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Title: Mikhail Bakunin Author: Henry Seymour Date: 1888 Language: en Topics: Mikhail Bakunin, biography Source: Retrieved on 31st August 2021 from https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_-yIvAAAAYAAJ/
Mikhail Bakunin was born of an ancient aristocratic Russian family in
1814. At an early age, his father, who was then a wealthy proprietor of
Torchok in the governmental department at Twer, sent him to a cadet
school in St. Petersburg ; here he was soon entered as an artillery
ensign. In those days this service was one which was reserved especially
for the most favored nobles, the Czars traditional policy being to grant
greater freedom of research in this than in other services. It is not to
be wondered at, then, that Bakunin here nurtured the germs of those
great revolutionary ideas which afterwards made him the terror of
tyrants all over the world.
He longed to master the leading philosophical thought of his day, and
never lacked opportunity by losing it. Quartered with his battery in the
Polish provinces, the sight of the regime of absolute repression to
which these provinces were subjected filled him with horror. He resigned
his commission and went to live at Moscow, where he studied philosophy
with Belinski. Towards 1846 he left Russia and visited Berlin, in order
to study the more thoroughly the Hegelian philosophy, which was his wont
to characterize as the Algebra of Revolution. He visited Dresden,
Leipzig, and in fact, every locality where he imagined it possible to
exchange opinions with the leading thinkers of the times. He published
many philosophical dissertations over the signature of Jules Elisard. He
visited Paris in 1843, and there he became an enthusiastic admirer of
Proudhon. Bakunin was undoubtedly indebted more to Proudhon than to any
other man for the latest development of his thought. Bakunin’s style is
akin to Proudhon’s. The effect of Proudhon’s ideas unmistakably led to
the acceptance of those anarchistic sentiments which resulted in his
setting on foot the great and invincible Nihilist party in Russia, and
which made him one of the most prominent features of the modern
revolutionary movement.
He visited Switzerland, and remained there four years. He entered heart
and soul into the new social movement on foot there, being en rapport
with the Polish exiles. He excited grave suspicions on the part of the
Russian government, and was ordered to immediately return to Russia. But
he returned to Paris instead, and there daringly delivered a public
appeal to the Poles and Russians to organize a grand Pan-Slavonic
revolutionary confederation. The Czar of Russia was enraged to the
highest pitch. He demanded Bakunin’s expulsion from France. The French
government, ever the tool of tyranny, acceded to Russia’s request, and
then ten thousand roubles were offered for his arrest and transportation
into Russian territory. The Revolution of February soon brought him back
to France, but he quickly quitted to attend at the Congress of Slavs.
After this he went to Dresden and became one of the chiefs of the May
revolution. Forced to fly from Dresden, he was arrested, sent to prison,
and condemned to death in May, 1850, which sentence was afterwards
commuted to imprisonment for life. But jails, like laws, as Swift says,
are only cobwebs, which may catch small flies, and let wasps and hornets
break through. Bakunin escaped to Austria, but was relentlessly pursued
and again arrested, and sentenced to death for high treason. And aeain a
commutation of the death -sentence was secured, and he was doomed to
life-imprisonment. After repeated appeals varied with a few significant
threats from Russia, the Austrian government was compelled to hand him
over to the tender mercies of the Czar. Even then Bakunin was buoyed up
with hope. He was confined in a filthy dungeon in the fort
Petropavlofifski for several years, and, after surmounting almost
insuperable obstacles to life, he was finally transported to Siberia, a
region where all Russian reformers, friends of the people, are sent to
be cruelly tortured to death. Luckily, Bakunin found there, as governor,
Muravieff-Amurski, a cousin of General Muravieff, Bakunin being by
marriage also a cousin of General Muravieff. Owing to this, he was
allowed exceptional latitude, and he even pursued, in a manner, his
philosophic studies. It was on account of this comparative immunity that
Bakunin was enabled to perform what under ordinary circumstances would
have been a miracle. He escaped from Siberia, suffering untold hardships
; wandering footsore over many a mile of rough and rugged country, he
reached the sea ; and after many a fierce encounter with all sorts of
surroundings, he contrived to obtain passage to Japan. From here he
sailed to California. In 1860, he alighted, like a thunderbolt, in
London.
