Red Star: The First Bolshevik Utopia

‘Red Star’ has been on my to-read list for a long time, after I presumably heard the phrase ‘Bolshevik Utopia’ and was instantly intrigued. I was subsequently reminded by [b:Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future|24878857|Postcapitalism A Guide to Our Future|Paul Mason|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1437580637s/24878857.jpg|44526761], as Paul Mason discusses its Martian socialism. However getting hold of a copy did not prove easy; only recently did I finally get access to a library that has it. The edition I read was from 1984, which gave an interesting cast to the essays that accompany Bogdanov’s two novellas and one brief poem. These naturally compare Bogdanov’s visions with the USSR. A more contemporary comparison that show more occurred to me was [b:The Three-Body Problem|20518872|The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past #1)|Liu Cixin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1415428227s/20518872.jpg|25696480] and [b:The Dark Forest|23168817|The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #2)|Cixin Liu|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1412064931s/23168817.jpg|42713958]: thought-provoking near future sci-fi from ostensibly-still-communist China. Also Kim Stanley Robinson’s [b:Mars Trilogy|1655299|Mars Trilogy|Kim Stanley Robinson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1456997462s/1655299.jpg|1649931], which has definite echoes of ‘Red Star’. Despite being written in 1908 and 1913, Bogdanov’s novellas are prescient and striking. They depict a Martian society where work, gender, childrearing, and much else are entirely a matter of choice. It’s very appealing and reminded me of Le Guin’s [b:The Dispossessed|13651|The Dispossessed|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1353467455s/13651.jpg|2684122].

Like Le Guin, Bogdanov understands that Man Gawps At Utopia, a popular theme in the 19th century, isn’t terribly interesting in and of itself. Both ‘Red Star’ and [b:The Dispossessed|13651|The Dispossessed|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1353467455s/13651.jpg|2684122] deal with the new challenges and conflicts that eventuate in a fair, equal, peaceful society without capitalist competition. In Bogdanov’s case, the conflict is a shortage of natural resources. Perhaps the most vivid and memorable part of the book is a debate on how to deal with this. A man called Sterni takes the Thanos approach: genocide before birth control! Luckily, a very sensible woman called Netti argues that murdering everyone on Earth to steal their resources would be madness, and instead birth control and co-operation should be pursued. She convinces the crowd in a very powerful scene, which the narrator then replays a record of. This debate has fascinating resonances in light of the later policies of the USSR, a resource constrained socialist country amid hostile capitalist nations. Bogdanov is especially, tragically prescient in identifying that nationalism and imperialism can poison countries even without capitalism. He also predicts a good many technologies (nuclear bombs, video calling, etc), although the accompanying essays point out in a somewhat deflating fashion that so did many other sci-fi writers of that era.

Although ‘Red Star’ is justly the focus of the book, the other novel ‘Engineer Menni’ was also well worth reading. Rather than viewing Martian society from the perspective of an outsider from Earth, it recounts recent Martian history: a terraforming project to build canals. The narrative explains the project management of this in sometimes excessive detail, although it has an astute grasp on how gigantic infrastructure projects reshape society and culture. One of the accompanying essays also notes that three generations in the titular Menni’s family provide an analogy for Marx’s stages of development: feudalism, industrial capitalism, and socialism. He advances the view that these generations can sympathise with each other without true mutual comprehension. Likewise, the visit to Mars from Earth tries so hard to understand the utopia that it precipitates a mental breakdown. Bogdanov clearly thought the psychological transition to socialism would be difficult and time-consuming. This book is interesting for its historical context, for its prescience, and simply as a utopian vision. It has aged well. show less

Greeting Comrades! Board your Sputnik, and prepare for Space Communism.

Red Star is one of those weird historical scifi artifacts. Written in 1907 by an early Bolshevik and good friend of Lenin's, it imagines contact between contemporary Earth and a Martian socialist utopia. Leonid, our narrator, is a communist revolutionary who is selected as the idea ambassador between Earth and Mars by a secret Martian mission equipped with an anti-gravity spaceship. He journeys to a world where the revolution has won. Mars has advanced industries that require only a single shift per week from each citizen, managed by a complex statistical bureau. The people are happy, healthy, clear and logical. There's the standard utopian plans for production, show more housing, and health, but I enjoyed the little details that Bogdanov let slip in. In the socialist future, poetry will have strict rhyme patterns in geometric harmony with the universe, none of this free verse nonsense. Meetings will be orderly and to the point, with little bloviating or pointless repetition. Of course, Red Mars is not perfect. They're decades away from running out of key resources and a complete ecological collapse. The Martian's only options are to colonize Earth or Venus, both incredibly dangerous prospects. Somehow, central planning can't see a way out of their dilemma. Engineer Menni is a prequel of sorts, concerning the building of the Martian canals and a metaphor for dialectical materialism as an inter-generational drama. It simply isn't as good as Red Star. This edition also includes some great historical notes on Bogdanov and his place in history.

