Mikhail Bakunin

Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (; 1814–1876) was a Russian revolutionary anarchist, socialist and founder of collectivist anarchism. He is considered among the most influential figures of anarchism and a major founder of the revolutionary socialist and social anarchist tradition. Bakunin's prestige as a revolutionary also made him one of the most famous ideologues in Europe, gaining substantial influence among radicals throughout Russia and Europe.

Bakunin grew up in Pryamukhino, a family estate in Tver Governorate. From 1840, he studied in Moscow, then in Berlin hoping to enter academia. Later in Paris, he met Karl Marx and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who deeply influenced him. Bakunin's increasing radicalism ended hopes of a professorial career. He was expelled from France for opposing The Russian Empire's occupation of Poland. In 1849, he was arrested in Dresden for his participation in the Czech rebellion of 1848 and deported to Russian Empire, where he was imprisoned first in Saint Petersburg, then in the Shlisselburg fortress from 1854 and finally exiled to Siberia in 1857. He escaped via Japan to the United States and then to London, where he worked with Alexander Herzen on the journal ''Kolokol'' (''The Bell''). In 1863, Bakunin left to join the insurrection in Poland, but he failed to reach it and instead spent time in Switzerland and Italy.

In 1868, Bakunin joined the International Working Men's Association, leading the anarchist faction to rapidly grow in influence. The 1872 Hague Congress was dominated by a struggle between Bakunin and Marx, who was a key figure in the General Council of the International and argued for the use of the state to bring about socialism. In contrast, Bakunin and the anarchist faction argued for the replacement of the state by federations of self-governing workplaces and communes. Bakunin could not reach the Netherlands and the anarchist faction lost the debate in his absence. Bakunin was expelled from the International for maintaining, in Marx's view, a secret organisation within the International and founded the Anti-Authoritarian International in 1872. From 1870 until his death in 1876, Bakunin wrote his longer works such as '' Statism and Anarchy'' and ''God and the State,'' but he continued to directly participate in European worker and peasant movements. In 1870, he was involved in an insurrection in Lyon, France. Bakunin sought to take part in an anarchist insurrection in Bologna, Italy, but his declining health forced him to return to Switzerland in disguise.

Bakunin is remembered as a major figure in the history of anarchism, an opponent of Marxism, especially of the dictatorship of the proletariat; and for his predictions that Marxist regimes would be one-party dictatorships ruling over the proletariat, not rule by the proletariat. His book ''God and the State'' has been widely translated and remains in print. Bakunin has had a significant influence on thinkers such as Peter Kropotkin, Errico Malatesta, Herbert Marcuse, E. P. Thompson, Neil Postman and A. S. Neill as well as syndicalist organizations such as the Wobblies, the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War and contemporary anarchists involved in the modern-day anti-globalization movement.Sale, Kirkpatrick (2006-11-06
An Enemy of the State
, '' The American Conservative''

Biography

Early years

On 18 May 1814, Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was born to a Russian noble family in the village situated in Tver. His father Alexander Mikhailovich Bakunin (1768–1854) was a career diplomat who served in Italy and France, and upon his return settled down at the paternal estate and became a Marshal of Nobility. According to the family legend, the was founded in 1492 by one of the three brothers of the noble Báthory family who left Hungary to serve under Vasili III of Russia. But the first documented ancestor was a 17th-century Moscow dyak (clerk) Nikifor Evdokimov nicknamed Bakunya (from the Russian ''bakunya'', ''bakulya'' meaning "chatterbox, phrase monger"). Alexander's mother, knyazna Lubov Petrovna Myshetskaya, belonged to the impoverished Upper Oka Principalities branch of the Rurik dynasty founded by Mikhail Yurievich Tarussky, grandson of Michael of Chernigov.

In 1810, Alexander married Varvara Alexandrovna Muravyova (1792–1864), who was 24 years younger than he. She came from the ancient noble founded in the 15th century by the Ryazan boyar Ivan Vasilievich Alapovsky nicknamed ''Muravey'' (meaning "ant") who was granted land in Veliky Novgorod. Her second cousins included Nikita Muravyov and Sergey Muravyov-Apostol, key figures in the Decembrist revolt. Alexander's liberal beliefs led to his involvement in the Northern Society of the Decembrists. After Nicolas I became Emperor, Alexander gave up politics and devoted himself to the estate and his children—five girls and five boys, the oldest of whom was Mikhail.

