example, Bogdanov writes in the paper “O khudozhestvennom
nasledstve” (1918a: 39) that poetry is a part of the self-awareness of this class.

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collective by means of cooperation and class fight and it organizes its

own experience in a class consciousness in order to be able to
organize the whole mankind for harmonic life. The ideal which
proletarian art should promote must be, hence, “all-organizational”.
Unlike Lenin and Trotsky, who accented the necessity of class
struggle and encouraged a military spirit in the proletariat, Bogdanov
believes that “the working class goes to his ideal through the fight,
but this ideal is not destruction, but the new organization of life”
(Bogdanov 1918a: 67). Thus, his ideal of proletarian art is
constructive and positive. The socialist re-organization of society
requires the ideal of the collectivist consciousness and “comradely
relationships”.
Some authors, like Lynn Mally, who are engaged with studies
of Bogdanov’s works, thematize only one aspect of his theory of
culture – namely, the aspect of struggle of exploited workers against
the bourgeoisie (Mally 1990). But this approach contradicts the key
idea of the tektological worldview which is consequently developed
by Bogdanov in all his texts. He resists the reduction of art to
communist propaganda. He criticizes the one-dimensional
understanding of art as just a ‘civil art’ focusing on agitation and
propaganda and representing and protecting class interests. He
advocates the broad content of proletarian art: “The whole life and
the whole world” should be the content of proletarian art because its
main task is to organize the “soul of the proletariat” (Bogdanov 1990:
423). He writes: “In thousands of poems calling for a class struggle
and glorifying victories in that struggle, in hundreds of stories
denouncing capital and its servants, everything else is submerged.
This must be changed. The part should not be taken as being the
whole.” (Bogdanov 1918a: 67) He appeals for the “comprehensive
deepening into life”, for the “comprehensive understanding of life, its
concrete forces and its ways” (Bogdanov 1918a: 67). Everything can
be the content of proletarian art; there are no restrictions for it.
One more prejudice about Bogdanov’s account for
proletarian art must be dispelled. It is connected with his attitude to
the bourgeois culture. Bogdanov is often associated with radical
intellectuals who define proletarian culture as unique and justify an
absolute rejection of cultural heritage. This image is absolutely
wrong. On the contrary, Bogdanov outlines the necessity of cultural
conditions and traditions, created by prior social formations, for the
development of proletarian art and negates claims that proletarian
art can emerge without cultural grounds. Opposed to the view of
rejecting tradition and the past and creating something new in one’s
own mind, Bogdanov advocates studies of the culture of the past,

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making it one’s own by creating a new content. The bourgeois

culture has to be adopted in such a creative way that it becomes
enrichment for the proletariat. The proletariat should study from
previous generations, but its study must be accompanied by
reflection about its own social perspective.11 Adapting a traditional
culture, the proletariat should not “obey”, but “rule”. “The new
logic has to transform all these old things, to give old things other
images … But one must have this new logic, that is one must develop
it.” (Bogdanov 1990: 420) Against the left-radical orientated
propagandists of an autonomous proletarian art, Bogdanov argued
that “we live not only in the present-day collective, we live in a
collaboration [sotrudnichestvo] between generations [Bogdanov’s emphasis].
This is not to be confused with collaboration between classes, which
is a contrary idea.” (Bogdanov 1990: 425) Thus, the proletariat’s
attitude toward non-proletarian art should be not contradictory but
complementary. In this respect, Bogdanov, Trotsky and Lenin seem
to share the same opinion.
But there is a radical difference between them concerning the
political attribution of art. For Lenin, art must become not just
proletarian, it must become party art. He formulated this principle
for literature (Lenin 1967: 48). However, he was not referring to
literature in the narrow sense of the word, but in terms of a wide
range of artistic activity in general. For Lenin, any idea of the
absolute autonomy of literature, art for art’s sake, or the absolute
freedom of writers, is simply an anarchistic bourgeois concept and
reactionary rhetoric. In opposite to him, Bogdanov distinguished the
terms ‘sociality’ and ‘party policy’. He recognizes the collective forms
of aesthetic production as an integral element in the process of social
change, which demonstrate the class character. In Bogdanov’s
words: “The artistic talent is individual, but creation is a social
phenomenon: it emerges out of the collective and returns to the
collective, serving its vital purposes” (Bogdanov 1990: 425).
Proletarian art should provide a scientific Marxist understanding of
natural and social phenomena that would allow workers to play a
leading role in a society. But, at the same time, Bogdanov stresses
that “organization of our art as well as organization of our science
has to be constructed on the basis of the comradely cooperation”
(Bogdanov 1990: 425). The party model of organization of art,
suggested by Lenin, is unacceptable to him because of its structure
11 James D. White has the same opinion. He writes: “In older cultures there were
elements that were useful to the proletariat, but there were also others that were
harmful. This being the case, the proletariat had to learn to distinguish what was
beneficial from what was harmful and alien to it in the heritage of the past”
(White 2013: 34).

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which is of an authoritarian type and is founded on the domination–

submission hierarchy, which will inevitably give rise to authoritarian
tendencies in the ordering of the whole society.
According to Bogdanov, proletarian art must be free and
objective. He points out: “As the organizer of life, art has to be, first
of all, consequently sincere and truthful; whom and what can it
organize if nobody trusts it?” (Bogdanov 1918a: 69) He stresses that,
playing its organizational function, art should not forget that “the
spirit of labour collectivism consists primarily in objectivity”
(Bogdanov 1918a: 71). The perception of the world from the social
perspective, that is from the perspective of the proletarian ideal, does
not exclude that the human life has many aspects which are all-
human. What Bogdanov suggests can be interpreted as a balance
between human and social. From this point of view, the content as a
matter of values should be the main concern of proletarian art.
In Bogdanov’s opinion, art and literary criticism is a
necessary organizational tool which helps to develop proletarian
art.12 Thus, the proletarian literary criticism should teach the
working-class writers how to maintain the class position and class
interest in their works. Bogdanov expects from the proletarian
literature that it should depict life not from a subjective and naive
point of view, but against the background of a deep understanding of
social context and collective goals. In works of art, the individual
should represent the typical; this is a means for working out the
proletarian class-consciousness through the mechanism of
identification of an individual with an ideal.
And last, but not least, is a question about the form of
proletarian art. It is curious to see that even pure aesthetics are
founded in Bogdanov’s theory on the tektological basis. In Tektology,
he claims: “The principles of a work of art are agreement and
harmony, and therefore organization” (Bogdanov 2003: 3). Later, he
repeats that beauty is “organizedness” (Bogdanov 1990: 426). He
propagates the correlation between form and content. He proposes
to look for the forms, which correspond with genuine proletarian
activity, with aesthetics of industrial working process and scientific
technology.13 Such a form must be simple, direct, constructive and
expressive. It must be economic and, at the same time, it must
exhibit the content of an artwork clearly. Form must express the
12 This is the topic of the paper “O kchudozhestennom nasledstve”. We should
differentiate between Bogdanov’s understanding the proletarian criticism as a

means of improving a quality of proletarian art and Lenin’s idea of control about
art in terms of party’s censorship.
13 In the works of his favorite painter and sculptor, Constantin Meunier,
Bogdanov finds these features.

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rhythm of a new proletarian art which corresponds to proletarian

labour activity. Bogdanov speaks not only about the “rhythm of
sounds”, but also about the “rhythm of images and ideas”. Form and
rhythm should build a unity to be able to bring out the content in a
best way. Summing up his position, I can say that Bogdanov
represents a constructivist view on art. After October 1917, this account
of art met almost immediately a response and stimulated a wide
variety of experiments in Russia.
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Archiv. 25. Band: 18–29.

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Plenge, Johann. 1965. ‟Deutsche Propaganda (1921)”. In Johann Plenges

Organisations- und Propagandalehre, eingeleitet von Hanns Linhard. Berlin:
Duncker & Humblo.
Pustil’nik, Simona. 1995. ‟Printsip otbora kak osnova Tektologii A. Bogdanova”.
Voprosy filosofii. № 8.
Rullkötter, Bernd. 1974. Die wissenschaftliche Phantastik der Sowjetunion. Bern,
Frankfurt am Main: Lang.
Sadovskiy, Vadim. N. 1995. ‟Empiriomonizm A.A. Bogdanova: zabytaya glava
filosofii nauki”. Voprosy filosofii. № 8.
Soboleva, Maja. 2007. Aleksandr Bogdanov und der philosophische Diskurs in Russland zu
Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts. Zur Geschichte des russischen Positivismus. Hildesheim:
Olms Verlag.
Trotsky, Leo. 1960. Literature and Revolution. The University of Michigan Press.
White, James D. 2013. Alexander Bogdanov’s Conception of Proletarian Culture.
Revolutionary Russia. 26, 1, 52–70.

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KNOWLEDGE AS FILM vs. KNOWLEDGE AS PHOTO

ALTERNATIVE MODELS IN EARLY SOVIET THOUGHT
Daniela Steila_______________________________________________________________
While Lenin considers human knowledge similar to a mirror-like

reflection of the object, Bogdanov emphasizes the creative role of
the subject in organizing the world. On the basis of some textual
evidences, it seems possible to illustrate the epistemologies of the
two fields into which Russian Marxism divides at the beginning of
the twentieth century, in terms of the two metaphors of
photography on the one hand, and cinema on the other. In
particular, while discussing Einstein's relativity, Bogdanov
considers sense organs, memory, and all the apparatus of human
knowledge “as a certain kind of cinematographic device”;
Eisenstein deems that cinema is “an excellent instrument of
perception … for the sensation of movement”. Although it is
difficult to find compelling proofs of exchanges and influences, this
This chapter is peer-reviewed and edited for is an actual ‘tangential point’ between Bogdanov and Eisenstein's
ideas on human knowledge.

