User:Czar/drafts/Books about Bakunin



Can still check BRD on these:

Bakunin (Carr biography)
Nursey-Bray #58: "Standard English-language biography which, though a bit dated, still remains very useful. Excellent historical detail."

Avrich 1975: "Carr's work, though scholarly, readable,a nd still indispensible to anyone interested in Bakunin, places undue emphasis on the more eccentric aspects of Bakunin's personality and career while paying too litle attention to his major wirtings and their impact on the revolutionary and working-class movements."

Masters (1975)
Nursey-Bray #91: "Very readable and sympathetic account of Bakunin's ieas, if somewhat simplistic in places."

Avrich 1975: "... the first full-length life of Bakunin in English since [Carr's 1937 biography]. ... An up-to-date biography incorporating all the latest research ... has been badly needed, but Masters unfortunately does not provide it. Characterized by hasty writing, skimpy research and indadequate documentation, his life of Bakunin has little to recommend it. Masters apparently does not read Russian and is quite out of his depth when discussing the historical background of Bakunin's diverse activities. Nor does he seem to have used the most important source on Bakunin to have appeared in recent years, the multi-volume Archives Bakounine, edited by Arthur Lehning of Amsterdam."

Avrich 1976: Portions of the above. "Masters ... leans heavily on Carr and on on the English-language anthology of Bakunin's writings compiled in 1971 by Sam Dolgoff. He does not appear to have used Max Nettlau's three-volume German biography of Bakunin or Lehning's multivolume Archives Bakounine, the most important source to have appeared in recent years. ..."


 * History: Review of New Books, May 1975, p. 180
 * History: Review of New Books, May 1975, p. 180
 * History: Review of New Books, May 1975, p. 180
 * History: Review of New Books, May 1975, p. 180
 * History: Review of New Books, May 1975, p. 180
 * History: Review of New Books, May 1975, p. 180
 * History: Review of New Books, May 1975, p. 180
 * History: Review of New Books, May 1975, p. 180

Kelly (1982)
Nursey-Bray #80: Unsympathetic but detailed treatment of Bakunin as a millenarian"



Bakunin and the Italians by Ravindranathan (1988)
Nursey-Bray #116: "A detailed historical discussion of the important influence of Bakunin on the development of Italian anarchism, focusing on the 1860s and 1870s."



Grawitz (1990, fr)
Lourar: "Grawitz shows one point on which the two revolutionaries agree: their parasitic relationship to money. In the Russian, this attitude takes on spectacular proportions, but Madeleine Grawitz loves Bakunin so much that she finds, if not excuses, at least good explanations for it."



Leier (2006)

 * http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/bakunin-for-21st-century-activists
 * http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/bakunin-for-21st-century-activists
 * http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/bakunin-for-21st-century-activists
 * http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/bakunin-for-21st-century-activists
 * http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/bakunin-for-21st-century-activists

From out of the Dustbin
Anthology

Nursey-Bray #44


 * History: Review of New Books, Nov. 1985, p. 53
 * History: Review of New Books, Nov. 1985, p. 53
 * History: Review of New Books, Nov. 1985, p. 53
 * History: Review of New Books, Nov. 1985, p. 53

The Political Philosophy of Bakunin (1953)
Anthology

Nursey-Bray #45



The Doctrine of Anarchism by Pyziur (1956)
Nursey-Bray #114: "A useful exposition of Bakunin's ideas which are set out thematically with a consideration of Bakunin's contribution to anarchist doctrine"



The Confession of Mikhail Bakunin (1978)
Nursey-Bray #23, translated by Howes


 * History: Review of New Books, Feb. 1978, p. 84
 * History: Review of New Books, Feb. 1978, p. 84
 * History: Review of New Books, Feb. 1978, p. 84
 * History: Review of New Books, Feb. 1978, p. 84
 * History: Review of New Books, Feb. 1978, p. 84
 * History: Review of New Books, Feb. 1978, p. 84
 * History: Review of New Books, Feb. 1978, p. 84
 * History: Review of New Books, Feb. 1978, p. 84

The Social and Political Thought of Michael Bakunin by Saltman (1983)
Avrich 1983: "There appears to be no end to unsatisfactory books about Bakunin. Arthur Mendel's Michael Bakunin: Roots of Apocalypse and Aileen Kelly's Mikhail Bakunin: A Study in the Psychology and Politics of Utopianism, both published in 1982, were notable more for their hostility to the famous Russian revolutionary than for illuminating his life or his ideas. Richard B. Saltman, in this even more deeply flawed study, goes to the opposite extreme. Far from being hostile to Bakunin, he offers a ludicrously uncritical analysis of his social and political thought, skating lightly over his belief in an "invisible" dictatorship, his collaboration with the unsavory Sergei Nechaev, and his antipathy to Germans and Jews. It is a matter of particular regret that Saltman should find it necessary to castigate earlier writers on Bakunin - among them E. H. Carr, Edmund Wilson, Isaiah Berlin, George Woodcock, and James Joll - who have discovered inconsistencies and ambiguities in Bakunin's theories. ... Saltman is singularly ill-equipped to undertake a study of Bakunin. He does not read Russian: virtually all his citations are from English-language anthologies of Bakunin's writings. Nor, apparently, is he acquainted with German. There is not a single reference to the work of Max Nettlau, the foremost historian of anarchism and author of a standard three-volume biography of Bakunin with copious extracts from his unpublished papers. Saltman's own exposition of Bakunin's ideas, swaddled in graceless and at times unintelligible prose, is not likely to capture a wide audience. His tone is laborious and pedantic. There is too much flat assertion, too little depth of analysis, and the history is exceedingly thin. This book adds nothing to our understanding of Bakunin. One wonders how it found its way into print."

Nursey-Bray #122: "Draws heavily on Bakunin's first-draft manuscripts to argue that Bakunin's anarchist theories were predicated on a concept of natural authority. Focuses mainly on the 1866–74 period, and arranges Bakunin's ideas so that they emerge in a systematic fashion."



Other

 * Lehning's Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings
 * Avrich and Miller
 * Avrich 1975: "Lehning, the foremost authority on Bakunin, has now put together a compact selection of his writings for the student and general reader. It must have been exceedingly difficult to squeeze such a prolific and unsystmatic writer as Bakunin into a volume of this size, but Lehning has done rather well ... His selection, however, is marred by an uncritical approach to his subject, which has virutally banished from consideraiton Bakunin's less attractive personal and political characteristics, particularly his mania for secret societies, his plans for an 'unofficial' dictatorship to replace the Russian autocracy, and his periodic anti-Semitic, anti-German and anti-intellectual outbursts. Lehning's book, moreover, will inevitably compete with Sam Dolgoff's Bakunin on Anarchy, a somewhat larger and equally rich anthology ..."
 * Antoni Kamiński's Bakunin:
 * H.E. Kaminski's Bakunin:
 * Morris's Bakunin: The Philosophy of Freedom: