Mikhail Bakunin

Lore & Background

Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, who died on 1 July 1876, was a Russian revolutionary anarchist and political philosopher. He ranks among the most important figures in anarchism and played a major role in revolutionary socialism, social anarchism, and collectivist anarchism. His reputation as a revolutionary made him one of the best-known ideologues in Europe, and he gained significant influence among radicals across Russia and the continent.

Bakunin came from a noble family and grew up at the Pryamukhino estate in the Tver Governorate. In 1840, he began studying in Moscow and later in Berlin, with plans to become a professor. While in Paris, he met Karl Marx and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, both of whom had a deep impact on him.

His growing radicalism put an end to any academic career. France expelled him for opposing the Russian Empire’s occupation of Poland. After taking part in the 1848 Prague uprising and the 1849 Dresden uprising, he was imprisoned, put on trial, sentenced to death, and extradited multiple times.

In 1857, he was exiled to Siberia but escaped through Japan, then the United States, and finally reached London. There he worked with Alexander Herzen on the journal Kolokol. In 1863, he tried to join an insurrection in Poland but never made it, instead spending time in Switzerland and Italy.

In 1868, Bakunin became a member of the International Workingmen’s Association, where he led the anarchist faction, which quickly gained influence. The 1872 Hague Congress was marked by a conflict between Bakunin and Marx, a key figure on the General Council who believed the state should be used to achieve socialism. Bakunin and the anarchists argued that the state should be replaced by federations of self-governing workplaces and communes.

Bakunin could not attend the congress in the Netherlands, and without him the anarchist faction lost the debate. He was expelled from the International because Marx believed he had maintained a secret organization within it. In response, Bakunin founded the Anti-Authoritarian International in 1872.

From 1870 until his death in 1876, he wrote longer works such as Statism and Anarchy and God and the State, while also staying active in European worker and peasant movements. In 1870, he took part in an insurrection in Lyon, France. He later tried to join an anarchist uprising in Bologna, Italy, but his failing health forced him to return to Switzerland in disguise.

Bakunin is remembered as a key figure in the history of anarchism and as a critic of Marxism, especially the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat. He argued that Marxist states would become one-party dictatorships ruling over the proletariat, not ruled by it. His book God and the State has been widely translated and remains in print. Bakunin strongly influenced thinkers such as Peter Kropotkin, Errico Malatesta, Herbert Marcuse, E. P. Thompson, Neil Postman, and A. S. Neill, as well as syndicalist groups like the IWW, the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, and contemporary anarchists in the anti-globalization movement.

Early life

Bakunin was born into Russian nobility at the Priamukhino estate, which had over 500 serfs. His father, Alexander Mikhailovich Bakunin, had been a Russian diplomat in Italy. After returning to Priamukhino and marrying the much younger Varvara Aleksandrovna Muravyeva, he raised their ten children using Rousseau’s educational methods.

Mikhail, the third child and oldest son, learned languages, literature, and philosophy of the time, and later described his youth as idyllic and sheltered from Russian reality. As an early teenager, he began military training at the St. Petersburg Artillery School, but he rejected it. He became an officer in 1833 and enjoyed the freedom to take part in city social life, but felt unfulfilled.

Neglecting his studies, he was sent to Belarus and Lithuania as punishment in early 1834, where he read academic theory and philosophy. He deserted the school in 1835 and avoided arrest only because of his family’s influence. He was discharged at the end of that year and, against his father’s wishes, left for Moscow to become a mathematics teacher.

In Moscow, Bakunin lived a bohemian intellectual life. German Romantic literature and idealist philosophy were popular there in the 1830s. In Nikolai Stankevich’s intellectual circle, he read German philosophy from Kant to Fichte to Hegel, and published Russian translations of their works. He produced the first Russian translation of Hegel and by 1837 was the leading Russian expert on Hegel.

He befriended young Russian intellectuals such as the literary critic Vissarion Belinsky, the poet Nikolay Ogarev, the novelist Ivan Turgenev, and the writer Alexander Herzen before their careers took off. Herzen funded Bakunin’s studies at the University of Berlin in 1840. Bakunin soon abandoned his plan to return to Moscow as a professor.

In Berlin, Bakunin moved toward the Young Hegelians, a group with radical interpretations of Hegel’s philosophy, which turned his attention to politics. He left Berlin in early 1842 for Dresden and met the Hegelian Arnold Ruge, who published Bakunin’s first original work. That piece, titled “The Reaction in Germany,” called for extending the French Revolution to the rest of Europe and Russia. Although written in dense Hegelian language and under a pseudonym, it marked Bakunin’s shift from philosophy to revolutionary rhetoric.

Revolutionary activity and imprisonment

Throughout the 1840s, Bakunin became more involved in revolutionary agitation. When his activities drew the attention of Russian secret agents, he left for Zürich in early 1843.

Reader's Guide

Bakunin is remembered as a major figure in the history of anarchism and as an opponent of Marxism, especially of the dictatorship of the proletariat, arguing that Marxist states would be one-party dictatorships ruling over the proletariat, not ruled 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 IWW, the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War and contemporary anarchists involved in the modern-day anti-globalization movement.

Did You Know?

• He escaped from Siberian exile in 1861 via Japan and the United States to London.
• Bakunin wrote his Confession to the Russian emperor while imprisoned, which later proved controversial.