ISBN 103204787103ABC
Steila_________________KNOWLEDGE AS FILM VS PHOTO________________Page 1 of 15

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In intellectual history, influences of ideas are a major topic, and

also a very difficult one: in order to prove contacts or impacts of ideas
one has to demonstrate connections, readings, discussions, comments,
notes... This is the intriguing and fascinating detective side of the
intellectual historian's work, looking for the ‘smoking guns’ which
definitely prove relationships, exchanges, influences. In the case of
Bogdanov and Eisenstein, both extremely compelling figures in early
Soviet thought, we shall consider that, though belonging to different
generations, they shared a common milieu, the Proletkult movement of
the 1920s, where Bogdanov was a leading figure, and the young
Eisenstein took part in discussions and writings within the Proletkult
organization (Tikka 2009; Biggart 2016). Eisenstein, however, did not
explicitly refer to Bogdanov in his works, nor did he openly discuss the
latter’s ideas. Their relationships need to be examined by a variety of
interdisciplinary methods, which only a wide collective effort will
probably be able to achieve. To such a picture I should like to add some
curious details.
Bogdanov was interested in cinema long before the revolution,
and maintained that cinema could be used to educate the new
proletarian class. This is not surprising: Bogdanov had a serious
scientific education, and he was very interested in technology in general.
In his first utopian novel, Red Star, Bogdanov imagines innovative uses
for both photography and cinema. In 1907 he noted the already
existing application of photography in photo-telescopes: on Mars there
were telescopes which take pictures so precise and detailed that they
could be enlarged in order to show details invisible to the naked eye.
Menni, a technician, explains to the author's alter ego, Leonid, that the
“direct-vision magnification” of a certain telescope “is about 600, (…)
but when that is insufficient we take a photograph and examine it under
a microscope, which raises the power to 60,000 or more” (Bogdanov
1984: 40).
On Mars, photos are also used to hold attention alive during
presentations. Another Martian character, Enno, gives “a fascinating
account” of a distant planet, “its deep, storm-tossed oceans and
towering mountains, its scorching sun and thick white clouds, terrible
hurricanes and thunderstorms, grotesque monsters and majestic giant
plants. He illustrated his lecture with moving pictures on a screen which
took up an entire wall of the auditorium”. Leonid notices that “Enno's
voice was the only sound to be heard in the darkness; the audience was
plunged into deep concentration” (Bogdanov 1984: 72–73). A person so
deeply interested in the development of a new sort of ‘pedagogy’ in

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order to develop proletarian culture, as Bogdanov was through his

whole life, was obviously thinking of pedagogical applications of those
new powerful means of representation and communication.
On Mars, cinema turns out to be very powerful. In respect of its
technical potential, Bogdanov's imagination extended beyond
development of sound cinema, which was already being experimented
with on Earth, and envisages 3D movies. He writes:
“the theater in our little town had one feature that held
particular fascination for me, namely the fact that no actors performed
there at all. The plays were either transmitted from distant large cities
by means of audiovisual devices, or – more usually – they were
cinematic reproductions of plays performed long ago, sometimes so long
ago that the actors themselves were already dead. The Martians have
mastered the technique of instantaneous color photography and use it
to capture life in motion, much as in our cinema theaters. But not only
do they combine the camera with the phonograph, as we are thus far
rather unsuccessfully beginning to do on Earth, they also employ the
principle of the stereoscope to give the moving pictures natural depth.
Two images, the two halves of the stereogram, are projected
simultaneously onto the screen, and in front of each seat in the
auditorium is fastened a set of binoculars, which combines the two flat
pictures into three-dimensional ones. It was eerie to watch people
moving, acting, and expressing their thoughts and feelings as vividly and
distinctly as in real life and yet know that there was actually nothing
there but a plate of frosted glass in front of a phonograph and an
electric light operated by a clockwork mechanism. It was a weird,
almost mystical phenomenon that filled me with a vague sense of
unreality” (Bogdanov 1984: 87–88).
The last sentence of this amazing description of the 3D Martian
movie theater is especially significant. According to Bogdanov, cinema
turns out to be the best technical means of ‘reproducing’ reality in such
a faithful, precise way that reproduction could be completely confused
with reality, in a sort of ‘mystical’ experience.
In fact, the problem of the relationship between perception and
reality was a central topic of discussion among Russian Marxists at the
beginning of the twentieth century, just as it became – again – in the
1920s. Within a common materialistic framework, which necessarily
considers human beings as a part of the material world, and sense
perception as the first, basic connection between knowing subject and
known object, one can illustrate the epistemologies of the two fields into
which Russian Marxism divides at the beginning of the twentieth

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century, in terms of the two metaphors of photography on the one

hand, and cinema on the other.
It is well known that Lenin proposed his own epistemology as
the only one that was consistent with ‘orthodox’ Marxism, which relied
on the whole history of materialism as opposed to idealism. As Friedrich
Engels stated in his Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German
Philosophy, in the whole history of thought philosophers split into two
great fields: “Those who asserted the primacy of the mind over nature
(...) comprised the camp of idealism. The others, who regarded nature
as primary, belong to the various schools of materialism” (Engels 1886:
366). As far as epistemology is concerned, consequently, materialists
explain human knowledge starting from the impressions that the
external objects provide on the sense organs of the human body. Such a
fundamental empiricism was considered as a sound point for Russian
‘orthodox’ Marxism. However, G. V. Plekhanov, the well-known ‘father
of Russian Marxism’, whom Lenin openly declared to be his own
‘master’ in philosophy (Lenin 1924: 343; 1921: 94), had developed a
peculiar ‘theory of hieroglyphics’ relying both on the philosophical
tradition of French eighteenth century materialism, and modern
physiology (Steila 1991). According to him, our impressions are
undeniably subjective and cannot be identified with the material
movements, which are their objective bases and which excite our
sensations. However, there is an exact correspondence between the
objective conditions of the thing and the sensation we feel when it
stimulates our sense organs. Plekhanov concluded: “Our sensations are
some kind of hieroglyphics that make us aware of what is happening in
reality. Hieroglyphics do not resemble the events they communicate,
but they are capable of communicating with absolute accuracy the events
themselves and – what is of prime importance – the relations which
exist between them (Plekhanov 1892: 501). So, according to Plekhanov,
the ‘truth’ of our sensations did not consist in their being a ‘mirror
image’ of things, but in their providing us with undistorted
representations of the real relations between things or events. Lenin,
however, deemed this to be the weakest point in Plekhanov’s thought:
“Plekhanov was guilty of an obvious mistake in his exposition of
materialism” (Lenin 1909: 238). Lenin compared Plekhanov’s theory of
hieroglyphs with Hermann von Helmholtz’s views on perception and
experience, and endorsed Albrecht Rau’s criticism of the latter, in order
to criticize Plekhanov. Lenin wrote: “an image can never wholly
compare with the model, but an image is one thing, a symbol, a
conventional sign, another. The image inevitably and of necessity implies
the objective reality of that which it ‘images’. ‘Conventional sign,’

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symbol, hieroglyph are concepts that introduce an entirely unnecessary

element of agnosticism” (Lenin 1909: 235).
Instead of Plekhanov’s unnecessary emphasis on conventional
signs, Lenin proposed his own theory of knowledge as ‘reflection’, which
he considered much more consistent with the whole tradition of
philosophical materialism. According to his views, the camera is a good
way of explaining how we know reality. In Materialism and Empirio-
Criticism one reads that “objective reality (…) is given to man by his
sensations, and (…) is copied, photographed and reflected by our
sensations, while existing independently of them” (Lenin 1909: 130).
Any photographer would object that the camera is by no means a
‘neutral’ instrument for the reproduction of reality: owing to its
technical characteristics it provides us with a two-dimensional account
of three-dimensional reality. Besides, at the beginning of the century,
colour reproduction was far from being precise. Finally, as we know
very well, in any picture it is always the author's ‘cut’ that defines what
is actually photographed.
Nevertheless, the camera is often considered even now, in
popular understanding, as a reliable means of reproducing reality, as a
sort of reflecting mirror. The image we see in the mirror is also not at all
identical with the real object, and the same is true for our perceptions,
as has been well known since ancient times, and as the huge
philosophical literature on the topic of ‘sense-deception’ testifies. What
the example of the camera as a faithful reproducing device really means
to say, is that in spite of the technical specificities of the camera, and the
peculiarities of our sense organs, the object remains that object, within
the photo as well as within our sensations. The object exists as such
independently of our perception or photography, which merely
reproduces it.
In Lenin's works the example of photography as faithful
reproduction of reality is actually used very rarely. Lenin used the word
‘photography’ in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, as we have shown, but
also once again in 1909, referring to a polemical article he was writing:
Ideological Decay and Disunity Among Russian Social-Democrats. He wrote that
this essay was “an instantaneous photograph of one of the rivulets of
that broad torrent of ideological confusion” (Lenin 1933: 109), which
gave rise to different ideological movements dividing Russian Social-
Democracy. Again, photograph means a representation of reality, in
this case a quite complex reality, corresponding to the picture itself.
This meaning of the word ʽphotographʾ was already wide-spread
in Russian scientific literature at the end of the nineteenth century. For
instance the well-known physiologist I. M. Sechenov wrote in 1892:

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“The eye refers to forms and movements, like a photographic record,

capable of clearly perceiving not only motionless, but also moving
forms; therefore the similarity between what is sensed and the real is
here as tangible as the similarity between a human being's face and his
or her photo” (Sechenov 1952; 1892: 472).
Sechenov was one of the authorities Plekhanov relied on while
developing his theory of hieroglyphs, but Lenin did not take this into
account when criticizing Plekhanov1. He preferred to maintain that
Sechenov was a leading figure of Russian science2. Photography was in
general considered as a good representative of realistic mirror-like
knowledge within materialism, and not only by Lenin. Cinema, on the
contrary, is never used by Lenin as a metaphor for knowledge. In his
works one can find only a few passing references to the topic, mainly
relating to propaganda documentaries and their possible impact (for
instance in 1913 in order to criticize its ideological use by German
Catholics or Taylorist capitalists; or after the revolution to support its
ideological use for the benefit of the victorious revolution) (Lenin 1913a:
594; 1913b: 245; 1930: 112; 1920: 161; 1928: 406; 1925).
Amongst those Marxists who were critical of Lenin and
Plekhanov's ‘orthodoxy’, photos were not considered at all as a good
example of how knowledge works. One of the first to reject the analogy
was Joseph Dietzgen, who was very popular in Russia at the beginning
of the twentieth century amongst the so-called Machian Marxists, i. e.,
the opponents of Lenin (Steila 2013: 237–251). Marx himself had
described Dietzgen as a representative of “autodidactic philosophy –
pursued by workers themselves” (Marx 1867: 497), Engels had written
that this German worker could understand dialectics by himself,
independently of Hegel (Engels 1886: 383–384). At the same time, Ernst
Mach, in the Preface to the Russian translation of his Analysis of
Sensations, wrote that “J. Dietzgen … has reached conclusions very
similar to those presented in this book” (Mach 1908: 4). Similarities
between Dietzgen's positions and Machian thought (the ideas of Mach
himself, and those of his Russian followers) were often emphasized at
that moment (Kautsky 1909; Yushkevich 1907: 80, 86–88; Valentinov
1908: 161–168; Dauge 1907: VIII), and also later. In 1925, for instance,
while discussing Bogdanov's Tectology, I. Vaynshteyn pointed out some
parallels between Bogdanov's theory of organization and the thinking of
Dietzgen (Vaynshteyn 1925). Indeed, Dietzgen had criticized the
1
When criticizing Plekhanov's theory of knowledge, Lenin rather considered it to
have derived from Helmholtz's positions. On the connections of Plekhanov,
Sechenov and Helmholtz. See Steila 1991.
2 Lenin asked his mother to send to him in Geneve a copy of Sechenov's recent
book Elementy mysli in 1904. See Lenin 1904.

