Russian anarchist (1842?1921)
Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
[a]
(9 December 1842
[b]
? 8 February 1921) was a Russian
anarchist
and
geographer
known as a proponent of
anarchist communism
.
Born into an
aristocratic
land-owning family, Kropotkin attended
Page Corps
and later served as an officer in
Siberia
, where he participated in several geological expeditions. He was imprisoned for his activism in 1874 and managed to escape two years later. He spent the next 41 years in exile in
Switzerland
, France (where he was imprisoned for almost four years) and England. While in exile, he gave lectures and published widely on anarchism and geography.
[3]
Kropotkin returned to Russia after the
Russian Revolution
in 1917, but he was disappointed by the
Bolshevik
state.
Kropotkin was a proponent of a
decentralized
communist society
free from central government and based on voluntary associations of self-governing communities and worker-run enterprises. He wrote many books, pamphlets and articles, the most prominent being
The Conquest of Bread
and
Fields, Factories, and Workshops
, with
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
being his principal scientific offering. He contributed the article on anarchism to the
Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition
[4]
and left an unfinished work on anarchist ethical philosophy.
Life
[
edit
]
Early life
[
edit
]
Kropotkin was born in Moscow on 9 December 1842, in the
Konyushennaya
("
Equerries
") district.
[c]
His father, Alexander, was a typical royal officer who owned serfs in three provinces and
whose family
descended from the
Grand Princes of Smolensk
.
His mother, Ekatarina Sulima, was the daughter of General
Nikolai Sulima
and a descendant of a
Zaporozhian Cossacks
leader. Peter, the youngest of her four children, was three years old when she died of
tuberculosis
.
Kropotkin's father remarried two years later. This stepmother was indifferent towards the Kropotkin children and had a streak of jealous vindictiveness, going through great lengths to remove the memory of Kropotkin's mother.
With his father mostly absent, Kropotkin and his older brother, Alexander, were raised by their German nurse. Kropotkin developed an enduring compassion for the estate's servants and serfs who cared for him and relayed stories of his mother's kindness.
He was raised in the family's Moscow mansion and an estate in
Nikolskoye, Kaluga Oblast
, outside Moscow.
At the age of eight, Kropotkin attended Tsar
Nicholas I
's Royal Ball. Commending the child's costume, the tsar chose Kropotkin for his
Page Corps
, an elite school in
St. Petersburg
that combined military and court education and produced the tsar's imperial attendants.
Kropotkin joined the Page Corps as a teenager and began a 14-year epistolary relationship with his brother that charts his intellectual and emotional development.
By the time of his arrival, Kropotkin had already shown a populist position towards
the emancipation of serfs
and a nature of revolt against his father and the school's hazing.
Kropotkin began his first underground revolutionary writings at the school, where he advocated for a Russian constitution.
He developed an interest in science, reading, and opera. As a top student, Kropotkin became a sergeant-major in 1861
and was thrust into court life, serving as the emperor's personal Page de Chambre.
His views of the tsar and court life soured as imperial policy changed over the next year.
Privately he was preoccupied with the need to live a societally useful life.
Siberia
[
edit
]
For his tour of service, in 1862 he chose the
Amur Cossacks
in east
Siberia
, an undesirable post that would let him study the technical mathematics of artillery, travel, life in nature and financial independence from his father.
He developed a firm worldview of compassion for the poor and contrasted the pride and dignity of the yeoman peasant farmers against the indignities of serfdom.
He wrote approvingly of the cultivated
Transbaikalia
governor-general
Boleslav Kukel
, to whom Kropotkin reported.
Kukel engaged Kropotkin in prison reform and city self-governance projects that the central government ultimately denied. The exiled poet and political prisoner
Mikhail Larionovitch Mikhailov
introduced Kropotkin to anarchism by recommending he read an essay by
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
.
Kropotkin's brother came to live with him in
Irkutsk
.
After Kukel's ouster in early 1863, Kropotkin found solace in geographical work.
He led a disguised reconnaissance expedition to find a direct route through
Manchuria
from
Chita
to
Vladivostok
the next year. He explored the
East Siberian Mountains
in the north the year after. The mountain measurements from his 1866
Olekminsk
-
Vitimsk
expedition confirmed his Manchurian hypothesis that the Siberian area from the
Ural Mountains
to the
Pacific Ocean
was a
plateau
and not a
plain
. This discovery of the
Patom
and
Vitim Plateaus
won him a gold medal from the
Russian Geographical Society
and led to the commercialization of the
Lena gold fields
. A
range of mountains in this region
was later named for him.
