Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (1814–1876)

Founder and theorist of Russian anarchism and populism.

M.A. Bakunin was born on May 8, 1814, in the Tver Governorate, Russia, into a Russian noble family. In his youth, he was influenced by bourgeois democratic ideas and was dissatisfied with the Tsar’s absolutism. From 1840, he successively lived in Germany, France and Switzerland. From 1844 to 1847, while living in Paris, France, he was closely associated with Proudhon and became acquainted with the founders of Marxism—Marx and Engels. From 1848 to 1849, Bakunin took part in the German Revolution, and in 1849, he was sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment for taking part and leading the Dresden Uprising. In 1851, he was extradited to the Tsarist government of Russia and during his imprisonment wrote a Confession to the Tsar. In 1861, he fled from his Siberian exile to London, England, by way of Japan and the United States. In 1865, he founded the secret organization “International Brotherhood”. In 1866, he published the article Principles and Organization of the International Brotherhood, advocating the immediate abolition of all states, the abolition of all power and laws, opposing all authority and political parties, marking the formation of his anarchist ideological system. After taking part in the activities of the First International in 1868, Bakunin preached anarchism and engaged in separatist activities within the International, organized a secret group, the Alliance of Socialist Democracy, and attempted to usurp the leadership of the General Council of the First International. Marx and Engels resolutely exposed and struggled against Bakunin’s separatist activities and various intrigues. In 1872, at The Hague Congress of the First International, Bakunin was expelled from the First International. Later, he organized the “Anarchist International”, and publicly confronted the First International. Bakunin died in Bern on 1 July 1876.

Bakunin’s chief works include Principles and Organization of the International Brotherhood (1866), Revolutionary Catechism (1869), God and the State (1870–1871), Statism and Anarchy (1873), among which the book Statism and Anarchy expresses his anarchist thought in a concentrated manner. Marx and Engels profoundly exposed and criticized Bakuninism in On Authority, Conspectus of Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy, and other works.