Putin and Xi Jinping dream of eternal life. Just like their dictator predecessors Stalin and Mao. Hereʼs what they did to achieve it and “good luck, comrades”!

Putin and Xi dream of living at least 150 years

On September 3, 2025, two elderly dictators, Vladimir Putin (72 years old) and Xi Jinping (72 years old), together with their younger counterpart Kim Jong Un (41 years old), were walking up the red carpet to the grandstand before the start of a military parade in Beijing. Suddenly, an open microphone installed nearby caught a few phrases from their conversation.

Xi said that people rarely lived to be 70, but now it is almost a child’s age. Putin assured that “with the development of biotechnology, organs will be infinitely changeable, and people will be able to live longer and longer and even achieve immortality”. Xi continued that “according to forecasts, people will be able to live to be 150 in this century”. 41 y.o. Kim Jong Un walked alongside with a smile, listening to his dictator friends who were 30 years older.

All three seem intent on holding on to power until the end. And at least two of the seniors are already investing in the fight against aging. At the behest of the Kremlin, Putin’s inner circle is receiving millions in grants to establish institutes researching “immortality”.

This includes bioprinting organs from lab-grown cells, a genetic research program to renew aging cells, and even immune system correction based on “critical markers identified in the aging process”.

In 2024, Putin ordered the launch of a national project "New Technologies for Preserving Health". One of its main priorities is the fight against aging. Moreover, specialist doctors from specialized institutes were tasked with urgently providing all their developments. On paper, all this, of course, is aimed at "preserving the health of the countryʼs citizens".

A similar project was launched in China in 2016, the “Large-scale Program for Research on Aging and Organ Degeneration”. The initiative focuses on studying the cellular and molecular mechanisms of aging.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences has already published several results of studies on slowing aging conducted on monkeys. In addition, a large biobank with blood samples from more than two thousand centenarians has been created in Beijing and Shanghai to study genetic factors associated with longevity.

Putin with scientist Mikhail Kovalchuk, from his inner circle, who oversees research into "immortality", 2025.

Getty Images / «Babel'»

Si at the Robotic Surgery Center in Britain, 2015.

Getty Images / «Babel'»

Stalin was burned twice for immortality

In 1926, the worldʼs first Scientific and Practical Institute of Blood Transfusion appeared in Moscow, headed by Alexander Bogdanov. The director of the institute was better known as one of the main ideologists of socialism and one of the creators of the Bolshevik Party in 1904.

At that time, he was called the second person in the party after Lenin. But a few years later he had a falling out with the leader of the Bolsheviks on ideological grounds. Soon Bogdanov was removed from the leadership, and later expelled from the party altogether.

Bogdanov allowed himself to criticize Lenin sharply even after the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917. In particular, he promoted the policy of war communism and prophetically declared that a new ruling communist oligarchy would emerge from the Leninist model. Surprisingly, he was not shot. He was arrested only once in the early 1920s, but was quickly released.

Disillusioned with politics, Bogdanov took up science and writing. In 1908, he published the utopian novel "The Red Star". His main character, a contemporary of Bogdanov, ends up on Mars. And there he sees a local socialist society built on universal equality and barracks order, which has left wars in the past along with a market economy and competition.

In the novel, the Martians have achieved remarkable technical and scientific progress. Among the innovations is a ritual of general blood exchange, with the help of which the Martians rejuvenate the body and achieve longevity.

Bogdanov began to put this idea into practice in the mid-1920s. After all, he was a doctor by training and worked in his specialty for some time, including in field hospitals during the First World War. He promoted the theory of rejuvenation by means of blood transfusions from young people to old people.

“There is every reason to believe that young blood, with its materials taken from young tissues, is able to help the aging organism in its struggle along those lines along which it is already suffering defeats, that is, along which it is aging,” he wrote in one of his scientific articles.

In 1926, the then 47-year-old Stalin became interested in this theory, and even more so, veterans from the party leadership. Thus, the experimental Institute of Blood Transfusion appeared, which shared premises with an equally colorful institution — the Institute of Brain, created on the basis of the "Laboratory for the Study of Leninʼs Brain".

Bogdanov was both a researcher and a test subject, that is, he repeatedly transfused himself with "young blood". His experiments were keenly interested in the Kremlin. But in 1928, Bogdanov died suddenly during his eleventh blood transfusion. As it turned out later, due to Rh incompatibility with the donor.

However, Bogdanov could not have known about this at the time, because the Rh factor of blood was discovered only in 1940. A magnificent funeral was held for the director of the Institute of Blood Transfusion with speeches by party leaders. The body was cremated, and the brain was transferred to the nearby Brain Institute for research.

After Bogdanovʼs death, the Institute of Blood Transfusion was headed for a while by an ambitious Ukrainian scientist, Oleksandr Bogomolets. In 1909, he became the youngest doctor of medicine in the then Russian Empire, having defended his thesis at the age of 28.

One of his opponents at the defense, the famous physiologist Ivan Pavlov, predicted a brilliant scientific future for Bogomolets. And he was not mistaken. Bogomolets went down in history as the founder of the Ukrainian school of pathological physiology, endocrinology and gerontology and the founder of the first medical research institutions in Ukraine and Russia.