Kropotkin covered Siberia for St. Petersburg newspapers since his arrival, including the condition of the Polish political exiles who participated in the unsuccessful 1866
Baikal Insurrection
.
Kropotkin secured a promise from the governor-general to suspend the prisoners' death sentences, which was reneged. Disillusioned, Kropotkin and his brother resolved to leave the military. His time in Siberia taught him to appreciate peasant social organization and convinced him that administrative reform was an ineffectual means to improve social conditions.
Russian locales of Kropotkin's early career
After five years in Siberia, Kropotkin and his brother moved to St. Petersburg, where they continued their schooling and academic work. Kropotkin took a position with the Russian
interior ministry
with no duties. He studied physics, math, and geography at the university.
After presenting his Vitim expedition findings, Kropotkin accepted the Russian Geographical Society's part-time offer of its Physical Geography section Secretaryship. Kropotkin translated
Herbert Spencer
for additional income. He continued to develop a theory, which he considered his best scientific contribution, that the East Siberian mountains were part of a large plateau and not independent ridges. Kropotkin participated in an 1870 polar expedition plan that postulated the existence of what was later discovered as the
Franz Josef Land
Arctic archipelago.
In early 1871, he was commissioned to study the
Ice Age
in Scandinavian geography, in which Kropotkin developed theories of the glaciation of Europe and the
glacial lakes
of its northeast.
His father died later that year and Kropotkin inherited a wealthy estate in
Tambov
. Kropotkin turned down the Geographical Society's offer of its general secretary position, instead choosing work on his Ice Age data and interest in bettering the lives of peasants.
Anarchism
[
edit
]
While Kropotkin became increasingly revolutionary in his writings, he was not known for activism.
He was spurred by the 1871
Paris Commune
and trial of
Sergey Nechayev
. He and his brother attended meetings on the
Franco-Prussian War
and revolutionism.
Likely at the encouragement of a Swiss extended family member and his own desire to see the socialist worker's movement, Kropotkin set out to see Switzerland and Western Europe in February 1872. Over three months, he met
Mikhail Sazhin
in Zurich, worked and fell out with
Nikolai Utin
's Marxist group in Geneva, and was introduced to the
Jura Federation
's
James Guillaume
and
Adhemar Schwitzguebel
. The Jura were the main internal opposition to the Marxist-controlled
First International
, as followers of
Mikhail Bakunin
.
Kropotkin was quickly impressed and was instantly converted to anarchism by the group's egalitarianism and independence of expression,
but narrowly missed meeting the leading anarchist, Bakunin, while there.
[31]
[d]
Kropotkin visited Belgium's movement before returning to Russia in May with contraband literature.
Back in St. Petersburg, Kropotkin joined the
Chaikovsky Circle
, a group of revolutionaries that Kropotkin considered more educational than revolutionary in their activities.
Kropotkin believed in the inevitability of social revolution and the need for stateless social organization. His populist revolutionary program for the group focused on urban workers and peasants whereas the group's moderates focused on students. Partially for this reason, he declined to contribute his personal wealth to the group. He viewed professionals as unlikely to forgo their privileges and judged them to not live societally useful lives. His program emphasized federated agrarian communes and a revolutionary party. While he could speak powerfully, Kropotkin was not a successful organizer.
Kropotkin's first political memo in November 1873 covered his basic plan for stateless social reconstruction including common property, worker control of factories, shared physical labor towards societal need, and labor vouchers in lieu of money. He emphasized living among commoners and using propaganda to focus mass dissatisfaction. He rejected the Nechayev conspiracy model.
Members of the circle began to be arrested in late 1873 and the
Third Section
secret police came for Kropotkin in March 1874.
His arrest for agitation, as a former
page de chambre
and officer, was scandalous.
Kropotkin had just filed his Ice Age report and had been recently elected president of the Geographical Society's Physical and Mathematical Department. At the society's request the tsar granted Kropotkin books to finish his glaciation report. Kropotkin was held in the
Peter and Paul Fortress
.
His brother, who had also radicalized as a follower of Lavrov,
was also arrested and
exiled in Siberia
, where he committed suicide about a decade later.