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epistemology of ‘reflection’ exactly by maintaining that camera does not

take pictures conforming to reality. He wrote: “Nothing more insipid
has been said of truth and knowledge than ... that truth is the
conformity of our knowledge with its object. How can a picture
‘conform’ to its model? Approximately it can … But to be altogether
alike, quite the same as the original, what an abnormal idea!” (Dietzgen
1870–1875: 140).
These topics, widely discussed within Russian Marxism at the
beginning of the twentieth century, became again very important
during the 1920s. Since, by this time, Bogdanov had become a
prominent figure within the powerful Proletkult movement, and since
he maintained, as it were, un-orthodox theoretical positions in relation
to the basic principles of official Marxism, Lenin's Materialism and
Empirio-Criticism was republished in a second edition, which became
much more influential than the first. When the book came out for the
first time in 1909, most readers took it to be mainly as a polemical work,
as part of the ideological struggle within the Bolshevik fraction at that
time (Steila 2013: 328–339), but in 1920, in its second edition, it was put
forward as being an authoritative statement of Marxist orthodox
epistemology. The post-face by V. I. Nevskiy, Dialectical Materialism and
the Philosophy of Dead Reaction, made it clear that Lenin's work represented
Orthodoxy in Marxist thought, and that Bogdanov was to be
condemned as a dangerous heretic. The main charge was that
“Bogdanov … obstinately maintains, now as before, that the physical
world is ‘socially organized experience’” (Nevskiy 1920: 331).
Furthermore, in his later works (Nevskiy quoted Philosophy of Living
Experience, Proletarian Culture, Outlines of the Science of Organization,
Tectology...) Bogdanov had repeated the same mistakes that he was
accused of by Lenin in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. In order to show
which kind of mistakes these were, Nevskiy mentioned Bogdanov's
conception of the ‘physical’ as depending on collective experience.
Bogdanov had written:
“Physical experience is the experience of someone, – of all humanity in its
development, to be precise. This is a world of strict, established,
worked-out regularity and the world of specific, exact correlations. It is
that well-ordered world in which all theorems of geometry, all formulas
of mechanics, astronomy, physics, etc. operate. Is it possible to accept
this world, this system of experience as being independent of humanity?
Is it possible to say that it existed before humans did?” (Bogdanov 2016:
218).
Bogdanov had answered: “ if it is said that the law of gravity
operated before there were human beings, then this is not the same as

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saying that it is independent of human beings” (Bogdanov 2016: 219). This

was the breaking point between orthodox Marxist on the one hand and
Bogdanov's science of organization on the other. Nevskiy's post-face
inflamed the discussion over Bogdanov's system of thought.
A few years later in 1923 Bogdanov contributed to an interesting
book on Einstein's theory of relativity. This volume included the
translation of an extensive essay by Moritz Schlick, and some articles by
Russians: one by Bogdanov's close friend, Vladimir Bazarov, on space
and time in the light of the new theory; Bogdanov's essay on the theory
of relativity from the organizational point of view; and a work by Pavel
Yushkevich on the philosophical meaning of relativity. Bogdanov
maintained that Einstein's theory was of great importance for his own
general science of organization. From such a standpoint, “the question
of the correlations between a complex (any kind of – physical,
biological, psychical, social) and its environment” turns out to be a key
problem (Bogdanov 1923: 101)3. Einstein's theory considers the
movement of physical bodies as a specific case of such a general
problem. In Bogdanov's words:
“Transfer represents a particular case of interaction of a body with its
environment, a special case: the body loses and gains not energy, but the
link with its environment, loses a link (spatial contact) with some
elements, gains a link with others. Conventional thinking sees there two
facts: 1) the environment itself is not moving; 2) the body moves. The
theory of relativity works on the premise that here there is one fact, not
two. It is the correlation of two sides that changes; depending on the
position of the knowing subject, this might be expressed in one way, or
another” (Bogdanov 1923: 102).
In order to understand movement from the standpoint of the
theory of relativity, more than one observer is needed. Classic physics
assumed one observer, the new physics requires a sort of collective,
social engagement:
“Since a single observer cannot occupy two positions at the same time,
even mentally, the question of coordination appears to be essentially a
specific organizational-social task: to unify, to connect the knowledge of
two observers, one of whom is really or mentally attached to the moving
body, the other to its environment, whilst each of them operates with his
own instruments of orientation, his own system of space-time
coordinates” (Bogdanov 1923: 104–105).
Bogdanov was therefore able to accept Einstein's theory as a
confirmation of his own thinking, since Einstein's theory moved toward
3
Bogdanov wrote on this topic another article (Bogdanov 1924), which was mainly
a discussion of Timiryazev's ideas on relativity.

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a sort of “not-subjective” relativism, thereby developing farther the

point of view of Mach (Bogdanov 1923: 121).
The contents of this book focused on the idea that the theory of
relativity should be considered as a confirmation of, and perhaps a
development and regeneration of, the old Machism. Yushkevich, who
examined the philosophical significance of Einstein's theory, wrote that
the theory of relativity was “wholly filled with the spirit of those
influences, which its author acknowledged, when referring to Hume and
Mach as the thinkers who gave him conceptual inspiration for his work”
(Yushkevich 1923: 155). Yushkevich concluded: “the theory of relativity
is the rebirth of modern positivism, which receives here new
confirmation and support” (Yushkevich 1923: 155)4.
In his discussion of Einstein's relativity, Bogdanov made a very
curious statement: “Our sense organs, memory, and all the scientific
auxiliary means for perceiving and recording facts, can be considered as
a certain kind of cinematographic device” (Bogdanov 1923: 107). Let us
examine the context in which this statement appears. Bogdanov is
explaining that “the theory of relativity formulates the corrections,
through which one can move from the projections and forms of the
events of the system A within system B to the ‘reality’ of those events in
the same system A, where they take place, and vice versa” (Bogdanov
1923: 107). This possibility can be explained through the image of
‘instantaneous photographs’ of one system, taken from the other. But at
this point Bogdanov makes the statement quoted above, and
emphasizes that it will be more correct and effective to compare our
perceptive devices to cinema instead of photography. He explains:
“If two such devices, within the systems A and B, simultaneously film
the other system, each ‘film’ will be unfaithful, ‘distorted’ when
compared with a film taken within the same system: the representations
of bodies will be foreshortened in the line of the movement, the very
course of the events is slowed down (‘the clock lags behind’), for each in
the same way and from their respective vantage points. A person, for
instance, in these ‘films’ has a certain height when standing up, and
another when lying down. It is clear that formulae permitting one to
move from the coordinates of one system to another should be
understood as being formulae of correction for the passage from more or
less distorted representations to the internal reality of each system:
4
Einstein himself acknowledged certain influence of Mach's ideas on his own
positions as a young scientist. See Einstein 1951: 20–21 and Blackmore 1972:
247–285.

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formulae of substitution (podstanovka) of things and events, to be applied

to their perceptible forms” (Bogdanov 1923: 107)5.
This passage is particularly interesting. Here Bogdanov puts the
theory of relativity into his own perspective of knowledge as the
‘construction’ of reality by collective subjects. The formulae which allow
to move from one system to the other are called ‘formulae of
substitution’ (podstanovka). The term ‘substitution’ (podstanovka) had been
used by Bogdanov since Empiriomonizm to mean a methodological
approach aimed at explaining phenomena and events within life as well
as within science (Bogdanov 1995: 53).
According to Bogdanov: “substitution consists in the fact that
one object or phenomenon is replaced for the purpose of cognition by
another one, real or mental. For instance, under a work of art ‘are put’
certain images, sentiments, moods, which it stimulates in the person
who reads it, looks at it, or listens to it, ‘under’ a white sun ray is put the
sum of all those colored rays, into which it is decomposed through the
prism, etc.” (Bogdanov 1995: 52).
The main point for Bogdanov is that substitution is not an
individual, but a collective method of constructing reality: “The
principle of substitution lies in the communication among people, in their
mutual understanding” (Bogdanov 1995: 52). Substitution is the method by
which a human group in a certain epoch responds to the practical and
theoretical need for a harmonious and unified worldview. Within such a
worldview human beings can understand each other and interact with
reality6.
As is well known, in Bogdanov's view, experience is essentially
social. In 1906 Bogdanov wrote: “The world of experience crystallized
and continues to crystallize out of chaos. The force that determines the
forms of such crystallization is the human relationship. Beyond these
forms there is no experience, since an unorganized mass of feelings does
not constitute an experience. Thus, experience is social in its basis, and
its progress is the socio-psychological process of its organization, to which the
5
“Если два таких аппарата, находясь в системах А и В, делают взаимно
съемку этих систем, то их “фильмы” будут изменены, “искажены” по
сравнению со съемкою из своей системы: изображения тел окажутся
укорочены по линии движения, самый ход событий замедлен (“отставание
часов”), то и другое одинаково с обеих сторон. Человек, напр., на этих
“фильмах” имеет один рост, когда он стоит, и другой, - когда лежит. Ясно,
что формулы перехода от координат одной системы следует понимать как
формулы поправок для перехода от более или менее искаженных
изображений к внутренней действительности каждой системы, формулы
подстановки вещей и событий под их воспринимаемые образы.”
6 More on the concept of ‘substitution’, see Steila 2009: 153–157.

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organizing individual-psychic process completely adapts itself”

(Bogdanov 1906: XXXIII–XXXIV).
To understand how substitution works does not mean just to
become aware of a sort of spontaneous process within one's own
consciousness, but to appreciate the deep social nature of such a
process. In one of Bogdanov's unpublished letters to Bazarov, one reads:
“Substitution is a complicated product of social development, and it is
particularly wrong to confuse it with the passage from perception to
apperception. Substitution is a problem of cognitive methodology, i.e., a
problem of the social – not just the psychological – order, and it
emerges on the basis of social symbolism” 7.
From the standpoint of Bogdanov's thought, the theory of
relativity could be seen as a new perspective, capable of producing a
better form of substitution. Bogdanov considered this to be an instance
of the ‘unifying tendency’ that was at work within natural science
(Bogdanov 1996: XVI). In the first book of Tektology he writes of the
theory of relativity:
“Its formulation and analysis are entirely based upon the relationships
between observers accepting these or other events, and upon the
conditions of signaling which let them co-ordinate their observations.
The notion of the physical environment is evidently expanded here in
the organizational sense; it is complemented by elements never before
taken into account, namely, enquiring beings and their relationships”
(Bogdanov 1996: 100).
Such a view overcomes the classic physics of the ‘single observer’
and creates new opportunities for epistemology to overcome the
subjectivity of a point of view within one system and to take into
account other systems. Communication allows people to develop a
wider worldview. It was not fortuitous that the example Bogdanov used
to illustrate how we can employ the formulae of substitution to move
from one set of representations to another was a classical
epistemological problem. Bogdanov wrote:
“Let us imagine a person living in a cave; its entrance is blocked by a
optical-deforming pane; he can observe and study the external world
only through this pane. It is evident that all the measures and relations
in this world for that person are distorted in a certain way. In order to
predict the positions of moving external objects, that person must use
formulae, similar to the formulae of the general theory of relativity, in
particular, Gaussian coordinates. But in exactly the same way all
7
Archive Fondazione Basso. Bogdanov's Letter to Bazarov, June 21, 1911 (see
Steila 2009: 168).

