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Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (Trolo) (Russian — Михаил Александрович Бакунин, Michel Bakunin — on the grave in Bern), (May 18 (30 N.S.), 1814–June 19 (July 1 N.S.), 1876) was a well-known Russian revolutionary considered one of the “fathers of modern anarchism".

Early years

Bakunin was born of an aristocratic family in the village of Pryamukhino (Прямухино) between Torzhok (Торжок) and Kuvshinovo (Кувшиново), in Tver guberniya, northwest of Moscow, in the spring of 1814. At the age of 14 he left for St. Petersburg where he was given military training at the Artillery University. He completed his studies in 1832. In 1834 he was commissioned as a junior officer in the Russian Imperial Guard and sent to Minsk and Gardinas in Lithuania (now in Belarus). That summer, Bakunin became embroiled in a family row taking his sister’s side in rebellion against an unhappy marriage. Though his father wished him to continue in either the military or civil service, Bakunin abandoned both in 1835 and made his way to Moscow, where he hoped to pursue the study of philosophy.

Interest in philosophy

In Moscow, Bakunin became fast friends with a group of former university students, then engaged in the systematic study of Idealist philosophy grouped around the poet Nikolay Stankevich, “the bold pioneer who opened to Russian thought the vast and fertile continent of German metaphysics” (E. H. Carr). The philosophy of Kant was initially a central part of their study, but they moved on to Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel. By autumn 1835, he had conceived of the idea of forming a philosphical circle in his home town of Pryamukhino. This was a passionate environment for the young people involved. For example, Vissarion Belinsky fell in love with one of Bakunin’s sisters. By early 1836, Bakunin was back in Moscow. He produced a translation of Fichte’s Lectures on the Destiny of the Scholar and The Way to a Blessed Life became his favorite book. With Stankevich he also read Goethe, Schiller, Jean Paul and E.T.A. Hoffmann.

At this time he embraced a religious but extra-ecclesiastical immanentism:

He became increasingly influenced by Hegel and provided the first Russian translation of his work. During this period he met the socialists Alexander Herzen and Nikolay Ogarev, and the slavophiles Konstantin Aksakov and Piotr Tschaadaev. In this period he began to develop his panslavic views.

Study in Germany

After long wrangles with his father, Bakunin went to Berlin in 1840. His stated plan at the time was still to become a university professor (a “priest of truth,” as he and his friends imagined it), but he soon encountered and joined radical students of the so-called “Hegelian Left,” and joined the socialist movement in Berlin. In his 1842 essay The Reaction in Germany, he argued in favor of the revolutionary role of negation, summed up in his often misinterpreted phrase After three semesters in Berlin Bakunin went to Dresden where he became friends with Arnold Ruge. Here he also read Lorenz von Stein's Der Sozialismus und Kommunismus des heutigen Frankreich and developed a passion for socialism. He abandoned his interest in an academic career, devoting more and more of his time to promoting revolution.The Russian government, becoming aware of his radicalism, ordered him to return to Russia. On his refusal his property was confiscated. Instead he went with Georg Herwegh to Zurich, Switzerland.

Switzerland, Brussels and Paris

During his six month stay in Zurich, he became closely associated with German communist Wilhelm Weitling. Until 1848 he remained on friendly terms with the German communists, occasionally calling himself a communist and writing articles on communism in the Schweitzerische Republikaner. He moved to Geneva in western Switzerland shortly before Weitling's arrest. His name had appeared frequently in Weitling's correspondence seized by the police. This led to reports being circulated to the tzarist police. The Russian ambassador in Berne ordered Bakunin to return to Russia, but instead he went to Brussels, where he met many leading Polish nationalists, such as Joachim Lelewel. However he clashed with them over their demand for a historic Poland based on the borders of 1776 as he defended the right of autonomy for the non-Polish peoples in these territories. He also did not support their clericalism and they did not support his calls for the emancipation of the peasantry.

In 1844 Bakunin went to Paris, then a centre for European radicalism. He established contacts with Karl Marx and the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who greatly impressed him and with whom he formed a personal bond.

In December 1844, Tsar Nikolai I issued a decree stripping Bakunin of his privileges as a noble, denying him civil rights, confiscating his land in Russia, and condemning him to life long exile in Siberia should the Russian authorities ever get their hands on him. He responded with a long letter to La Réforme, denouncing the Tsar as a despot and calling for democracy in Russia and Poland (Carr, p.139). In March 1846 in another letter to the Constitutionel he defended Poland, following the repression of Catholics there. Some Polish refugees from Kraków, following the defeat of the uprising there, invited him to speak at the meeting in November 1847 commemorating the Polish November Uprising of 1830. In his speech, Bakunin called for an alliance between the Polish and Russian peoples against the Tsar, and looked forward to "the definitive collapse of despotism in Russia." As a result, he was expelled from France and went to Brussels.

