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Bakunin and the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Paul Avrich
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“MIKHAIL ALEKSANDROVICH BAKUNIN is in San Francisco ”, announced the front page of Herzen's Kolokol November 1861. “HE IS FREE!Bakunin left Siberia via Japan and is on his way to England. We joyfully bring this news to all Bakunin's friends.” Arrested in Chemnitz in May 1849, Bakunin had been extradited to Russia in 1851 and, after six years in the Peter-Paul and Schlürg fortresses, condemned to perpetual banishment in Siberia. On June 17, 1861, however, he began his dramatic escape. Setting out from Irkutsk, he sailed down the Amur to Nikolaevsk, where he boarded a government vessel plying the Siberian coast. Once at sea, he transferred to an American sailing ship, the Vickery, which was trading in Japanese ports, and reached Japan on August 16th. A month later, on September 17th, he sailed from Yokohama on another American vessel, the Carrington, bound for San Francisco. He arrived four weeks later, completing, in Herzen's description, “the very longest escape in a geographical sense”.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , December 1979 , pp. 320 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1979

References

1 Kolokol (London), November 22, 1861. All dates are new style.

2 See Carr, E. H., “Bakunin's Escape from Siberia ”, in: The Slavonic Review, XV (1936–1937), pp. 377–88Google Scholar; Libero International (Kobe), No 5 (1978).Google Scholar In Yokohama, by an odd coincidence, Bakunin ran into Wilhelm Heine, a fellow participant in the Dresden rising of 1849.

3 San Francisco Evening Bulletin. October 16, 1861.

4 Alexander Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, transl. by Constance Garnett (6 vols; London, 1924–1927), V, p. 137.Google Scholar

5 Pis'ma M. A. Bakunina k A. I. Gertsenu i N. P. Ogarevu, ed. by Dragomanov, M. P. (St Petersburg, 1906), pp. 191.Google Scholar

6 Bakunin to Herzen and Ogarev, October 15, 1861, ibid., p. 189. Carr gives both $250 and $300 as the sum borrowed from Rev. Coe: “Bakunin's Escape from Siberia ”, loc. cit., p. 383, and Michael Bakunin (New York, 1961), pp. 247.Google Scholar

7 Pis'ma, p. 189.

8 Carr, Michael Bakunin, op. cit., p. 252; Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, op. cit., V, pp. 131–32.

9 Pis'ma, pp. 189–90; Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, V, p. 131.

10 Pis'ma, pp. 191–92.

11 Max Nettlau, Michael Bakunin. Eine Biographie (3 vols; London, 1896–1900), I, pp. 138–40Google Scholar; Polonskii, V., Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin. Zhizn', deiatel'nost', myshlenie, I (Moscow, 1922), pp. 347–48.Google Scholar

12 The New York Times and The New York Tribune, November 16, 1861.

13 The passenger list of the Champion, as printed in The New York Tribune of November 16, 1861, gives his name as “M. Bakonnia ”.

14 See Bakunin to Solger, October 14,1844, and Bakunin to Emma Herwegh, October 18, 1847, in Sobranie sochinenii i pisem, 1828–1876, ed. by Iu. M. Steklov (4 vols; Moscow, 1934–36), III, pp. 236–38, 267–68.

15 Ibid., p. 467; Dictionary of American Biography, XVII, pp. 393–94. See also The Forty-Eighters: Political Refugees of the German Revolution of 1848, ed. by Zucker, A. E. (New York, 1950), pp. 124, 343–44Google Scholar; Wittke, Carl, Refugees of Revolution: The German Forty-Eighters in America (Philadelphia, 1952), pp. 310–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 When Bakunin visited Solger's New York home, he wrote a note to Herzen and Ogarev, to which Solger and Kapp appended their greetings. See Bakunin to Herzen and Ogarev, 12 3, 1861, Pis'ma, p. 193.Google Scholar

17 The Forty-Eighters, op. cit., pp. 307–08; Wittke, Refugees of Revolution, op. cit., pp. 43, 62–63. See also Lenel, Edith, Friedrich Kapp (Leipzig, 1935).Google Scholar

18 Bakunin, M., Oeuvres (6 vols; Paris, 1895–1913), I, p. 50Google Scholar. On Sumner see the fine two-volume biography by Donald, David H., Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War and Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man (New York, 1960–1970).Google Scholar

19 On Wilson see Abbott, Richard H., Cobbler in Congress: The Life of Henry Wilson, 1812–1875 (Lexington, Ky, 1972)Google Scholar; Dictionary of American Biography, XX, pp. 322–25.Google Scholar

20 Hordyñski, Jozef, History of the Late Polish Revolution, and the Events of the Campaign (Boston, 1832).Google Scholar

21 Kennard, Martin P., “Michel Bakounin ”, manuscript in Harvard Library, published by Oscar Handlin, “A Russian Anarchist Visits Boston ”, in: The New England Quarterly, XV (1942), pp. 104–09.Google Scholar

22 Kennard describes Solger as “a valued friend” who, like Bakunin, “had been compelled to flee, a political refugee from the absolutism of his fatherland ”. Ibid., p. 105.

