Mikhail Bakunin
Overview
 
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a well-known Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n revolutionary
Revolutionary
A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.-Definition:...

 and theorist of collectivist anarchism
Collectivist anarchism
Collectivist anarchism is a revolutionary doctrine that advocates the abolition of both the state and private ownership of the means of production...

. He has also often been called the father of anarchist theory in general. Bakunin grew up near Moscow, where he moved to study philosophy and began to read the French Encyclopedists, leading to enthusiasm for the philosophy of Fichte. From Fichte, Bakunin went on to immerse himself in the works of Hegel, the most influential thinker among German intellectuals at the time.
Quotations

Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.

The Red Association (1870)

When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called "the People's Stick."

Statism and Anarchy (1873)

By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible. Those who have cautiously done no more than they believed possible have never taken a single step forward.

Attributed to Bakunin in The Explorers (1996) by Paolo Novaresio ISBN 1-55670-495-X

We wish, in a word, equality - equality in fact as a corollary, or rather, as primordial condition of liberty. From each according to his faculties, to each according to his needs; that is what we wish sincerely and energetically.

Attr. in J. Morris Davidson, The Old Order and the New, 1890.

 
x
OK