Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/456



E have already made the acquaintance of Bakunin in Stankevič's circle, and have learned how Bakunin, a self-made man in matters philosophical, introduced his Moscow friends to the thought of Hegel. Bakunin is solely comprehensible as product and victim of Russian conditions under Nicholas I. Brought up from the very outset amid decabrist memories, he betook himself to Europe, plunged into Hegelian philosophy, and was urged on towards the revolution by the Hegelian left and by Proudhon. The years before 1848 and the year of revolution were spent by him in revolutionary movements of all kinds, for he hoped to realise his ideal of a free humanity through personal participation in the revolution, no matter where. His experiences in European and Russian prisons, and in Siberia, accentuated his hatred of the existing order, and made of him a professional revolutionary. The world as it was, Russia pre-eminently but Europe as well, extant civilisation and extant institutions, infuriated him, and his head was ever filled with revolutionary thoughts and plans, which, however, never attained to maturity. Neither in the field of practice nor in that of theory did Bakunin know anything of method or order. A genius and yet half-cultured (not wholly by his own fault), an egoist to the pitch of childishness, he was never troubled by the question whether, in the last resort, and amid the universal wretchedness, he might not to some extent share responsibility for his own individuality. The roots of all evil were elsewhere than in himself. The old order and its supporters, nature and the universe, includiding the Almighty, had personally injured him, were to him a con-