Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/495

Rh does Lavrov, whose adherents could not get on with the Bakuninists. Those anarchists err who extol Bakunin as a man of action; he was a dilettante, and his practical life no less than his theoretical was a collection of fragments. I do not deny that Bakunin was a man of genius; I am not overpersuaded by the arguments of Marx, Engels. and others; but I consider that on the whole Marx was right and Bakunin wrong. Marx understood the nature of democracy better than Bakunin, understood better how democracy might be realised. Bakunin's revolutionism and anarchism are the freedom of the Russian Cossack, the pseudo-hero whose characteristics have been so ably depicted by the painter Verest'agin, the pseudo-hero who made such a poor showing in the Russo-Japanese war. For Russia, Bakunin believes in brigands à la Pugačev and Razin; for Europe, he believes in the dregs of the proletariat.

Bakunin, who desired to transform the world from its foundations, remained throughout life nothing better than a dreamer. When living in a villa near Locarno, an heirloom of his friend and disciple Cafiero which had been placed by the latter at the master's disposal, he wished to organise a rising in Italy. and had thoughts of boring a tunnel through which his anarchists could make their way into that country unnoticed. A manifestation of this same foolish simplemindedness was his antisemitism, which was displayed from time to time in his attacks on Lassalle and Marx.

We must not forget that Bakunin, during his second period of residence in Europe, lived in the Latin countries, whereas Marx was in England. Both men involuntarily constructed their ideas of the future and their thoughts regarding the organisation of society mainly out of the enduring impressions of their respective environments. Bakunin, who wherever he went remained the unresting foreigner, moved by preference in the comparatively unorganised strata of the working class, whereas Marx was influenced by English and German experiences.

This was why the Paris commune impressed the two men so differently.

Bakunin's anarchism is largely explicable by his restless, positively nomadic life in Europe.

Bakunin exercised a powerful influence upon the development of the opposition in Russia, the development by which