Kropotkin was moved to the House of Detention prison military hospital in St. Petersburg for poor health, with the help of his sister. With assistance from friends, he escaped from the minimal-security prison in June 1876. By way of Scandinavia and England, Kropotkin arrived in Switzerland by the end of the year, where he met Italian anarchists
Carlo Cafiero
and
Errico Malatesta
. He visited Belgium and Zurich, where he met French geographer
Elisee Reclus
, who became a close friend.
Exile
[
edit
]
Kropotkin associated with the Jura Federation and began editing its publication.
He met and married his wife, a Russian Jewish student, in 1878.
In 1879, he started
Le Revolte
, a revolutionary fortnightly, in Geneva that published his personal articulation of
anarchist communism
, the idea of distributing work product communally based on need rather than by work.
He became the philosophy's most prominent proponent, despite not creating it. The philosophy became part of the Jura program in 1880 at Kropotkin's advocacy.
Le Revolte
also published Kropotkin's best known pamphlet, "An Appeal to the Young", in 1880.
Switzerland expelled Kropotkin at Russia's behest after the
assassination of Alexander II
in early 1881. He moved to
Thonon-les-Bains
,
France
, near Geneva, so that his wife could finish her Swiss education. Upon learning that the Holy League, a tsarist group, intended to kill him for his alleged association with the assassination, he moved to London, but could only bear to live there for a year.
Upon his return in late 1882, the French arrested him for agitation, partly to appease Russia. He was sentenced to five years in
Lyons
. In early 1883, he was transferred to the
Clairvaux Prison
, where he continued his academic work. A public campaign of intellectuals and French legislators called for his release. Reclus published
Words of a Rebel
, a compilation of Kropotkin's
Revolte
writings while he was in prison, which became a main source of Kropotkin's thoughts on revolution. As Kropotkin's health worsened from
scurvy
and
malaria
, France released him in early 1886.
He would stay in England through 1917, settling in
Harrow, London
, apart from brief trips to other European countries.
In London in late 1886, he co-founded
Freedom
, an anarchist monthly and the first English anarchist periodical, which he continued to support for almost three decades.
His first and only child was born the next year. He published multiple books over the next coming years including
In Russian and French Prisons
and
The Conquest of Bread
.
His intellectual circle in London included
William Morris
and
W. B. Yeats
as well as old Russian friends
Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky
and
Nikolai Tchaikovsky
. Kropotkin contributed to the
Geographical Journal
and
Nature
.
After 1890, according to biographers
George Woodcock
and
Ivan Avakumovi?
, Kropotkin became more of a scholarly recluse and less of a propagandist. His works' revolutionary zeal subsided as he turned to social, ethical, and scientific questions. He joined the
British Association for the Advancement of Science
. He continued to contribute to
Freedom
but was no longer an editor.
Several of Kropotkin's books began as journal articles. His writings on anarchist communist social life were printed in the French successor to
Le Revolte
and later revised into
The Conquest of Bread
in 1892. Kropotkin's writings on decentralizing production and industry against the countervailing trend of centralized industrialization were compiled into his
Fields, Factories, and Workshops
in 1899.
His research throughout the 1890s on the animal instinct for cooperation as a counterpoint to
Darwinism
became a series of articles in
Nineteenth Century
and, later, the book
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
, which was widely translated.
Following a scientific congress in
Toronto
in 1897, Kropotkin toured Canada. His experience there led him to advise the Russian
Doukhobors
who sought to immigrate there. He helped facilitate their emigration in 1899.
Kropotkin entered the United States and met
John Most
,
Emma Goldman
, and
Benjamin Tucker
. American publishers published his
Memoirs of a Revolutionist
and
Fields, Factories, and Workshops
by the end of the decade.
He visited the United States again in 1901 at the invitation of the
Lowell Institute
to give lectures on Russian literature that were later published.
He published
The Great French Revolution
(1909),
The Terror in Russia
(1909), and
Modern Science and Anarchism
(1913). His 70th birthday in 1912 had celebratory gatherings in London and Paris.
Kropotkin's support for Western entry into World War I, siding with England and France, divided the anarchist movement, which had been anti-war, and damaged his esteem as a luminary of socialism. He exacerbated this by insisting, with returning to Russia, that Russians support the war as well.
Return to Russia
[
edit
]
With the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, Kropotkin returned to Russia in June 1917. He refused the Petrograd Provisional Government's offer of a cabinet seat. In August, he advocated for defending Russia and the revolution at the National State Conference. Kropotkin applied for a residence in Moscow in 1918, which was personally approved by Vladimir Lenin, head of the Soviet government. Months later, finding life in Moscow difficult in his old age, Kropotkin moved with his family to a friend's home in the nearby town of Dmitrov.
