A. Bogdanov's Novels: Utopia or Artistic Reflection of the Future Sociality and Dilemmas of the Author's Personality?

Rozin Vadim Markovich Doctor of Philosophy Chief Scientific Associate, Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences  109240, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Goncharnaya, 12 str.1, kab. 310 rozinvm@gmail.com Other publications by this author

We are talking about two novels by Bogdanov:  "Red Star" (1908) and "Engineer Manny" (1912). They are usually considered utopias, and the second novel is interpreted as the first rehearsal of the idea of "Tectology" (on the Internet, such an understanding migrates from site to site: "The novel is the popularization of A. Bogdanov's scientific ideas about "organizational" science, which he later outlined in the work "Tectology")." Bogdanov wrote his first novel during the difficult period of his break with Lenin and Plekhanov, which is indirectly reflected in the first lines of The Red Star, where the main character, Comrade Leonid, expressing, I assume, Bogdanov's position, explains his break with another hero, Anna Nikolaevna, partially reflecting the views of Bogdanov's opponents:

"Gradually it took the form of a deep ideological disagreement – in understanding our attitude to revolutionary work and in understanding the meaning of our own connection. She went to the revolution under the banner of duty and sacrifice, I – under the banner of my free desire. She joined the great movement of the proletariat as a moralist who finds satisfaction in its highest morality, I – as an amoralist who simply loves life, wants its highest flourishing and therefore enters into its current, which embodies the main path of history to this flourishing. For Anna Nikolaevna, proletarian ethics was sacred in itself; I believed that it was a useful device necessary for the working class in its struggle, but transitory, like this struggle itself and the system of life that generates it" ^[1].

     In fact, the disagreements were much more serious. Lenin and his followers, comrades Bolsheviks, believed that the working class of Russia should take power and the workers are quite ready for this in terms of their development. Bogdanov, on the basis of observations of social reality, coming from a cultural point of view, was sure that, on the contrary, the workers were not mature enough to solve such a task, they were not ready yet, that there was no necessary science on which they could rely, and therefore the main work should be reduced, firstly, to the construction of such a science, secondly, to the education, development and cultivation of workers. As B. Legrand wrote in 1929 in the introduction to the novel: according to Bogdanov, set out in the pamphlet "Questions of Socialism", "... the proletariat as a class, before setting its task to conquer power, must master science, rework it in accordance with its class interests, create and develop a new science – a universal organizational science as Bogdanov called it, which should be the science of building a new socialist society. Any other attempt to implement the program of the proletariat, according to Bogdanov, would be "a program of adventure, the darkest in the history of the proletariat, the most severe in consequences... The only end of the adventure would be the long reign of the Iron Heel" ^{[2, p. 38]}.

Elsewhere in the same pamphlet, Bogdanov formulates his conviction as follows: until the working class masters science, it cannot, should not attempt to implement socialism (see ^{[2, p. 69]}). His task, according to Bogdanov, is: to collect, develop, systematize harmoniously the germs of a new culture, the elements of socialism arising in the bowels of the capitalist system, without attempting to directly seize power and transform society until the accumulation of the necessary elements of culture (see [ibid., pp. 74, 103])."

  Well, in the second novel "Engineer Manny", in my opinion, it is impossible to find a popularization of the ideas of organizational science, there are only two fragments where the author speaks only about the idea of such a science, no more. "On this path, Natty (Manny's son and follower. – V.R.) came to his greatest discovery – laid the foundation for a universal organizational science. He sought simplification and unification of scientific methods, and for this he studied and compared the most diverse techniques used by mankind in its knowledge and work; it turned out that both are in the closest relationship, that theoretical methods arose entirely from practical ones, and that all of them can be reduced to a few simple schemes…In the end, he came to the following conclusion: no matter how different the elements of the universe are–electrons, atoms, things, people, ideas, planets, stars–and no matter how different their combinations are in appearance, it is possible to establish a small number of general methods by which these elements of any kind are connected to each other, as in in the spontaneous process of nature, and in human activity. Natty was able to clearly identify three main of these “universal organizational methods”; his students went further, developed and investigated the findings more precisely. This is how a universal science emerged, which quickly covered the entire organizational experience of mankind… Since that time, solving the most complex organizational tasks has become a matter not of individual talent or genius, but of scientific analysis, like mathematical calculation in practical mechanics problems. Thanks to this, when the era of radical reform of the entire social system came, the greatest difficulties of the new organization were relatively easily and quite systematically overcome: just as before natural science became an instrument of scientific technology, so now universal science has become an instrument of scientific construction of social life as a whole. And even earlier, the same science found wide application in the development of working class organizations and their preparation for the last, decisive struggle" ^[3].

