Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov

Nikolai Fyodorov (1829–1903) was a Russian Orthodox Christian philosopher and the founder of Russian cosmism, a movement that joined faith, science and a vision of a perfected humanity. He is often regarded as a forerunner of transhumanism because he argued for radical life extension, physical immortality and even the resurrection of the dead through scientific and technical means.

The illegitimate son of a nobleman, he took the surname of his godfather and worked for years as a teacher in provincial schools before turning to libraries. From 1874 he spent about twenty-five years at the Rumyantsev Museum in Moscow, where he compiled a systematic catalogue of books. He lived frugally, gave away most of his salary and owned almost nothing. He published nothing during his lifetime; his essays were gathered by his disciples into The Philosophy of the Common Task, issued in 1906, three years after his death.

His central notion was the “common task”: humanity, guided by reason and morality, should regulate nature, defeat death and include everyone, the dead among them. He distinguished two causes of death, the body’s inability to renew itself indefinitely and the hostility of the external environment, which he thought could be countered by controlling climate and disease. For him, immortality without resurrection was an incomplete victory, and veneration of the ancestors was the foundation of true religion. He also supported renewable energy and cloud seeding, which he compared to irrigating “sky rivers.”

His influence reached poets, composers and early rocket pioneers. Vladimir Mayakovsky counted him among his favourite philosophers, and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was among those inspired by his ideas. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky regarded him with respect. Many of his proposals are speculative, yet he is still read as an early reflection on technology and human responsibility.