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measures and relationships of everything that happens within the cave

are distorted for an observer on the outside. If both sides succeed in
identifying the properties of the medium separating them, by
introducing corrections in their observations, they will be able to
establish a precise picture of the things and the events” (Bogdanov 1923:
107–108). In other words, a new, better, substitution is achieved.
In one endnote in the first book of Tektology, Bogdanov maintains
that “current formulations of the ‘principle of relativity’ elaborated by
Einstein and others do not seem to me ... to be definitive from an
organizational point of view”, since “they always assume only two
observers and the light signaling between them” (Bogdanov 1989: 137).
Bogdanov continued: “For example, since direct light signaling would
be impossible if observers were moving away from each other faster
than the speed of light – a ray of light from one could not reach the
other – then it is assumed that the relative speed of bodies is always less
than the speed of light; and that the speed of light is the fastest possible
speed. However, if we introduce into the system of coordination a third
observer as an intermediary between the two, we obtain a different
result” (Bogdanov 1989: 137).
Furthermore, if two electrons fly out from a radioactive nuclei at
a speed close to the speed of light, “it would seem perfectly clear that
they are objectively moving apart from each other … faster than the speed
of light. If one could imagine individual observers located on each of
these particles, then, through the intermediary of the observer placed
between them, they will be able to establish this, though observations
without an intermediary would give them a different result” (Bogdanov
1989: 137–138). Bogdanov concludes that: “application of the
organizational point of view leads to a far more simple conception of
the relativity principle than the usual one” (Bogdanov 1989: 138).
From the standpoint of the general theory of organization, it is
perfectly understandable that human beings can change their
frameworks, their pattern of interpretation of reality, since those
frameworks have nothing to do with Kant's forms of cognition.
Bogdanov emphasizes: “Truly, there are certain forms of thinking that
people use to consolidate their experience; but they are by no means the
eternal ‘constitution of cognitive capacities’. They are means for the
organization of experience, which are developed and altered with the
growth of experience and the alteration of its contents” (Bogdanov
1996: 47).
In Bogdanov's views the knowing subject is by no means a sort of
a passive recorder of perceptive data, a ‘camera’ as in Lenin's
epistemology. Instead, one could claim, the human collective is engaged

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in the production of reality and its organization, one could say in its
‘montage’.
We cannot find a ‘smoking gun’ that would prove evidentially
that the young Eisenstein had read Bogdanov's epistemological essays.
But, curiously enough, according to Eisenstein as well as Bogdanov,
cinema could provide us with an orientation in the four-dimensional
space-time continuum, which is implicit in Einstein's theory of relativity.
In Eisenstein's essay The Filmic Fourth Dimension we read:
“The fourth dimension? Einstein? Or mysticism? Or a joke? It is
time to stop being frightened of this new knowledge of a fourth
dimension…. Possessing such an excellent instrument of perception as
the cinema – even on its primitive level – for the sensation of
movement, we should soon learn a concrete orientation in this four-
dimensional space-time continuum, and feel as much at home in it as in
our own house-slippers” (Eisenstein 1949: 69–70).
Cinema is “an excellent instrument of perception … for the
sensation of movement”, according to Eisenstein (Eisenstein 1949: 70).
In turn, according to Bogdanov, “our sense organs, memory, and all the
scientific auxiliary means to perceiving and recording facts, can be
considered as a certain kind of cinematographic device” (Bogdanov
1923: 107). This may not provide evidence for a direct or mutually
acknowledged exchange of ideas between Eisenstein and Bogdanov, but
it can certainly be regarded as a tangential point of encounter.
References
Biggart, John. 2016. “Bogdanov's Sociology of the Arts.” In Culture as Organization in

Early Soviet Thought, edited by Pia Tikka et al. Helsinki: Aalto University.
Blackmore, John T. 1972. Ernst Mach, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bogdanov, Aleksandr A. 1906. Empiriomonizm. Stat’i po filosofii, III. St.Petersburg:
Izdanie S.Dorovatovskogo i A.Charushnikova.
-------------- 1923. “Princip otnositel'nosti s organizatsionnoy tochki zreniya.” In
Teoriya otnositel'nosti Eynshteyna i ee filosofskoe istolkovanie, 101–122. Moscow: Mir.
-------------- 1924. “Ob”ektivnoe ponimanie principa otnositel'nosti
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-------------- 1984. Red Star. The First Bolshevik Utopia, edited by Loren R. Graham and
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-------------- 1989. Tektologiya. Vseobshchaya organizatsionnaya nauka. 1. Moscow:
Ekonomika.
-------------- 1995. Neizvestnyy Bogdanov. Kniga 3, edited by N. S. Antonova and N. V.
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-------------- 1996. Bogdanov’s Tektology, Book 1, edited and translated by Peter Dudley,
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-------------- 2016. The Philosophy of Living Experience. Popular Outlines, translated, edited
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Dietzgen, Joseph. 1870–1875. “The Religion of Social-Democracy. Six Sermons.” In
Some of the Philosophical Essays on Socialism and Science, Religion, Ehics, Critique-of-
Reason and the World-at-large, 90-154. Chicago: Kerr.
Einstein, Albert. 1951. “Autobiographisches / Autobiographical Note.” In Albert
Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, edited by Paul A. Schilpp, 1–35. Stuttgart: W.
Kohlhammer Verlag.
Eisenstein, Sergey. 1949. Film Form. Essays in Film Theory, edited by J. Leyda. New
York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
Engels, Frederick 1886. “Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German
Philosophy.” In Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 1990. Collected Works 26,
353–398. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Kautsky, Karl 1909. “Über Marx und Mach.” Der Kampf, 10: 451–452;
Kautsky Karl. 1990. “O Markse i Mache.” Vozrozhdenie, 9–12: 77–80.
Lenin, Vladimir I. 1904. “To His Mother. January 8, 1904.” In Vladimir Lenin. 1967.
Collected Works 37, 359. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
-------------- 1909. Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. In Vladimir Lenin. 1962. Collected
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-------------- 1913a. “A ʽScientificʾ System of Sweating”. In Vladimir Lenin. 1963.
Collected Works 18, 594-595. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
-------------- 1913b. “Organisation of the Masses by the German Catholics”. In
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-------------- 1920. “Directions Concerning the Work of the Propaganda-Instructor
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-------------- 1921.“Once Again on the Trade Unions, the Current Situation and the
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70–107. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
-------------- 1924. “How the ʽSparkʾ was Nearly Extinguished”. In Vladimir Lenin.
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Works 42, 388–389. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
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klassicheskoy nemetskoy filosofii. In Georgiy Plekhanov. Izbrannye filosofskie
proizvedeniya 1, 451–503. Moscow: Gospolitizdat.
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Between Anthropological Materialism and Physiology, Dordrecht: Kluwer.
--------------- 2009. “From Experience to Organization: Bogdanov's Unpublished
Letters to Bazarov”. In Aleksandr Bogdanov Revisited, edited by Vesa Oittinen,
151–172. Helsinki: Aleksanteri Series, 1.
--------------- 2013. Nauka i revolyuciya. Recepciya empiriokriticizma v russkoy kul'ture (1877–
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Tikka, Pia. 2009. “Tracing Tectology in Sergei Eisenstein's Holistic Thinking.” In
Vaynshteyn I. 1925. “Iskusstvo i organizatsionnaya teoriya”, Vestnik Kommunisticheskoy
Akademii, 11: 204–222.
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provincii.
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-------------- 1923. “Teoriya otnositel'nosti i ee znachenie dlya filosofii”. In Teoriya
otnositel'nosti Eynshteyna i ee filosofskoe istolkovanie, 123–155. Moscow: Mir.

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EISENSTEIN’S SYSTEM THINKING:

INFLUENCES AND INSPIRATIONS
Oksana Bulgakowa__________________________________________________________
In 1931 Eisenstein started work on a basic theoretical book,

Method, that would present his theoretical system. In the very first
notes he defines a goal that seems to be similar to Bogdanov’s
tectology: to find a basic structure, isomorph for a work of art but
also for the growth of plants and bones, for human society and the
organization of bees or ants. Eisenstein’s system thinking is
inspired and defined by his basic hypotheses: the structure of an
artwork is perceived as a form that equates to multi-layered
consciousness in the transition from the pre-logical, sensual to
logical thought that the recipient experiences during the ecstatic
perception of an art work. Basic principles of modernist art –
fragmentation, montage, visualization, and rhythmic recurrence,
the object of Eisenstein’s analysis, – determined the new form of
Eisenstein’s writing and thinking and revolutionized the theory and
the form of its rendition. Eisenstein rejects linear logic and seeks
for forms of a hypertext that in his eyes are closer to the associative,
spherical, and labyrinthine thought structures, which to date have
only found expression in modernist art experiments.

ISBN 103204787103ABC
Bulgakowa___________EISENSTEIN’S SYSTEM THINKING____________Page 1 of 20

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Alexander Bogdanov introduced the term “Tektology” to

describe a discipline that would unify social, biological and physical
sciences by considering them as systems of relationships; tektology
analyzed the organizational principles of theses systems. The word
came from Ernst Haeckel, whose book with multi-colour illustrations of
animals and sea creatures Kunstformen der Natur, Art Forms of Nature,
inspired Eisenstein, as well as Haeckel’s theory of evolution which
claimed that ontogeny, an individual organism's biological
development, parallels species' evolutionary development, phylogeny.
We can only speculate about the possible influence of
Bogdanov’s system thinking on Eisenstein (Yampolskiy 2008/2009, 45–
90; Zabrodin 2005). At the time when Eisenstein worked in Proletkult
Bogdanov had lost his power.
The idea of new collective art that Bogdanov envisaged for
the proletariat, an art that does not know fetishism and individualism,
defined the early work of Eisenstein from Strike to October. These films
were inspired by mass actions within Proletkult, like Evreinov’s Storming
of the Winter Palace. The mass action became Eisenstein’s signature as a
film director. But at the same time he was also inspired by Meyerhold’s
idea of movement on stage, Arvatov’s concept Production art, Futurist
and Constructivist aesthetics, Rosicrucian hermeneutics, psychoanalysis
and experimental psychology among many other topics. Later
Eisenstein tried to find the basic principle of organization that defined a
closed and specific area: the work of art. But this work was understood
very broadly. He contextualized the moving images – of Disney,
Griffith, Chaplin and his own – in the broad context of the
development of visual culture from cave painting to modernism. The
idea of dynamic stability or isomorphism could be found in Eisenstein’s
approach but with distinct differences. In this paper will try to follow the
traces of Eisenstein’s system thinking.
In 1931 Eisenstein started the work on a basic theoretical
work Method that would present his theoretical system. In the very first
notes he defines the goal that seemed to be similar to Bogdanov’s
tectology: to find a basic structure, isomorph, for a work of art but also
for the growing of plants and bones, for human society and the
organization of bees or ants, with references to the books of Michelet
and Maurice Maeterlinck. He introduced long quotations from the
anthropologist Franz Boah and the zoologist Friedrich Hemplemann, as
well as psychologists Alexander Luria, Ernst Kretschmer and Heinz
Werner. He sought out contacts with Soviet physicists and physiologists
but never mentioned Alexander Bogdanov. The name of his

