He had a quarrel with
Marx over a matter in which he himself confessed
later that Marx was in the right. He became a member
of the Slav Congress in Prague, where he vainly
endeavored to promote a Slav insurrection. Toward
the end of 1848, he wrote an ``Appeal to Slavs,''
calling on them to combine with other revolutionaries
to destroy the three oppressive monarchies, Russia,
Austria and Prussia. Marx attacked him in print,
saying, in effect, that the movement for Bohemian
independence was futile because the Slavs had no
future, at any rate in those regions where they hap-
pened to be subject to Germany and Austria.
Bakunin accused Mars of German patriotism in
this matter, and Marx accused him of Pan-Slavism,
no doubt in both cases justly. Before this dispute,
however, a much more serious quarrel had taken
place. Marx's paper, the ``Neue Rheinische Zeitung,''
stated that George Sand had papers proving
Bakunin to be a Russian Government agent and one
of those responsible for the recent arrest of Poles.
Bakunin, of course, repudiated the charge, and
George Sand wrote to the ``Neue Rheinische
Zeitung,'' denying this statement in toto. The denials
were published by Marx, and there was a nominal
reconciliation, but from this time onward there was
never any real abatement of the hostility between
these rival leaders, who did not meet again until 1864.
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