Such struggles as this man experienced, and the sufferings he endured,
would have softened the activity of most men, but our hero was a
Bakunin! He had scarcely stepped foot in England when he redoubled his
enthusiasm for the cause of social revolution. He appealed to the Poles
and Russians to join hands in a revolutionary confederation. He assisted
Herzen and Ogareff in editing and publishing the “Kolokol” (The Bell), a
revolutionary sheet, but it had no immediate effect owing to its great
depth and searching into philosophy; which was far beyond the mental
grasp of his co-workers. His anarchistic ideas manifested themselves
more largely than ever, and he at this time entered into sharp conflict
with the revolutionary politicians of the Marx school. In 1869 he
founded the Alliance of the Socialist Democracy, and on Sep. 28, 1870,
he organized an insurrection at Lyons, the failure of which necessitated
his flight to Geneva. The ’71 movement in Paris is attributed, if not
entirely, at least, very largely to the propagandism of Bakunin. At the
Geneva Congress in 1870 he took positive issue with the political wing
of the revolutionary party. He settled in Geneva for a little while, and
started a revolutionary journal, entitled “Egalité”. About this time he
was summarily expelled from the Hague International Congress of 1872,
but he carried thirty delegates with him, who finally overthrew the
International, which the delegates re-organized under their own
direction later.
Like most valuable literature, that which contains the innermost thought
and feeling, Bakunin’s assumed the shape of correspondence. No end of
time he spent in elaborating letters to those who approached him in a
spirit of inquiry. In these letters, some of which were aimed to arouse
the sluggish and animate the timorous, others to propound philosophical
deductions from fundamental truths, Bakunin specially formulated his
system of scientific Anarchy. His earliest pamphlet I have been able to
discover is “Odezwa do Slawian przez Ruskiego patriote” which was
published in 1849. In 1862 he published in London a pamphlet in Russian,
entitled “Romanoff, Pugatcheff, or Pestel?” occasioned by Alexander II,
decreeing the abolition of “serfdom” in 1861. He issued an address at
Leipzig, entitled “A mes amis Russeset Polonais”. “La Revolution sociale
ou la Dictature militaire” and “La Theologie politique de Mazzini et
l’lnternationale” were two other important pamphlets. At other times he
published “L’Empire Knoutogermanique et la Revolution Sociale”, “Paroles
Addressees aux Etudiants”, “The Principles of the Revolution”.
“Revolutionary Catechism” was not put into type, and was in cipher, but
it was first made public by being read by the public prosecutor at the
trial of Netchaieff on July 8^(th), 1871. But the most important of all
is the unfinished fragment, “God and the State”, which splendidly posits
Anarchy as the basis of true order. Given an equality of conditions, he
contended, and Church and State become unnecessary. Absence of equal
conditions, or opportunities, is due to the existence of the State,
which, although originating naturally and necessarily, has now no
further title to exist, in the present order of social development, and
which only assumes a claim itself to exist to protect Society from evils
that directly result from its own existence. He demonstrates the really
inseparable relation of Church and State. He disposes, with an
unanswerable and convincing array of argument, of the god-belief, and
its accompanying superstitions. Citing Voltaire’s famous phrase “If god
did not exist it would be necessary to invent him”, Bakunin
scientifically illustrates the nonsense of such a notion, and argues out
the opposite conclusion that “If god existed, it would be necessary to
abolish him”. He also reviews the various experimental forms of
government, and vigorously assails the final form — the government of
science. “The government of science, and of men of science, even be they
positivists, disciples of Auguste Comte, or, again, disciples of the
doctrinaire school of German communism, cannot fail to be impotent,
ridiculous, inhuman, cruel, oppressive, exploiting, maleficent.” The
mission of science is to enlighten life, not to govern it.
Bakunin died at Berne, in Switzerland, July 2, 1876. A crude simple
stone marks his memory there. And let the consciousness of his struggles
and triumphs, and the loftiness of his life-purpose animate all
possessed of heart and brain to make a noble man’s memory immortal by
unceasingly striving to finish the glorious work which Mikhail Bakunin
begun.