45 2 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHYand his supporters had set up a Jura Federation - with a Bakuninist group
in Geneva in vehement opposition to the International's section there.
The political situation in Europe after the Commune tended to sharpen
the differences between Bakunin and Marx: Marx gradually gave up
expecting a quick revolution and was unwilling to have the International
committed to the support of spasmodic risings in Italy, Spain and Russia
(the countries chiefly susceptible to anarchist doctrines). The anarchists
considered any revolutionary uprising to be justified as a step towards the
total destruction of contemporary society. To them, the General Council
was an authoritarian irrelevance.^136
The inevitable clash provoked by divergent assessments of the political
situation was aggravated by more personal factors: extraordinary though
it seems, Bakunin had undertaken in 1869 to translate Capital into Russian.
About the same time Bakunin had had the misfortune to meet and trust
a young psychopathic revolutionary, named Netchayev, who had just
escaped from Russia with fabricated stories of widespread revolutionary
activities among the students. Netchayev was utterly ruthless in his
methods and when Bakunin - predictably in one who never completed
any of his own works let alone the translation of those of others - wished
to suspend his labours on Capital and pay back the advance, Netchayev
wrote to Bakunin's agent threatening him with death if so much as asked
for the money back. Marx attributed Netchayev's reported activities to
Bakunin's hatred for him, and his unreasonable suspicion of Bakunin was
fed by his Russophobe friend Borkheim and by Nicholas Utin, both of
whom continually worked on Marx with tales of Bakunin's intrigues. Utin,
a Russian exile who had collaborated and then quarrelled with Bakunin
in Switzerland, had started a Russian section of the International in
Geneva in opposition to Bakunin.^137 This section - which numbered only
half-a-dozen members and was purely ephemeral - asked Marx to rep-
resent them on the General Council - a tribute which Marx accepted,
remarking to Engels:A funny position for me, functioning as a representative of young
Russia! A man can never tell what he is capable of and what strange
bedfellows he may have to accept. In the official reply I praise Flerowski
and emphasise that the main task of the Russian branch is to work for
Poland (i.e. help Europe dispense with having Russia as a neighbour).
I considered it safer to say no word about Bakunin, either in the official
or in the confidential reply.^138The London Conference, held in an inn just off Tottenham Court
Road in mid-September 1871 , was not a very representative gathering:
no Germans; only two Britishers; from France, only refugees; and from