Alexander Bogdanov

In 1924, Bogdanov started his blood transfusion experiments, apparently hoping to achieve eternal youth or at least partial rejuvenation. Lenin's sister Maria Ulianova was among many who volunteered to take part in Bogdanov's experiments. After undergoing 11 transfusions, he remarked with satisfaction on the improvement of his eyesight, suspension of balding, and other positive symptoms. The fellow revolutionary Leonid Krasin wrote to his wife that "Bogdanov seems to have become 7, no, 10 years younger after the operation".

In 1925-1926, Bogdanov founded Institute for Haemotology and Blood Transfusions, which was later named after him. After Lenin's death, he was commissioned to study Lenin's brain and, if possible, to resuscitate his body. In his letters to the Soviet leaders Joseph Stalin and Bukharin he dreamed of physically rejuvenating the Bolshevik party leadership.

(Wikipedia entry for Alexander Bogdanov)

The totalitarian ruler who seeks to extend his lifespan through artificial means is a staple of the science fiction genre. The most notable example would be Robert Silverberg's Shadrach in the Furnace, but there's also Scott Westerfeld's The Risen Empire, the Emperor from Warhammer 40K, and so on.

Imagine Bogdanov's loony experiments actually worked, conferring immortality or a greatly extended lifespan to the members of the soviet nomenklatura. There you have a really intriguing premise for an alternate history novel. A world where the term "gerontocracy" would take an altogether creepier meaning... You could even throw in some allusions to Koshei the Deathless for good measure.

Bogdanov's Red Star appears in China Mieville's list of Fifty Fantasy & Science Fiction Works That Socialists Should Read. It also was one of the inspirations for Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars (a book which, I confess, I didn't manage to finish).