Bakunin and the United States

Abstract

“MIKHAIL ALEKSANDROVICH BAKUNIN is in San Francisco ”, announced the front page of Herzen's Kolokol November 1861. “HE IS FREE!Bakunin left Siberia via Japan and is on his way to England. We joyfully bring this news to all Bakunin's friends.” Arrested in Chemnitz in May 1849, Bakunin had been extradited to Russia in 1851 and, after six years in the Peter-Paul and Schlürg fortresses, condemned to perpetual banishment in Siberia. On June 17, 1861, however, he began his dramatic escape. Setting out from Irkutsk, he sailed down the Amur to Nikolaevsk, where he boarded a government vessel plying the Siberian coast. Once at sea, he transferred to an American sailing ship, the Vickery, which was trading in Japanese ports, and reached Japan on August 16th. A month later, on September 17th, he sailed from Yokohama on another American vessel, the Carrington, bound for San Francisco. He arrived four weeks later, completing, in Herzen's description, “the very longest escape in a geographical sense”.