17 Facts About Alexander Bogdanov

Alexander Bogdanov was a key figure in the early history of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, originally established 1898, and of its Bolshevik faction.

Alexander Bogdanov co-founded the Bolsheviks in 1903, when they split with the Menshevik faction.

Alexander Bogdanov was a rival within the Bolsheviks to Vladimir Lenin, until being expelled in 1909 and founding his own faction Vpered.

Alexander Bogdanov came across the works of Lenin in 1896, particularly the latter's critique of Peter Berngardovich Struve.

Alexander Bogdanov dated his support for Bolshevism from autumn of 1903.

Back in Russia during the 1905 Revolution, Alexander Bogdanov was arrested on 3 December 1905 and held in prison until 27 May 1906.

For four years after the collapse of the Russian Revolution of 1905, Alexander Bogdanov led a group within the Bolsheviks, who demanded a recall of Social Democratic deputies from the State Duma, and he vied with Lenin for the leadership of the Bolshevik faction.

In June 1909, Alexander Bogdanov was defeated by Lenin at a Bolshevik mini-conference in Paris organized by the editorial board of the Bolshevik magazine Proletary and was expelled from the Bolsheviks.

Alexander Bogdanov broke with the Vpered in 1912 and abandoned revolutionary activities.

Alexander Bogdanov had no party-political involvement in the Russian Revolution of 1917, although he did publish a number of articles and books about the events that unfurled around him.

At the beginning of February 1918, Alexander Bogdanov denied that the Bolsheviks' October seizure to power had constituted a conspiracy.

Alexander Bogdanov refused multiple offers to rejoin the party and denounced the new regime as similar to Aleksey Arakcheyev's arbitrary and despotic rule in the early 1820s.

In 1918, Alexander Bogdanov became a professor of economics at the University of Moscow and director of the newly established Socialist Academy of Social Sciences.

Between 1918 and 1920, Alexander Bogdanov co-founded the proletarian art movement Proletkult and was its leading theoretician.

On 8 September 1923, Alexander Bogdanov was among a number of people arrested by the GPU on suspicion of being involved in them.

Alexander Bogdanov was released after five weeks on 13 October; however, his file was not closed until a decree passed by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on 16 January 1989.

In 1922 whilst visiting London to negotiate the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement, Alexander Bogdanov acquired a copy of the British surgeon Geoffrey Keynes's book Blood Transfusion.