[51]
In 1919, Emma Goldman visited his family there. Kropotkin met with Lenin in Moscow and corresponded by mail to discuss political questions of the day. He advocated for
workers' cooperatives
and argued against the Bolsheviks' hostage policy and centralization of authority while simultaneously encouraging Western comrades to stop their governments' military interventions in Russia.
Kropotkin ultimately had little impact on the Russian revolution, but his advocacy work for political and anarchist prisoners in Russia and for the Russian revolution, during the last four years of his life replenished some of the goodwill he had lost from his support for Western powers in World War I.
Kropotkin died of pneumonia on 8 February 1921.
His family refused an offer of a
state funeral
.
With his Moscow funeral, the Bolsheviks permitted the diminished Russian anarchist movement an official, restrained occasion to memorialize their figurehead.
It was the last major anarchist demonstration of the period in Russia, as the movement and Kropotkin's writings would be fully suppressed later that year.
Philosophy
[
edit
]
Critique of capitalism
[
edit
]
Kropotkin critiqued what he considered to be the fallacies of the
economic systems
of
feudalism
and
capitalism
. He believed they create poverty and
artificial scarcity
and promote
privilege
. Alternatively, he proposed a more decentralized economic system based on
mutual aid
and
voluntary cooperation
. He argued that the tendencies for this kind of organization already exist, both in evolution and in human society.
[53]
Kropotkin disagreed in part with the Marxist critique of capitalism, including the
labor theory of value
, believing there was no necessary link between work performed and the values of commodities. His attack on the institution of wage labor was based more on the power employers exerted over employees, and not only on the extraction of
surplus value
from their labor. Kropotkin claimed this power was made possible by the state's protection of private ownership of productive resources.
[54]
[55]
However, Kropotkin believed the possibility of surplus value was itself the problem, holding that a society would still be unjust if the workers of a particular industry kept their surplus to themselves, rather than redistributing it for the common good.
[55]
Critique of state socialism
[
edit
]
Kropotkin believed that a
communist
society could be established only by a
social revolution
, which he described as, "... the taking possession by the people of all social wealth. It is the abolition of all the forces which have so long hampered the development of Humanity".
[56]
However, he criticized forms of revolutionary methods (like those proposed by
Marxism
and
Blanquism
) that retained the use of state power, arguing that any central authority was incompatible with the dramatic changes needed by a social revolution. Kropotkin believed that the mechanisms of the state were deeply rooted in maintaining the power of one class over another, and thus could not be used to
emancipate
the
working class
.
[57]
Instead, Kropotkin insisted that both
private property
and the
state
needed to be abolished together.
The economic change which will result from the Social Revolution will be so immense and so profound, it must so change all the relations based today on property and exchange, that it is impossible for one or any individual to elaborate the different social forms, which must spring up in the society of the future. [...] Any authority external to it will only be an obstacle, only a trammel on the organic labor which must be accomplished, and beside that a source of discord and hatred.
[56]
Kropotkin believed that any post-revolutionary
government
would lack the local knowledge to organize a diverse population. Their vision of society would be limited by their own vindictive, self-serving, or narrow ideals.
[58]
To ensure order, preserve
authority
, and organize
production
the state would need to use
violence
and
coercion
to suppress further revolution, and control workers. The workers would be reliant on the state
bureaucracy
to organize them, so they would never develop the initiative to self-organize as they needed.
[56]
This would lead to the re-creation of
classes
, an oppressed workforce, and eventually another revolution.
[59]
Thus, Kropotkin wrote that maintaining the state would paralyze any true social revolution, making the idea of a "revolutionary government" a contradiction in terms:
We know that Revolution and Government are incompatible; one must destroy the other, no matter what name is given to government, whether dictator, royalty, or parliament. We know that what makes the strength and the truth of our party is contained in this fundamental formula ? "Nothing good or durable can be done except by the free initiative of the people, and every government tends to destroy it;" and so the very best among us, if their ideas had not to pass through the crucible of the popular mind, before being put into execution, and if they should become masters of that formidable machine ? the government ? and could thus act as they chose, would become in a week fit only for the gallows. We know whither every dictator leads, even the best intentioned, ? namely to the death of all revolutionary movement.
