A Red, Green Planet: Alexander Bogdanov’s Interplanetary Utopia

In his science-fiction novels, Red Star (1908) and Engineer Menni (1913), Russian physician and Bolshevik philosopher, Alexander A. Bogdanov, portrays an ideal society set on Mars. Leonid, an Earthling elected by Martians to visit their planet, describes a world in which war does not exist, class struggle has been overcome, and science and technology have been developed to the greatest possible extent. While these novels tell us much about Bogdanov’s utopian dreams, they also hint at the Earth system science research that was conducted in Russia during his lifetime. Bogdanov’s novels, in fact, reflect some of the topics that had been featured prominently in Russian research trajectories since the turn of the 20th century, and which included, for instance, space technology, cosmism, and the biosphere. Most importantly, he seemed to subtly outline the environmental problems that are derived from the long-term exploitation of natural resources. These are the main issues that this paper explores with the aim of providing a broader understanding of the scientific debate that occurred in the Earth and planetary sciences in the early 20th century in Russia—aspects that often lie at the intersection of science and utopia.