  This is all, of course, only an idea here, not even a sketch of the theory.

Reading both novels multiplies questions (at least for me). Why is this a utopia, because Bogdanov in the Red Star describes socialism as he understands it, and clearly believes that such a society can be built? The term utopia comes from the other-Greek. O? "not" + "a place that does not exist" or according to another version, "a good place". Can the texts of Plato's "State" or the "Red Star" be considered utopias? Rather, these are social projects carried out by the first in the form of a dialogue, the second – a work of art.

What is typical for a social project? The idea, its development (thinking through based on social knowledge), the installation for the implementation of the developed project ^{[14, pp. 84-88]}. In the "State" Plato formulates the idea of an ideal state and discusses the conditions for its implementation. "So let's," Plato says through the mouth of Socrates, "let's mentally build a state from the very beginning. As you can see, our needs create it" ^{[12, p. 130]}. Among the conditions of implementation, he refers to the existence of the project itself and the relevant knowledge (borrowed by him from his other works), the training of philosophers, if I may say so, government workers and reformers who decided to devote their lives to social reconstruction, and finally, the search for enlightened rulers. "Meanwhile," says Socrates, "it is enough for one such person to appear, who has the state under his command, and this person will do everything that is not believed now... After all, if the ruler establishes the laws and customs that we have analyzed, it is possible that citizens will willingly comply with them" ^{[12, p. 283]}. Plato also understands that it is impossible to create a new social order without radically altering a person (that is, without taking people out of the cave into sunlight). Plato places his main hopes here not on coercion, but on persuasion, encouragement and education. "If someone forcibly drags him up the steepness, uphill, and does not let him go until he takes him out into the sunlight, will he not suffer and be outraged by such violence? And when he came out into the light, his eyes would be so amazed by the radiance that he could not see a single object of those whose authenticity he is told" ^{[12, p. 296]}.

As you know, Plato failed to implement the project of restructuring the state. He did not find an enlightened ruler and could not captivate free citizens with his ideas. It is not surprising, therefore, that in his declining years Plato bitterly writes in the "Laws": "everything indicated now is unlikely to ever have an opportunity to implement, so that everything happens according to our word. It is unlikely that there will be people who will be satisfied with such a structure of society... All this is exactly a story about a dream, just a skillful modeling of the state and citizens from wax!" ^{[13, p. 198]}.

Bogdanov borrows a lot from Plato, but also from Marx. Plato has the methodology of social design, Marx has the object of design – socialism, the organization and economy of which is based on the rejection of private property, rational management and distribution, on free (without money) satisfaction of needs. At the same time, Bogdanov anticipates (more precisely, he works out the project) the problems that the socialist economy will face: the difficulties of planning Mont Blanc for the needs of citizens and countless economic processes. "The numbers change every hour," Manny explained, "within an hour, several thousand people managed to declare their desire to switch from one job to another. The central statistical mechanism notes this all the time, and every hour the electric transmission carries its messages everywhere…

– The Institute of Calculations has its agents everywhere, who monitor the movement of products in warehouses, the productivity of all enterprises and the change in the number of employees in them. This way it is found out exactly how much and what should be produced for a certain period and how many working hours are required for this. Then it remains for the institute to calculate for each branch of labor the difference between what is and what should be, and report it everywhere. The flow of volunteers then restores the balance.

– And the consumption of food is not limited by anything?

– Absolutely nothing: everyone takes what he needs, and as much as he wants.

– And at the same time, nothing like money is required, no evidence of the amount of work performed or obligations to perform it, or anything like that at all?

– Nothing like that. There is never a shortage of free labor even without it: labor is a natural need of a developed socialist person, and all kinds of disguised or explicit coercion to work are completely unnecessary for us.

– But if consumption is not limited by anything, then are there not sharp fluctuations in it that can overturn all statistical calculations?..

– The difficulties here are very big. The Institute of Calculations should keep a sharp eye on new inventions and changes in the natural conditions of production in order to accurately take them into account. A new machine is being introduced – it immediately requires the movement of labor both in the area where it is used, and in machine production, and sometimes in the production of materials for one or another industry. Ore is being depleted, new mineral wealth is being discovered – again the movement of labor in a number of rail tracks, etc. All this must be calculated from the very beginning, if not quite accurately, then with a sufficient degree of approximation, and this is not at all easy until direct observation data are obtained" ^[1].

