{"id":20331,"date":"2025-10-03T17:37:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T15:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/03\/stalin-putin-and-an-enduring-obsession-with-immortality-letter\/"},"modified":"2025-10-03T17:37:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T15:37:16","slug":"stalin-putin-and-an-enduring-obsession-with-immortality-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/03\/stalin-putin-and-an-enduring-obsession-with-immortality-letter\/","title":{"rendered":"Stalin, Putin and an enduring obsession with immortality | Letter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Readers respond to an article by Aleks Krotoski about dictators and tech billionaires wanting to \u2018solve the problem\u2019 of ageing<\/p>\n<p>Like Vladimir Putin, Joseph Stalin was interested in immortality (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/lifeandstyle\/2025\/sep\/28\/how-the-rich-and-powerful-plan-to-live-for-ever\">\u2018To them, ageing is a technical problem that can, and will, be fixed\u2019: how the rich and powerful plan to live for ever, 28 September<\/a>). In 1939 he read Prolonging Life, a pamphlet promising a lifespan of 150 years, by Aleksandr Bogomolets, a haematologist famous for his rapid-healing serums and blood transfusion methods.<\/p>\n<p>Bogomolets promised to prolong life with cytotoxic proteins, herbs and transfusions of young blood. Stalin made him a Hero of Socialist Labour and gave him generous research funding, but was dismayed when he died aged 64 in 1946 (this was hardly Bogomolets\u2019s fault \u2013 as a boy in Tsarist times, he visited his mother, a revolutionary serving a sentence of hard labour in a Siberian prison, and caught tuberculosis).<br \/><strong>Donald Rayfield<\/strong><br \/><em>Emeritus professor<\/em><em>, Queen Mary University of London<\/em><\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2025\/oct\/03\/stalin-putin-and-an-enduring-obsession-with-immortality\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><br \/>\n<img src=\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/e58f2645bad1be8b9ad4bdfccaf983bbd16cab7b\/452_0_4388_3510\/master\/4388.jpg?width=140&amp;quality=85&amp;auto=format&amp;fit=max&amp;s=a782b728ab6d3bcf8fed2dfa65122182\" title=\"Stalin, Putin and an enduring obsession with immortality | Letter\" \/>Readers respond to an article by Aleks Krotoski about dictators and tech billionaires wanting to \u2018solve the problem\u2019 of ageing<br \/>\nLike Vladimir Putin, Joseph Stalin was interested in immortality (\u2018To them, ageing is a technical problem that can, and will, be fixed\u2019: how the rich and powerful plan to live for ever, 28 September). In 1939 he read Prolonging Life, a pamphlet promising a lifespan of 150 years, by Aleksandr Bogomolets, a haematologist famous for his rapid-healing serums and blood transfusion methods.<br \/>\nBogomolets promised to prolong life with cytotoxic proteins, herbs and transfusions of young blood. Stalin made him a Hero of Socialist Labour and gave him generous research funding, but was dismayed when he died aged 64 in 1946 (this was hardly Bogomolets\u2019s fault \u2013 as a boy in Tsarist times, he visited his mother, a revolutionary serving a sentence of hard labour in a Siberian prison, and caught tuberculosis).Donald RayfieldEmeritus professor, Queen Mary University of London Continue reading&#8230;Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Readers respond to an article by Aleks Krotoski about dictators and tech billionaires wanting to \u2018solve the problem\u2019 of ageing Like Vladimir Putin, Joseph Stalin was interested in immortality (\u2018To them, ageing is a technical problem that can, and will, be fixed\u2019: how the rich and powerful plan to live for ever, 28 September). In &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/03\/stalin-putin-and-an-enduring-obsession-with-immortality-letter\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Stalin, Putin and an enduring obsession with immortality | Letter<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":20332,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20331"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}