International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

Mikhail Bakunin is among the most significant anarchist activists and theorists of the nineteenth century. In both roles he came into conflict with Karl Marx , and he developed a particularly influential form of non-Marxist socialism. Born of noble descent, Bakunin was raised in privileged if isolated conditions 60 miles east of Tver in central Russia. As a child, he received an extensive liberal education under the guidance of his well-educated and traveled father. However, in the more difficult political and economic circumstances that followed the Decembrist uprising of 1825, he was sent to St. Petersburg to enter military school in 1828. He graduated in 1832 and was commissioned an ensign, though he secured a discharge less than three years later, having decided that the military was not for a man of his intellectual interests and rebellious character. In 1836 he moved to Moscow to study in the circle of Nikolai Stankevich and to pursue an academic career. He immersed himself in German philosophy, initially concentrating on the subjective idealism of Fichte before falling under the spell of Hegel. Under Hegel's influence, Bakunin developed a rather speculative interest in political reality, though it was only after he made it to Berlin in 1840, to further his philosophical studies, that his political radicalism became apparent. In the early 1840s Hegel's younger disciples, ... log in or subscribe to read full text