[56]
Rather than a centralized approach, Kropotkin stressed the need for decentralized organization. He believed that dissolving the state would cripple counter-revolution without reverting to authoritarian methods of control, writing, "In order to conquer, something more than guillotines are required. It is the revolutionary idea, the truly wide revolutionary conception, which reduces its enemies to impotence by paralyzing all the instruments by which they have governed hitherto."
[58]
He believed this was possible only through a widespread "Boldness of thought, a distinct and wide conception of all that is desired, constructive force arising from the people in proportion as the negation of authority dawns; and finally -- the initiative of all in the work of reconstruction -- this will give to the revolution the Power required to conquer."
[58]
Kropotkin applied this criticism to the
Bolsheviks
' rule following the
October Revolution
. Kropotkin summarized his thoughts in a 1919 letter to the workers of Western Europe, promoting the possibility of revolution, but also warning against the centralized control in Russia, which he believed had condemned them to failure.
[60]
Kropotkin wrote to
Lenin
in 1920, describing the desperate conditions that he believed to be the result of bureaucratic organization, and urging Lenin to allow for local and decentralized institutions.
[61]
Following an announcement of executions later that year, Kropotkin sent Lenin another furious letter, admonishing the terror which Kropotkin saw as needlessly destructive.
[62]
Cooperation and competition
[
edit
]
In 1902, Kropotkin published his book
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
, which gave an alternative view of animal and human survival. At the time, some proponents of "
Social Darwinism
" such as
Francis Galton
proffered a theory of interpersonal competition and natural hierarchy. Instead, Kropotkin argued that "it was an evolutionary emphasis on cooperation instead of competition in the Darwinian sense that made for the success of species, including the human".
[63]
In the last chapter, he wrote:
In the animal world we have seen that the vast majority of species live in societies, and that they find in association the best arms for the struggle for life: understood, of course, in its wide Darwinian sense ? not as a struggle for the sheer means of existence, but as a struggle against all natural conditions unfavourable to the species. The animal species [...] in which individual struggle has been reduced to its narrowest limits [...] and the practice of mutual aid has attained the greatest development [...] are invariably the most numerous, the most prosperous, and the most open to further progress. The mutual protection which is obtained in this case, the possibility of attaining old age and of accumulating experience, the higher intellectual development, and the further growth of sociable habits, secure the maintenance of the species, its extension, and its further progressive evolution. The unsociable species, on the contrary, are doomed to decay.
[64]
Kropotkin did not deny the presence of competitive urges in humans, but did not consider them the driving force of
human history
.
[65]
He believed that seeking out conflict proved to be socially beneficial only in attempts to destroy
injustice
, as well as
authoritarian
institutions such as the
state
or the
Russian Orthodox Church
, which he saw as stifling human creativity and impeding human instinctual drive towards
cooperation
.
[66]
Kropotkin claimed that the benefits arising from
mutual organization
incentivizes humans more than mutual strife. His hope was that in the long run, mutual organization would drive individuals to
produce
.
Anarcho-primitivists
and
anarcho-communists
believe that a
gift economy
can break the cycle of
poverty
. They rely on Kropotkin, who believed that the
hunter-gatherers
he had visited implemented mutual aid.
[67]
Mutual aid
[
edit
]
In his 1892 book
The Conquest of Bread
, Kropotkin proposed a system of economics based on mutual exchanges made in a system of voluntary cooperation. He believed that in a society that is socially, culturally, and industrially developed enough to produce all the goods and services it needs, there would be no obstacle, such as preferential distribution, pricing or monetary exchange, to prevent everyone to take what they need from the social product. He supported the eventual abolition of money or tokens of exchange for goods and services.
[68]
Kropotkin believed that
Mikhail Bakunin
's
collectivist
economic model was just a wage system by a different name
[69]
and that such a system would breed the same type of centralization and inequality as a capitalist wage system. He stated that it is impossible to determine the value of an individual's contributions to the products of labor and thought that anyone who was placed in a position of trying to make such determinations would wield authority over those whose wages they determined.
[70]
According to
Kirkpatrick Sale
, "[w]ith
Mutual Aid
especially, and later with
Fields, Factories, and Workshops
, Kropotkin was able to move away from the absurdist limitations of
individual anarchism
and no-laws anarchism that had flourished during this period and provide instead a vision of
communal anarchism
, following the models of independent cooperative communities he discovered while developing his theory of mutual aid. It was an anarchism that opposed centralized government and state-level laws as traditional anarchism did, but understood that at a certain small scale, communities and communes and co-ops could flourish and provide humans with a rich material life and wide areas of liberty without centralized control."