This is how Gosplan and the USSR State Security Council see it. Bogdanov, of course, could not have predicted that the economy and economy based on socialist planning and distribution would lose to the capitalist market, adjusted on the basis of social science and experience in overcoming economic crises.   

Many questions arise when reading Bogdanov's novels. For example, reading "Red Star", I got to the episode where one of the leaders of the Martians, Sterney, offers to destroy the Earthlings. "On Mars," he explains to other leaders, "the reserves of radio matter necessary as an engine for interplanetary communication and as an instrument for the decomposition and synthesis of all elements were coming to an end: it was only being spent, and there were no funds for its renewal… The people of the Earth own it, and in no case will they voluntarily give it up, will not give up any significant share of its surface. This follows from the whole nature of their culture. Its basis is property, protected by an organized population. Although even the most civilized tribes of the Earth exploit in fact only an insignificant part of the forces of nature available to them, but the desire to seize new territories from them never weakens. Systematic plundering of lands and property of less cultured tribes is called colonial policy among them and is regarded as one of the main tasks of their state life. One can imagine how they would react to a natural and reasonable offer from our side – to give us part of their continents, in return for which we would teach them and help them use the rest incomparably better... For them, colonization is only a matter of brute force and violence; and whether we want or not, they will force us to accept this point of view in relation to them…

And now, if we took a part of the earth's surface for ourselves through the necessary violence, then it would undoubtedly lead to the unification of all earthly humanity in one sense of earthly patriotism, in merciless racial hatred and malice against our colonists; the extermination of aliens in any way, up to the most treacherous, would become in the eyes of people by a sacred and noble feat, giving immortal glory. The existence of our colonists would become absolutely unbearable. You know that the destruction of life is generally a very easy matter, even for our culture; we are immeasurably stronger than earthly people in the event of an open struggle, but with unexpected attacks they can kill us as successfully as they usually do with each other. It should also be noted that the art of extermination is incomparably more developed among them than all other aspects of their peculiar culture.

And in the end, after long hesitation and fruitless painful waste of energy, the matter would inevitably come to the formulation of the question that we, conscious beings and foreseeing the course of events, must accept from the very beginning: colonization of the Earth requires the complete extermination of earthly humanity…– It is necessary to understand the necessity and firmly look into her eyes, no matter how harsh she is. We are facing one of two things: either a halt in the development of our life, or the destruction of alien life on Earth. There is nothing third in front of us" ^[1].

What I don't understand here is: how can it be that the socialists (according to Marx, the next after the capitalists, a higher stage of human development, and obviously more humane) propose to destroy the population of an entire planet? Even as a scenario, it doesn't fit in my head. However, why does it not fit, because Marx wrote in Capital: "The hour of capitalist private property is striking. Expropriators are expropriated" ^{[9, pp. 772-773]}, and didn't the Bolsheviks destroy an entire class (the bourgeoisie), a significant part of the wealthy peasants (kulaks), sent intellectuals abroad (many philosophers and humanitarians), systematically destroyed the enemies of the people. Is the Martian Sterney, who proposes to destroy people, significantly different from Trotsky, who explains why the Bolsheviks expelled philosophers in the 20s? Trotsky in an interview with an American journalist Strong called this action "Bolshevik humanism": "We sent these people because there was no reason to shoot them, and it was impossible to tolerate them" ^[8].

As can be seen from the beginning of the next novel "Engineer Manny", in the end, the Martians leaned towards humanism, overriding even the Bolshevik approach, they decided "for the near future to abandon any direct, active interference in the affairs of the Earth; they think to limit themselves to studying it and gradually familiarizing terrestrial humanity with the older culture of Mars. And I quite agree with them that caution is necessary in this matter. So, if the discoveries of their science about the structure of matter were now known on Earth, then the militarism of hostile nations would have in their hands destructive weapons of unprecedented power, and the whole planet would be devastated in a few months" ^[3].

  The fluctuations of the protagonist of the "Red Star" Leonid are also incomprehensible to me. On the one hand, he seems to be a very reasonable person, prepared to be an intermediary between Martians and humans, on the other – as it turns out, he absolutely cannot control his actions (having lost his mind, he kills Sterney, who offered to destroy the Earthlings). Similarly, in "Engineer Manny", the main character, a brilliant engineer who planned the construction of canals on Mars, and also very reasonable, without hesitation, in a fit of anger, kills his assistant engineer Maro, who weaves intrigues against him.

