Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (1814, 1876) was a Russian revolutionary and publicist, one of the founders of anarchism and an ideologist of populism. He was born on May 30, 1814, in the village of Pryamukhino in the Tver province to a noble family. In 1829, he entered the Artillery School in St. Petersburg, but in 1834 he was expelled for disrespectful behavior towards the authorities.

In the late 1830s, Bakunin became close to V. G. Belinsky, A. I. Herzen, and N. P. Ogarev and became a follower of Hegel's philosophy. In 1840, he went abroad, where he met European revolutionaries. He was greatly influenced by the ideas of Proudhon, one of the theorists of anarchism. During the European revolutions of 1848 and 1849, Bakunin actively participated in events in Paris, Prague, and Dresden. After the defeat in Dresden, he was arrested and ended up in the prisons of Saxony and Austria, receiving two death sentences, which were commuted to life imprisonment. In 1851, the Austrian authorities handed him over to Russia. He spent six years in the Shlisselburg Fortress, after which he was exiled to Siberia, from where he escaped in 1861. Later, he arrived in England and began collaborating with Herzen and Ogarev, helping to publish the magazine "The Bell." In 1864 and 1867, Bakunin lived in Italy, where he founded the first anarchist organization, the "International Brotherhood." He actively created a network of secret revolutionary societies in Europe and participated in uprisings in Poland (1863), Lyon (1870), and Bologna (1874). In 1868, in Geneva, Bakunin joined the First International, but his ideas, which rejected the state as an instrument of violence, contradicted Marx's views, leading to their conflict. As a result, in 1872, Bakunin and his supporters were expelled from the International and created their own international community, the "International of Anarchists." Bakunin wrote numerous works on philosophy, politics, and economics. His book "The State and Anarchy" (1873) gained the most fame, outlining his theory that denies the necessity of political power and centralization, as well as the use of state power for revolutionary purposes.