page_title: Mikhail Bakunin
section_title: Relocation to Italy and influence in Spain
hierarchical_section_title: Mikhail Bakunin / Biography / Relocation to Italy and influence in Spain
caption_attribution_description: English: Bakunin's membership card of the League of Peace and Freedom
context_page_description: Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a Russian revolutionary anarchist and founder of collectivist anarchism. He is considered among the most influential figures of anarchism and a major founder of the social anarchist tradition. Bakunin's prestige as a revolutionary also made him one of the most famous ideologues in Europe, gaining substantial influence among radicals throughout Russia and Europe.
  Bakunin grew up in Pryamukhino, a family estate in Tver Governorate. From 1840, he studied in Moscow, then in Berlin hoping to enter academia. Later in Paris, he met Karl Marx and the father of anarchism, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who deeply influenced him.
  Bakunin's increasing radicalism ended hopes of a professorial career. He was expelled from France for opposing Russia's occupation of Poland. In 1849, he was arrested in Dresden for his participation in the Czech rebellion of 1848 and deported to Russia. There he was imprisoned in Saint Petersburg, then in the Shlisselburg fortress from 1854, then exiled to Siberia in 1857. He escaped via Japan to the United States, then to London where he worked with Alexander Herzen on the journal Kolokol.
context_section_description: Having re-entered Western Europe, Bakunin immediately immersed himself in the revolutionary movement. In 1860, while still in Irkutsk, Bakunin and his political associates had been greatly impressed by Giuseppe Garibaldi and his expedition to Sicily, during which he declared himself dictator in the name of Victor Emmanuel II. After his return to London, he wrote to Garibaldi on 31 January 1862:
  If you could have seen as I did the passionate enthusiasm of the whole town of Irkutsk, the capital of Eastern Siberia, at the news of your triumphal march across the possession of the mad king of Naples, you would have said as I did that there is no longer space or frontiers.
  Bakunin asked Garibaldi to participate in a movement encompassing Italians, Hungarians and South Slavs against both Austria and Turkey. Garibaldi was preparing for the Expedition against Rome. By May, Bakunin's correspondence focused on Italian-Slavic unity and the developments in Poland. By June, he had resolved to move to Italy, but waited for his wife to join him. When he left for Italy in August, Mazzini wrote to Maurizio Quadrio, one of his key supporters, that Bakunin was a good and dependable person. However, with the news of the defeat at Aspromonte, Bakunin paused in Paris where he was briefly involved with Ludwik Mierosławski. However, Bakunin rejected Mieroslawski's chauvinism and refusal to grant any concessions to the peasants.
  In September, Bakunin returned to England and focussed on Polish affairs. When the Polish insurrection broke out in January 1863, he sailed to Copenhagen to join the Polish insurgents. They planned to sail across the Baltic in the SS Ward Jackson to join the insurrection. This attempt failed, and Bakunin met his wife in Stockholm before returning to London. 
  Now he focussed again on going to Italy and his friend Aurelio Saffi wrote him letters of introduction to revolutionaries in Florence, Turin, and Milan. Mazzini wrote him letters of commendation to Federico Campanella in Genoa and Giuseppe Dolfi in Florence. Bakunin left London in November 1863, travelled via Brussels, Paris and Vevey, (Switzerland), and arrived in Italy on 11 January 1864. It was here that he first developed his anarchist ideas. Bakunin planned a secret organization of revolutionaries to carry out propaganda and prepare for direct action. He recruited Italians, Frenchmen, Scandinavians, and Slavs into the International Brotherhood, also called the Alliance of Revolutionary Socialists.
  By July 1866, Bakunin was informing Herzen and Ogarev about the fruits of his work over the previous two years. His secret society then had members in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Britain, France, Spain, and Italy, as well as Polish and Russian members. Among his Polish associates was the  former insurgent, Walery Mroczkowski, who became a friend and translator into French. In his Catechism of a Revolutionary of 1866, he opposed religion and the state, advocating the "absolute rejection of every authority including that which sacrifices freedom for the convenience of the state."
  Giuseppe Fanelli met Bakunin at Ischia in 1866. In October 1868, Bakunin sponsored Fanelli to travel to Barcelona to share his libertarian visions and recruit revolutionists to the International Workingmen's Association. Fanelli's trip and the meeting he organised during his travels was the catalyst for the Spanish exiles, the largest workers' and peasants' movement in modern Spain and the largest Anarchist movement in modern Europe. Fanelli's tour took him first to Barcelona, where he met and stayed with Elisée Reclus. Reclus and Fanelli disagreed about Reclus' friendships with Spanish republicans, and Fanelli soon left Barcelona for Madrid. Fanelli stayed in Madrid until the end of January 1869, conducting meetings to introduce Spanish workers, including Anselmo Lorenzo, to the First International. In February 1869 Fanelli left Madrid, journeying home via Barcelona. While in Barcelona again, he met with painter Josep Lluís Pellicer and his cousin, Rafael Farga Pellicer along with others w
caption: Bakunin's membership card of the League of Peace and Freedom
exif: {}