On the one hand, Leonid is ready to take on the mission to carry out the ideas of Martians on Earth, but on the other hand, he doubts whether an intellectual can solve such a task without the help of the working class. "For the second time," Leonid reflects, "what broke my mental strength was the very nature of the culture into which I tried to enter with my whole being: I was overwhelmed by its height, the depth of its social connection, the purity and transparency of its relations between people. Sterney's speech, which roughly expressed the incommensurability of the two types of life, was only an excuse, only the last push that threw me into that dark abyss, to which the contradiction between my inner life and the entire social environment, at the factory, in the family, in communication with friends, then spontaneously and uncontrollably led me. And again, wasn't this contradiction much stronger and more acute for me, an intellectual revolutionary, who always did nine-tenths of his work either alone or in conditions of unilateral inequality with fellow employees, as their teacher and leader, in an environment of isolation of my personality among others? Could not the contradiction be weaker and softer for a person who experiences nine-tenths of his working life, at least in a primitive and undeveloped, but still in a friendly environment, with its, perhaps, somewhat rude, but real equality of employees?" ^[1].

In the second novel, this contradiction between the personality and the social environment (the working collective) reaches its limit. Engineer Manny, deeply aware of such a conflict, decides to retire from life, commit suicide. It turns out that Bogdanov, who is a bright personality, in the person of Manny decides to deal with her in favor of the socialist cause. In "Memories of Childhood" in 1925, Bogdanov interprets his personality in this way.

"Personality is a small cell of the living tissue of society, its subjectivism expresses only its limitations. I fought against subjectivism when I met it in other people; naturally, I tried to overcome it in myself as well… It is unavoidable that a person looks from his own point of view, operates with his own methods. But in what sense is all this “his" for him? He himself belongs to a collective – a class, a social group, or several such collectives, whose life has given the content of his practical activity and his thinking to varying degrees and degrees. Personality is nothing more than a small center of application of social forces, one of the countless points of their intersection. Her point of view and way of understanding belong to her only in the sense that they find their embodiment and expression in her; it would be more correct to say that the personality belongs to them, and not vice versa…The method is bigger than a person" ^[10].

Almost the same thing was said by my teacher, G.P. Shchedrovitsky: "From all sides I hear – A man! Personality! – it's all lies. I am a vessel with living, self–developing thinking. I am thinking thinking, its hypostasis and materialization, the organism of thought and nothing else. This is how I view myself and treat myself, and many of the difficulties of my individual life are connected precisely with a clear understanding of my special nature, with the fact that I am a bundle of thinking and must live according to its laws... I am always thinking, and this is a pleasure, the equal of which I do not know. I mean one thing all the time: I am a knecht, a servant of my thinking, and then there is the action of thinking, mine and others who, in particular, communicate. This is my essence of a person. Thinking is thinking, the game is playing" ^{[15, p. 9]}.

I also don't understand the remark about science at the end of the novel "Engineer Manny". Such a science should be understandable to workers, integrate the capabilities of different sciences (physical, biological, social), a science that describes universal laws that people's organizational actions obey. Bogdanov believes that it is on the basis of these laws that socialism can be built and the main problems of humanity can be solved. At the same time, in both novels, he shows that the social element rules the ball. The latter is formed by the actions of individuals and deindividual processes (economic, social, historical, cultural), and it is impossible to understand how one is connected with the other.

It seems that the rational activity and science of the Martians should provide them with unhindered progress, but the trouble is that nature is being depleted and there are no resources left, remnants of selfish behavior remain, almost insane solutions are proposed (to destroy Earthlings). Or in the second novel, engineer Manny has to foresee and plan everything in such a way as to ensure the well-managed and uninterrupted construction of Martian canals. However, the bad luck: the workers' unions, the government, the syndicates of the bourgeoisie, society act based on their interests, weave intrigues, fight with each other, which, in the end, leads to the collapse of the entire project and the imprisonment of Manny.

The science that Bogdanov offers in the novel "Engineer Manny", which becomes clear a little later, is "Tectology". Do its laws take into account the social element and the difference of cultures (Martian and terrestrial), which Bogdanov described so convincingly in both novels? He is sure that yes, he takes it into account, I doubt it very much. It is unlikely that the main social and psychological processes can be reduced to organizational experience (organization-disorganization). "In general," Bogdanov writes in Tectology, "the whole process of man's struggle with nature, subjugation and exploitation of its elemental forces is nothing but the process of organizing the world for man, in the interests of his life and development. This is the objective meaning of human labor.

