BAKUNIN THE APOSTLE OF NIHILISM. 19/ 
occupied the town for three days. He was taken prisoner and 
condemned to death. This sentence was commuted for per 
petual imprisonment, which he at first underwent in an Austrian 
fortress, but afterwards, having been claimed by Russia, he was 
shut up in the fort of Petropavloffski, at St. Petersburg. There 
he remained for eight years. Imprisonment produced the same 
effect upon him as upon Blanqui. It transformed in him the 
revolutionary idea into fanaticism and a kind of religion. He 
actually compared himself to Prometheus, the Titan benefactor 
of men, chained to a rock in the Caucasus by the orders of the 
Tsar of Olympus. He even thought, they say, of making a 
drama on the subject, and he used sometimes, later on, to chant 
the plaint of the Ocean Nymphs coming to console the victim 
of the vengeance of Zeus. Bakunin, of course, was the modem 
Prometheus, who brought to men the light of truth. 
Alexander 11, commuted the perpetual imprisonment for 
exile in Siberia, where Bakunin arrived in 1857. He found 
there, as governor, Muravieff-Amurski, a cousin of the other 
Muravieff, and consequently his own connection. He thus 
enjoyed, it appears, exceptional favours and complete liberty. 
Katkoff, the famous journalist of Moscow, and former friend 
of Bakunin, has alleged that he has letters of Bakunin which 
prove that he used to take money from tradesmen on the 
understanding that he would recommend them to the governor. 
He obtained leave to visit the whole of Siberia, in order to make 
known its resources. Having arrived at the port of Niko- 
laieffski, he succeeded in getting on board ship, and in 1861 
reached England, by way of Japan and America. He wrote in 
the famous newspaper, the Kolokol (the Bell), edited by Herzen 
and Ogareff. At the time of the Polish insurrection in 1863, 
he wished to go to Lithuania to raise the peasants there, but 
he was unable to get further than Malmöe, in Sweden. Soon 
afterwards, about 1865, we find him in Italy, fomenting and 
organizing Socialism. He then for some time placed his 
activity at the service of the International, but he never 
admitted its expectation of a brighter future from the reform 
of existing institutions. What he longed for was their 
destruction.