If science fiction is about (among other things) contact between radically different minds, than it is harder to image a mind more different from our own than the dedicated revolutionary and scientific mystic Alexander Bogdanov. show less

Estrela Vermelha é um livro em que o protagonista, alter ego de Bogdánov, tem um delírio profético no qual ele vê a futura relação do ocidente com o oriente médio sob a perspectiva de um árabe. No caso, é evidente que a Terra é o Oriente Médio, que os Marcianos, i.e. estadunidenses, tecnologicamente mais avançados e politicamente mais estáveis, desejam explorar em busca de combustível para seus meios de transporte. Pois para os americanos marcianos de Estrela Vermelha, um decrescimento econômico e necessidade de controle populacional são respectivamente a pior e segunda pior coisa que se pode fazer.

Eles tentarão primeiro ir para as terras selvagens da América Latina de Vênus, onde a matéria prima ainda está show more intocada. O fracasso inevitável os fará se virar para a conturbada Terra.

Pois Marte é vasto, homogêneo, contínuo de mar a mar, monoglota, sexualmente liberal, tecnocrata em último nível e está destruindo rapidamente seu ecosistema. Já a Terra é imersa em brigas internas de diferentes povos e facções de línguas e costumes distintos em constante guerra entre si, mas, em seu retrocesso, ainda não tocaram nas preciosas jazidas de combustível. Os marcianos apenas não a tomaram ainda por conta da inevitável guerra de guerrilhas e crescente radicalismo que se sucederá. Dum modo ou de outro, a guerra será justa, pois o sistema deles é claramente superior, e na média final, é preferível 1 bilhão de marcianos felizes do que 1 bilhão de terráqueos oprimidos e oprimindo.

Bem, Leonid, como bom imigrante em Marte, não consegue se adaptar à população local, condescendente com o terráqueo e seus jeitos primitivos, e comete um ato terrorista, sendo deportado de volta a seu lugar de origem. Devemos, é claro, ler o comunismo de Leonid como uma alegoria ao jihadismo (ele, afinal, sonhavam ter múltiplas esposas).



Eu estava prestes a reconsiderar o título de utopia a Marte de Bogdánov, mas aí eu lembrei que eles tem um estoque aparentemente infinito de tomboy gfs e reconheci que a denominação é correta. show less

Red Star is from 1908. With good reason, I first heard of Bogdanov in Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars. Alexander was an “Old Bolshevik”, friend of Lenin and Trotsky, Victor Serge and many other early revolutionaries. This novella tells of a utopian civilization on Mars after a revolution. As an article of science fiction, it has some pretty accurate predictions and the influence is clearly felt in other early utopian SF and the works of Ursula K LeGUin. As a novel, it was slow, but as a creative product of historical ideology: 5 stars. The ideas in here read like pamphlet from the era and it was very exciting to connect the dots and read this in light of Serge’s book as where it perfectly falls in line with that year it was show more written/published. Matching this in other media, I watched the 1929 silent Soviet SF film, Aelita. Another Mars utopia. It got right a few things: 1) cutting edge Futurist architecture and Constructivist sets, 2) the message of solidary extending beyond borders/ beyond planets, 3) a woman leader. It misses the milestone of true visual revolutionary art with too many lengthy scenes of the bloody bourgeois having diner parties! Consider this film next to Lang’s Metropolis that came out three years later. show less

Alexander Bogdanov was an original member of the Bolshevik Party who wrote two science fiction novels - 'Red Star' (1908), and 'Engineer Menni' (1913) - to empart his ideas and stimulate revolutionary feeling in his audience. Red Star: The First Bolshevik Utopia includes them both.

Red Star is the story of Leonid, a member of the Bolshevik Party during the still intense period following the 1905 revolution, who is approached by another revolutionary, Menni, who claims to be from some advanced secret society and offers him a place within it if he will take part in a mission to Mars. Leonid agrees and is taken by Menni to his ship where Menni and his crew reveal they are, in fact, Martians. Leonid's mission, he is told, is to serve as a show more link between the two human races of Earth and Mars. On Mars Leonid discovers a communist utopia: an advanced, peaceful society of perfect equality, unity and freedom - one which however forecasts economic difficulties in the future, which have added the weight of need to the wish to befriend those of Earth.

Engineer Menni is the story (told briefly by Menni to Leonid in Red Star) of the great engineer Menni, the man in Red Star's past who oversaw the construction of Mars's canals in order to make vast swathes of previously arid desert habitable. This is the story of a man of genius driven to complete his epic Project, and the setbacks as he contends with corrupt capitalists taking their opportunity to profit at the expense of the proletariat doing the work, and the global Republic funding the Project. Menni's murdering of his assistant - who is allied with the capitalists - leads to his imprisonment and the disintergration of the Project in his absense, until Netti, a young and influential socialist, brings about his return.

I highly recommend this book: both stories are more than worth reading and should be better known. Engineer Menni I particularly enjoyed, having a brilliant political storyline and being well written as well as full of ideas (communist, and more generally political, and even on the philsophy of pragmatism). show less

A 1908 Russian Scifi book? Well obviously I should try that.

Várias questões controversas nesta utopia escrita entre as duas grandes revoluções russas (1905 e 1917).
A questão ambiental (homem x natureza) e um certo positivismo progressista ainda refletem o pensamento do século XIX, o que torna a utopia de Bogdánov datada nesses aspectos, quando, no Século XXI os setores mais avançados se preocupam com o bem viver e a preservação da natureza - contra o capitalismo.
Porém, a libertação do jugo machista é um ponto alto (páginas 137 e 138).
Outro aspecto fantástico e que o autor prevê a ruína do socialismo isolado num único país página 149.