Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin was a prominent Russian revolutionary and a foundational figure in the development of anarchist thought in the 19th century. Disillusioned with his noble background and military career, he immersed himself in radical intellectual circles, eventually moving to Paris where he encountered influential thinkers like Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Karl Marx. Bakunin advocated for direct action and equated violence with virtue, arguing that it was a necessary tool for creating revolutionary change. His activism led to repeated arrests and imprisonment, including a lengthy sentence in Siberia, from which he ultimately escaped.
Bakunin's vision emphasized the importance of revolution in nonindustrial societies, and he founded several anarchist organizations, notably the International Brotherhood and the International Social Democratic Alliance. His ideas often clashed with Marxist theory, particularly regarding state communism and class consciousness, leading to significant tensions within the broader socialist movement. Despite his contributions, Bakunin's legacy was met with fierce opposition, resulting in his ideas being suppressed in many regions. His writings inspired a wave of political activism and violent acts throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, leaving a lasting impact on anarchist and socialist movements worldwide.
Subject Terms
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin
Identification: Russian anarchist
Significance: Bakunin’s advocacy of revolutionary violence resulted in his persecution in many European countries; even Karl Marx tried to suppress his ideology
If Pierre-Joseph Proudhon provided many of the basic ideas of nineteenth century anarchism, Mikhail Bakunin gave anarchism its doctrine of action. He equated violence with virtue, defining terrorism in God and State (1871) as a weapon to produce nothing less than “the annihilation of everything as it now exists.” Bakunin’s writings, the man himself, and the movements he helped found were vigorously persecuted.
Bakunin grew to adulthood hostile to his provincial noble family’s values. Dissatisfied with his career as a military officer, he moved into the radical literary circles of Vissarion Belinsky and Ivan Turgenev. In 1840 he traveled to Paris and entered radical intellectual circles, meeting both Proudhon and Marx. In 1847 Bakunin was expelled from Paris after urging Poles to overthrow czarist control in a meeting before a Polish refugee association. He then went to Prague, where he urged the Slavs to destroy the Austro-Hungarian Empire in order to pave the way for the emergence of a virtuous society. His activities gained him permanent listing by international police authorities. While in Dresden in 1849, Bakunin mounted the barricades during the German city’s brief revolution, and was promptly sent to prison. After being returned to Russian authorities in 1851, he spent six years in a Russian prison. In 1857 he was banished to Siberia. He escaped in 1861 and made his way to London, where he lived with the famous Russian exile Alexander Herzen and often met with Karl Marx.
Bakunin went to Italy in 1865, during a critical period in Italian unification, and won many young disciples to anarchism in Naples. This experience also convinced him that revolution would first take place in nonindustrial areas, such as Naples and his native Russia, where people were “socialist by instinct and revolutionary by nature.” To this end, he founded his first anarchist organization, the International Brotherhood.
In 1867 Bakunin moved to Switzerland. There he worked with Sergei Nacheev, a young Russian exile, to write manifestos advocating bold acts of terrorism to destroy existing society; these manifestos greatly influenced future generations of anarchists. Bakunin was able to make converts out of rural Swiss watchmakers, elite artisans who knew how to make powerful bombs. By 1868 he founded the International Social Democratic Alliance, which he joined to Marx’s International. In later years Bakunin organized strong anarchist organizations in Lyon, Marseilles, Madrid, and Barcelona.
Bakunin’s stress on violence and his hostility to Marx’s ideas about state communism and mass class consciousness led to bitter quarrels. At the Hague Conference in 1872, Bakunin and his fellow anarchists were expelled from the International. After participating in Bologna’s abortive 1874 uprising, Bakunin fled to Switzerland.
Bakunin died in Bern two years later, leaving his scattered writings for future editors to compile. Although he created no coherent body of doctrine, his ideas about violent propaganda inspired many political assassinations and bombings, from the 1880’s until well into the twentieth century. Not only Bakunin’s writings, but his very ideas were vigorously suppressed in most Western nations. Because of his legacy, many socialist and labor organizations in the United States were later branded as subversive merely because they were believed to be anarchistic.