Pan Slavism and Revolution

“Since 1846 the Slavo-Polish cause has become my idée fixe.” Bakunin's Letter to Herzen and Ogarev

Bakunin's attempt to draw Alexander Herzen and Vissarion Belinsky into conspiratorial action for revolution in Russia fell on deaf ears. In Brussels, Bakunin renewed his contacts with revolutionary Poles and Karl Marx. He spoke at a meeting organised by Lelewel in February 1848 about a great future for the slavs, whose destiny was to rejuvenate the Western world. Around this time the Russian embassy circulated rumours that Bakunin was a Russian agent who had exceeded his orders. As the revolutionary movement of 1848 broke out, Bakunin was ecstatic, despite disappointment that little was happening in Russia. Bakunin approached the French socialists in the Provisional Government, Ferdinand Flocon, Louis Blanc, Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin and Albert L'Ouvrier for money for a project for a Slav federation liberating those under the rule of Prussia, Austro-Hungary and Turkey. They lent him 2,000 francs of public money. He left for Germany travelling through Baden to Frankfurt and Köln. He broke with Marx over the latter's criticisms of Herwegh's attempt to incite an insurrection in Baden. He went on to Berlin, but was stopped from going to Posen by the police. This was part of Prussian occupied Poland, where a nationalist insurrection was taking place. The poet, Juliusz Słowacki had announced to the national Assembly that a "new age has dawned, the age of holy anarchy." Instead Bakunin went to Leipzig and Breslau, then to Prague where he participated in the First Pan Slav Congress. The Congress was followed by an abortive insurrection that Bakunin had sought to promote and intensify but which was brutally suppressed. He returned to Breslau, where Marx republished the libel that Bakunin was a Tsarist agent, claiming that Georges Sand had proof. Marx had to retract this statement after Georges Sand came to Bakunin's defense.

Bakunin published his Appeal to the Slavs in the fall of 1848, in which he proposed that Slav revolutionaries unite with Hungarian, Italian and German revolutionaries to overthrow the three major European autocracies, the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Kingdom of Prussia.

Bakunin played a leading role in the May Uprising in Dresden in 1849, helping to organize the defense of the barricades against Prussian troops with Richard Wagner and Wilhelm Heine. He was captured in Chemnitz and held for thirteen months before being condemned to death by the government of Saxony. As the governments of Russia and Austria were also after him, his sentence was commuted to life. In June 1850, he was handed over to the Austrian authorities. Eleven months later he received a further death sentence, but this too was commuted to life imprisonment. Finally, in May 1851, Bakunin was handed over to the Russian authorities.

Imprisonment, Confession, Exile and Escape

Bakunin was taken to the notorious Peter and Paul Fortress. At the beginning of his captivity, Count Orlov, an emissary of the Tsar, visited Bakunin and told him that the Tsar requested a written confession, hoping that the confession would place Bakunin spiritually as well as physically in the power of the Russian state. Since all his acts were known, he had no secrets to reveal, and so he decided to write to the Tsar:

You want my confession; but you must know that a penitent sinner is not obliged to implicate or reveal the misdeeds of others. I have only the honor and the conscience that I have never betrayed anyone who has confided in me, and this is why I will not give you any names.

On reading the letter, Tsar, Nicholas I, remarked, “He is a good lad, full of spirit, but he is a dangerous man and we must never cease watching him.” This Confession, which was only published following its discovery in the tsarist archives, has proved to be quite controversial, and is sometimes analysed within the context of a specifically Russian literary form.

After three years in the underground dungeons of the notorious Fortress of St Peter and St Paul, he spent another four years in the castle of Shlisselburg. It was here that he suffered from scurvy and all his teeth fell out as a result of the appalling diet. He later recounted that he found some relief in mentally re-enacting the legend of Prometheus. His continuing imprisonment in these awful conditions led him to entreat his brother to supply him with poison. Following the death of Nikolai I, the new tsar Alexander II personally struck his name off the amnesty list. However in February 1857, his mother's pleas to the Tsar were finally heeded and he was allowed to go into permanent exile in the western Siberian city of Tomsk. He married Antonia Kwiatkowski, the daughter of a Polish merchant, a year later.