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collaborators in Proletkult Boris Arvatov or Sergey Tretyakov, appeared

only in his personal diaries.
Eisenstein’s theoretical project was the theory of a modern
artist who postulated that the basic principles of modernist art –
fragmentation, montage, visualization, and rhythmic recurrence –
determined the new form of writing and thinking and in this way
revolutionized the theory and the form of its rendition. In this way,
Eisenstein’s theory acquired the qualities of an aesthetic product
inspired by the experimental prose, Cubist painting, or filmic devices.
However, the modernist character of the unfinished book Method, a
fragment, whose meaning becomes apparent in conjunction with the
other fragments, collided with the totality of Eisenstein’s claim to offer a
universal theory that was to include all arts and all artworks as well as
the laws of artistic thought. This contradiction was typical for the
period. The theory would itself become an all-embracing oeuvre of
Eisenstein.
Eisenstein worked on Method, his last book, and one that he
never completed, for sixteen years (1932–1948) until his death. He
altered the title several times, made frequent corrections to the book’s
plan, but the main concept remained unchanged. In the context of his
earlier theoretical projects — the Spherical Book of 1929 and the Montage
book of 1937 — his basic idea of Method initially appears rather strange,
reductionist (in spite of the material, which has no limitations), and then
enigmatic. Yet it is precisely the earlier projects that provide a key to
understanding the particular nature of Method.
In the late 1920s Eisenstein planned his Spherical book. The
inner necessity for writing it lay in polemic demarcation. His rivals, the
directors Pudovkin, Timoshenko and Kuleshov, had just published their
books on film theory as well as the Russian formalists, who had severely
criticized Eisenstein’s innovative treatment of film language in October
(Timoshenko 1926; Pudovkin 1926, 1927; Kuleshov 1929). But
Eisenstein wanted more: he wanted to offer a comprehensive concept
that attempted to break up the usual forms in the 1920s of fixing a
theory, that is, the form of a manifesto, an article or even a book.
“It is very hard to write a book. Because every book is two-
dimensional. I wanted this book to be characterized by a quality that on
no account fits into the two-dimensionality of a printed work. This
requirement has two aspects. First, that this bundle of essays should on
no account be read and pondered one after the other. I wished that they
be considered simultaneously, because ultimately they portray a
number of sectors, which are arranged around a general constitutive
point of view — the method — but aligned to different areas. Second, I
wanted to create the mere spatial possibility that would make it possible
to step from each contribution directly into another and to make

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apparent their interconnection [...] Such a synchronic manner of

circulation and mutual penetration of the essays could be carried out
only in the form... of a sphere [...] Unfortunately [...] books are not
written as spheres [...] My only hope is that this book, which expounds
the method of reciprocal reversibility will be read precisely according to
the same method. In the expectation that we shall learn how to read
and write books as rotating spheres. Today we have more than enough
books like soap bubbles. Particularly about art.” (Eisenstein 1988, 344)
Eisenstein wrote these thoughts in his diary on 5 August
1929. Between March and August 1929 he repeatedly worked on a plan
for a possible anthology (RGALI 1923–1–1030, 12; 1923–1–1012, 1–
2).1 It was not a collection of the texts he had published or conceived.
The project demanded an entirely new approach to the organization of
the texts as an unmotivated changing of perspectives and methods of
analysis, which would freely communicate with each other, but would
still allow jumps into different dimensions at any time. Eisenstein
probably gave up the idea of finishing the book around 1932, for up to
this date one still finds traces of the project. In the essays for the Spherical
Book, which Eisenstein wrote in rapid succession from 1928–1929,
montage is explained according to various models. Montage is
comprehended (1) as a conditioning method to create a chain of
conditioned reflexes — as understood by reflexology (“Montage of Film
Attractions”); (2) as a collage, a combination and recombination of
different materials — as understood by constructivism (“Montage of
Attractions”); (3) as a system of oppositions, which produce meaning—
as understood by linguistics (“Perspectives”) and exemplified by
Japanese characters (“Beyond the Shot”); (4) as a hierarchical system
with changing dominants — influenced by experiments with new music
and Yuriy Tynyanov’s verse theory (“The Fourth Dimension in
Cinema”); (5) in terms of the law of unity and the struggle between
opposites — “The Dialectical Approach to Film Form”, or as a
synesthetic procedure that forces the various senses — seeing, hearing,
smelling, tasting — to communicate with each other (“An Unexpected
Juncture”). Nearly all concepts that Eisenstein introduces in this text
(attraction, dominant, overtone, and interval) are associated with the
different models of analysis and interpretation. In this book, the
metaphysical symbolist, the vulgar Marxist, and the dialectician that are
Eisenstein all co-exist, side by side.
Parallel to the Spherical Book, Eisenstein planned to write a
psychoanalytical book about himself and how his theory originated, My
Art in Life — a further possible sector (Eisenstein 1997/1998: 13–23).
The polarity of the positions sketched here, constant changes of points
1 For a detailed account of this project, see: Bulgakova 1996: 31-108.

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of view and dimensions, creates a tension between the sectors, for the
principle of simultaneity was not to be abandoned. It is the only project
in which such polarity is admitted. This approach lifts the Spherical Book
out of the traditional development of theory and impressively
demonstrates the new theoretical mentality of the twentieth century.
At the beginning of the twentieth century the world of closed
holistic systems suffered a breakdown. A multitude of different types of
discourse appeared; they treated the work of art in its various aspects
without aspiring to cover the whole (Iser 1999: 35). Totality as a utopia
was passé, but one adapted the results of a single science as the
worldview — according to old habits — and thus two modes of
thought, the new and the old, were mixed together. A discourse was not
capable of translating the phenomenon of art into a referential
language, and therefore metaphors were used instead of concepts.
Theory also aids understanding of the discourse, not only the
phenomenon of art, and thus the result was double reflections and self–
reflection, mixing of ontological and operational aesthetics. A modest
professional analytical approach became established.
The Spherical Book is a product of this approach. Eisenstein
joins the ranks of specialists, who, like the formalists, are able to
determine what literature is and what constitutes film. He is one of
them, yet he behaves like a man from the last century — he wants
totality, with all his expert knowledge. His Spherical Book is the most
radical attempt at achieving a unity in permanent change from one
level to another, based on reinterpretation and a variable use of the
non–compatible sectors. Eisenstein offers a total framework for these
different discourses by taking the model of a rotating sphere, which
enables transitions and guarantees multiple perspectives.
In Method Eisenstein explores how consciousness functions via
the imprints it leaves in art forms and art techniques. His ideas about
the effects of art undergo a radical re–interpretation. He suggested that
during ecstatic perception of a work, art would activate and provoke
within the observer a shift to pre–logical, sensual thought, which breaks
through rational consciousness like a jolt, as the unconscious does in
Sigmund Freud’s model. Thus the structure of an artwork is perceived
as a form that equates to multi–layered consciousness and the entire
diversity of forms are viewed as an endless chain of invariants that stem
from the basic trauma that consciousness experienced in the course of
evolution, at the transition from pre–logical to logical thought.
Whereas in the first Spherical Book the effects of art are
explained with the aid of conditioning, in Method the return to the basic
(evolutionary) trauma secures the co–participation. Eisenstein discovers
a structural analogy between his concept and those of Marx and Freud
(and does not mention Bogdanov): Freud seeks a basic substance to

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explain the human psyché and discovers a simple and universal conflict;
Marx does this with the structure of society. Eisenstein also looks for a
similar, primary conflict in art, which he calls the “basic problem”
[Grundproblem], and at first uses this as the title of the book. Starting from
the assumption that there is a basic conflict between the layers of
consciousness, the traces of which are captured in art forms, Eisenstein
then proceeds to new conceptions of isomorphic structures and, finally,
to a universal model of analysis through which heterogeneous
phenomena can be described, structured, and investigated: painting,
film and circus and music.
Eisenstein uses the concepts of sensuality and rationality to
describe different mental structures; sometimes he refers to mythical,
“concrete” or “objective” thinking and avoids the use of
psychoanalytical concepts. In the 1930s he uses Lévy–Bruhl’s term
“pre–logical thinking”, but when this term was criticized, he exchanges
it for “sensual thinking”, which he finds in Marx. Eisenstein studies
works written by linguists, anthropologists, missionaries, and
ethnographers.2 With his interest in archaic structures, Eisenstein is part
of a general contemporary trend (following the same path as T.S. Eliot,
D.H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, Aby Warburg, Antonin Artaud).
However, it is not the archaic per se, or the mythological practices of
the régimes of Stalin or Hitler that interest him, but rather the
modernist experiments in the arts, which he compares with examples
from classical antiquity, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment.
Eisenstein regards the formalized structures of sensual thinking as a
reservoir for the artistic means.
Eisenstein’s analytical model, which he calls Method, can
attribute all art phenomena to one and the same schema (pre–
logical/logical, sensual/rational, consciousness/unconscious). The
model in Method is characterized by a strange reductionism, analogous
to the interpretation of the primary and secondary features of
psychoanalytical hermeneutics. Eisenstein transforms a law of dialectics
about the unity of contradictions into binary opposition. Vyacheslav
Ivanov interpreted the book as a utopia of total semiotization of the
world (Ivanov 1977). However, on closer scrutiny the semiotic
interpretation of the model in Method reveals severe limitations.
In one of the final chapters of Method, “Circle”, Eisenstein
returns to his idea for Spherical Book, and on 17 September 1947 remarks
“In 1932 I began to organize my theoretical notes on film
(which I have been doing for fifteen years now), and I noticed that I
2Eisenstein wrote many notes in the margins of his copies of the books: Lévy-Bruhl
1922 (Russian edition 1930); Werner 1926; Kretschmer 1922 (Russian edition
1927); Winthuis 1928; Granet 1934; Covarrubias 1937; Bilz 1940.

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dream of writing a Spherical Book, because for me everything is related

to everything and everything passes over into everything. The only form
that corresponds to this is the sphere. To [change] from one meridian to
any other meridian. Since that time I have longed for this book, and
now perhaps more than ever” (RGALI 1923–2–268).
The grounds for the amalgamation of Eisenstein’s first and
last project lie in the way he thinks and writes. He rejects linear logic
and seeks forms of a hypertext that in his eyes is closer to the associative,
spherical, and labyrinthine thought structures which to date had only
found expression in modernist art experiments, not in theoretical
writings. The theory of pre-logical mental structures, which are
mediated by art forms, emerges as a hybrid work, constructed according
to the principles of an artwork.
In 1932, Eisenstein compiles a catalogue of themes for the
projected book. He lists the thematic nodes and the examples that he
will use to illustrate the parallels between pre-logical thinking and
artistic devices: pars pro toto — synecdoche and close-up; sympathetic
magic — the function of the landscape in literature; participation —
actors’ experience; the reading of tracks by a hunter — constructing the
plot of a detective story (Eisenstein 1989: 13–23). Over the next sixteen
years, Eisenstein writes four different versions of the book; each of them
focuses on different aspects and applies different mode of analysis (close
to his idea for the Spherical Book): (1) exploration of the formalized
structures of pre-logical thinking (Method I); (2) investigation of the basic
forms; (3) the genesis of his theoretical model in the form of
“theoretical” memoirs; and (4) the anthropological foundations of this
theory.3
In the first version of the book, Method I (1932–1940),
Eisenstein concentrates on means of expression and arts that do not
need or allow verbalization: gestures, intonation, music, and circus. The
gesture is seen as the Ur-form, the origin of the word, which is why
Eisenstein collects material about the role of pantomime in
Shakespearean theatre and the acting style of Henry Irving. Eisenstein
reads memoirs by Russian actors and returns to his own concept of
expressive movement as well as Meyerhold’s idea for the gestural “pre-
play”. Intonation is understood as a substitute for meaning; therefore,
Eisenstein takes long excerpts from Yvette Guilbert’s book, L’Art de
chanter une chanson (Guilbert 1928). Although the sections on circus and
Wagner do not actually get written, Eisenstein makes a detailed plan of
the circus chapter (November, 1933), and reads works by and on
3I do not refer here to the version of the text compiled by Kleiman 2002, but to the
archive manuscript (RGALI 1923-2-231-270, 321-323), which will be published
2007 in four volumes by Potemkin Press, Berlin.

