Knowledge as Film vs. Knowledge as Photo: Alternative Models in Early Soviet Thought

While Lenin considers human knowledge similar to a mirror-like reflection of the object, Bogdanov emphasizes the creative role of the subject in organizing the world. On the basis of some textual evidences, it seems possible to illustrate the epistemologies of the two fields into which Russian Marxism divides at the beginning of the twentieth century, in terms of the two metaphors of photography on the one hand, and cinema on the other. In particular, while discussing Einstein's relativity, Bogdanov considers sense organs, memory, and all the apparatus of human knowledge “as a certain kind of cinematographic device”; Einsenstein deems that cinema is “an excellent instrument of perception ... for the sensation of movement”. Although it is difficult to find compelling proofs of exchanges and influences, this is an actual ‘tangential point’ between Bogdanov and Eisenstein's ideas on human knowledge.