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Blood, Water and Mars: Soviet Science and the Alchemy for a New Man

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Blood, Water and Mars: Soviet Science and the Alchemy for a New Man Central Washington University ScholarWorks@CWU All Master's Theses Master's Theses Spring 2019 Blood, Water and Mars: Soviet Science and the Alchemy for a New Man Sophie Y. Andarovna Central Washington University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/etd Part of the European History Commons, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons, Intellectual History Commons, and the Russian Literature Commons Recommended Citation Andarovna, Sophie Y., "Blood, Water and Mars: Soviet Science and the Alchemy for a New Man" (2019). All Master's Theses. 1201. https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/etd/1201 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Master's Theses at ScholarWorks@CWU. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@CWU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BLOOD, WATER AND MARS: SOVIET SCIENCE AND THE ALCHEMY FOR A NEW MAN __________________________________ A Thesis Presented to The Graduate Faculty Central Washington University ___________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts History ___________________________________ by Sophie Yennan Andarovna May 2019 CENTRAL WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY Graduate Studies We hereby approve the thesis of Sophie Yennan Andarovna Candidate for the degree of Master of Arts APPROVED FOR THE GRADUATE FACULTY ______________ _________________________________________ Dr. Roxanne Easley, Committee Chair ______________ _________________________________________ Dr. Jason Knirck ______________ _________________________________________ Dr. Dan Herman ______________ _________________________________________ Dean of Graduate Studies ii ABSTRACT BLOOD, WATER AND MARS: SOVIET SCIENCE AND THE ALCHEMY FOR A NEW MAN by Sophie Yennan Andarovna May 2019 The themes of blood, water and Mars in Soviet science and technology show the strong utopian and even religious foundations of Soviet society, which invariably centered around forging a new environment and, in so doing, a new variety of human to inhabit it. In the minds and experiments of some of the radical men behind Russia’s Revolution, blood was to create a more advanced, biologically “equal” humanity capable of potential immortality, while water was harnessed with the millenarian aim of transforming the Soviet Union’s vast landscape into fields of bountiful fertility, as well as cities of efficient industry. Mars represents an extended, sweeping metaphor for the revolutionary dreams that long outlived October; Mars came to symbolize all that Earth could hope to achieve through communism. Authors, philosophers, politicians, and scientists all took part in explaining utopian visions of Soviet man conquering the Earth and the cosmos in their writings and experiments. The Bolshevik Alexander Bogdanov pioneered his revolutionary blood exchange experiments in his 1905 science fiction-utopian novel, Red Star. He founded Russia’s first blood research institute in hopes of facilitating the “comradely exchange of life” through blood transfusions in hopes of curing disease, and even reversing the aging process. Water played a iii paramount role in the communist dream of transforming man and his environment, via massive irrigation and canal projects, and lab experiments during the Stagnation years. Soviet scientists claimed the discovery of a “new” form of water called “polywater” that stoked Cold War paranoia in the U.S. Mars represented the Soviet urge to not only transform Earth, but other planets as well. Mars was often cast as the location of the socialist humanity of the future in science fiction throughout the Soviet years, and served as evidence of the wider transcendental aims of a communist utopia. These three subsets of Soviet science gave the New Soviet Man an unprecedented level of control over areas once reserved for God alone: possible immortality, apocalyptic transformation, and creation itself. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to Dr. Easley, for supplying me from her never-ending existential crisis first aid kit. Her feedback on this project has been invaluable. I appreciate and thank all those who endured by complaints during the writing process. I also apologize to my cats, who stared and me and meowed while I was working, wondering when I would move away from the white light box to pet them. A thousand thanks to my sister Katherine, who never failed to encourage my ideas and read the earliest drafts of this work. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................ 1 Science and Spirit .................................................................................... 1 Historiography ......................................................................................... 9 Organization .......................................................................................... 19 II THE REVOLUTIONARY INTELLECTUAL LANDSCAPE .................. 22 Utopias and Scientific Possibility ......................................................... 22 The Crystal Palace ................................................................................. 32 III BLOOD ....................................................................................................... 39 “Still Alive Day” ................................................................................... 39 Blood and Sacrifice ............................................................................... 44 Blood Exchanges on Mars and on Earth ............................................... 57 From the Page to the Laboratory .......................................................... 59 Blood, Lambs, and the Pope ................................................................. 68 “Soviet Exhaustion” .............................................................................. 71 Living Substance ................................................................................... 78 “Parabiosis” and Rats that Smell Fear .................................................. 79 IV WATER ...................................................................................................... 82 Stalin’s Canals ....................................................................................... 83 Commissar Cotton ................................................................................. 90 Salt Poisoning ........................................................................................ 97 Vozrozhdenie ........................................................................................ 99 Polywater ............................................................................................. 106 Bioactive Water .................................................................................. 116 V MARS ....................................................................................................... 121 A Place to Put the Bodies .................................................................... 127 Freedom to Move about the Universe ................................................. 136 Giant Radishes on the Moon ............................................................... 140 VI CONCLUSION ........................................................................................ 143 vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CONTINUED Chapter Page REFERENCES ......................................................................................... 146 vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Science and Spirit Marxism inarguably shaped the development of Soviet science after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. But utopian and metaphysical ideas from the prerevolutionary period also persisted through and beyond that watershed event. As was evident in Soviet science, from studies in agronomy to rocketry, Marxism fused with these earlier utopian currents, particularly concepts inherited from the Russian intelligentsia of the pre-revolutionary Silver Age (1890- 1920s). The Russian Silver Age arose in the context of deep social malaise, and its writers and artists responded in a flurry of movements renouncing all past tradition. The period produced an abundance of occult and supernatural thought, but also marked scientific advancement. This was particularly true in biology, where advancements were aimed at “fixing” Russia and “saving” her population from a grim assortment of widespread maladies. Many of these illnesses were physical, but social, moral and “spiritual” illness frequently took the blame for the evils of Russian “backwardness.”1 The notion that Russia needed “saving” had existed among the intelligentsia since at least the 1860s, when “dreamers” turned to utopian-style musings of political and social engineering that they hoped would change Russia and her population for the better. In the age of Darwin, Mendel and Marx, the ambition of “saving” Russia was not only a battle to save the body, but one to save the soul of the nation as well. Metaphysical elements existed alongside the latest biological experiments in turn-of-the- century Russia, but such elements permeated other fields of Soviet science. During this period many Russian revolutionaries regarded science and socialism as the fused deus ex machina that 1 Maxim Gorkii, Untimely Thoughts. Essays on Revolution, Culture and the Bolsheviks, 1917-1918, trans. Herman Ermolaev (New York: Paul S. Eriksson, 1968), 7,14. 1 held the power to radically transform man and his environment,
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