despots). The essential difference is merely that Bakunin was a Russian, whereas Marx, Engels, and Ruge, being Germans, were animated with German sentiments.[1] In an earlier work of my own,[2] I have furnished proof of the assertion that at a considerably later date, Marx and the Marxists were still inspired with German nationalist sentiments, and cherished antipathies towards the Slavs. It is necessary to refer to the fact once more to-day, in view of the nationalist struggles now in progress within the ranks of the social democracy.[3]
To this view, which certainly cannot be termed chauvinist, Bakunin continued to adhere. He was a Russian, and as such desired that the Russians and the Slavs should become members of the revolutionary family of the nations. In the year 1848 he participated in the Prague rising; in 1863 he wished to help the Poles; at this time, too, he assisted in the commencing revolutionary organisation of the Russians. He had faith in the revolutionary energy of the Slavs.
If we wish to account for Bakunin's fondness for the Poles, we have only to recall that enthusiastic sarmatiophilism was almost universal at this epoch, and to remember Bakunin's personal acquaintanceship with Poles in Europe and in Siberia. We know, too, that his wife was a Pole.[4] Political relationships had existed between the radical Russians and the Poles ever since the partition of Poland.
When in 1848 the Czechs and the Ruthenians drew up their program of federation, Bakunin was won over to this cause. Bakunin belonged to a multilingual state, wherein distinct nationalities were struggling for national and linguistic rights. To him, consequently, the distinction between the centralising state and nationality was clearer than it was to Marx, by whom
- ↑ Marx's criticism of Bakunin's appeal (Appeal to the Slavs, by a Russian Patriot, M. Bakunin, Member of the Slav Congress in Prague, 1848) was published in the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung." It will be found in Die gesammelte Schriften von Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1902. vol. iii. p. 246).
- ↑ Grundlagen des Marxismus, § 119.
- ↑ While still in Siberia Bakunin wrote as follows (1860): "Nationality, just like the individual, just like the processes of life, digestion, and breathing, has no right to concern itself about itself until that right is denied. This is why the Poles, the Italians, the Hungarians, and all the oppressed Slav peoples, naturally and rightly stress the principle of nationality; and this is perhaps why we Russians concern ourselves so little about our nationality, and ignore it in favour of higher questions."
- ↑ Writing tram Siberia in 1861, Bakunin declared that the Polish question had been an "idée fixe" with him since 1846.
