Spanish Anarchism traces its origin to a Russian aristocrat, Michael Bakunin. In Herzen’s Memoirs we find a vivid account of this man. A giant in size, with the energy of ten ordinary men when roused, wildly exuberant and unmethodical in all his acts, living among a medley of unfinished articles, uncompleted plans, night-long Russian conversations and tea drinking – that is the picture Herzen paints. The attractive side of his character stands out – his generosity, his lack of malice that amounted to innocence, his simple and natural bearing with other men, but we are left with the impression of a student – a Russian student too – whom ten years of prison had done nothing to moderate.

There were, however, depths in Bakunin’s character which Herzen, a caustic and disillusioned exile, comfortably installed in London, did not appreciate. Bakunin was a man of action deprived of the power of action – a natural leader of guerrilla bands or peasant revolts. But he was also a man of unusual sympathetic imagination. He had an instinctive understanding for certain primitive classes of people – Russian and Italian peasants, brigands and outlaws of all sorts. Not only was he ready, like Garibaldi, to lead them at the barricades and to risk his life for them, but he felt a genuine respect and liking for their ideas and way of life. It was on just this feeling for simple and liberty-loving people that he founded his gospel, his vision of the future, which was to lead them, after many vicissitudes, to a heaven upon earth.