In August of 1858 Bakunin received a visit from his second cousin, General Count Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky, who had been Governor of Eastern Siberia for ten years. Muravyov was a liberal and Bakunin, as his relative became a particular favourite. In the spring of 1859, Muravyov help Bakunin with a job for Amur Development Agency which enabled him to move with his wife to Irkutsk.

Hearing from Muravyov of the opening of the Japanese ports to Russian and American shipping, Bakunin began to construct a plan of escape. Despite Muravyov falling from favour because of his liberal views, his successor, another relative of Bakunin, was also indulgent towards him. On June 5 1861, Bakunin left Irkutsk under cover of company business, ostensibly employed by a Siberian merchant to make a trip to Nikolaevsk. By July 17 he was on board the Russian warship Strelok bound for De-Kastri. However, in the port of Olga, Bakunin managed to persuade the American captain of the Vickery to take him on board. Despite bumping into the Russian Consul on board, Bakunin was able to sail away under the nose of the Russian Imperial Navy. By August 6 he had reached Hakodate in the northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaido and was soon in Yokohama.

Return to Europe through Japan and America

In Japan Bakunin met by chance Wilhelm Heine, his of his comrades-in arms from Dresden. The German botanist Philipp Franz von Siebold noted:

"In that Yokohama boarding-house we encountered an outlaw from the Wild West Heine, presumably as well as many other interesting guests. The presence of the Russian revolutionist Michael Bakunin, in flight from Siberia, was as far as one could see being winked at by the authorities. He was well-endowed with money, and none who came to know him could fail to pay their respects."

He left Japan from Kanagawa arriving in San Francisco on October 15 whence he proceeded via Panama to New York. In Boston, he visited Karol Forster, a partisan of Ludwik Mieroslawski during the 1848 Revolution in Paris, and caught up with other "Forty-Eighters", veterans of the 1848 revolutions in Europe, such as Friedrich Kapp. He then sailed for Liverpool arriving on December 27. He immediately went to London to see Herzen. That evening he burst into the drawing-room where the family was having supper. "What! Are you sitting down eating oysters! Well! Tell me the news. What is happening, and where?!"

The First International and the rise of the Anarchist movement

After returning to Europe, Bakunin immediately immersed himself in the revolutionary movement. In 1863 he joined a revolutionary expedition that was to aid a Polish insurrection against the Czar, but the insurrection was defeated and Bakunin ended up in Sweden. In 1864 he traveled to Italy, where he first began to develop his anarchist ideas. In his Revolutionary Catechism of 1866, he opposed religion and the state, advocating the

During the 1867–1868 period, Bakunin became involved in the League of Peace and Freedom, for which he wrote a lengthy essay setting forth his increasingly anarchist views, Federalism, Socialism, and Anti-Theologism*. Bakunin argued in favor of an anti-statist federalism, drawing on the work of Proudhon, coupled with what he regarded as its indispensable corollary, libertarian socialism, for Bakunin withdrew from the League when it became clear that the majority of its members were not prepared to adopt a socialist position, and instead founded the Social Democratic Alliance, which adopted a revolutionary socialist program.

In 1868, Bakunin joined the Geneva section of the First International, in which he remained very active until he was expelled from the International by Karl Marx and his followers at the Hague Congress in 1872. Bakunin was instrumental in establishing branches of the International in Italy and Spain.

In 1869, the Social Democratic Alliance was refused entry to the First International, on the grounds that it was an international organisation in itself, and only national organisations were permitted membership in the International. The Alliance dissolved and the various groups which it comprised joined the International separately.

Between 1869 and 1870, Bakunin became involved with the Russian revolutionary Sergey Nechayev in a number of clandestine projects. However, Bakunin broke with Nechaev over what he described as the latter’s “Jesuit” methods, by which all means were justified to achieve revolutionary ends.*

In 1870 Bakunin led a failed uprising in Lyon on the principles later exemplified by the Paris Commune, calling for a general uprising in response to the collapse of the French government during the Franco-Prussian War, seeking to transform an imperialist conflict into social revolution. In his Letters to A Frenchman on the Present Crisis, he argued for a revolutionary alliance between the working class and the peasantry and set forth his formulation of what was later to become known as propaganda of the deed:

Bakunin was a strong supporter of the Paris Commune of 1871, which was brutally suppressed by the French government. He saw the Commune as above all a “rebellion against the State,” and commended the Communards for rejecting not only the State but also revolutionary dictatorship.* In a series of powerful pamphlets, he defended the Commune and the First International against the Italian nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini, thereby winning over many Italian republicans to the International and the cause of revolutionary socialism.