23 Ibid., p. 107.

24 Ibid., pp. 107–08.

25 Pis'ma, p. 190.

26 Handlin, “A Russian Anarchist ”, loc. cit., p. 108.

27 Bakunin, Oeuvres, I, p. 172.

28 Ibid., pp. 21–22.

29 Handlin, , “A Russian Anarchist ”, p. 107.Google Scholar

30 Bakunin, Oeuvres, I. p. 22.

31 Pis'ma, p. 190.

32 Brooks, Van Wyck, The Flowering of New England, 1815–1865, revised ed. (New York, 1937), pp. 510.Google Scholar

33 Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. by Longfellow, Samuel (3 vols; Boston, 1886), II. p. 371.Google Scholar

34 Handlin, , “A Russian Anarchist ”, p. 107. Contrast Carr, Michael Bakunin, p. 261Google Scholar: “Bakunin never acquired more than a smattering of spoken English ”.

35 Carr, Michael Bakunin, pp. 251–55; Handlin, , “A Russian Anarchist ”, p. 105.Google Scholar

36 Handlin, , “A Russian Anarchist ”, p. 106.Google Scholar

37 Annie Longfellow Thorp, “A Little Person's Little Memories of Great People ”, Longfellow Papers, Craigie House, Cambridge, published by Hecht, David, ‘“Laughing Allegra’ Meets an Ogre”, in: The New England Quarterly, XIX (1946), pp. 243–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Pis'ma, pp. 190–91.

39 Carr, Michael Bakunin, p. 247; Handlin, , “A Russian Anarchist ”, p. 107.Google Scholar

40 Nettlau, Michael Bakunin, op. cit., I, pp. 138–40; The New York Times, December 15, 1861.

41 Bakunin, , “Herzen”, in Archives Bakounine, ed. by Lehning, Arthur, V (Leiden, 1974), pp. 23.Google Scholar

42 Bakunin to P. P. Lialin, London, February 27, 1862, in Lemke, M. K., Ocherki osvoboditel'nogo dvizheniia “shestidesiatykh godov ” (St Petersburg, 1908), pp. 134–35.Google Scholar

43 Bakunin, Oeuvres, IV, p. 289; Handlin, , “A Russian Anarchist ”, p. 109.Google Scholar

44 Bakunin, Oeuvres, I, p. 171.

45 Ibid., pp. 12–13. See also Rogger, Hans, “Russia and the Civil War”, in: Heard Round the World, ed. by Hyman, Harold (New York, 1969), pp. 177–256.Google Scholar

46 Bakunin, Oeuvres, I, p. 174.

47 Ibid., IV, p. 448.

48 Quoted in Max Laserson, M., The American Impact on Russia: Diplomatic and Ideological, 1789–1917 (New York, 1950), pp. 171.Google Scholar

49 Handlin, , “A Russian Anarchist ”, p. 108Google Scholar; Carr, Michael Bakunin, p. 491.

50 Bakunin, Oeuvres, I, pp. 28–30. Bakunin's esteem for local self-government was influenced, among others, by Proudhon, Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill.

51 Ibid., pp. 28–29. This, as Hecht, Davidpoints out in Russian Radicals Look to America, 1825–1894 (Cambridge, Mass.. 1947), pp. 58–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar, was written twenty-five years before Frederick Jackson Turner enunciated his famous “safety-valve ” theory of American social stability.

52 Bakunin, , “Ispoved ”', Sobranie sochinenii i pisem, IV, pp. 154–55.Google Scholar

53 Pis'ma, p. 190.

54 Handlin, , “A Russian Anarchist ”, p. 108.Google Scholar

55 Bakunin, Oeuvres, I, pp. 29–30.

56 Ibid., pp. 157–58.

57 Ibid., pp. 171–74.

58 Bakunin, M., God and the State (New York, 1970), pp. 32.Google Scholar

59 Bakunin, Oeuvres. I, pp. 287–89.

60 Archives Bakounine, III (Leiden, 1967), pp. 45.Google Scholar On another occasion, while praising educational advances in America and Switzerland, Bakunin nevertheless argued that “children of the bourgeoisie ” enjoyed a higher education while those “of the people ” received a “primary education only, and on rare occasions a bit of secondary education ”. Oeuvres, V, p. 324.

