letters

Bakunin Library

Mikhail Bakunin, “Letter to Arnold Ruge” (May 1843)

February 28, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
[Translated from the French text published in La vie ouvrière, No. 112, May 20, 1914, ] B. to R. St. Peter’s Island, Lake Biel, May 1843. Our friend Marx has passed on your letter from Berlin. You seem disgruntled with Germany. You only see the family and the bourgeois, cooped up with all its thoughts and all its desires between four stakes, and you do not want to believe in the springtime that will make it emerge from its hole. Ah, dear friend! Do not lose faith! You especially, do not lose it! What! me, the Russian, the Barbarian, I […]
Bakunin Library

Letter to Albert Richard (February 7, 1870)

February 26, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
February 7, 1870 My friend and brother – Forgive me my long silence, and you will forgive me for it I am sure when you know the cause of it. – In response to the question that you ask me, you and Mme D. Z. [André Bastelica], I respond: Yes, the affairs of Mr A. S. [Russia] are very serious and they should become still more serious in the spring. The debacle in that house is imminent, and God alone knows what will result from it! Will it be a failed, fraudulent bankruptcy? Will it be a complete and open […]
Bakunin Library

Letter to Nikolai Bakunin, February 1, 1861

July 16, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
Working on the Bakunin Library involves a lot of working back and forth through the writings, keeping important details fresh and seeing what new details seem fresh and important as things develop. As part of that process, I’m going to spend some time working through parts of Bakunin’s correspondence, starting with the years 1861-1868, preparing to work on the introduction for the first full volume of the edition. I’ll share rough translations of as many of those letters as time allows. The first fruits of that project is the last surviving letter from Bakunin during his exile in Siberia, written […]
Bakunin Library

Letter to Albert Richard (April 1, 1870)

April 12, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
April 1, 1870. Geneva. Dear friend. I still find myself here and every day await news of the arrival of the relation that you know, in order to go to meet them. Complete reaction in the International of Geneva.—The factory [fabrique] has triumphed on all fronts in my absence, and no one has been found to halt that triumph. L’Egalité has become a reactionary paper. Here is the program: Cooperation and the local politics of bourgeois radicalism. From now on the International of Geneva will no longer be anything but a stepping-stone to bring the Perrets and Grosselins to power. […]
Bakunin Library

Letter to Ogarev and Ozerov (April 5, 1871)

July 5, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
Letter to Nikolay Platonovich Ogarev and Vladimir Michajlovich Ozerov April 5, 1871, Locarno 1. To Jean. Here is a letter to Varlin for you. I send it to you today in case, enflamed by our impatient friend Ross, you should decide to leave Paris before circumstances and especially financial means have allowed me to join you. On that subject, I have already written to Ross and to you yesterday. Return the letter to Varlin only from hand to hand. In all probability the Parisians succumb, but they will not succumb in vain, having accomplished their task, and posed the question; […]
Bakunin Library

Letter to Nikolay Ivanovich Zhukovsky (May 5, 1870)

July 5, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[Letter to Nikolay Ivanovich Zhukovsky, in Russia]                              May 5, 1870. Locarno.                              Casa Pedrazzini. Dear Zhuk, The day after my arrival, I responded briefly to you few words. Now I want to discuss with you. You probably already know that I have punctually fulfilled, towards Guillaume and Fritz Robert, what we have decided among us; and I see, in the latest issues of Solidarité, which I have found here in the home of a friend, that Guillaume has held strictly to the direction fixed. The last two issues are excellent. I wish very much to know the impression that […]
Bakunin Library

Bakunin to Proudhon, November 11, 1864

June 22, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
November 11, Paris My dear Proudhon – I have just arrived in Paris and I will remain here only a very few days. You friend, and now mine also, Felix Delhasse has given me your address at Passy. I would like to come there to see you. But knowing that you are ill, I did not want to risk the journey before being sure that you would be in a state to receive me. So please inform me or have me informed in a few words, if I should come or not. Address your response to me in a double […]
Bakunin Library

Bakunin to Elisée Reclus, February 15, 1875

June 1, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
February 15, 1875 – Lugano My very dear friend, I thank you so much for your kind words. I have never doubted your friendship. That feeling has always been mutual and I judge yours by my own. Yes, you are right. For the moment, the revolution has gone back to bed, and we fall once again into a period of evolutions, one of subterranean, invisible and often even insensible revolutions. The evolution that takes place today is very dangerous, if not for humanity, at least for certain nations. – it is the last incarnation of a used-up class, enjoying its […]
Bakunin Library

Bakunin to Karl Marx, December 22, 1868

August 5, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
December 22, 1868. Geneva 123. Montbrillant. My old friend – Serno has shared with me the part of your letter that concerned me. You asked him if I continue to be your friend. – Yes, more than ever, dear Marx, because I understand better than ever how right you are in following, and in inviting us all to march on the wide road of economic revolution, and in denigrating those among us who would lose themselves on the paths of either national or exclusively political enterprises. I now do what you yourself commenced to do more than twenty years ago. […]