Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/486

460 this differentiation between state and nation was far less vividly perceived. At the congress of the League of Peace and Freedom held at Berne in 1868, Bakunin drew express attention to the distinction between state and folk. We have seen that Herzen wanted a folk-state, and in like manner Bakunin differentiated folk from state, and had a democratic conception of the folk. For the rest, enough has been said in earlier chapters regarding the principle of nationality and kindred problems.

Proof that Bakunin's panslavism was not nationalist in character is further afforded by the fact that he did not accept the Czech program altogether uncritically. He approved neither Palacký nor Rieger, for in opposition to these two leaders he desired to make common cause with the Magyars against Austria. He wished, too, to take the Rumanians into his Slav federation, for he desired the break up of Turkey as well as that of Austria. As regards all these designs, there were doubtless differences of outlook and differences in the estimate of the political situation, as between Bakunin on the one hand and Marx and the German radicals on the other, but we must not for this reason refer Bakunin's views to Slavist chauvinism. We may admit that Bakunin, like Herzen and Russians in general, was less sympathetic towards Germans than towards Frenchmen, Italians, and other members of the Latin races. Here, however, traditional influences were at work, and more especially family traditions, for Bakunin's father had had a predilection for the Latins, and above all for the Italians. When Bakunin's plans on behalf of the Poles and the Slavs were shipwrecked in 1863, he turned to the Latins. It must not be supposed that Bakunin had any national aversion for the Germans, but he disliked German conditions in general and the German bourgeoisie in particular.

To conclude, Bakunin, like Herzen, regarded the Russian people as predestined to establish the social revolution. In support of this view he referred in 1868 to the existence and significance of the mir. In the opinion of the Russian folk, he said, the soil belongs to the folk alone, to the genuinely working masses, to those who till the ground. Now this outlook, says Bakunin, enfolds all the social revolutions of the past and of the future. The Slavs, he contends, and above all the Great Russians, are the most unwarlike of the nations, and they therefore have no desire for conquests, but are