Although Bakunin's 1842 article, "The Reaction in Germany," published in the organ of the Dresden Left Hegelians, Deutsche Jahrbucher, is generally held to be the most radical and eloquent manifesto of Left Hegelianism, the standard historical commentary tends to consider his pre-1842 Russian works as far removed from this revolutionary ideal. Most historians have long failed to discern the logical continuity in Mikhail Bakunin's thought before and after the "pivotal" date of 1840. Indeed, his intellectual development is usually dividied into two distinct, mutually exclusive periods. During the first period, pre-1840, Bakunin is presented as a conservative and a monarchist, dedicated to a spiritual and political compromise with the "rational reality of the Tsarist regime. After his arrival in Berlin in 1840, however, one is suddenly confronted with the political anarchist and instigator of world revolution. However, this abrupt dichotomy which appears in most historical commentaries dealing with Bakunin's writings and activities cannot be maintained. The hypothesis that there even occurred a break in the evolution of Bakunin's thought rests on a misinterpretation of his early Russian Hegelian works. / The goal of this study is to demonstrate that the concern with the practical application of philosophy into a political tool for revolutionary acton forms the central theme of Bakunin's early works; and to show that his Berlin period constitutes the logical continuation of his early theoretical position. In effect, the present study represents a revindication of the young Bakunin and attempts to prove that his Hegelianism was central to the formation of his radical position. At the same time, it situates Russian Left Hegelianism in the mainstream of European radicalism, by showing how the ideas developed by Bakunin were moving in a direction parallel to those of the Young Hegelian movement in Germany.

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