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Alexander Bogdanov and the Politics of Knowledge after the October Revolution

  • Book
  • © 2023

Overview

Authors:
  1. Maria Chehonadskih

    1. Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

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  • Illuminates the theoretical legacies of Soviet philosopher Alexander Bogdanov
  • Offers a history of Russian philosophy during the October Revolution
  • Focuses on epistemology, an under-studied topic in Marxist philosophy

Part of the book series: Marx, Engels, and Marxisms (MAENMA)

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiv
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • Maria Chehonadskih
    Pages 1-18

  3. Strategic Unity of Marxism and Empiricism

    • Maria Chehonadskih
    Pages 19-59

  4. The Science of Organisation

    • Maria Chehonadskih
    Pages 61-93

  5. Proletarian Monism

    • Maria Chehonadskih
    Pages 95-131

  6. Structures Take to the Streets

    • Maria Chehonadskih
    Pages 133-170

  7. The Encyclopaedia of Poor Life in Platonov’s Proletarian Literature

    • Maria Chehonadskih
    Pages 171-226

  8. Postscript

    • Maria Chehonadskih
    Pages 227-235

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 237-275
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Keywords

About this book

In this book, Maria Chehonadskih unsettles established narratives about the formation of a revolutionary canon after the October Revolution. Displacing the centre of gravity from dialectical materialism to the rapid dissemination, canonisation and decline of a striking convergence of empiricism and Marxism, she explores how this tendency, overshadowed by official historiography, establishes a new attitude to modernity and progress, nature and environment, agency and subjectivity, party and class, knowledge and power. The book traces the adventure of the synthesis of empiricism and Marxism across philosophy, science, politics, art and literature from the 1890s to the 1930s, offering a radical rethinking of the true scope and scale that the main proponent of Empirio-Marxism, Alexander Bogdanov, had on the post-revolutionary socialist legacies. Chehonadskih draws on both key and forgotten figures and movements, such as Proletkult, Productivism and Constructivism, filling a gap in the literature that will be particularly significant for Marxism, continental philosophy, art theory and Slavic studies specialists.

Reviews

“In the prodigious intellectual blossoming that marked the early years of the Russian Revolution, only to become buried under the official ideology of Marxism-Leninism, the ‘Proletkult’ and, within it, the multifaceted work of Alexander Bogdanov form a decisive point of heresy. Its striking originality and capacity to generate new conceptual imaginations in successive epistemic conjunctures had never been as clearly and completely explained as in this beautiful study by Maria Chehonadskih. It will become an absolute reference.” (Etienne Balibar, co-author of Reading Capital)

“The technological progress permanently changes our professional and everyday environment. How to find a new balance between the individuals and their changed conditions of life? That was the main question that Alexander Bogdanov tried to answer by his ‘universal organizational science’. In her well written and informative book Maria Chehonadskih offers a deep analysis of Bogdanov’s thinking and its influence on the post-revolutionary Soviet culture and shows its relevance for own time – a necessary reading for everybody who is interested in the relationship between technology and society.” (Boris Groys, author of Art Power and The Communist Postscript)

“A very welcome book on one of the major and most underappreciated thinkers of the last century.” (Carlo Rovelli author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and The Order of Time)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

    Maria Chehonadskih

About the author

Maria Chehonadskih is a Lecturer in Russian at Queen Mary University of London. Before joining Queen Mary, Chehonadskih was a Max Hayward Visiting Fellow at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford in 2019–2021. She received her PhD in Philosophy from the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), Kingston University in 2017.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Alexander Bogdanov and the Politics of Knowledge after the October Revolution

  • Authors: Maria Chehonadskih

  • Series Title: Marx, Engels, and Marxisms

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40239-5

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: History, History (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-40238-8Published: 31 December 2023

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-40241-8Due: 31 January 2024

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-40239-5Published: 30 December 2023

  • Series ISSN: 2524-7123

  • Series E-ISSN: 2524-7131

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XIV, 275

  • Topics: Epistemology, Russian, Soviet, and East European History, Political Economy/Economic Systems

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