Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/487

Rh inspired by an unalloyed and passionate eagerness for the free and collective utilisation of the soil. By instinct, continues Bakunin, giving free rein to his imagination, the Russians are socialistic; by nature they are revolutionary; the Russians, therefore, will initiate the federation of the world.

These fancies do not belong to the domain of realist thought, and they are all the more open to censure seeing that two years earlier Bakunin had given utterance to extremely critical opinions regarding the Russian mir. In his letter to Herzen and Ogarev (1866) he strongly condemned the patriarchalism of the mir, saying that it repressed individuality, permitted no internal revolution, and (before all) sacrificed woman. The mir as an institution was the incorporation of Chinese immobility.

In this connection it may be well to point out that Bakunin's opponent Marx, and Engels no less, held at first regarding the Russian mir, and therefore regarding the Russian people, views no less uncritical than those of Bakunin.

After 1863 Bakunin modified his Slavist designs and practically abandoned them. Henceforward he placed more confidence in the French and in the Latins generally, whilst, as we know, he discovered the revolutionary instinct in all men and all nations. Once only, in the year 1872, in response to a German appeal, he elaborated the program for a Slav section of the International in Zurich. The Slavs, including more particularly the Czechs, were to be won over to the cause of revolution and to be weaned from reactionary panrussism. In this program Bakunin expressly declared that the Slavs were not to be organised for their own sake; their organisation was merely to serve as means for their incorporation in the general organisation of the International.

N order to clarify our outlook concerning Bakunin's philosophical and political views, we will now undertake a comparison between Bakunin and Marx. This will throw much light upon the relationship between anarchism and socialism, in so far as Bakunin may be regarded as one of the principal founders of anarchism, whilst Marx may be looked upon as the founder of contemporary socialism, and thus the