61 Bakunin to Reclus, Lugano, February 15, 1875. in: Guillaume, James, L'lnternationale: documents et souvenirs (1864–1878) (4 vols; Paris, 1905–1910), III, pp. 284–85.Google Scholar

62 Quoted by Charles Shively, introduction to Andrews, S. P., The Science of Society (Weston. Mass., 1970Google Scholar, reprint of the Benjamin Tucker edition of 1888), p. 21.

63 See, for example, Bakunin, , “Gospel of Nihilism ”, in: The Word, 04 1880.Google Scholar

64 As one might expect, Marxist and other non-anarchist journals portrayed Bakunin in an unfavorable light. For example, the New York Arbeiter-Union of October 20, 1869, called him an “agent-provocateur in the service of Russia and of panslavism ”. See Archives Bakounine, V, pp. 564–66.

65 Socialism and American Life, ed. by Donald Drew Egbert and Stow Persons (2 vols: Princeton, 1952), I, p. 207.Google Scholar

66 Liberty, January 7 and 21. March 18, 1882.

67 Serialized in Liberty, May 17, 1884, and following issues, published in book form in 1886. The most recent edition of the Tucker translation was published by Vintage Books of New York in 1961, revised and abridged by Ludmilla B. Turkevich.

68 Liberty, June 7, 1890. Yarros also wrote essays for Liberty on Chernyshevsky and Herzen.

69 Ibid., October 29, 1881; June, 1882, and following issues; February 17, 1883; March 6, 1886, and following issues.

70 Ibid., November 26, 1881. Tucker's sources probably included J. W. A. von Eckardt, Russia Before and After the War, transl. by Edward Fairfax Taylor (London and Boston, 1880)Google Scholar, with a 48-page chapter on Bakunin; and an article on Bakunin by E. de Laveleye in the Revue des Deux Mondes of the same year. In 1908, it might be added, Tucker published an American edition of Paul Eltzbacher's Anarchism (translated from the German by Tucker's associate Steven T. Byington), which contains a valuable chapter on Bakunin and his ideas.

71 Liberty, November 26, 1881.

72 Ibid., July 22, 1882; Tucker to Joseph A. Labadie, September 18, 1883, Labadie Collection, University of Michigan.

73 A leading authority on Tucker calls its publication “a landmark in anarchist propaganda ”. James Martin, J., Men Against the State: The Expositors of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827–1908, revised ed. (Colorado Springs, Colo., 1970), pp. 219.Google Scholar

74 See her letter to Tucker of July 4, 1883, in Liberty, August 25, 1883.

75 Truth, September 8, 1883 — January 19, 1884. She also published a translation of Kropotkin's “To Young People ” (An Appeal to the Young) in Truth, January 5 — January 26, 1884.

76 In the United States it was re-issued in 1896 by E. H. Fulton of Columbus Junction, Iowa, as Liberty Library No 2; in 1900 by Abe Isaak (a Russian Mennonite turned anarchist) of San Francisco, as Free Society Library No 4; and in 1916 (as amended by Max Nettlau) by Emma Goldman's Mother Earth Publishing Association, which incorrectly labeled it the “first American edition ”. Much to Tucker's consternation, the Liberty Library and Free Society editions failed to credit him with the translation, erroneously attributing it to Cafiero and Reclus, who had merely contributed the foreword.

77 Liberty, September 18, 1886 — June 18, 1887. Excerpts in Spanish appeared in the anarchist journal El Despertar (New York), June 1 and 15, 1892.

78 The Alarm, January 23, 1886. Although The Alarm attributes the Catechism to Bakunin alone, most modern scholars regard Nechaev as the principal and perhaps the sole author.

79 Freedom (London), September-October 1900. In 1901, to mention another example, Abe Isaak's Free Society appealed for funds to decorate and maintain Bakunin's grave. Free Society (Chicago), August 4, 1901.

80 Bakunin, M., Gott und der Staat (Verlag der Gruppe II, I.A.A., Philadelphia, 1884)Google Scholar; Freiheit (New York), May 2 — June 13, 1891, then in pamphlet form as Internationale Bibliothek, No 17 (New York, 1892)Google Scholar. Bakunin was often quoted by Most, the leading German anarchist in America, whose Pittsburgh Manifesto of October 1883 drew heavily on Bakuninist ideas.