Bakunin’s disagreements with Marx, which led to Bakunin’s expulsion from the International in 1872 after being outvoted by the Marx party at the Hague Congress, illustrated the growing divergence between the "anti-authoritarian" sections of the International, which advocated the direct revolutionary action and organization of the workers in order to abolish the state and capitalism, and the social democratic sections allied with Marx, which advocated the conquest of political power by the working class. The anti-authoritarian sections created their own International at the St. Imier Congress and adopted a revolutionary anarchist program.*

Although Bakunin accepted Marx’s class analysis and economic theories regarding capitalism, acknowledging “Marx’s genius,” he thought Marx was arrogant, and that his methods would compromise the social revolution. More importantly, Bakunin criticized “authoritarian socialism” (Marxism) and the concept of dictatorship of the proletariat which he adamantly refused.

(Quoted in Daniel Guerin, Anarchism: From Theory to Practice (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970), pp.25-26.)

Bakunin retired to Lugano in 1873 and died in Bern on June 13, 1876.

Political beliefs

Bakunin’s political beliefs rejected governing systems in every name and shape, from the idea of God downwards, and every form of external authority, whether emanating from the will of a sovereign or from universal suffrage. He wrote in Dieu et l’Etat (God and the State*), published posthumously in 1882:

Bakunin similarly rejected the notion of any privileged position or class, since

Bakunin's political beliefs were based on several interrelated concepts: (1) liberty; (2) socialism; (3) federalism; (4) anti-theism; and (5) materialism. He also developed a prescient critique of Marxism, predicting that if the Marxists were successful in seizing power, they would create a party dictatorship "all the more dangerous because it appears as a sham expression of the people's will" (Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, ed. A. Lehning (New York: Grove Press, 1974), page 268).

Bakunin's Concept of Liberty

By "liberty," Bakunin did not mean an abstract ideal but a concrete reality based on the equal liberty of others. In a positive sense, liberty consists of "the fullest development of all the faculties and powers of every human being, by education, by scientific training, and by material prosperity." Such a conception of liberty is "eminently social, because it can only be realized in society," not in isolation. In a negative sense, liberty is "the revolt of the individual against all divine, collective, and individual authority."*

Libertarian Socialism

Bakunin's socialism was a form of collectivist anarchism, in which the workers would directly manage the means of production through their own productive associations. There would be "equal means of subsistence, support, education, and opportunity for every child, boy or girl, until maturity, and equal resources and facilities in adulthood to create his own well-being by his own labor."*

Federalism

By federalism Bakunin meant the organization of society "from the base to the summit - from the circumference to the center - according to the principles of free association and federation."Consequently, society would be organized "on the basis of the absolute freedom of individuals, of the productive associations, and of the communes," with "every individual, every association, every commune, every region, every nation" having "the absolute right to self-determination, to associate or not to associate, to ally themselves with whomever they wish."[http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1866/catechism.htm

Anti-Theologism

Bakunin argued that "the idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind, in theory and practice." Consequently, Bakunin reversed Voltaire's famous aphorism that if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him, writing instead that "if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him."*

Materialism

Bakunin denied religious concepts of "free will" and advocated a materialist explanation of natural phenomena: "the manifestations of organic life, chemical properties and reactions, electricity, light, warmth and the natural attraction of physical bodies, constitute in our view so many different but no less closely interdependent variants of that totality of real beings which we call matter" (Selected Writings, page 219). The "mission of science is, by observation of the general relations of passing and real facts, to establish the general laws inherent in the development of the phenomena of the physical and social world." However, Bakunin rejected the notion of "scientific socialism," writing in God and the State that a "scientific body to which had been confided the government of society would soon end by devoting itself no longer to science at all, but to quite another affair... its own eternal perpetuation by rendering the society confided to its care ever more stupid and consequently more in need of its government and direction."*

Bakunin's Concept of Social Revolution

Bakunin’s methods of realizing his revolutionary program were consistent with his principles. The workers and peasants were to organize on a federalist basis, "creating not only the ideas, but also the facts of the future itself."* The worker's trade union associations would "take possession of all the tools of production as well as buildings and capital."The peasants were to "take the land and throw out those landlords who live by the labor of others."*

