Russian language
Russian (ру́сский язы́к, russky yazyk, pronounced [ˈruskʲɪj jɪˈzɨk]) is a Slavic language spoken primarily in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics of the Soviet Union and former participants of the Eastern Bloc. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the three living members of the East Slavic languages. Written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century onwards.
It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages. It is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the 8th most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers and the 7th by total number of speakers. The language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.
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Tsar
Tsar (Old Church Slavonic: ц︢рь (usually written thus with a tilda) or цaрь) is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism. The term is derived from the Latin word Caesar, which was intended to mean Emperor in the European medieval sense of the term - a ruler with the same rank as a Roman emperor, holding it by the approval of another emperor or a supreme ecclesiastical official (the Pope or the Ecumenical Patriarch) - but was usually considered by western Europeans to be equivalent to king, or to be somewhat in between a royal and imperial rank.
Occasionally, the word could be used to designate other, secular, supreme rulers. In Russia and Bulgaria the imperial connotations of the term were blurred with time, due to the medieval translations of the Bible, and, by the 19th century, it had come to be viewed as an equivalent of King.
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Mikhail Bakunin | Wikipedia audio article
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Mikhail Bakunin
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The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
- Socrates
SUMMARY
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Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (; 30 May [O.S. 18 May] 1814 – 1 July 1876) was a Russian revolutionary anarchist and founder of collectivist anarchism. He is considered among the most influential figures of anarchism and one of the principal founders of the social anarchist tradition. Bakunin's enormous prestige as an activist made him one of the most famous ideologues in Europe, and he gained substantial influence among radicals throughout Russia and Europe.
Bakunin grew up in Pryamukhino, a family estate in Tver Governorate, where he moved to study philosophy and began to read the French encyclopédistes, leading to enthusiasm for the philosophy of Fichte. From Fichte, Bakunin went on to immerse himself in the works of Hegel, the most influential thinker among German intellectuals at the time. That led to his embrace of Hegelianism, bedazzled by Hegel's famous maxim: Everything that exists is rational. In 1840, Bakunin traveled to Saint Petersburg and Berlin with the intention of preparing himself for a professorship in philosophy or history at the University of Moscow. In 1842, Bakunin moved from Berlin to Dresden. Eventually he arrived in Paris, where he met Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Karl Marx.
Bakunin's increasing radicalism—including staunch opposition to imperialism in east and central Europe by Russia and other powers—changed his life, putting an end to hopes of a professorial career. He was eventually deported from France for speaking against Russia's oppression of Poland. In 1849, Bakunin was apprehended in Dresden for his participation in the Czech rebellion of 1848 and turned over to Russia where he was imprisoned in the Peter-Paul Fortress in Saint Petersburg. He remained there until 1857, when he was exiled to a work camp in Siberia. Escaping to Japan, the United States and finally ending up in London for a short time, he worked with Alexander Herzen on the journal Kolokol (The Bell). In 1863, he left to join the insurrection in Poland, but he failed to reach his destination and instead spent some time in Switzerland and Italy.
In 1868, Bakunin joined the socialist International Working Men's Association, a federation of trade unions and workers' organizations, which had sections in many European countries as well as in Latin America and (after 1872) in North Africa and the Middle East. The Bakuninist or anarchist trend rapidly expanded in influence, especially in Spain, which constituted the largest section of the International at the time. A showdown loomed with Marx, who was a key figure in the General Council of the International. The 1872 Hague Congress was dominated by a struggle between Marx and his followers, who argued for the use of the state to bring about socialism; and the Bakunin/anarchist faction, which argued instead for the replacement of the state by federations of self-governing workplaces and communes. Bakunin could not attend the congress as he could not reach the Netherlands. Bakunin's faction present at the conference lost and Bakunin was (in Marx's view) expelled for supposedly maintaining a secret organisation within the international.
From 1870 to 1876, Bakunin wrote some of his longer works, such as Statism and Anarchy and God and the State. However, Bakunin remained a direct participant in struggles. In 1870, he was involved in an insurrection in Lyon, France, which foreshadowed the Paris Commune. The Paris Commune closely corresponded to many elements of Bakunin's anarchist programme—self-management, mandates delegates, a militia system with elected officers and decentralisation. Anarchists like Élisée Reclus and those in the tradition of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon—who had greatly influenced Bakunin—were key figures in the Commune. Despite declining health, much a result of his years of imprisonment, Bakunin also sought to take part in a communal insurrection involving anarchists in Bologna, Italy, but was forc ...