FORERUNNERS OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
which then prevailed for Poland, to his acquaintance with Poles in Europe and Siberia, and to the fact that he had a Polish wife. For the Czechs and Ukrainians Bakunin was won by the programme of federation put forward by them in 1848. Bakunin came from a State of mixed language, in which several nationalities were struggling for national linguistic rights; hence the contrast between the centralising State and the idea of nationality was clearer and more living with him than with Marx. On this distinction between State and people Bakunin laid special emphasis at the congress held in 1848 in Bern by the League of Peace and Freedom. That he did not attack Panslavism from the nationalist side is proved by the fact that he did not accept the Czech programme without criticism; in contrast to Palacky and Rieger, he wanted to go with the Magyars against Austria. Besides, he wanted to include the Roumanians in his Slav federation, since he thought of the destruction, not merely of Austria, but also of Turkey. In all these plans there were differences of outlook and estimate of the political situation between Bakunin and Marx or the German Radicals, but this cannot be traced to Slav Chauvinism.
Finally, Bakunin, just as Herzen, looked upon the Russian people as the born people of the social revolution. In support of this view he quoted the existence and importance of the Mir. According to Russian popular ideas, the whole land belongs to the people alone, that is, to the whole mass of real workers, who till it with their own hands and it is just this idea which, according to him, contains in itself all social revolutions of the past and future. He also held that the Slavs, in particular the Great Russians, were the least war-like of peoples, and that they therefore aimed at no conquests, but set their sole and passionate desire upon the free and collective exploitation of the soil. The Russians, so his fantasy argued, are socialist by instinct and revolutionary by nature, and therefore the Russians will initiate the confederation of the world.
Erratum: No. 62, p. 320, l. 2 from bottom, for “the brutal facts must be stated,” read “must be faced.”
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