Back in the 1920s, Bogomolets became interested in the phenomenon of aging. He believed that the main cause of aging was the wear and tear of the body’s connective tissues — the network of cells and collagen fibers that separates and supports other tissues, such as bones and organs.

Simply put, connective tissue is a kind of “cement” that holds the body together. If this cement could be strengthened, people could live up to 150 years.

The result of Bogomoletsʼ research and one of the most important inventions was a drug called "antireticular cytotoxic serum". Due to its effect on connective tissue, it turned out to be effective for treating ulcers, wounds, bone fractures, some forms of rheumatism and other diseases.

In the 1930s, people started talking about Bogomoletsʼ miraculous "elixir of life" in the West. His works began to be translated into different languages of the world. But even earlier, successes in prolonging life attracted the attention of the leader of the USSR, Stalin.

Bogomolets received full carte blanche to conduct research and establish specialized institutes. He became president of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, a laureate of the Stalin Prize, received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, two Orders of Lenin, and many other awards.

This is despite the fact that Bogomolets never joined the Communist Party, had a noble background, and had “unreliable” relatives. Moreover, his rise occurred in the 1930s, a period of Stalinist terror, when repressions were carried out for even less.

Another hope for the Kremlin dictator for an “elixir of life” ended with the death of Bogomolets in 1946, when he was 65 years old. According to one legend, upon hearing of the scientist’s death, Stalin exclaimed in anger: “What a scoundrel! He fooled us all.”

And within a few years of coming to power, Bogomolets’s teachings were declared “anti-scientific and anti-Soviet”.

That same year, in 1946, Stalin suffered a severe stroke and began to be suspicious of doctors. He even repressed his personal physician, Vladimir Vinogradov, as part of the “Doctors’ Affair,” one of the large-scale repressive campaigns he personally oversaw toward the end of his life.

And in the end, he so intimidated everyone that when, at the age of 74, he suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage, no one dared to approach him while he lay dying in a pool of his own urine.

Mao Zedong was also predicted to live to be 150 years old.

This wish appeared in the party newspaper for Maoʼs birthday in 1966: "December 26 was the birthday of our great leader, Chairman Mao. A ceremonial meeting was held in the capital. Chairman Mao is in very good health.

According to research by physiologists and scientists, our great leader, the red sun in our hearts, Comrade Mao can live for 140-150 years. This is the greatest happiness of all the Chinese people and the peoples of the whole world. We wish Chairman Mao unlimited longevity."

As Maoʼs former personal physician Li Zhisui recounted in his book, the Chinese leader had his own recipe for longevity. He believed that sexual relations with young women would increase his energy and prolong his life.

Therefore, he constantly kept a harem of young women from dance troupes or the Communist Party Secretariat with him. They were selected according to three criteria: appearance, artistic talent and political credibility. According to recollections, these women were proud when they caught sexually transmitted diseases from Mao.

However, in the early 1960s, when Mao reached a new peak of power, he began to complain more and more often about problems with potency. This is where Dr. Li came to the rescue with various injections or traditional Chinese medicines.

As for even basic hygiene, Mao never washed his face or brushed his teeth. He was wiped with hot, damp towels by his guards, and he rinsed his mouth with green tea. To Liʼs every suggestion that he use a toothbrush, Mao replied: "A tiger never brushes its teeth".

In the early 1970s, Maoʼs health deteriorated sharply, his Parkinsonʼs disease worsened and he became almost incapacitated. In 1976, after two severe heart attacks, Mao died at the age of 82. He finally requested that he be cremated.

But the party leadership violated his will. Maoʼs body was embalmed and put on display in a mausoleum in the central square of Beijing.

Kim Il Sung ordered doctors to extend his life to 120 years

The grandfather of the current ruler of North Korea began to worry about his longevity at around the age of 65. To this end, he ordered the creation of a “Longevity Center”. Its head was the dictator’s personal physician Kim So Yong.

Dr. Kim and her colleagues studied a variety of methods for prolonging life. From recipes for several thousand herbs from ancient treatises of Eastern medicine to modern drugs, methods, and practices. The results of the research were presented to Kim Il Sung, and he himself chose what he liked.

At first, the dictator liked laughter therapy. For this, a troupe of actors and children aged five or six was assembled, who were supposed to do some funny things to make the dictator laugh.

Performers who managed to make Kim laugh at least five times a day received the honorary title of "Honored Artist".

At 78, Kim caught sight of another recipe for longevity. He began to transfuse himself with the blood of 20-year-olds. Before this, the selected donors were even fed a special nutritious diet.

According to doctor Kim So Yeon, the dictator became so obsessed with transfusions that he eventually had his blood type changed.

Ultimately, Dr. Kim suggests, such excessive and selective treatment had the opposite effect. In the early morning of July 8, 1994, the dictator died of a sudden heart attack. He was 82 years old, the same age as his neighbour, dictator Mao Zedong, at the time of his death.