BAKUNIN, MIKHAIL. - Renowned Russian anarchist of the 19th century, born in Priamukhino (Tver' province) in 1814, died in the hospital of Bern in 1876. Son of a landowner and the eldest of eleven children, he began his career in 1833 as an artillery officer, but after two years abandoned it to devote himself to philosophical studies. Through Kant and Fichte he arrived at Hegel, whose ideas he enthusiastically embraced. Evidence of his Hegelian faith from this period is the introduction to his translation of Hegel’s *Gymnasial Discourses*, in which B. adopts the idea of the rationality of all reality, and an article *On Philosophy*, published in 1840 in the St. Petersburg journal *Native News*. The Hegelian categories in these two writings still retain a certain religious coloring, although Bakunin’s religiosity at the time already displayed an irrepressible spirit of freedom and a clear intolerance of all authority and dogmatic limits, which were among his principal characteristics.
In the autumn of 1840 Bakunin went to Berlin, where he aligned himself with the Left Hegelians. God, for him, was supreme freedom. This, however, could not be comprehended through speculation but only through freedom and action: “Life, love, and action can be known only through life, love, and action.” Yet freedom was now increasingly understood by Bakunin in a political sense: “Ethical freedom, without external freedom, is merely an insubstantial specter.” Particularly significant for Bakunin’s development during this period is his famous article *Reaction in Germany*, published under the pseudonym Jules Elysard in the *Deutsche Jahrbücher* of 1842, in which he sought to demonstrate that antithesis is the fundamental element of the Hegelian dialectic. The article closes with the celebrated final line: “The passion for destruction is at the same time a creative passion.”
In the years that followed, Bakunin became increasingly absorbed in revolutionary action, his first aim being the liberation of the Slavs, and particularly the Poles. This made a return to Russia impossible for him. In 1848 he was in Paris, Germany, and Prague among the most ardent agitators and promoters of the revolution. When this was suppressed, Bakunin was arrested in Chemnitz and sentenced to death by a Saxon court. The sentence was not carried out, however, and he was handed over to Austria, which in turn delivered him to Russia in 1851. In Russia he was imprisoned until 1857, during which time he composed and directed to Tsar Nicholas I his *Confession*. In 1857 he was sent into exile in Siberia, but after four years he managed to escape and make his way through Japan and America to London. There he collaborated with Marx in the First International. But his anarchic tendencies and opposition to all forms of state organization soon brought him into conflict with Marx, and the disagreement grew sharper until it led to Bakunin’s expulsion from the First International (1872). In 1870 Bakunin took part in the Lyon uprising, and in 1874 in the disturbances in Bologna. The failure of both ventures led him to doubt the revolutionary spirit of humanity. He died poor and disillusioned in a hospital in Bern.
The most fruitful period of Bakunin’s literary activity followed his imprisonment. It was then that he composed his most famous works: *The German Empire and the Social Revolution* (1871); *God and the State* (1870–71); and *Statism and Anarchy* (1873). At first, in 1848, Bakunin had sought God in revolution. It was around that time (probably in 1849) that he wrote to a friend: “You are mistaken if you think I do not believe in any God. I have sought God in men, in their freedom; now I seek God in revolution.” Yet the violent hatred he bore toward every limit imposed on human freedom ultimately led him to a radical hostility toward all forms of religious faith. The sovereign being of God seemed to him to absorb everything: “If God exists, man is a slave; but man can and must be free: therefore God does not exist.”
In the history of Russian culture, Bakunin is one of the most significant figures. His anarchism connects him—according to Berdyaev—with other figures of the same type, such as Stenka Razin and Pugachev, and also links him to the Slavophiles with their deep aversion to every form of the state. Bakuninist ideas are also found in the novels of Dostoevsky. His concept of negation as the fundamental element of Hegelian dialectic and of reality finds its continuation in Lenin’s exaltation of the Hegelian dialectic, which Lenin saw as a justification for revolutionary action.
Among the editions of his works (a complete edition is lacking), the following should be noted: *Oeuvres* (6 vols., Paris 1895–1913). In Russian: *Selected Works* (5 vols., Moscow-Petrograd 1919–22). For his letters, there is only *Correspondance de M. B., Lettres à Herzen et à Ogareff* (1860–74), published with a preface and annotations by M. Dragomanov (Paris 1898).
Gustavo A. Wetter