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The Cynosure

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Chronology of Bakunin's Life

Michael Aleksandrovich Bakunin born May 18, 1814 (Russian calander), May 30, 1814 (European calander), in the village of Premukhino in the province of Tvar.

1828 Sent to St. Petersburg to prepare for Artillery School

1829 entered the Artillery School in St. Petersburg.

1832 commissoned as a junior officer and sent to Misk and Grodno in Poland.

1835 resigned commission.

1836 moved to Moscow and studied philosophy.

1836 translated Fichte's Lectures on the Vocation of the Scholar.

1838 March: published Preface to Hegel's Gymnasium Lectures.

1840 moved to St. Petersburg and in June to Berlin to study and prepare for a professorship at the University of Moscow.

1842 moved to Dresden and collaborates with Arnold Ruge in publishing Deutsche Jahrbücher.

1842 published "Reaction in Germany" in October.

1843 moved to Bern and Zurich, meets Wilhelm Weitling.

February 1844 moved to Paris, via Brussels.

February 1844 ordered home by Russian government.

December 1844 stripped of his nobel status and sentenced in abstensia to hard labor in Siberia.

1844-1847 meets and talks with Proudhon often and Marx occasionally, and is on friendly terms with George Sand.

November 29, 1847 at the banquet in Paris commemorating the Polish insurrection of 1830, Bakunin delivered a speech denouncing the Russian government and is subsequently expelled from France. Russian ambassador, in an attempt to discredit Bakunin, circulates the false rumor that Bakunin is employed by the Russian government to pose as a revolutionary.

1847 expelled from France in December and moved to Brussels where he met Marx again.

February 1848 returned to Paris after February Revolution.

March 1848 met Marx and Engels in Cologne and split begins over Marx's denunciation of Bakunin's frined Herwegh, who had led an ill-fated expedition of German exiles to Baden in the hope of instigating an uprising.

June 1848 particpated in Slav Congress and insurrection in Prague.

June 1848 Marx publishes false report that Bakunin is a Russian agent responsible for the arrest of Poles.

Latter part of 1848 expelled from Prussia and Saxony, and spends the rest of the year in the principality of Anhalt.

December 1848 Appeal to the Slavs. published.

January 1849 secretly arrived in Leipzig to prepare for an uprising in Bohemia.

April 1849 moved to Dresden.

May 3, 1849 popular rebellion broke out in Dresden and Bakunin emerged as a "heroic" leader.

May 9. 1849 the rebellion crushed, Bakunin, Richard Wagner and Heuber escaped to Chemnitz where Bakunin and Heuber are arrested while Wagner hides in his sister's house and escapes.

January 14, 1850 while held in the Königstein fortress, Bakunin is condemned to death.

June 1850 death sentence commuted to life imprisonment, after which Bakunin is extradited to Austria.

March 1851, after first being jailed in Prague, then Olmütz where he is sentenced to hang. Although the death sentence is commuted, Bakunin is chained hand and foot to the prison wall and suffers acutely. Shortly thereafter, he is handed over to the Russians and imprisoned in the dungeons of the Fortress of Peter and Paul.

1851 Confession to Tsar Nicholas I.

1854 moved toSchüsselberg prison where he succumbs to scurvy, causing his teath to fall out.

1857 Tsar Alexander relents, Bakunin is released from prison and sentenced to perpetual exile in Siberia.

1858 married Antonia Kwiatkowski, a young Polish girl, on October 5 and moved to Irkutsk.

June 1861 Bakunin contrives to escape Siberia, arrives in Nikolavsk in July, sails on the Strelok to Kastri where he boards an American merchant ship, Vickery, to Hakodate, Japan. Next he makes his way to Yokohama, and, in October, sails to San Francisco. In November he crosses to New York, and on December 27, 1861 he arrived in London.

1862 published To My Russian, Polish and Other Slav Friends, and The People's Cause: Romanov, Pugachev, or Pestel?

1863 goes to Stockholm and is reunited with his wife, then back to London, and on to Italy.

Mid-1864 back to Sweden, then London, where he saw Marx, and on to Paris where he renewed his friendship with Proudhon, finally moving to Italy where he stayed until 1867. He settled first in Florence.

1864 founded the journal Libertà e Giustizia.

October 1865 moved to Naples.

1866 founded International Brotherhood, or the Alliance of Revolutionary Socialists.

1867 travels to Geneva, attends and addresses the inaugural Congress of the League for Peace and Freedom and writes Federalism, Socialism and Anti-Theologism.

September 25, 1868 founds the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy.

July 1868 Bakunin joined the Geneva section of the International Workingmen's Association. Moved to Geneva.

January 1869 secret "Alliance" dissolved.

March 1869 began his collaboration with Nechaev.

Fall 1869 moved to Locarno and translated first volume of Marx's Das Kapital.

September 1869 attended Basle Congress of International.

March 28, 1870 Marx addessed his "Confidential Communication" to his German friends to stir up hatred against Bakunin by declaring him an agent of the pan-Slavist party from which he allegedly received 25,000 francs per year.

June 1870 broke relations with Nechaev.

August 1870 Bakunin expelled from the Geneva section of the International due to his support for the Jura faction.

1870 Published Letters to a Frenchman.

September 9, 1870 left Locarno and arrived in Lyons Sept 15.

September 28, 1870 a popular uprising is suppressed, and Bakunin is forced to flee in the face of an arrest warrant. He hid in Marseilles.

October 24, 1870 sailed from Marseilles to Locarno.

1870-71 Wrote The Knouto-Germanic Empire, including the sections published posthumously as God and the State.

1871 Wrote The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State and published The Political Theory of Mazzini and the International.

Summer and Autumn 1872 Bakunin stayed in Zurich.

September 7, 1872 Bakunin expelled from the International at the Hague congress.

1873 Published Statism and Anarchy.

October 12, 1873 Bakunin retired from the struggle and resigned from the Jura Federation.

First half of 1874 spent in Italy where Bakunin lived with Cafiero near Locarno.

July 1874 Bakunin joins his friends in Bologna where they have planned an uprising, but is forced to return to Switzerland in disguise and settled in Lugano.

1875 in poor health Bakunin traveled to Bern and is hospitalized.

July 1, 1876 at noon Bakunin died.

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