The organizational nature of cognition and thinking in general is even more obvious. Its function is to coordinate the facts of experience into coherent groupings – thoughts and systems of thoughts, i.e. theories, doctrines, sciences, etc.; and this means to organize experience. The exact sciences organize all modern machinery of machine production; they are capable of this only because they themselves represent the organized experience of the past, primarily also technical.

Artistic creativity has its principle of harmony and harmony, which means organization. It organizes people's ideas, feelings, moods by its own special methods, closely touching knowledge, often directly merging with it, like fiction, poetry, painting. In art, the organization of ideas and the organization of things are inseparable. For example, taken by themselves, an architectural structure, a statue, a painting are systems of "dead" elements – stone, metal, canvas, paints; but the vital meaning of these works lies in those complexes of images and emotions that unite around them in the human psyche.

We see that human activity – from its simplest to its most complex forms – is reduced to organizing processes" ^[4]. 

However, modern research shows that even many processes in production and construction, not to mention cognition, thinking, artistic creativity, are not reduced to organizational experience and management ^{[7; 14]}.

By the way, organizational science does not answer the question of what type of sociality is assumed in the construction of socialism (whether private property will be preserved for someone, who will be the social hegemon, how power will be chosen, what relationships of people and communities are assumed, whether the right will be preserved or the laws will protect only the proletariat, etc.). Reading both Romana, we can't get answers to these questions. There is a suspicion that Tectology bypasses the most important problem – the definition and constitution of the coming sociality. 

Interestingly, almost a hundred years later, the methodological school of G.P. Shchedrovitsky, from whom I studied, was subjected to the same criticism. One of the critics calls the approach of methodologists "managerial fetishism". "The essence of managerial fetishism boils down to the fact that any shortcomings of the system can be eliminated without restructuring its foundations due to effective management (management). The prosperity of the system depends solely on the number and quality of effective managers to whom it will entrust its fate. This philosophy was very close to the part of the Soviet leadership that did not want to change anything in the social order, but at the same time understood that literally everything needed to be changed in order to survive. Methodologists inspired her with false hope that there was a way out, it was enough for those in power to buy their “socio-philosophical stone”...Although they did not have time to receive official recognition of the theory of methodologists, they were given unprecedented freedom in the USSR to spread their unorthodox views…Gorbachev went the other way: he preferred to break the system, and the methodologists turned out to be historically unclaimed" ^[11].

But let's not criticize Bogdanov from the standpoint of modernity, it's better to try to understand him as the author of "Red Star" and "Engineer Manny", as a man of his time. To do this, we will first offer a brief description of his personality, bearing in mind the solution of our problem.  

Bogdanov's biography suggests that he was divided as a person. On the one hand, being at one time the second person in the Bolshevik Party and enjoying great authority among the workers, he was no stranger to the desire for power and leadership. On the other hand, Bogdanov saw the dangers of both. He deliberately broke with the Bolsheviks (in June 1909, Bogdanov was expelled from the Bolshevik center at a meeting of the expanded editorial board of the Proletarian newspaper, and in January 1910 at the He was removed from the Central Committee at the Paris Plenum), and hinted that Lenin's victory could lead to great trouble ("The only end of the adventure would be a long reign of Iron Heel"). Although Bogdanov focused on building Tectology, teaching and experiments on blood transfusion, he certainly retains a sense of his importance and a desire to influence the course of building socialism in Russia.

And he understands socialism in his own way: rather economically and as a reasonable activity. Both, in his opinion, should be based on scientific knowledge. But Bogdanov understands science in a very modern way for his time: of course, it should be an exact science, but it combined the achievements of natural, biological and social sciences on the basis of the Marxist method and, no less importantly, practice-oriented. This practice, Bogdanov is convinced, is a universal organization. Why an organization? Well, it was a sign of the times: the ideas of building a new person and culture, "life-building", as they wrote then, were in the air.

"We feel perfectly well," wrote I. Vereshchagin, "that architectural requirements can and should be imposed not only on buildings, but also on any thing, any person and his face. At present, not only new factories are being built, but also a new culture and a new person" ^{[1, p.130]} "A new society," L.S.Vygotsky, the creator of Soviet psychology, declares in the same years, "creates a new person. When they talk about the melting of man as an undoubted feature of the new humanity, and about the artificial creation of a new biological type, then this will be the only and first species in biology that will create itself... In the future society, psychology will be the science of a new person" ^{[5, p. 436]}).

