An earlier post here put the re-occurring question as to what if Trotsky became the General Secretary instead of Stalin. Let's bring some new blood into these hypotheticals. Forget Trotsky. What if Bogdanov wasn't hounded out of both his leadership position and subsequently the party by Lenin (for example Lenin dies in 1909)? Would we see a more democratic and more science based Soviet society emerge after the revolution without the superstitious excesses of anti-intellectual careerists, without the heavy handed approach of the military-originating cadres, without the cult of personality and rabid censorship of forward thinking schools of thought and individuals? Would, in essence, the Soviet Union have been able to wield authoritarianism and militancy necessary for its survival without the crippling paranoia wasting away its best and brightest and giving way to cynical careerism?
I'll be the first to admit that Red Hamlet: The Life and Ideas of Alexander Bogdanov by James D. White made me seriously question some fundamental assumptions I had about the Bolsheviks and Lenin in particular. He seemed kind of boorish in his treatment of Bogdanov. Him and Stalin's money making schemes, holding the power of the purse over the whole party, were fascinating to learn about. And Bogdanov was the man—his tectology was a precursor to systems theory, and his work on blood transfusion is amazing. That said, I disagree with Bogdanov and his stance on elections in the Russian Empire—Lenin was closer to the mark that participation in elections was a great way to propagandize and organize, and indeed closer to what Marx himself envisioned (see his Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League where he states, "As far as possible they should be League members and their election should be pursued by all possible means. Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention."). Most importantly, Lenin's strategy to contest elections worked. Check out Lenin's Electoral Strategy from 1907 to the October Revolution of 1917: The Ballot, the Streets—or Both by August H. Nimtz for details, but basically participation as an independent party in bourgeois elections drummed up lots of support for the Bolsheviks and allowed them to refine their organization structure in the run-up to 1917. Lenin could have handled Bogdanov better, Bogdanov should have been a larger part of the Bolsheviks in the lead up to the revolution and Lenin more flexible, but with Bogdanov at the helm and not Lenin it's very possible we never would have gotten an October Revolution in the first place. Bogdanov, by all accounts, might have been better with helming the actual Soviet Union, but there's no doubt in my mind, with his April Theses cutting through the intellectual milieu, his incredible vitality, and his understanding of the currents of the people, that Lenin and no other was the man for the job in actually sparking and pushing for the October Revolution.
What's this, a well thought out post in my chapo?!
Seriously though you raise some great points. Especially the need for active participation in parliamentary politics, Lenin is electoralism done exactly right. And my view on this is actually very similar - the Soviet project needed Lenin's "boorishness" to get going because a less self-assured leader setting the course would probably not have been able to decisively exploit the chaotic situation to topple the state in the right way and navigate all subsequent perils but cooler heads post Civil War and a more collegial decision making at the top would have lead to a healthier and more sustainable society. If nothing else (and it was a lot of else), one thing Bogdanov got right: the ensuing society recreates the internal structure of the foundational organisation leading that society.
100% agree with this. I forget the name Bogdanov gave to that process, but when I read about it was like "uuuuuhhhhhhhhhh wow that's scary accurate."