The Socialism of to-day

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 835096955

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-28834

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Laveleye, Émile de

Title:: The Socialism of to-day

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Field & Tuer

Year of publication:: 1884

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (XLIV, 331 S.)

Collection:: Economics Books

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208 THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY. When Alexander II. decreed the abolition of serfdom in 1861, Bakunin was in hopes that he was going to be the Tsar of the peasants, Zemsky Tsar, a name which he gave him in the Kolokol. Alexander was to break with the traditions of Peter the Great, who had introduced into holy Russia the hateful institutions of the West, and to substitute for them the equal laws of the Slavs. “ Unhappily,” said he, “ Alexander is German, and as such he will never understand the Russia of the peasants, Zemskuiu Rossiu.” In a pamphlet entitled Romanoff, Pugatcheff, or Pestel (1862), he says, “Whom shall we follow? Romanoff, that is to say, Alexander II.; Pugatcheff, that is to say, a military chief, such as he who directed the insurrection of the Cossacks against Catherine ; or Pestel, that is to say, a conspirator who would have killed the Emperor ? ” Pestel was one of the leaders of the conspiracy against Nicholas I., in 1825. He was arrested and hung. Bakunin explains with savage enthusiasm the programme of Panslavism. “ Oh ! war against the Germans,” he cries, “ is a good work and one indispensable for the Slavs. We must restore liberty to our brothers of Poland, of Lithuania, and of the Ukraine, and march in a body to the deliverance of the Slavs, who groan under the yoke of Teutons and Turks. Alliance with Italy, Hungary, Roumania, and Greece against Prussia, Austria, and Turkey. Realization of the cherished dream of all Slavs : the constitution of the grand free Panslavic Federation.” At this time Bakunin was still imbued with the narrow idea of nationalities. It was afterwards that he rose to the higher conception of the suppression of States, to be henceforth re placed by the amorphism of federal autonomous Communes. Still hatred for the Germans was, so to speak, in his blood. It was never extinguished, and, in particular, it disclosed itself, bitter and implacable, in the struggle with Marx. It was Bakunin who took the lead in the International from 1870, and when it lost all its influence, through the divisions of parties, it was the Bakunist Alliance that organized in Europe the propa ganda of revolutionary Socialism. It is in the two countries where the working classes are best organized for the struggle, England and Germany, that the

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