Critique of Marxism

The dispute between Mikhail Bakunin and Karl Marx highlighted the differences between anarchism and Marxism. While both anarchists and Marxists share the same final goal, the creation of a free, egalitarian society without social classes and government, they strongly disagree on how to achieve this goal. Anarchists believe that the classless, stateless society should be established by the direct action of the masses, culminating in social revolution, and refuse any intermediate stage such as the dictatorship of the proletariat, on the basis that such a dictatorship will become self-perpetuating. For Bakunin, the fundamental contradiction is that for the Marxists, "anarchism or freedom is the aim, while the state and dictatorship is the means, and so, in order to free the masses, they have first to be enslaved."*

Bakunin was perhaps the first theorist of the "new class," the intellectuals and administrators forming the bureaucratic apparatus of the state. Bakunin argued that the "State has always been the patrimony of some privileged class: a priestly class, an aristocratic class, a bourgeois class. And finally, when all the other classes have exhausted themselves, the State then becomes the patrimony of the bureaucratic class and then falls - or, if you will, rises - to the position of a machine."*

Criticism

Bakunin has been criticized for being a closet authoritarian. In his letter to Albert Richard, he wrote that However, Bakunin's supporters argue that this “invisible dictatorship” is not a dictatorship in any conventional sense of the word, as Bakunin was careful to point out that its members would not exercise any official political power:

Bakunin has also been criticized for his anti-semitic and anti-German remarks.

Anarchist historian Max Nettlau described Bakunin's pan-Slavism of the 1840s as being the result of a nationalist psychosis "from which few are entirely free" ("Bakunin: A Biographical Sketch," in Maximoff, Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p.41). Some critics try to use Bakunin's Confession of 1851 to Tsar Nikolai I to discredit him, because in it he asked the Tsar for forgiveness and implored him to place himself at the head of the Slavs as their redeemer and father.

He has been criticized for being Eurocentric because of his alleged indifference to conditions in Japan during and after his brief stay in Yokohama.*.

Bibliography

  • Bakunin on anarchism / edited, translated and with an introduction by Sam Dolgoff preface by Paul Avrich. -- New York : Knopf, originally published in 1971 as Bakunin on anarchy. Includes James Guillaume’s Bakunin - A Biographical Sketch.[http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/guillaume/works/bakunin.htm
  • Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, ed. A. Lehning. New York: Grove Press, 1974
  • Statism and Anarchy, Cambridge University Press 1991
  • No Gods No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism by Daniel Guérin
  • Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Volume 1: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300CE-1939),* ed. Robert Graham
  • The Political Philosophy of Bakunin edited by G. P. Maximoff, including "Mikhail Bakunin - a Biographical Sketch" by Max Nettlau
  • The Basic Bakunin: Writings 1869-1871, ed. Robert M. Cutler (New York: Prometheus Books, 1992)
  • Mikhail Bakunin: The Philosphical Basis of his Anarchism, by Paul McLaughlin (New York: Algora Publishing, 2002)

English translations of Bakunin are generally rare when compared to the comprehensive editions in French (by Arthur Lehning), Spanish and German. Madelaine Grawitz’s biography (Paris: Calmann Lévy 2000) remains to be translated.

The standard English-language biography is by E. H. Carr.

A new biography, Bakunin: The Creative Passion, by Mark Leier, is due to be published by St. Martin’s Press August 22 2006, hardcover, 320 pages, ISBN 0312305389

An eight-volume complete works of Bakunin is to be published at some point in the future by AK Press; according to Ramsey Kanaan these will likely be published yearly for eight years in hardcover format.

See also

External links

Anarchists | Atheists | 19th century philosophers | Atheist philosophers | Materialists | Russian anarchists | Russian nobility | Russian philosophers | Russian revolutionaries | People of the Revolutions of 1848 | Russian atheists | Escapees | 1814 births | 1876 deaths

Михаил Бакунин | Mikhail Bakunin | Michail Alexandrowitsch Bakunin | Mihhail Bakunin | Mijaíl Bakunin | Miĥail Bakunin | Mikhail Bakunin | Mikhaïl Aleksandrovitch Bakounine | Mikhail Bakunin | 미하일 바쿠닌 | Mihail Bakunjin | Mihail Bakunin | Mikhail Bakunin | Michail Bakunin | מיכאיל באקונין | Michailas Bakuninas | Michail Bakoenin | ミハイル・バクーニン | Mikhail Bakunin | Mikhail Bakunin | Michał Bakunin | Mikhail Aleksandrovitch Bakunin | Бакунин, Михаил Александрович | Mikhail Bakunin | Michail Alexandrovič Bakunin | Михаил Бакуњин | Mihail Bakunin | Michail Bakunin | มีฮาอิล บาคูนิน | Mihail Bakunin | Бакунін Михайло Олександрович | 米哈依尔·巴枯宁

 

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