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Wagner. In Method I., neither vision nor hearing are regarded as the
basic senses for a theory of art, but instead the sense of touch — a sense
that is usually excluded from aesthetic theory and for which there is no
method of conservation. Eisenstein does not seem to know the texts by
Johann Gottfried Herder and Walter Benjamin; his interest in touch
was aroused by Denis Diderot’s writings, Filippo Thommaso Marinetti’s
Tactilism manifesto and a book by Léon Daudet (Daudet 1930). In the
chapter about the features of pre-logical thinking, Eisenstein attempts to
include the senses of smell and taste in his theory, but abandons this
later. He returns to the sense of touch as one of the basic senses involved
in the origins of the arts in the fourth book, Anthropology, which begins
with a chapter on haptic sense. Eisenstein’s attentiveness to phenomena
that are non-verbal or incapable of being preserved by modern
recording techniques also makes him interested in rhythm. Eisenstein
regards rhythm as a basic element in the creation of an effective
artwork, because the biology of an organism is based on rhythmic
principles (breathing, peristalsis, the functioning of the heart), as is
ecstatic experience. Eisenstein attempts to link the ideas of the German
school of experimental psychology and physiological aesthetics,
associated with Ernst Kretschmer, Wilhelm Wundt, and Friedrich
Nietzsche, with inspirations from his study of the mystical practices of
Ignatius of Loyola. However, his analysis of the ecstatic state and the
production of ecstasy in art is later expanded into a separate study,
“Pathos” (1946/1947), in which Eisenstein uses the examples from the
Rougon-Macquart series of novels by Zola that he lists in the catalogue
of themes in Method I (Eisenstein 1967 : 91–128).
From the language phenomena, Eisenstein selects examples
of linguistic pre-logic, particularly mimetic and magical practices like
incantations, he examines the relationships between a sound, the shape
of a letter, and the meaning, Filippo Thommaso Marinetti’s and
Velemir Khlebnikov’s onomatopoetic. This section comprises theories
of the origin of names and metaphor, research on various kinds of slang,
dialect, and argot. Metaphors are regarded as a practice connected with
taboos, as a deviation from naming and calling. Eisenstein studies
writers, who have broken up the forms of logical language (Edgar Allan
Poe, James Joyce, Marcel Proust), followed the logic of dreams (Gérard
de Nerval), or who work with ambivalent double meanings (Anatole
France’s irony, the collection of erotic riddles and fairy tales of
Aleksandr Afanasiev). He attends Nikolai Marr’s lectures on the origin
of languages. Marr’s paleontology which seeks connections between the
stem of a word and its meaning, directs Eisenstein’s interest toward the
origins of art, the Ur- phenomena of representation: cave paintings,
children’s drawings, outline drawings, and silhouettes. In all these
forms, Eisenstein looks for the connection between rhythm and

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movement, and finds this perfected in the ornament. Via the ornament
as pictorial embodiment of rhythm, Eisenstein approaches the dynamic
phenomenon of the plot. The plot is interpreted as a pre-logical and
mimetic phenomenon, as an embodiment of the ritual, which is based
on the rhythmic organization of movement and verbal ambivalence.
The shift of the analysis of non-verbal phenomena to the plot
is explained through a step-wise construction:
1. Double meanings, linguistic ambivalence, which enable a
connection to be made between motor kinetic? functions and the trope
(metonym, metaphor, riddle), on the basis of magical practices: non-
naming, a transferred naming, ritual incantation, etc.
2. The masculine, the feminine, and the bisexual as a physical
form of ambivalence.
3. Ambivalence in a character (Jekyll and Hyde) and in the
personality of an artist (Lewis Carroll and Charles Dodgson).
4. In perennial themes (the search for a father).
Eisenstein has not yet worked out in detail the connection
between these steps but only sketches it. Eisenstein interprets the
ambivalence as an invariant of the unity of opposites and tries to find a
dialectical formula of form, which he describes, however, with the help
of Freudian terms such as “urge”. For the Method I. he wants to write a
series of studies and portraits under the title “Le cas de …” which can
be translated as “The [...] case”, or “The file on [...]”. Honoré de
Balzac, Jules Verne, Lev Tolstoy, Stendhal, and Lewis Carroll are the
candidates for his “case-studies”. Eisenstein intends to analyze the
individual consciousness of an artist in whose personality and work
ambivalence is forcefully present as an expression of conformity to
general laws. In this section he also wishes to investigate utopias as an
expression of the same drive operating at the level of the collective
unconscious.
The word “start” appears in this substantial manuscript of
315 double-sided pages, which also includes material and excerpts
collected during the eight years of work, for the first time on 25 June
1940 when Eisenstein comes across a text by Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe about objective (gegenständliche) thinking. Before he had used
Tolstoy’s term “concrete thinking” or Jonathan Swift’s “language of
objects”, Eisenstein is writing a chapter about the sense of touch as a
substitute for vision and all other senses when he reads Goethe’s
“Significant Help Given by an Ingenious Turn of Phrase”. He tears the
pages out of the book, and puts it in the folder with his notes.
The new plan foregrounds expressive movement, visual
representation, and character wherein he looks for a dynamic triad
consisting of kinesis, mimesis, and psyche. At this time Eisenstein finds a
German title for the book, Grundproblem — basic problem, which

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replaces the first version, Grundthema — basic theme. Whereas

Grundthema was placed in the context of notes on bisexuality,
Grundproblem appears in the notes on dialectic. Henceforth the concept
develops in two directions and culminates in two volumes of his study -
about the basic forms and the genesis of his theoretical model (both
1942–1943). Eisenstein discards the chapters on utopias and Lev
Tolstoy and focuses the analysis of rhythm, expressive movement,
ornament, silhouette drawings, metonymy, and metaphor around a new
nucleus, namely, the construction of the plot. Ambivalence in language
is developed in a chapter on riddles and magic rituals. From the ritual,
which brings together magic, imitation, movement, gesture, and
rhythm, Eisenstein can proceed to a situation that he understands as
materialization of the trope in the plot. The analysis of a situation, like a
slave and a king exchanging clothing, for example, is performed on
many literary examples from E.T.A. Hoffmann, Lion Feuchtwanger,
Heinrich Heine, William Shakespeare, and Balzac. Eisenstein wants to
show that the figures of pre-logical thinking form the basis of the
“appealing anecdote” in the plot. The perennial themes and characters
are now not restricted to the search for a father but include blood
vengeance (Hamlet) and incest (Oedipus). Eisenstein does not analyze
Coleridge and Kipling’s Kim, as he had planned earlier, but instead
examines the detective story in detail. The manuscript ends abruptly in
the middle of a chapter on Balzac’s L’auberge rouge and Dostoyevskiy’s
Brothers Karamazov, because Eisenstein had to begin shooting Ivan the
Terrible.
In January 1944 he begins a new volume, which he refers to
as “Part 2”. Here Eisenstein thinks the entire concept over as an
anthropological project. He returns to the sense of touch, animism, and
chthonic myths. The body is now no longer a model but a direct source
and material of art. The skin is analyzed as the surface for painting, the
tattoo as the first auto portrait, the womb as a primal form and origin of
architecture and ceramics. Bodily fluids and excretions (blood, urine,
and excrement) head up the original color spectrum. The skeleton, as a
model for structure, is substituted by the fluid body, and plasmatic,
polymorphic qualities sought in the form. Expressive movement is
studied taking the amoeba as an example. Disney becomes a central
object of the analysis because in his work plasmatic qualities of form,
color, and rhythm are combined with animism and totemism
(Eisenstein 2012). The semantics of the basic visual forms are
investigated in place of the plot; here, the circle is a central focus.
Freud’s Oedipus is replaced by Otto Rank’s hypothesis concerning the
primary trauma of birth. This is why Eisenstein does not use the search
for a father as a perennial theme but instead the archaic myth of the
deluge. Pars pro toto in painting, which was not treated at length in

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Method I, becomes a chapter of some length the series of paintings The

Bathers by Degas; the composition is interpreted as embodying the basic
drive to return to the womb, which is caused by birth trauma. In the
previous volume, both struggle and the law of fusion of opposites are
focal points; here the more archaic state of non-differentiation is
evoked. The last notes for this book, which were written four days
before Eisenstein died, begin with a quotation from Rigveda, which is
about the original non-separation of existence and non-existence.
In one of the last chapters, Eisenstein wanted to provide an
overview of the school of Soviet film, embedded in one of his basic ideas
that cinema represents the last stage in the development of the arts
because it encompasses all experiments and forms (RGALI 1923–2–
244). In his last notes for Method, this project is replaced by another
more ambitious plan. Eisenstein outlines a project on film history as an
expression of the collective unconscious in which Russian and American
film traditions play a role as well as the French surrealists and German
film (RGALI 1923–2–268; Kracauer 1947). The analysis of the
collective unconscious in film inspired by Siegfried Kracauer’s recently
published book From Caligari to Hitler replaces the chapter on utopias,
which was scrapped.
Both titles, Grundproblem [Basic Problem] and Metod [Method],
allude to discursive clichés. When philosophy became established as a
discipline at German universities in the mid-nineteenth century,
“Grundproblem” was one of the most frequent words used in the titles
of academic works on the history of philosophy, aesthetics, and
psychology.4 Whereas the word in Russian has a certain enigmatic
quality, Grundproblem in German is just as much a cliché as the word
“method” in Soviet discourse of the 1930s. However, the word could
also have a programmatic meaning: method is not the same as theory,
law, or canon; it designates an operative, open, and dynamic system
that guides epistemological and practical activity. Eisenstein
understands the concept to mean the specific way of thinking itself; thus
his book does not provide a canon but an analytical formula, which can
describe not only art but also thought.
Whereas both titles, Grundproblem and Method, are
distinguished by their firm place in contemporary discourse, the
disciplines in which Eisenstein locates his project are not in the least
traditional. In his diary — parallel to the catalogue of themes for Method
I— Eisenstein notes the components that together form the basis of his
theory.
4 The catalogue in the State Library in Berlin lists over 100 books published
between 1880 and 1932 in which the word Grundproblem appears in the title.

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The list consists of the first letters of words:

“Х
Ec — Ecstasy
D [ialectics] — on method (synopsis of dialectics).
М [ysticism] — history of dialectics (mysticism as preliminary
[stage]).
I [ntroduction]
Sup [erposition] — on the question of
knowledge/epistemological devices? techniques.
R [ecurrence] — (imitation).
L [inguistics]” (RGALI 1923–2–1131, l. 31).5
The nodes that are the sources and elements of Method, and
thus define it, bring together various gnoseological models (dialectics,
mysticism), specific problems of aesthetics (imitation), and psychology
(ecstasy, superposition) in a strangely sexualized epistemic structure.
Ecstatic states have connections with mysticism, which
Eisenstein defines as the preliminary stage of dialectics. At the
beginning of the twentieth century mysticism enjoyed a revival and was
a hot topic of discussion in European modernism. The image worlds in
the dreams of St. Theresa of Avila and Juan de la Cruz are discussed by
Charles Baudelaire (Les Salons, 1845) and Dmitriy Merezhkovskiy (Die
spanischen Mystiker, 1939). The protagonists of Ulysses (1925) and La
Nausée (1938) read Ignatius of Loyola and are well aware of the
hallmarks of his psychological techniques. Eisenstein was introduced to
various hermetic and mystic doctrines in 1920 by the Rosicrucian Boris
Zubakin, who was also a big influence on the young Mikhail Bakhtin.
Eisenstein collected literature on mysticism all his life, which shocked
German left intellectuals.6 In his relationship with Konstantin
Stanislavskiy, who had discovered yoga techniques for his acting
method before Eisenstein did, there is jealousy: Eisenstein does not
interpret Stanislavskiy with reference to Buddhism, but with reference
to Loyola’s mental Exercises.
In Eisenstein’s understanding, the comic is a mirror image of
ecstasy. He is not interested in classic texts of the early twentieth century
on humour (by Bergson or Freud), but primarily in grotesque Mexican
humour that is drug-induced: vacilada. “Vacilada is argot for the
hilarious trance caused by marihuana” (Brenner 1929: 180). Eisenstein
had experienced and studied this phenomenon while in Mexico.
Further, the passages he quotes from Baudelaire’s Les paradis artificiels of
5 Eisenstein uses Ya (Yazykoznanie for Linguistics), the last letter of the alphabet.

