BAKUNIN, MIKHAIL (1814-1876), Russian anarchist, was born at Torjok, Tver. He served as an officer of the imperial guard in Poland, but resigned in protest against Tsarist methods. He then travelled in Germany, France and Switzerland, where he fixed his residence, refusing a summons of the Russian Govern ment to return, an act which cost him the confiscation of his estates. In 2849 he, like Wagner, took part in the vain defence of the Dresden revolutionary government. He was arrested and handed over to the Russian Government which sent him to eastern Siberia (1855), whence he escaped and returned to Europe (1861). From this time he took the place of Proudhon (q.v.) as the lead ing anarchist of Europe, till his death in Berne on June 13, 1876.
His chief principles, as enunciated in his God and the State (188 2) and his letters, are three : (1) Atheism, and the propa ganda of atheism—not agnosticism; (2) the destruction of the State ; the State being an organ of oppression all that is needful is to break its power. A system of anarchist communism will then automatically appear. The anxiety of the socialists to put in the place of a capitalist State another, revolutionary, State is conse quently idiotic; (3) political action must be rejected, because the destruction of the State cannot be achieved by political action but by insurrection. But while he demanded the complete abro gation of authority in society and in the organizations to which he belonged, he followed a reverse principle in organizations under his own control. These consisted of devoted revolutionaries who placed the revolution before everything else and yielded implicit obedience to their leader. He wrote in 1870 to his lieutenant Albert Richard, "Have you never thought what is the principal cause of the power and vitality of the Jesuit order? . . . it is the complete effacement of individuals and of private wills in collec tive organization and action." For this purpose he organized the "Alliance of Socialist Democracy" which operated first in a body called the League of Peace and Freedom and then in the Inter national Association of working men. Within the Alliance, which was not secret, was an organization of secret "national brothers," and above them again a supreme organization of zoo "interna tional brothers." After 1872, when this organization was dislo cated, Bakunin formed another secret body which was called simply "Y." In the organization of all these he was chiefly aided by a Russian named Nechaieff, and he drew in 1870 a bitter pic ture of his methods : "For him, truth, mutual confidence, real and strict solidarity only exist between a dozen individuals who form the sanctus sanctorum of the Society. All the rest are to serve as blind instruments . . . they are conspiracy-fodder. . . In the name of the cause it is his duty to gain possession of your whole person without your knowledge. . . . If your friend has a wife or a daughter, he will manage to seduce her and give her a baby in order to force her to break away from official morality and into a revolutionary protest against society." His views gained wide acceptance in the International (q.v. for further details) before it was split in 1872, especially in Spain, Italy, Belgium and French Switzerland. An anarchist insurrection, personally directed, at Lyons in 1870 was a fiasco, but the Bakuninists played a great part in the Spanish revolution of 1873, being in control or part control of several towns during the year. Their influence died away in Belgium, but in Italy and later in Russia, Bakuninism was for years exceedingly powerful.
Bakunin was the progenitor of Nihilism, but was no great theorist himself. What elaborations he made on his three main principles were, as he himself said, due to the "great master of us all, Proudhon." His influence in his lifetime was largely personal: his sincere and impulsive character profoundly impressed men much his superior in intellect. His philosophy struck deep roots only in countries such as Italy, Spain and Russia which were in dustrially backward and had a large oppressed peasant population. Historically, he was justified in his claim to be the successor of Stenka Razin and the leaders of the jacquerie.
See INTERNATIONAL, THE ; ANARCHISM, and their attached bibliog raphies, also R. W. Postgate, The Workers' International (192o, bibl.), and G. M. Stekloff, History of the First International (1928, bibl.) . M. Nettlau's (German) life of Bakunin has not been pub lished; there is a duplicated copy in the British Museum.
(R. W. P.)