Michael Confino, a leading historian of Russian anarchism, published in several languages an important number of studies on Bakunin, Kropotkin and the circles of their relations, including the controversial Nechaev (Nečaiev), a topic on which he brought a substantial answer: the "Catechism of the Revolutionary" was the work of Nechaev alone . His research work was not confined to anarchism and he dealt with many other topics,such as the various structures of the Russian society in the 19th century, the intelligentsia and, as was mentioned in his vitae, "social, economic and intellectual history, with emphasis on comparative history, agrarian problems, collective psychology of social groups, the structure of societies under the Old Regime, the revolutionary movements, and the evolution of the Jewish community in Bulgaria," his country of birth.
Born in Sofia Michael Confino studied at the University in that city. He immigrated to Israel in 1948 and attended the Hebrew University in Jerusalem from 1955 to 1957. He then studied at the Sorbonne and at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, where he obtained his Ph. D. and left a deep and durable impression. He later founded the Russian and East European Research Center at Tel Aviv University and was a member of a large number of learned societies and professional institutions, often in their editorial or their executive committees. Michael Confino taught at the Hebrew University from 1959 to 1970 and in Tel Aviv University from 1970 until retiring in 1995.