[63]
Self-sufficiency
[
edit
]
Kropotkin's focus on local production led to his view that a country should strive for
self-sufficiency
by manufacturing its own goods and growing its own food, thus lessening the need to rely on imports. To these ends, he advocated
irrigation
and
greenhouses
to boost local food production.
[71]
Personal life
[
edit
]
There was no cleavage between the man and his world. He spoke and acted in all things as he felt and believed and wrote. Kropotkin was a whole man.
Rudolf Rocker
Kropotkin married
Sofia
, a Russian Jewish student, in Switzerland in October 1878. She was over a decade younger than Kropotkin.
Kropotkin references her as a primary source of criticism and feedback. Her published story, "The Wife of Number 4,237", was based on her own experience with her husband at Clairvaux prison. She created an archive in Moscow dedicated to his works before her death in 1941
[73]
.Their only child,
Alexandra
, was born in London in 1887.
Kropotkin was reserved about his private life.
As an individual, Kropotkin was known for having exceptional integrity and moral character that matched his beliefs.
Henry Hyndman
, an ideological adversary, recalled Kropotkin's charm and sincerity. These traits, wrote Stepnyak-Kravchinsky, contributed to Kropotkin's power as a public speaker. As a thinker, Kropotkin focused more acutely on issues of morality than of economics or politics and carried himself by his own principles without imposition on others. In practice, this made him more of a "revolutionary humanitarian" than a revolutionist by deed.
He was also known for being exceptionally kind
and for forgoing material comforts to live a revolutionary, principled life by example.
Wrote one philosopher, Kropotkin's "scholarly and saintly ways ... almost brought respectability to the movement."
Legacy
[
edit
]
As the anarchists' leading theorist in his lifetime,
[78]
Kropotkin wrote their most systematic doctrine and in an accessible way;
[79]
and led the development of anarchist-communist social doctrine. His works, inventive and pragmatic, were the most read anarchist books and pamphlets, with translations into major European and Eastern languages that influenced revolutionaries (e.g.,
Nestor Makhno
and
Emiliano Zapata
) and non-anarchist reformers alike (e.g.,
Patrick Geddes
,
Ebenezer Howard
), as well as a wide range of intellectuals (including the writers
Ba Jin
and
James Joyce
).
Much of Kropotkin's impact was in his intellectual writings prior to 1914. He had little influence on the Russian revolution, despite returning for it.
Emma Goldman regarded Kropotkin as her "great teacher" and as among the greatest minds and personalities of the 19th century.
After Kropotkin's 1921 death, the Bolsheviks permitted Kropotkin's Moscow house to become a Kropotkin Museum. This closed in 1938
with his wife's death.
Kropotkin is the namesake for multiple regional entities.
The Konyushennaya district in Moscow, where Kropotkin was born, is now known by his name, as the Kropotkinsky district, including the
Kropotkinskaya
metro station.
[81]
He is the namesake for
a large town
in the
North Caucasus
(southwest Russia)
[82]
and
a small town
in Siberia.
The
Kropotkin Range
he was first to cross in the Siberian
Patom Highlands
was named for him,
as was
a peak
in
East Antarctica
.
[83]
Works
[
edit
]
Books
[
edit
]
- In Russian and French Prisons
, London: Ward and Downey; 1887.
- The Conquest of Bread
(Paris, 1892) Project Gutenberg e-text,
Project LibriVox audiobook
- The Great French Revolution, 1789?1793
(French original: Paris, 1893; English translation: London, 1909). e-text (in French),
Anarchist Library e-text (in English)
- The Terror in Russia,
1909,
RevoltLib e-text
- Words of a Rebel
, 1885,
- Fields, Factories, and Workshops
(London and New York, 1898).
- Memoirs of a Revolutionist
, London: Smith, Elder; 1899. Anarchist Library e-text,
Anarchy Archives e-text
- Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
(London, 1902) Project Gutenberg e-text,
Project LibriVox audiobook
- Modern Science and Anarchism
, 1903, *
- Russian Literature: Ideals and Realities
(New York: A. A. Knopf, 1905).
