Bakunin, the demon of revolt

Michail Bakunin travelled vehemently through his century fighting for an 'excessive ideal of freedom' which irreversibly changed the political imagery of his and our époque. A revolutionary thinker who rooted his ideals in action, he soon became the worst nightmare of policemen worldwide. Incarcerated in many European jails, trialled to death in two empires, imprisoned in Saint Petersburg's Fortress (where all his teeth fell out but he got to have a piano in his cell) he was finally exiled to Siberia. But nothing could stop that huge man, two meters tall and as big as a house, who fled on horseback, sledges, trains and ships to return to Europe and its revolutionary turmoil. There he lived through the First International and confrontations with Marx, the Paris Commune and the Lyon barricades, he then spent some time in Italy where he became known as 'the devil at Pontelungo'. As with all biographies, there is no happy ending: Bakunin died in Bern in 1876. He was ill and tired, but died dreaming of new revolutions and new worlds.

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