'I shall confess to You as to a spiritual father,' he wrote to the Tsar. In his 'Confession' B. admitted all his transgressions, and e<1lled his revolutionary activities mad and c riminal. proceeding from immaturity of mind (M. A. Bakunin: Sobr. soch. i pisem . . . . IV. 1 04-206 ) . He realised that his 'Confession' could only compromise him in the eyes of the revolu tionaries, and therefore tried to conceal its actual contents. ( A .S.)
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persecution and death of Mikhaylov?9 And a s for the reprimand of a man like Korsakov10-that is not worth talking about. It is a pity it was not two.
Bakunin's escape is remarkable for the space it covered; it is the very longest escape in a geographical sense. After making his way to the Amur, on the pretext of commercial business, he succeeded in persuading an American skipper to take him to the shores of Japan. At Hakodate another American captain undertook to convey him to San Francisco. Bakunin went on board his ship and found the sea-captain busily fussing over a dinner; ·he was expecting an honoured guest, and invited Bakunin to join them. Bakunin accepted the invitation, and only when the visitor arrived found that it was the Russian Consul-General.
It was too late, too dangerous, too ridiculous to try to conceal himself: he entered at once into conversation with him and said that he had obtained leave to go on a pleasure-trip. A small Russian squadron under the command, if I remember right, of Admiral Popov was riding at anchor, about to sail for Nikolayev:
'You are not returning with our men? ' inquired the Consul.
'I have only just arrived,' said Bakunin, 'and I want to see a little more of the country.'
After dining together they parted en bans amis. Next day he passed the Russian squadron in the American steamer: there were no more dangers, apart from those of the ocean.
As soon as Bakunin had looked about him and settled down in London, that is, had made the acquaintance of all the Poles and Russians who were there, he set to work. To a passion for propaganda, for agitation, for demagogy, if you like, to incessant activity in founding and organising plots and conspiracies and establishing relations and in ascribing immense significance to them, Bakunin added a readiness to be the first to carry out his ideas, a readiness to risk his life, and recklessness in accepting all the consequences. His nature was a heroic one, left out of work by the course of history. He sometimes wasted his powers on rubbish, as a lion wastes the pacing he does in his cage, always thinking that he will walk out of it. But Bakunin was not 9 M. I. Mikhaylo\' was condemned at the end of 1 861 to six years' forced labour and permanent residence in Siberia. He was put in irons and sent to extremely harsh forced labour in the Kandin mines, where he perished in 1865. (A.S.)
10 M. S. Korsakov, Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, was severely reprimanded by Alexander II for allowing B. to escape. (A.S.)
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a mere rhetorician, afraid to act upon his own words, or trying to evade carrying his theories into practice.
Bakunin had many defects. But his defects were slight, and his strong qualities were great . . . . Is it not in itself a sign of greatness that, wherever he was cast up by fate, as soon as he had grasped two or three features of his surroundings, he singled out the revolutionary current and at once set to work to carry it farther, to expand it, making of it the burning question of life?
It is said that Turgenev meant to draw Bakunin's portrait in Rudin ; but Rudin hardly recalls certain features of Bakunin.
Turgenev, carried away by the biblical custom of God, created Rudin in his own image and semblance. Turgenev's Rudin, saturated in the jargon of philosophy, is Bakunin as a young man.
In London he first of all set about revolutionising The Bell, and in 1 862 advanced against us almost all that in 1847 he had advanced against Belinsky. Propaganda was not enough; there ought to be immediate action ; centres and committees ought to be organised ; to have people closely and remotely associated with us was not enough, we ought to have 'dedicated and halfdedicated brethren,' organisations on the spot-a Slavonic organisation, a Polish organisation. Bakunin thought us too moderate, unable to take advantage of the situation of the moment, insufficiently fond of resolute measures. He did not lose heart, however, but was convinced that in a short time he would set us on the right path. ""hile awaiting our conversion Bakunin gathered about him a regular circle of Slavs. Among them there were Czechs, from the writer Fritsch to a musician who was called Naperstok ;11 Serbs who were simply called after their father's names loanovic, Danilovic, Petrovic ; there were vVallachians who did duty for Slavs, with the everlasting 'esco' at the end of their names; finally, there \vas a Bulgarian who had been a doctor in the Turkish army. And there were Poles of every diocese-the Bonapartist, the Mieroslawski, the Czartorysczki: democrats without socialist ideas but with a tinge of the officer ; socialists, Catholics, anarchists, aristocrats and men who were simply soldiers, ready to fight anywhere in North or South America . . . and by preference in Poland.
\Vith them Bakunin made up for his nine years' silence and solitude. He argued, lectured, made arrangements, shouted, decided. directed, organised and encouraged all day long, all night long, for days and nights together. In the brief minutes he had 11 The word means 'thimble" in Russian. (Tr.)
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free he rushed to his writing-table, cleared a little space from cigarette-ash, and set to work to write five, ten, fifteen letters to Semipalatinsk and Arad, to Belgrade and Tsargrad, to Bessarabia, Moldavia and Belokrinitsa. In the middle of a letter he would fling aside the pen and bring up to date the views of some old-fashioned Dalmatian, then, without finishing his exhortation, snatch up the pen and go on writing. This, however, was made easier for him by the fact that he was writing and talking about one and the same thing. His activity, his laziness, his appetite, and everything else, like his gigantic stature and the everlasting sweat he was in, everything, in fact, was on a superhuman scale, as he was himself; and he was himself a giant with his leonine head and tousled mane.
At fifty he was exactly the same wandering student from the Maroseyka, the same homeless Bohemien from the Rue de Bourgogne, with no thought for the morrow, careless of money, throwing it away when he had it, borrowing it indiscriminately right and left when he had not, as simply as children take from their parents, careless of repayment; as simply as he himself would give his last money to anyone, only keeping what he needed for cigarettes and tea. This manner of life did not worry him; he was born to be a great vagrant, a great nomad. If anyone had asked him once and for all what he thought of the right of property, he might have answered as Lalande answered Napoleon about God: 'Sire, in my pursuits I have not come upon any necessity for this right!' There was something child-like, simple and free from malice about him, and this gave him an unusual charm and attracted to him both the weak and the strong, repelling none but the affected petit bourgeois.12 His striking personality, the eccentric and powerful appearance he made everywhere, in a coterie of young people in Moscow, in a lecture-room at Berlin University, among Weitling's Communists and Caussidiere's Montagnards, his speeches in Prague, his command at Dresden, his trial, imprisonment, sentence to death, torture in Austria and surrender to Russia-where he vanished behind the fearful walls of the Alexeyevsky ravelin-make of 12 \Vhen, carried away in arl\"ument, Bakunin poured on his opponent's head a noisy storm of abuse for which no one else would have been for·