81 Dělnické Listy (New York), 01 18, 1896Google Scholar, and following issues, reproduced in pamphlet form as Bush a stát [Dělnicka Knihovna, No 4] (New York, 1896); Bog i gosudarstvo (Soiuz Russkikh Rabochikh gor. N'iu Iorka, New York, 1918)Google Scholar; Fraye Arbeter Shtime, 1900–01.

82 For example, Freiheit, March 16 and April 6, 1895, printed a German translation of three lectures delivered by Bakunin in May 1871 at Courtelary in the Swiss Jura, re-issued as a pamphlet entitled Drei Vorträge. A Spanish translation appeared in El Esclavo of Tampa, Florida, in 1895, and a Czech translation in Dělnické Listy in 1895 and also as a pamphlet, Tři přédnáški [Dělnicka Knihovna, No 1] (New York, 1895).Google ScholarBakunin's essays and speeches also appeared in such journals as II Grido degli Oppressi (New York, 1892–1994)Google Scholar, Germinal (Paterson, 1899–1902), Volné Listy (New York, 1890–1917)Google Scholar, Di Fraye Tsukunft (New York, 1915–1916)Google Scholar, Free Society (San Francisco, Chicago, New York, 1897–1904)Google Scholar, Mother Earth (New York, 1906–1917)Google Scholar, and Why? (Tacoma, 1913–14).

83 Golos Truda (New York, 1911–1917)Google Scholar; Khlebi Volia (New York, 1919).Google Scholar See also Rabochaia Mysl' (New York), 08 1916Google Scholar, which invoked Bakunin and Herzen's slogan “To the People! ” According to one authority, the first Russian paper in the United States, Svoboda, was published in California during the 1870's by a follower of Bakunin. Lipotkin, L. [Lazarev], “Russkoe anarkhicheskoe dvizhenie v Severnoi Amerike: Istoricheskie ocherki ”, manuscript, Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, p. 111.Google Scholar

84 Bakunin, M., Izbrannye sochineniia, I, with an introduction by Varlaam Cherkezov (Federatsia A.K.G. [Anarkho-Kommunisticheskikh Grupp], New York, 1920).Google Scholar See also Tak govoril Bakunin (Bridgeport, Conn., n.d. [1919?]), first published in Paris in 1914 by the Bratstvo Vol'nykh Obshchennikov. A Yiddish collection of Bakunin's writings, Geklibene shriften, was published in New York in 1919 by the Kropotkin Literary Society, with a biographical sketch by Rudolf Rocker.

85 Quoted in Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism (Indore, n.d.), p. 88.

86 See Brown, Emily C., Har Dayal: Hindu Revolutionary and Rationalist (Tucson, Ariz., 1975), pp. 116–17.Google Scholar

87 Mother Earth, May 1914; The Modern School, June 1, 1914. Havel produced a small pamphlet for the occasion, Bakunin, May 30, 1814 — July 1, 1876 (Centenary Commemoration Committee, New York, 1914. For a similar celebration in Paris, see Avrich, Paul, The Russian Anarchists (Princeton, 1967), p. 114Google Scholar and illustration 7.

88 Vanzetti to Alice Stone Blackwell, September 15, 1925, The Letters of Sacco, and Vanzetti, , ed. by Marion Denman Frankfurter and Gardner Jackson (New York, 1928), pp. 169.Google Scholar

89 For example, Bakunin on Anarchy, ed. by Dolgoff, Sam (New York, 1972)Google Scholar; Bakunin, M., Selected Writings, ed. by Lehning, Arthur (New York, 1974)Google Scholar; Daughter of a Revolutionary: Natalie Herzen and the Bakunin-Nechayev Circle, ed. by Con-fino, Michael (LaSalle, Ill., 1974)Google Scholar; Masters, Anthony, Bakunin: The Father of Anarchism (New York, 1974)Google Scholar. In 1961 E. H. Carr's Michael Bakunin was re-issued by Vintage Books of New York, and in 1970 Bakunin's God and the State, was reprinted — for the first time since the Mother Earth edition of 1916 — by Dover Publications of New York. The first English translation of Bakunin's Statehood and Anarchy appeared in New York in 1976, and his Confession was published in an English translation by Cornell University Press in 1977. See Avrich, Paul, “Bakunin and His Writings ”, in: Canadian-American Slavic Studies, X (1976), pp. 591–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

90 See Freedom (London), April 3, 1976.