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1860 (Baudelaire 1946) are all concerned with the particular kind of
hilarity associated with taking opium. Perhaps Eisenstein became aware
of these passages through reading Entwicklungspsychologie by Heinz
Werner, who quotes from Baudelaire frequently.
“D [ialectics]” is understood primarily as the fusion of
opposites; perhaps this is why mysticism is defined as its preliminary
stage. One foundation of mysticism doctrine is the notion of the
“opposites falling together into one”, for which Nicholas of Cusa
suggested the term coincidentia oppositorum. The intention was to describe
a paradox phenomenon of this unity, by which opposites still remain
opposites. Only this bipolar state allows describing the phenomenon of
God or the basis of existence. As the source, which introduced him to
bipolarity, Eisenstein names Otto Weininger’s book Geschlecht und
Charakter, Gender and Character he read in 1920 (RGALI 1923–2–1109,
133). Eisenstein was not interested in Weininger’s apocalyptic
predictions but in the anthropological interpretation of male–female as
the dialectical basis of our culture and knowledge. He was fascinated by
the notion of androgyny, which travelled from Plato via the alchemists
to Emanuel Swedenborg and was celebrated in Russian symbolist
circles. Eisenstein nourished his notions about androgyny from the
cabbala and fictional and ethnographic works: Ernest Crawley’s The
Mystic Rose (1902), Das Zweigeschlechterwesen (1928) of Josef Winthuis,
Balzac’s novella Seraphita (that popularized Swedenborg’s ideas and
presented them in the form of a love story), and novels by Joséphin
Péladan. He quotes from Vasiliy Rozanov and his book Ljudi lunnogo
sveta (People of the Moonlight, 1913), which is understandable: Rozanov
understands bisexuality as an epistemological, not an ontological,
category,
Eisenstein turns dialectics into a sexualized and
anthropological concept by interpreting dialectics as a mystical
coincidentia oppositorum and as embodiment of the male–female in
androgyny: “Dialectics is a projection into consciousness (in a
philosophical conception) of the bisexuality of our structure. The
legends about the breaking apart of the sexes. Bisexuality as a remnant
— as a memory of an existing phenomenon of bisexuality ([Adam’s] rib
and the separation of Eve)” (Diary, 10.III–22.VIII. 1931; Mexico,
RGALI; 1923–2–1123, l. 182).
The ancient myths provide the material to understand the
phenomenon of unity:
“The most archaic type of “unity in the universe” — close to
our sexually undifferentiated forefathers; the separation of Ad[am] and
6 Videotaped recollections of Hans Feld, archive of the Stiftung Deutsche

Kinemathek, Berlin.

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Eve, Plato’s being, the story of Lilith and the two people who were
joined at their backs (in cabbala) — is actually closer to the vegetative
phenomenon. Here I shall have to insert facts from the biological drama
before the evolution of the sexes — after [Charles Stockard] The Physical
Basis of Personality [New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1931]. For
example, the question of same-sex twins, who develop from one egg [...]
Genius — is a person who fills the dialectic development of the universe
and can engage with it. Bisexuality as a physiological pre-condition
must be present in all creative dialectics” (RGALI; 1923–2–1123, l..
138–139.).
Eisenstein notes these thoughts in his diary and then writes a
letter to Magnus Hirschfeld, dated 23 May 1931, and asks him for proof
of Hegel’s bisexuality.7
Eisenstein’s ideas about conflict, or struggle, are similarly
sexualized. The books about conflict that he consults are not confined to
Marxist interpretations, such as Friedrich Engel’s Dialektik der Natur,
which he reads in 1926 in a recently published Russian translation. In
1930/1931 he studies The Philosophy of Conflict (1919) by the British
sexual psychologist Henry Havelock Ellis. In Eisenstein’s notes there is a
frequently mentioned thought about the conflict-laden harmony in a
work of art, which is based on bipolarity, on the union of opposites,
which strive “upward” and “downward”.8 The reference to Ellis makes
one suspect that this state should not be interpreted as a description of
ecstatic, mystic, or dialectic unity, but as an orgasm, which is defined in
Method as a short-lived but the ‘most common’ transition to ecstasy
(something for everyday use)— attainable repeatedly and regularly.
Recurrence and imitation stand at the golden section in
Eisenstein’s schema. Elsewhere, recurrence is for him inseparable from
rhythm and imitation. For as he states in his text “Imitation as Mastery”
(1929), the art of the modern age, which includes his works, does not
imitate the form but the fundamental structure, that is, the rhythmic
organization. With reference to film, this is not the pictorial
representation, but the ideogram of motion (Eisenstein 1989: 46–48).
These two phenomena are also connected to ecstasy and mysticism.
Loyola’s Exercises propose achieving an ecstatic state through rhythmic
repetition. In the first third of the twentieth century rhythm appears to
be a universal remedy for solving all problems. Economists,
psychologists, philosophers, and artists all have high praise for rhythm.
7 The draft of the letter is in Eisenstein’s diary, published in Eisenstein 1998: 96-97.
8 “The dialectics of an artwork is based on a highly interesting polarity. The effect of
an artwork derives from the fact that a contradictory process is at work in it: the
impetuous, progressive, striving upward to higher mental levels of consciousness and
at the same time in the form of penetrating levels of deepest sensual thought.”
(Eisenstein 1988: 146)

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They declare it to be a mediator between nature and art, which

safeguards the aesthetic perception and helps to overcome the
fragmentation so celebrated in modern art. Rhythmic principles are
sought in the space (Vasiliy Kandinskiy) and movement (Max
Reinhardt, Vsevolod Meyerhold), in the awareness of poetry, music,
and film (Hans Richter’s Rhythmus 21, Leopold Survage’s Rhythme coloré).
In 1919 Osip Brik writes Zvukovye povtory (Repetition of Sound) and in 1929
Andrei Belyy Ritm kak dialektika (Rhythm as Dialectics). Eisenstein quotes
from René Fülöp-Miller’s book Die Phantasiemaschine and Ernst
Kretschmer’s Medizinischer Psychologie, where the effect of rhythm is
explained through vegetative-somatic functions of the human organism.
Eisenstein’s fascination with biological nature of rhythmic
effects seems to be very close to Nietzsche’s determination of aesthetic
values and categories as biological as manifested in his concept of
Dionysian intoxication (Rausch) (Barck 2000: 386–388). Eisenstein,
whose notion of ecstasy resembles the physiological state of intoxication,
is not so radical. Rhythm and repetition he takes as a model for
imitation and explains it with reference to the nature of aesthetic
perception. Rhythm is their basis because Eisenstein sees nature,
humans, and artistic work as a circle that guarantees the union of the
cosmic, biological, and social.
Eisenstein makes first notes and selects quotations on rhythm
for Method after having read Wilhelm Reich’s essay on the orgasm. In
1934 Eisenstein contacts Reich and asks him for a copy of his book on
orgasm in which rhythm is investigated. Reich’s reply is enthusiastic: “I
was particularly pleased to hear from a leading comrade in the artistic
field that art has a great deal to do with the central problem of the living
substance, with orgasm.” He sends Eisenstein the book plus some issues
of the journal that he publishes in exile in the Netherlands and also
gives his views on Eisenstein’s Potemkin: “In Potemkin one is completely
overcome by its rhythm, which is a direct continuation of the biological-
sexual basic rhythm. As far as I am able to judge, the rational thoughts
of communism are most effective in film when they are linked in a good
way with our biological rhythm.” (Eisenstein 1984: 254)
The French term “superposition” does not fit in with the
sexualized concepts discussed above (dialectics, mysticism, ecstasy,
recurrence, rhythm). Eisenstein had investigated this peculiarity of
perception and thinking in his text “The Dialectical Approach to Film
Form” (1929), which was to be included in the projected Spherical Book.
The phenomenon of superposition, which was observed in stereoscopy,
drew attention to the differences between natural perception and
perception via technical apparatus. In general it was attributed to the
de-stabilization in the understanding of subjectivity (Crary 1990).
Eisenstein, however, sees superposition as a creative potential of human

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thought processes, which continually re-structures the “imprints and

impressions”. It is these reflections that help Eisenstein to see montage
as something non-linear: montage is not realized by a successive
sequence of images but consists in a series of superpositions,
“[...] in fact successive elements are not positioned side by
side, but on top of one another. For the concept (feeling) of movement
arises in the process of superposition of the retained impression of the
first position of the object and the position of the object that is seen next
[...] The discrepancy between the contours of the first image memorized
and the image that is perceived next — the conflict between them —
creates the feeling of movement [...] The eye follows the direction of an
element. It retains the visual impression, which then clashes with
following the direction of the second element.” (Eisenstein 1989a)
The technique of superposition causes the perception of three-
dimensionality and is the origin of the illusion of movement in film
projection and the image (= symbol). When two variables of an order
are superposed, something arises that opens up access to a higher
dimension: the one picture plus the other sum up to an image, the one
image plus the other sum up to an abstract concept. The impression is
two-dimensional, the imagination is three-dimensional. The concept
must include a temporal, fourth dimension. This concept not only
interprets the montage, but also re-interprets the image in the film — it
exists in the process of remembering and forgetting, and the perception
of the image functions as interaction between the memory of what has
just disappeared and the forgetting of what was just seen. Thus not only
the origin of the illusion of movement in film, but film itself is
understood as materializations of the human memory.
Symbol and concept are linguistic phenomena that mean a
change of dimension (image → word), and Eisenstein’s reflections on
montage always end with his reflections on the nature of film language.
Thus it is not coincidental that his list of “sources and components”
ends with “L [inguistics]”. Eisenstein is familiar with all contemporary
trends and developments in linguistics.
Eisenstein’s interest in cases where language comes up against
its own limitations leads him to the work of Fritz Mautner, who
developed a model whereby the world is doubled in language, which in
principle cannot perform its task of rendering reality because there is no
analogy between the statement and the object of reference.
Eisenstein has his doubts about this radical position and turns
to Karl Bühler, who also works on the structure of thought and
verbalization of vision. Eisenstein’s manuscript contains a typewritten
translation of a chapter out of Karl Bühler’s Sprachtheorie. Die
Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache (1934), which examines the connections
between language and film from the standpoint of representational