Arrested by the GPU in September 1923, Bogdanov wrote to F.E. Dzerzhinsky: "Universal organizational science. Isn't universal ruin, isn't world disorganization speaking harshly and imperiously about its necessity? And when our working class, by the power of things, had to take up the organization of the whole life of the country, wasn't it the most tragic thing in its position that it had to do it by touch, and with the help of specialists of the old science, which itself never set tasks in general? And is a universal scientific organization of the world economy into socialism conceivable without a developed tool – a universal organizational science? The question of a single economic plan is being raised with cruel urgency. Ask our specialist scientists - Professors Groman, Bazarov, the head of the State Planning Committee Krzhizhanovsky himself – is organizational science necessary and useful for solving this issue?" ^[10].

Methodologically, Bogdanov is also influenced by the rapidly developing cultural studies at the beginning of the twentieth century. In fact, he explains the failures of contact between Mars and Earth precisely in a culturological way, by the difference in the history and cultures of both civilizations of the solar system.

These personality traits allow me to build an explanation of some of the features of the artistic reality of Bogdanov's novels and outline an understanding of the problems formulated above.

In my opinion, the conflict with Lenin was only a kind of trigger for Bogdanov's revision of his own ideas and values. The problematic situation was something like this: Bogdanov felt that he himself did not understand what socialism, to which the Bolsheviks called, would be, moreover, he saw that the Russian workers, due to their inherent ideas and myths, would hardly be able to correctly assimilate the ideas of Marx, and finally, the role of the leaders themselves was unclear, or they should command and direct, like Lenin, or form and change consciousness, preparing the conditions for further steps. Bogdanov resolves this situation in two ways, both in rational discourse, having written a number of articles, and in an artistic form. The latter gave additional opportunities: it was possible to live the impending future and treat it not only rationally, but also sensually, emotionally. responding with both thoughts and experiences.

It will not be a revelation to the reader that Bogdanov took the novel "The War of the Worlds" by H. G. Wells, which was published a few years before the Red Star, as a scheme for constructing the artistic reality of the first novel. This is indicated by the coincidence of the planets and the invasion of the Martians (the scenario proposed by Sterney). However, it is natural that Bogdanov radically changed all the events. Before describing them, I will note two types of events that are created by the artist in a literary work in a genre close to "Red Star" and "Engineer Manny"..  

The first type is events that are built up in response to a fully realized problem or task. For example, the events of the Martian Institute of calculations are an artistic description of the socialist distribution model, which Bogdanov first thought out within the framework of scientific discourse. Or another example. Based on two worlds  Bogdanov creates a metaphor that can be read as two different planetary pictures of the world, but also (which already presupposes a certain culture) as a picture of the world (worldview) proposed by Marx and the Bolsheviks, opposed to the scheme of consciousness (worldview) of workers. In other words, Bogdanov deliberately created a metaphor that allows him to see firsthand the difference between the socialist and popular worldviews, as well as their collision and incompatibility.     

The second type of events does not imply awareness of the problem facing the artist (it can only be felt as an obscure dissatisfaction or desire), just as there is no clear understanding of the way to solve this problem. I came to an understanding of this type of events by analyzing one case, namely the story that happened to Carl Jung as a teenager. This is the story.

One day on a beautiful summer day in 1887, admiring the universe, Jung thought: "The world is beautiful and the church is beautiful, and God, who created all this, is sitting far away in the blue sky on a golden throne and... Here my thoughts stopped and I felt suffocated. I was numb and remembered only one thing: Not to think now! Something terrible is coming.

(After three hard days and sleepless nights from internal struggles and experiences, Jung still allowed himself to think out a seemingly harmless thought that he had begun).

I gathered all my courage, as if I had suddenly decided to immediately jump into hellfire, and gave the thought the opportunity to appear. I saw the cathedral in front of me, the blue sky. God sits on his golden throne, high above the world – and from under the throne a piece of feces falls on the sparkling new roof of the cathedral, breaks through it, everything collapses, the walls of the cathedral break into pieces.

