Mikhail Bakunin

Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), Russian revolutionary and anarchist. He was born Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin near Moscow into an aristocratic family, and educated at a military school in St Petersburg. Bakunin was an officer of the Imperial Guard, but resigned and spent a number of years travelling in Europe, before taking part in the revolutions of 1848-1849 in Paris and Germany. Arrested in Austria, he was condemned to death, but instead was turned over to the Russians, who imprisoned him for several years. He was sent to Siberia in 1857, but escaped in an American ship to Japan, and arrived in England in 1861. From that time until his death Bakunin was active in spreading his anarchistic views throughout Europe. In 1869 he founded the semi-secret Social Democratic Alliance, and as leader of that group he was the opponent of Karl Marx in the First International: this resulted in his expulsion in 1872. Bakunin's last years were spent in poverty in Switzerland, hatching plots with numerous fellow exiles that never came to fruition, and corresponding with small anarchist groups all over Europe that owed much to his fervent inspiration.