Cosmism
Russian Cosmism is a late-19th/early-20th-century Russian intellectual current (Nikolai Fyodorov, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Alexander Chizhevsky, Vladimir Vernadsky) combining science, eschatology, and utopian project: resurrection of the dead, conquest of space, immortality, and the active evolution of humanity as a cosmic task.
Key figures
- Fyodorov: the "Common Task" — humanity must conquer death and resurrect all ancestors through science; museum and archive as instruments of resurrection.
- Tsiolkovsky: founder of rocketry theory; "Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in the cradle forever."
- Vernadsky: the noosphere — the biosphere transformed by conscious thought.
Legacy
Cosmism fed Soviet space enthusiasm (Sputnik, Gagarin as quasi-religious events), biocosmism, and today's tech-right appropriations (Silicon Valley transhumanism). Marxist readings note its tension: Fyodorov's project is universalist and communal, while contemporary billionaire "cosmism" (space escape fantasies) is escapist individualism — leaving Earth rather than resurrecting everyone on it.
Infrared has engaged Cosmism sympathetically as evidence that socialism historically carried a Promethean, world-historical optimism now abandoned by managerial liberalism.