At age 15, Bakunin left for Saint Petersburg and became a Junker at the Artillery School, today called Mikhailovskaya Military Artillery Academy. In 1833, he received a rank of Praporshchik and was seconded to serve in an artillery brigade in the Minsk and Grodno Governorates. He did not enjoy the army, and having free time, he spent it on self-education. In 1835, he was seconded to Tver and from there returned to his village. Although his father wanted him to continue in either the military or civil service, Bakunin traveled to Moscow to study philosophy.

Interest in philosophy

In Moscow, Bakunin soon became friends with a group of former university students that studied idealist philosophy, grounded in the poet Nikolay Stankevich, "the bold pioneer who opened to Russian thought the vast and fertile continent of German metaphysics". They also studied Immanuel Kant, then Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. By autumn 1835, Bakunin conceived of forming a philosophical circle in his home town of Pryamukhino. By early 1836 he was back in Moscow, where he published translations of Johann Gottlieb Fichte's ''Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar's Vocation'' and ''The Way to a Blessed Life'', which became his favorite book. With Stankevich, Bakunin also read Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller and E. T. A. Hoffmann.

Bakunin became increasingly influenced by Hegel and made the first Russian translation of his work. During this period, he met Slavophile Konstantin Aksakov, Pyotr Chaadayev and socialists Alexander Herzen and Nikolay Ogarev. He developed his pan-Slavic views. After long wrangles with his father, Bakunin went to Berlin in 1840. His stated plan was to become a university professor (a "priest of truth" as he and his friends imagined it), but he soon met and joined students of the Young Hegelians and the socialist movement. In his 1842 essay
The Reaction in Germany
', he argued for the revolutionary role of negation, summed up in the phrase "the passion for destruction is a creative passion".

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, and devoted more and more time to promoting revolution. The Russian government, becoming aware of this activity, ordered him to return to Russia. On his refusal, his property was confiscated. Instead, he went with Georg Herwegh to Zürich, Switzerland.

Early nationalism

In his pre-anarchist years, Bakunin's politics were essentially a left-wing form of nationalism, specifically a focus on East Europe and Russian affairs. While at this time he located the national liberation and democratic struggles of the Slavs in a larger European revolutionary process, Bakunin did not pay much attention to other regions. This aspect of his thought dates from before he became an anarchist and his anarchist works consistently envisaged a global social revolution, including Africa and Asia. As an anarchist, Bakunin continued to stress the importance of national liberation, but he now insisted that this issue had to be solved as part of the social revolution. The same problem that in his view dogged Marxist revolutionary strategy (the capture of revolution by small elite which would then oppress the masses) would also arise in independence struggles led by nationalism, unless the working class and peasantry created an anarchy, arguing:

When Bakunin visited Japan after his escape from Siberia, he was not really involved in its politics or with the Japanese peasants. This might be taken as evidence of a basic disinterest in Asia, but that would be incorrect as Bakunin stopped over briefly in Japan as part of a hurried flight from 12 years of imprisonment, a marked man racing across the world to his European home. Bakunin had neither Japanese contacts nor any facility in the Japanese language and the small number of expatriate newspapers by Europeans published in China and Japan provided no insights into local revolutionary conditions or possibilities. The anarchist historian Max Nettlau points to a letter written by Bakunin to George Herwegh in 1848 in which Bakunin's anarchist tendencies are already well established.
During his six-month stay in Zürich , Bakunin associated with German communist Wilhelm Weitling. Until 1848, he was friendly with the German communists, occasionally calling himself communist and writing articles on communism in the ''Schweitzerische Republikaner''. He moved to Geneva soon before Weitling's arrest. His name had appeared often in Weitling's correspondence seized by the police. This led to reports to the imperial police. The Russian ambassador in Bern ordered Bakunin to return to Russia. Instead, he went to Brussels, where he met many leading Polish nationalists, such as Joachim Lelewel, co-member with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels