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Alexander Bogdanov’s “Cinematograph”
The article focuses on Alexander Bogdanov’s utopian novel The Red Star (1908), which is interpreted as a sort of literary experimentation that, in a free artistic form, develops ideas of socialist revolution, collectivist culture, and the future of civilization. The author analyzes the ways in which the novel poses the question of the future communist culture that requires a new subject of perception. It is demonstrated that, in the novel, this new, different subject of perception is introduced via the experience of the movie audience, while Bogdanov’s description of the protagonist’s behavior could well be interpreted as a film script of a special kind. It is via the personal experience of a movie spectator that something which might be called the experiencing of collective sensuousness (or sensuousness of the community) opens to the protagonist of the novel. This form of sensuousness is shared by all, regardless of social, political, or class distinctions and interests.