Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/485

Rh despots). The essential difference is merely that Bakunin was a Russian, whereas Marx, Engels, and Ruge, being Germans, were animated with German sentiments. In an earlier work of my own, 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.

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. 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