Mikhail Bakunin

Mikhail Bakunin was born into a noble family in Pryamukhino, in the Russian Empire, and left a military career to study philosophy in Moscow and Berlin. He took part in the revolutions of 1848-1849, was arrested, imprisoned and exiled to Siberia, and escaped in 1861. In western Europe he became the main voice of anti-authoritarian socialism in the International Workingmen's Association until he was expelled at the Hague Congress in 1872 after a conflict with Marx. His works include God and the State and Statism and Anarchy. He died in Bern, Switzerland.

Bakunin's ideas strongly influenced anarchist movements in Spain, Italy, Switzerland and Latin America, including the Spanish anarchist unions that were a major force in the 1930s. Anarchists and some historians credit him with predicting that a revolutionary state could become a new bureaucratic ruling class, a theme later raised by critics of the Soviet Union. Marxists accused him of conspiratorial methods and of splitting the International. Liberal and conservative critics point to his endorsement of insurrection, and historians have documented antisemitic passages in his polemics against Marx. He remains a reference point for libertarian socialists, and his slogan that the passion for destruction is a creative passion, from an 1842 essay, is often quoted by admirers and critics alike as a summary of his revolutionary temperament.