Alexander Bogdanov - Early Years

Early Years

Ethnically Belarusian, Alyaksandr Malinovsky was born into a rural teacher's family, the second of six children. He attended the Gymnasium at Tula, which he compared to a barracks or prison.

While working on his medical degree at Moscow University, he was arrested for demonstrating against Professor Vasily Klyuchevsky. He was exiled to Tula from 1894 to 1899, where he lodged with Alexander Rudenev, the father of Vladimir Bazarov. Here he met and married Natalya Bigdanova Korsak, who, as a woman, had been refused entrance to the university. She was working as a nurse for Rudenev. Malinovsky adopted his nom de plume from her patronym. Alongside Bazarov and Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov he became a tutor in a workers' study circle. This was organised in the Tula Armamment Factory by Ivan Saveliev, whom Bogdanov credited with founding Social Democracy in Tula. During this period, he wrote his Brief course of economic science which was published - "subject to many modifications made for the benefit of the censor" - only in 1897. He later said that this experience of student-led education gave him his first lesson in proletarian culture. In autumn 1895, he resumed his medical studies at the University of Kharkiv (Ukraine) but still spent much time in Tula. He gained access to the works of Lenin in 1896, particularly the latter's critique of Peter Berngardovich Struve. In 1899, he graduated as a medical doctor and published his next work, "Basic elements of the historical perspective on nature". However, because of his political views, he was also arrested by the Tsar's police, spent six months in prison, and was exiled to Vologda.