The article highlights the unexplored aspect of literary, political and sociological heritage of the outstanding Russian thinker. With the use of new and previously unknown archival records, the author determines a number of factors that led to the formation of Mikhail Bakunin’s realistic views on the phenomenon of global and local corruption. Among them, the author identifies the absolutist character of the Russian Empire supreme and regional authorities, which was the root cause of the traditional and large-scale corruption of the officials; at the same time, it was the result of underdeveloped domestic institutions of political self-organization of civil society. As a historical example of quite effective anticorruption policy, a unique attempt of the anti-corruption modernization of the bureaucracy («Civil Service Reform», according to Max Weber’s term) is considered. The modernization was undertaken at the regional level in Eastern Siberia on the initiative and under the leadership of Governor-General Muravyov-Amursky in the 1850s with the direct participation of Bakunin and other exiled opposition politicians.