Red Star by Alexander Bogdanov

Ingenious Bolshevik utopia on Mars

Alexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov was one of the founding members of the Bolshevik party in Russia and a friend of Vladimir Lenin until they had a falling out. Bogdanov was also a physician, philosopher, and a writer of science fiction. His first and best-known work in that genre is his novel Red Star. The book was published in 1908, after the failed Russian Revolution of 1905. Bogdanov nevertheless kept Bolshevik hopes alive with this novel about a utopian Communist society on Mars. An English translation of Red Star by Charles Rougle was published in 1984 by the University of Indiana Press, in a volume edited by Loren Graham and Richard Stites.

Leonid, the narrator of Red Star, is a mathematician living in St. Petersburg and, like Bogdanov, a Bolshevik revolutionary. Through his political party activities he meets an unusual man named Menni, who claims to be a visitor from the South. After they strike up a friendship, however, Menni reveals to Leonid that he is a Martian. His people have already conquered the problem of space travel, and he invites Leonid to join him on a journey to his home planet. In fact, Menni confesses that he has intentionally recruited Leonid as a possible cultural exchange ambassador through whom the two cultures can learn about one another before the Martians reveal their existence to the people of Earth. Leonid, or Lenni as the Martians call him, agrees to the trip and accompanies Menni to Mars, where he finds an ideal communist society in operation, the likes of which he and his Bolshevik comrades have envisioned in their dreams.

I read a lot of utopian and dystopian science fiction from the early years of the genre. I enjoy experiencing the futuristic visions of antiquated writers and seeing how those visions measure up to subsequent history. Old sci-fi literature, however, is often unrealistic in its speculations and clunky in style. Sometimes this can add to a book’s charm, but sometimes it merely annoys. Bogdanov’s Red Star, however, reads as remarkably intelligent, eloquent, and relevant more than a century after it was written. Some credit for that is likely due to Rougle, who’s translation renders Bogdanov’s prose as lively and articulate as if it were written last week.

Bogdanov himself, however, deserves commendation for how well thought-out his utopia is. Nothing in Bogdanov’s vision of the future is there without a reason. When he describes the fictional technological advances of Martian society, his speculations are supported by reasonable scientific justifications. There’s no superfluous fantasy just for the sake of “Wouldn’t it be cool if . . .” The same holds true for the book’s political content. Every element of the story is specifically designed to express Bogdanov’s ideas on Bolshevism. When the characters talk about events in Martian history or policies of the Martian government, there is always a well-conceived reason for those decisions, within Bogdanov’s conception of Marxism.

Unlike a lot of utopian novels, Bogdanov does actually include a satisfying fictional narrative amongst all the political, scientific, and economic theory. The book doesn’t read like a stuffy treatise. An unconventional romance livens things up and doesn’t feel gratuitous. If there is an aspect of the book that feels a little overdone, it’s the focus on the narrator’s mental health. Lenni’s propensity for mood swings and hallucinations is at times a bit too histrionic. That is a small complaint, however, in what is otherwise a fascinating and entertaining read. Having not only influenced many subsequent authors in the genre but also the very development of the Soviet Union itself, Red Star is truly a landmark work of Russian science fiction that will be of interest to more than just Bolsheviks.