The historical Anarchist activist, philosopher, and writer - Mikhail Bakunin - remains a beacon for human freedom and justice worldwide.
Below is a time line of events corresponding to his life:
1814 – May 30, Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin born into a noble family at Pryamukhino, Russian Empire
1829 – Entered Artillery Academy in St. Petersburg
1835 – Junior officer Bakunin quits the Russian army; begins his study of philosophy in Moscow
1840 – Moves to Berlin, is attracted to socialism, the Hegelian-Left, and pan-Slavic ideas
1842 – Moves to Dresden, capital of the German Kingdom of Saxony; publishes his essay “Reaction in Germany”
1844 – Russian Emperor Nicholas strips Bakunin of his title to “nobility,” confiscates his family’s land, and sentences him to life-imprisonment in absentia
1844-47 – Travels through Europe often being deported, meets with (the primitive) French Anarchist PJ Proudhoun, and later Karl Marx
1848-49 – Partakes in the Czech Rebellion of 1848 and in the revolutionary uprisings of Saxony & France; Bakunin becomes a leading figure in the May Uprising in Dresden (1949)
1849 – Bakunin sentenced to death and is imprisoned in Konigstein Fortress in Dresden until 1850
1850 – Extradited to Austria and imprisoned until 1851
1851- Extradited back to Russian Empire for his participation in the Czech Rebellion; imprisoned in Peter-Paul Fortress at St. Petersburg. Languishes in this prison until 1857 when he is exiled to a labor camp in Siberia
1861 – Bakunin escapes from Siberia to Japan, then travels to USA and UK
1863 – Attempts to join Polish uprising, Prussian police prevent him from reaching his destination, ends up residing in Switzerland and Italy
1864 – Founds the Italian Journal “Liberta e Giustizia” (Liberty & Justice)
1866 – Co-founds the International Brotherhood, aka: the Alliance of Revolutionary Socialists
1868 – Joins the International Working Men’s Association (the First International) which is dominated by Karl Marx and his supporters
1869 – Translates Marx’s “Das Kapital” into Russian
1870 – Actively participates in the Lyon Insurrection, the precursor to the Paris Commune of 1871
1870-71 – Writes “the Knouto-Germanic Empire” – including his most well-known book, which would, after his death, be published as “God & the State”
1871 – In the aftermath of the Paris Commune, Bakunin and the other anarchists within the International begin to criticize Karl Marx’s view of socialism as being “authoritarian;” also criticize the concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”
1872 – Marx orders the expulsion of Bakunin and his fellow anarchists from the International; later this same year the anarchists established their own International in St. Imier, Switzerland
1873 – Bakunin publishes his work “Statism & Anarchy”
1875 – Health declines, is hospitalized in Switzerland
1876 – At the age of 62, the “Godfather of Modern Anarchism,” Mikhail Bakunin dies on July 1.
Bakunin's Collected Works
“Freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice; socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality”
M. Bakunin