Anarchy Archives e-text
- The State: Its Historic Role,
published 1946,
- Ethics: Origin and Development
(unfinished). Included as first part of
Origen y evolucion de la moral
(Spanish e-text)
Pamphlets
[
edit
]
Articles
[
edit
]
- "The Constitutional Agitation in Russia,"
Archived
4 February 2018 at the
Wayback Machine
1905.
- "Brain Work and Manual Work,"
Archived
4 February 2018 at the
Wayback Machine
1890.
- "Manifesto of the Sixteen,"
Archived
4 February 2018 at the
Wayback Machine
1916.
- "Organized Vengeance Called 'Justice.'"
Archived
4 February 2018 at the
Wayback Machine
- "A Proposed Communist Settlement: A New Colony for Tyneside or Wearside."
Archived
4 February 2018 at the
Wayback Machine
- "What Geography Ought to Be,"
Archived
4 February 2018 at the
Wayback Machine
1885.
- "On Order"
Archived
5 February 2018 at the
Wayback Machine
- "Maxim Gorky,"
Archived
5 February 2018 at the
Wayback Machine
1904
- "Research on the
Ice age
",
Notices of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society
, 1876.
- "Baron Toll", The Geographical Journal, Vol. 23, No. 6. (Jun. 1904), pp. 770?772,
JSTOR
- "The population of Russia", The Geographical Journal, Vol. 10, No. 2. (Aug. 1897), pp. 196?202,
JSTOR
Archived
8 March 2016 at the
Wayback Machine
- "The old beds of the Amu-Daria", The Geographical Journal, Vol. 12, No. 3. (Sep. 1898), pp. 306?310,
JSTOR
- "Russian Schools and the Holy Synod,"
Archived
4 February 2018 at the
Wayback Machine
1902
- Mr. Mackinder; Mr. Ravenstein; Dr. Herbertson; Prince Kropotkin; Mr. Andrews; Cobden Sanderson; Elisee Reclus, "On Spherical Maps and Reliefs: Discussion", The Geographical Journal, Vol. 22, No. 3. (Sep. 1903), pp. 294?299,
JSTOR
- "The
desiccation
of Eur-Asia",
Geographical Journal
, 23 (1904), 722?41.
- "Finland" in Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.), 1911 (in part; with
Joseph R. Fisher
and
John Scott Keltie
)
- "Finland: A Rising Nationality,"
Archived
4 February 2018 at the
Wayback Machine
Nineteenth Century, 1885
- "Anarchism"
Archived
25 April 2020 at the
Wayback Machine
in Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.), 1911
- "Anti-militarism. Was it properly understood?"
Archived
29 November 2016 at the
Wayback Machine
, Freedom, vol.XXVIII, no. 307 (November 1914), pp. 82?83.
- "An open letter of Peter Kropotkin to the Western workingmen"
Archived
29 November 2016 at the
Wayback Machine
, The Railway Review (29 June 1917), p. 4.
See also
[
edit
]
Notes
[
edit
]
- ^
;
[2]
Russian:
Пётр Алексе?евич Кропо?ткин
Russian pronunciation:
[?p??tr
?l??k?s?ej?v??t??
kr??potk??n]
- ^
According to the new style calendar (modern Gregorian), Kropotkin was born on 9 December 1842. According to the old style (Old Julian) calendar used in the Russian Empire at the time, it was 27 November 1842. Russia converted from the old to the new style calendar in 1918.
- ^
His birth date was 27 November in the
Russian Old Style
calendar.
- ^
Kropotkin previously had some passing familiarity with Bakunin.
Historians wrote that Bakunin likely did not wish to meet Kropotkin based on the latter's familial connection to the socialist
Peter Lavrov
.
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Slatter, John.
"Kropotkin, Pyotr Alexeyevich."
Archived
16 September 2016 at the
Wayback Machine
Encyclopedia of Russian History
. 2004. Retrieved 1 March 2016 from Encyclopedia.com.
- ^
"Kropotkin"
Archived
25 December 2014 at the
Wayback Machine
.
Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary
.
- ^
Caves, R. W. (2004).
Encyclopedia of the City
. Routledge. p. 414.
ISBN
978-0-415-25225-6
.
- ^
Peter Kropotkin entry on 'anarchism' from the Encyclopædia Britannica (eleventh ed.)
, Internet Archive. Public Domain text.
- ^
Shatz, Marshall S. (1995). "Introduction".
The Conquest of Bread and Other Anarchist Writings
. Cambridge University Press. p. xi.
