Russian Cosmism

This collection of translations is interesting, useful, and enjoyable. It introduces a philosophy little known in either English or the Western world. Russian Cosmism was a progressive movement in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Russia. It was an intellectual counter to the rational Futurism that would eventually take hold as the guiding functionalist art and scientific ideology of the Soviet Union. Cosmism sought to understand the totality of human civilization with the universe as the basic unit of analysis. Sunspots, cosmic rays, and interstellar interactions with planet Earth could and did have an impact on human societies and political, economic, social, and artistic structures. It may seem far-fetched to the modern reader, but in a world where the Syrian War was brought about by climate change drought, where Russia's and China's reemergence into Arctic geopolitics has been brought about by warming seawaters and melting ice, and where Pacific Island nations are changing entire nation-state structures around rising ocean levels, a philosophy with a planetary perspective on human-nature interrelationality might be equally relevant today.The book presents a series of translations of the key exponents of Russian Cosmism. There are original essays here in English translation from Alexander Chizhevsky, Nikolai Fedorov, Alexander Svyatogor, Valerian Muravyev, Konstantin Tsoilkovsky, and Alexander Bogdanov. Most of the authors are represented by multiple essays, making this a really excellent compendium of primary sources of Russian Cosmism in English. Under the umbrella of the science and art futurism of Cosmism, the collection covers astronomy, architecture, mathematics, anarchist politics, and science fiction. Such is the scope of the philosophy that it would be useful for anthropologists, historians, political scientists, visual artists, cultural theorists, and Russian area studies experts. Particularly given the renewed attention on Eurasianism in contemporary Russian political ideology, there should also be quite an interest in a revival of the understanding of Cosmism from the perspective of Russia's political and cultural reemergence.Cosmism was really about technology transforming society and art. Much of it seems science fiction to the contemporary reader, but Cosmism is the philosophical basis for much twentieth-century science fiction that later did become reality, in the development of space travel, modern medicine, global economic systems, and the melding of technology with everyday human life. Cosmist ideas were some of the first to take space travel as a serious engineering project, and ideas of immortality and resurrection through advanced biology are evidenced today in cloning, species revival, molecular medicine, and biochemistry. Culturally, Cosmism is the guiding philosophy behind science fiction, and from a cultural tradition that yielded so much science fiction that it helped to shape the present reality, perhaps global problems of climate change, clean energy transitions, food security, and oceans management could benefit from a reimagining of Cosmism, which had a strong influence in both cultural and scientific spheres and politically was also a forerunner of the transhumanist movement.There are some truly outlandish ideas represented here though, for example, the Tektology of unifying all scientific systems as a means of conquering death and bringing in immortality through the human resurrection of anastasis. Whole-Earth command-economy structures are a foreshadow of the worst manias of the Soviet economic system. There are also the concepts of panpsychism, where atoms have feelings and therefore everything in the universe has consciousness derived from the atomic level, and Chizhevsky's heliobiology, where sunspots influence political movements through mass psychology. And in the “biopower” of Cosmism, we get the foreshadow of Eurasianism and the Gumilevian biopolity. Bogdanov brings it all back down to Earth on a more practical sociological level, arguing that if Cosmism is to be applicable to humanity, then humanity must converge into a monist unitary bloc. Therefore throughout all of this Cosmist thinking weaves the singularly Russian formation of monism and messianism, almost ensuring that Cosmism could only ever remain in the Russosphere and never achieve the planetary acceptance it would need to flourish.Criticisms are mostly for the sake of criticism, and this is a fine and valuable book. The only thing I would have liked to see more of would be the poets and artists who developed Cosmism, as the volume tends toward the scientific and philosophical spectrum. As much of the online e-flux material is focused on the art side of the science-art meld, it could have been interesting to see more of it presented here. There are misprints in Tsoilkovsky's “The Future of Earth and Mankind,” with are instead of acre occurring multiple times. Wider criticisms are of taking Cosmism itself too seriously. The usual criticisms of Russian political philosophy apply here; there is always talk of “the masses” and of “workers” or “great armies” but little conception of where these people should come from sociologically or where they should fit into the new Cosmist society. Taking a mass of people for granted was the failure of most twentieth-century political philosophical thinking. And it seems indelible to Cosmist thinking too.While the arguments are barely scientific and not particularly convincing to typologize the entirety of global human history into a single causal factor on the scale of the universe, these are all interesting essays that, if nothing else, help deepen our understanding of Russian social and art history. Something essentially Russian is here—that in the pursuit of the rational in the 1920s and 1930s scientific and futurist movements, the Russian avant-garde came up with some novel ideas, which evolved independently of anything in Europe and persist through to today in institutional legacies within Russian social and political systems and theories. This is important to understand for anyone seeking to gain insight into contemporary Russian society or the wider Eurasian Russosphere. And as much as this book should celebrate the authors of Cosmism, there should also be a celebration and recognition of the translators who have brought these works into English: Ian Dreiblatt, Thomas Campbell, Caroline Rees, Anastasia Skoybedo, and Anastasiya Osipova.The ideas expressed in this volume are radical and utopian. And they are one hundred years old, from a time of far less technological sophistication than today. But the writers' ability to dream and imagine better futures is a kind of vision that carried science and art through the twentieth century, and it is one that we have often given up on and delegated to a social strata of scientists and technologists. Atomic energy sounds fanciful when put in nineteenth-century science-fiction terms. But to read Muravyev reason out and feel out a way toward harnessing atomic energy makes us believe in the future again and in imagining yet better futures. Perhaps that is the utopic element, that dreams and visions make our artistic, scientific, and social realities. Cosmism, for all its practical faults, was a vision—a gaze into a future where humanity could control more than it could then and can now. If only as a reminder of what creative vision can accomplish in science and material reality, Russian Cosmism maintains relevance today. Our technology is our defining feature, and it is through technology that our visions and arts are now seen. Cosmism itself presented many faults; most ideas would be infuriating to serious scientists of the twenty-first century. But presented as an inspiration to new generations of futurists, Cosmism still has a lot to offer our collective imagination

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