Statism and Anarchy

Statism and Anarchy (Russian: Государственность и анархия, Gosudarstvennost' i anarkhiia, literally "Statehood and Anarchy") was the last work by the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. Written in the summer of 1873, the key themes of the work are: the likely impact on Europe of the Franco-Prussian war and the rise of the German Empire, Bakunin's view of the weaknesses of the Marxist position, and an affirmation of anarchism. Statism and Anarchy was the only one of Bakunin's major anarchist works to be written in Russian, and was primarily aimed at a Russian audience, with an initial print run of 1,200 copies printed in Switzerland and smuggled into Russia.

Marshall Shatz writes that Statism and Anarchy: 'helped to lay the foundations of a Russian anarchist movement as a separate current within the revolutionary stream.' A reviewer of another critic indicates that Bakunin criticized Marxist authoritarianism and advocated a libertarian socialism supported by interrelated efforts "from below upward."