That's it! I felt an unspeakable relief. Instead of the expected curse, grace descended upon me, and with it an unspeakable bliss that I had never known... I understood many things that I did not understand before, I understood what my father did not understand – the will of God... My father accepted the biblical commandments as a guide, he believed in God, as the Bible prescribed and as his father taught him. But he did not know the living God, who stands, free and omnipotent, stands above the Bible and above the Church, who calls people to become equally free. God, for the sake of fulfilling His Will, can force the father to abandon all his views and beliefs. Testing human courage, God forces us to abandon traditions, no matter how sacred they may be" ^{[1, p. 46. 50]}.

  At that time, young Jung was preoccupied with two existential problems. First. Relationship with the father, a hereditary clergyman. According to Jung, the father dogmatically fulfilled his duty: having religious doubts, he did not try to resolve them, and in general was not free in relation to the Christian Faith and God. The second problem is building your own relationship with God, clarifying your attitude to the Church. A little later in the episode under consideration, these problems were resolved by Jung cardinally: he breaks spiritually with both the father and the Church. After the first communion, Jung comes to a decision that he realizes as follows.

"I no longer found God in this religion. I knew I would never be able to take part in this ceremony again. The church is a place I won't go to anymore. Everything is dead there, there is no life there. I felt sorry for my father. I realized the tragedy of his profession and life. He was struggling with death, the existence of which he could not admit. A chasm opened up between him and me, it was boundless, and I did not see the possibility of ever overcoming it" ^{[16, p. 64]}.

Jung's essay about a revolutionary God destroying the church, as well as the whole comprehension of the fantasy that visited him, can well be considered a work close to artistic. As we can see, the first phase of Jung's creativity is the crystallization of an unconscious intersubjective situation (conflict with the father and the church). The second phase is a visual picture (fantasy) that opened before Jung, and he does not understand its meaning, or rather, understands it as a catastrophe of his worldview, so he is extremely scared. The third phase is a spontaneous, and in this respect also unconscious, composition of an explanation of what is happening (Jung learned, understood the real will of God). In short, this is an example of an event that was created by a person on a whim, although it was clearly determined.

So, Bogdanov in his novels creates several important events on a whim. In the Red Star, this is, for example, Sterney's suggestion of an invasion. Behind it, probably, is the problem of incompatibility of the visions and consciousnesses of socialists and workers, which may even lead to disaster and the power of the Iron Heel. This is an impulsive murder by Leonid Sterney. "Your recovery and participation in our common work," said Sterney, "have partly destroyed my argument…

– Extermination… partly," I interrupted (the story goes on behalf of Leonid.–V.R,), and, probably, all the anguish and anguish was too clearly reflected in my unconscious irony. Sterney turned pale and looked at me anxiously. There was silence.

And suddenly a cold ring of pain with an unprecedented, inexpressible force squeezed my heart. I leaned back in my chair to keep from screaming madly. The fingers of my hand convulsively gripped something hard and cold. I felt a cold weapon in my hand, and the spontaneously insurmountable pain became a frenzied despair. I jumped up from my chair, delivering a terrible blow to Sterney. One of the legs of the tripod hit him in the temple, and without a cry, without a groan, he leaned on his side like an inert body. I threw away my weapon, it rang and rattled against the cars. It was all over."^[1]

  In this case, this narrative is, on the one hand, a deadly conflict between representatives of two different worlds, on the other – a way to switch the plot (according to S. Neretina – this is a classic trope). No less eloquently described in "Engineer Manny" is the spontaneous murder of Manny's assistant Maro.  "And you wouldn't hesitate," Manny said, "to commit a crime against science and humanity for the sake of... budget?

  The tinge of cold contempt in the spoken words was stronger than a slap in the face. Maro straightened up, his eyes lit up with a cynical gleam, business restraint was replaced by an impudent mockery.

   – A crime?! What phrases! And you have nothing more to object to? But we will act in the most legal manner. And about the earthquake... it will probably happen already when we are gone!

    – Yes, you won't be there then!

   Manny jumped up, and Maro did not have time to dodge his movement, fast as lightning. A bronze knife would not be a weapon in the hands of an ordinary person, but Engineer Aldo was a descendant of ancient knights. The carotid artery of the neck and throat were severed by the blow. Blood spurted out in a fountain, and Maro fell. A few convulsions, a faint wheezing... Then silence" ^[3].