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functions. Bühler’s interest in this was originally aroused by his study of

jumps which Eisenstein compares with the spatial breaks in film
montage (from the close-up to the long shot) and the movements of an
observer around an object. Both cannot be continuous because they are
repeatedly interrupted by pauses and diversions. In language breaks are
bridged by syntax, and in film by dynamics. In Bühler’s opinion the
breaks are not caused by technology but by the nature of perception,
and in support of his view he analyses texts by Homer, which he
interprets like montage lists. This approach definitely influences
Eisenstein’s analyses of literary descriptions from works by Aleksander
Pushkin, Guy de Maupassant, and Lev Tolstoy.9 While reading,
Eisenstein takes note of the spatial fragmentation, the framing, the
movement of the eye as manipulated by the author through the details
in a close-up or a long shot, and unmotivated changes of the
perspective. Yet Eisenstein does not subscribe to Bühler’s conclusion,
namely, that linguistic representation is always richer than a film’s due
to the compact character of a linguistic unit. Bühler also compares the
skills of a film viewer to those of a detective, who has to read the visual
clues and construct a causal relationship between them.
Eisenstein compares himself to a pathologist, which is similar
to Benjamin’s surgeon. He also refers to Salieri, to whom he intends to
dedicate his unpublished book, as a pathologist. Eisenstein says that the
post-mortem, analysis by dissection, always results in a static approach,
but this is overcome in his studies by dynamics coming from film. As a
scientific frame of reference Eisenstein uses paleontology, which
investigates life in bygone periods through analyzing fossils. Georges
Cuvier, whose name appears in the very first notes for Method I.,
played an important role in establishing the discipline of paleontology
and became famous for his reconstructions of extinct animals from fossil
remains. In Eisenstein’s Method double readings constitute one track and
this basis becomes the link in order to relate the image (a fragment) to
the context, a dynamic narrative (plot) and unite both thought
paradigms.
The paradigms, which determine intuitive and rational
insights, are foregrounded by Carlo Ginzburg in his analysis of an
evidential paradigm. The first type includes the interpretation of a trail
by a hunter, of symptoms by a psychoanalyst, and of clues by a
detective. This type of knowledge is connected with a hypothetical
paradigm of medicine, which always deals with symptoms and never
with transparency. The exact, rational knowledge, worked out for
science, excludes the individual view for this makes mathematical
9The most well-known of these texts is “Pushkin, the montageur” (Eisenstein 1995:
109-223).

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classification impossible. In this case, numbers and data are interpreted

but not feelings produced by the senses, like a smell or a musical tone.
This is why physiognomy and graphology, which belong to the first
paradigm, lose their scientific status in the twentieth century. However,
when the statistical method (such as Bertillon’s) fails and is unable to
grasp the subject (in the case of criminology, the criminal), a method of
identification emerges that is based on a trace (i.e. the fingerprint),
which reproduces the evidential paradigm. Semiotics also belongs to
this paradigmatic world, whose origins could be dated back to the 1870s
(Ginzburg 1989: 96–125).
Eisenstein follows the first paradigm. He explores the sciences
that do not provide exact descriptions — paleontology, psychoanalysis,
graphology, physiognomy, ethnography, and anthropology — and with
their aid he interprets gestures, intonation, and stories that are based on
pars pro toto. Among the traces that Eisenstein attempts to decipher and
classify are formal structures of language and thinking in images — pre-
logical thought. In fact paleontology is of fundamental importance to
the project because Eisenstein not only analyses fragments, he produces
text mainly in the form of fragments. The fragmentary nature of the
project even permeates the syntax, for parts of sentences are missing or
marked with dots, brackets and dashes, which convey intonation and
gestures. The text consists of notes, diary entries, analyses and
quotations from scientific literature and illustrated journals, pulp fiction,
belletristic literature, and political commentaries. The text material by
other authors in five different languages becomes a part of Eisenstein’s
own text, just like the glued-in pictures, photos, drawings, and
pictograms. Fragmentation and montage strongly characterize thinking
in the new, twentieth century.
Eisenstein, a master of dialectical montage in film, carries this
principle over into theory. His model attempts to outwit epistemological
instability through re-contextualization and interpretation. The
collection of selected quotations is taken from a variety of sources and
disciplines that are self-exclusive, like psychology and psychoanalysis or
mysticism and Marxism, for which Eisenstein finds a new, surprising
context and new references. Thus Eisenstein, who with his
intertextuality, referentiality, incompleteness of discourse, arbitrary
fragmentation, repetition, and shifts exhibits all the characteristics of a
post-modernist, brings us back to an interpretative narrative.
To understand the text in Method requires special skills. The
reader must move through the pages like through the labyrinth of a
hypertext, follow unmotivated changes of perspective and associative
jumps, read drawings and pictograms, and instead of a causal logic
follow the argumentation of the pictorial logic of the author; that is, the
reader must read a scholarly study according to rules that are otherwise

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only applied to poetic texts or films. Eisenstein does not see this as any
kind of rupture. He does not write linearly or diachronically, but
spirally, spherically, and simultaneously; he writes in the way that
thinking often functions. The ideal form of this publication would be a
hypertext, which would retain the virtual simultaneity of all the
references, but which would also make it impossible simply to follow the
flow of the text. The double nature of the old and the new forms
threaten to break the book apart from within. This makes reading the
work both a tortuous and a fascinating experience, as its author
intended: the beginning and end should be reversed and contradictions
united into a symbiosis of information and deformation.
For Eisenstein, the advent of film was the prerequisite for
creating a new kind of theory of art, thanks to the analytical nature of
the film itself. Taking new forms, it can provoke the reader, into
embracing new models of perception. The film art reveals the structure
that remains hidden in other arts., It enables one to manipulate the
direction, the attention, and the meaning, making the analysis
productive. Close-up, double exposure, and reverse movement are film
tricks, but Eisenstein understands them as reifications of figures of
thought. Above all, these figures determine the thinking of the author.
Method is a product of the visualization and cinematographization of
thought, a further experimental, ecstatic, and dialectical film by
Eisenstein.
References
Barck, Karl-Heinz 2000. Ästhetik/Ästhetisches, in Ästhetische Grundbegriffe, edited by

Karl-Heinz Barck et al., vol. 1, Stuttgart: Metzler .
Baudelaire, C. 1946 Les paradis artificiels. Paris: J. Vautrain.
Bohn, Anna. 2003. Film und Macht: Zur Kunsttheorie Sergei M. Eisensteins, 1930–1948.
Munich, diskurs film Verlag Schaudig & Ledig GbR, vol. 16.
Brenner, Anita. 1929. Idols behind Altars. New York: Payson & Clark.
Bulgakowa, Oksana. 1996. Sergej Eisenstein: drei Utopien. Architekturentwürfe zur Filmtheorie.
Berlin: PotemkinPress.
Crary, Jonathan. 1990. Techniques of the Observer. On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth
Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Covarrubias, Miguel. 1937. The Island of Bali. New York: A. A. Knopf.
Daudet, Léon. 1930. Les Rythmes de l’homme. Cancer et malaises. Paris, Bernard Grasset.
Eisenstein, Sergei. 1967. Izbrannye proizvedeniia v 6 tomakh, vol. 3. Moscow : Iskusstvo.
---------------- 1984. Eisenstein. Schriften, edited by Hans-Joachim Schlegel, vol. 4.
Munich: Hanser.
---------------- 1988. Das dynamische Quadrat. Schriften zum Film, edited by Oksana
Bulgakova and Dietmar Hochmuth. Leipzig, Reclam.
---------------- 1989a. “Dramaturgie der Filmform” in Herausforderung Eisenstein, edited by
Oksana Bulgakowa. Berlin: Akademie der Künste der DDR.

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---------------- 1989b. “Nachahmung als Beherrschung”, in Herausforderung Eisenstein,

edited by Oksana Bulgakowa, 46–48. Berlin: Akademie der Künste der DDR.
---------------- 1989c. “Über den Kriminalroman”, in Herausforderung Eisenstein, edited by
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Pia Tikka

John Biggart, Vesa Oittinen,

Spherical Book Platform

Aalto University School of Arts Design and Architecture

Outline-generating algorithm, Perspicamus Oy

The concept of interactive online publication platfrom “Spherical Book”

Spherical Book platform software and graphic design © Eduard Shagal

This anthology “Culture as Organization in Early Soviet

Pia Tikka (Editor-in-Chief)

The work has been supported by The Federation of Finnish Learned

Some emphasis on Taylorism

Some emphasis on Tektology

SOMATIC MONTAGE FOR IMMERSIVE CINEMA

This paper investigates a new notion of cinematic montage for

its movements, memory, and sensations, participates in the reading of the

Immersive cinema is an architectonically enveloping, embodied,

Fig. 1. The Zeiss Model II Star Projector3

In the 1970s, laser-light shows became a popular addition to the

In the 1980s, a few planetaria installed arrays of conventional

During the silent film era at the beginning of the twentieth

Earliest cinematography mimicked the conventions of theater and

The concept of montage is essential to modern cinematic

juxtaposition, displacing the viewer abruptly in the space-time continuum

Fig. 4. Helmar Lerski,

Eisenstein was interested in an aggressive notion of montage, his

space. The metric aspect of creating rhythm through the temporal

At the end of the nineteenth century, a great deal of interest

it is, on the contrary, by conceiving my body itself as a mobile object that I am

The concept of somatic montage is not restricted to cinema. Or,

approach to participatory interaction between film and viewer in forming

Arnheim, Rudolf. 1957. Film as Art. University of California Press.

EISENSTEIN IN THE PROLETKULT

In their respective fields, Aleksandr Bogdanov and Sergey

Bogdanov, Eisenstein, and the Proletkult

Editor-in-Chief: Pia Tikka

Biggart and Bulgakowa________EISENSTEIN IN THE PROLETKULT _________Page 1 of 20

“There are two specific trends that I physically cannot stand:

“A polemic. An unequal combat between an individual and an

Science in the service of ideology3

The years during which Eisenstein worked under the aegis of

1 Eisenstein, letter to his mother, 4 January 1921. Bulgakowa 2001a: 24.

quotations from their works, are indicated by double inverted commas.

Bulgakowa 2014: 423–448.

Biggart and Bulgakowa________EISENSTEIN IN THE PROLETKULT _________Page 2 of 20

phenomena with the unconditioned reflexes they produce (through the

6 For Eisenstein’s reference to Bekhterev, see “Montage of Film Attractions”, in

Revolution” (1933) in Taylor 2010,:243. Here, Eisenstein also mentions the

not intuitive creativity, but the rational constructive composition of effective

Biggart and Bulgakowa________EISENSTEIN IN THE PROLETKULT _________Page 3 of 20

Braun 1995: 172–177). In “Montage of film attractions” (1924) he

Bulgakowa 2001b: 175–178; and Bulgakowa 2014: 428–429.

(1882–1939), a former ‘proletarian poet’ and a disciple of Frederick Winslow

“Montage Expressiveness”. For the range of connotations acquired by ‘attraction’

Biggart and Bulgakowa________EISENSTEIN IN THE PROLETKULT _________Page 4 of 20

the Proletkult, provides an insight into the kind of ideological messages

The ambivalent messages of Strike

There is no ‘programmatic’ Marxism in Strike. The film had

59–61; and Bulgakowa 2001a: 47–48.

Biggart and Bulgakowa________EISENSTEIN IN THE PROLETKULT _________Page 5 of 20

with the party-political and trade union wings.16 It is significant that

The intellectual and the proletarian

The completion of Strike marked the point where Eisenstein’s

16 On the aspirations of the Proletkult to an independent role in workers’

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Biggart_SOCIOLOGY OF THE ARTS__Page 1 of 22