I think Manny's suicide is an event created by Bogdanov on a whim. This is again, on the one hand, a trope, on the other hand, an event that allows Manny to leave (in fact, Bogdanov himself to break with the Bolsheviks, since he was disappointed in the methods of building socialism by them), to leave in order to create conditions for his son Natty, also a brilliant engineer (to give place to another hypostasis of Bogdanov, who switched to building science "Tectology"). In prison in a dialogue with a vampire (probably a metaphor for "social evil") Manny says:

"You're lying, Vampire, and you won't deceive me with naive sophisms. You, as always, call for treason. I know the path I've been following. Every step he took was a blow to the past. And you dream of making me the enemy of the future! I know my way. My struggle with the elements... only Natty is able to continue it worthy of me. My struggle is with you, Feli Rao and the likes of you... Natty and his friends are the best, most loyal allies in it. I do not know if they are right in their belief in socialism, and I think they are not; but I am convinced that if they are wrong, they will be able to understand it sooner than anyone else in time. The truth will win; but it will win not against that which is full of strength and purity and nobility, but with it!" ^[3].

Perhaps, on a whim, Bogdanov also describes the social element that buried Manny's project and himself. In all these cases, it is important that the events of artistic reality are created on a whim, solving Bogdanov's poorly or completely unconscious problems.  

But not on a whim at the very end of the novel Bogdanov puts a beautiful novella about the End of the world. "A huge high hall, flooded with light, thousands of people. But are they people? How free their poses are, how calm and clear their faces are, what strength their bodies breathe. And these are the doomed?..

 What brought them here? What thought, what feeling united them in this common silence?.. A new face enters and ascends to the dais at the back of the hall. Obviously, he is the one who was expected: everyone's eyes are directed at him. Is that Natty? Yes, Natty, but different, like a deity, in a halo of superhuman beauty. In the midst of a solemnly deep silence, he says:

 “'Brothers, on behalf of those who have taken upon themselves the solution of the last task, I declare that we have done our job.

  You know that the fate of our world has been fully clarified many thousands of years ago. The weakened sun has long been unable to feed the development of our life, our great common work with its rays. We kept the solar flame going as long as possible. We have blown up and brought down on the sun all our planets in turn, except for one, on which we are now. The energy of these collisions has given us an extra hundred thousand years. We spent most of them researching ways to migrate to other solar worlds. Here we suffered a complete failure…

   We have indisputable evidence that intelligent beings live in other star systems as well. On this we have built our new plan…

 The cold and emptiness of ethereal spaces, deadly for life, are powerless against dead matter. She can be entrusted with images and symbols that express the meaning and content of our history, our work, all the struggles and victories of our world. Thrown with sufficient force, it will passively and obediently carry our dear idea, our last will, to immeasurable distances…

   From the most durable substance that nature could give us, we have prepared millions of giant shells: each is a faithful copy of our will. They are made up of thin rolled plates covered with artistic images and simple signs that will be easily solved by any intelligent being. These shells are stacked at precisely defined places on our planet, and for each the direction and speed that he will receive from the initial push are calculated. Calculations are strict and tested hundreds of times: the goal will inevitably be achieved.

  And the initial push, brothers, will happen in a few minutes. Inside our planet, we have collected a huge mass of that unstable matter, the atoms of which, exploding, are destroyed in an instant and generate the most powerful of all natural forces. In a few minutes our planet will cease to exist and its fragments will scatter into infinite space, carrying away our dead bodies and our living cause.

 Let us meet joyfully, brothers, this moment in which the greatness of death will merge with the greatest act of creativity, this moment that will complete our life in order to transfer its soul to our unknown brothers!”…

 And when, after that, the vision was swallowed up by a hurricane of light and fire, the last thing that drowned in it, Manny had the same thought: “unknown brothers!”» ^[3].

Here, not on a whim, but quite consciously, Bogdanov admits that he firmly believes in the immortality of intelligent life. At the same time, he calmly treats the death of an individual, believing that a person, as a subject (engineer) of himself, has the right to end his life by suicide if it no longer satisfies him or is impossible (did not the example of Paul and Laura Lafargov, whose suicide was approved by Lenin, also affect here?). As you know, Bogdanov unexpectedly died in 1928, putting on himself another experiment on blood transfusion. But was it by chance (so it is believed), did Bogdanov take risks only out of ignorance (he transfused himself with the blood of a person with rhesus incompatible with Bogdanov's rhesus)? Maybe, anticipating the coming of the kingdom of the Iron Heel in the late 20s, he deliberately decided to end his life? Moreover, in his novels Bogdanov rehearsed such a departure on his heroes.