ISBN
978-0-521-45990-7
.
OCLC
832639138
.
- ^
"A meeting between V.I. Lenin and P. A. Kropotkin"
.
www.marxists.org
.
Archived
from the original on 25 May 2023
. Retrieved
17 May
2023
.
- ^
Kropotkin, Peter (1902).
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
. McClure, Philips & Company. pp.
223
.
- ^
Bekken, John (2009).
"Peter Kropotkin's anarchist economics for a new society"
.
Radical Economics and Labour
. London & New York: Routledge. p. 223.
ISBN
978-0-415-77723-0
.
- ^
a
b
Kropotkin, Peter (2011).
The Conquest of Bread
. Dover Publications, Inc. pp. 50, 101?102.
- ^
a
b
c
d
"Revolutionary Government"
.
The Anarchist Library
.
Archived
from the original on 9 March 2017
. Retrieved
13 December
2022
.
- ^
The Modern State
.
Archived
from the original on 13 December 2022
. Retrieved
13 December
2022
.
- ^
a
b
c
"Revolutionary Studies"
.
The Anarchist Library
.
Archived
from the original on 13 December 2022
. Retrieved
13 December
2022
.
- ^
"XI. CAN THE STATE BE USED FOR THE EMANCIPATION OF THE WORKERS?".
The Modern State
.
Archived
from the original on 13 December 2022
. Retrieved
13 December
2022
.
- ^
"The Russian Revolution and the Soviet Government: Letter to the Workers of Western Europe"
.
The Anarchist Library
.
Archived
from the original on 13 December 2022
. Retrieved
13 December
2022
.
- ^
"Letter to Lenin (4 March 1920)"
.
The Anarchist Library
.
Archived
from the original on 13 December 2022
. Retrieved
13 December
2022
.
- ^
"Letter To Lenin (21 December 1920)"
.
The Anarchist Library
.
Archived
from the original on 13 December 2022
. Retrieved
13 December
2022
.
- ^
a
b
Sale, Kirkpatrick
(1 July 2010)
Are Anarchists Revolting?
Archived
12 December 2010 at the
Wayback Machine
,
The American Conservative
- ^
Kropotkin, Peter (1902).
quotation from
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
.
Archived
from the original on 16 March 2019
. Retrieved
31 May
2012
.
- ^
Gallaher, Carolyn
; Dahlman, Carl T.; Gilmartin, Mary; Mountz, Alison; Shirlow, Peter (2009).
Key Concepts in Political Geography
. London: SAGE. p. 392.
ISBN
9781412946728
.
- ^
Vucinich, Alexander (1988).
Darwin in Russian Thought
. University of California Press. p. 349.
ISBN
9780520062832
.
- ^
Roy, Debarati (2012).
The Power of Money
. Vij Books India Private Limited. p. 201.
ISBN
9789382573173
.
- ^
Kropotkin, Peter (1892).
The Conquest of Bread
. Putnam. pp.
201
.
- ^
Kropotkin wrote: "After the Collectivist Revolution instead of saying 'twopence' worth of soap, we shall say 'five minutes' worth of soap." (quoted in
Brauer, Fae (2009).
"Wild Beasts and Tame Primates: 'Le Douanier' Rosseau's Dream of Darwin's Evolution"
. In Larsen, Barbara Jean (ed.).
The Art of Evolution: Darwin, Darwinisms, and Visual Culture
. UPNE. p. 211.
ISBN
9781584657750
.
)
- ^
Avrich, Paul (2005).
The Russian Anarchists
. AK Press. pp. 28?29.
ISBN
9781904859482
.
- ^
Adams, Matthew S. (4 June 2015).
Kropotkin, Read, and the Intellectual History of British Anarchism: Between Reason and Romanticism
. Springer.
ISBN
9781137392626
.
- ^
Eds (18 September 2021).
"Sophia Kropotkin (and a trip to Hartlepool)"
.
Freedom News
. Retrieved
24 January
2024
.
- ^
*
Osofsky 1979
, p. 19: "Paul Avrich sees Kropotkin as the foremost libertarian theorist and most venerated figure of the anarchist movement" ... "Alexander Gray ... 'probably the most representative, as he is certainly the most attractive and engaging, of the modern anarchist'"
- ^
Drinnon, Richard (1982) [1961].
"The Dream"
.
Rebel in Paradise: A Biography of Emma Goldman
. Paul Avrich Collection (Library of Congress). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p.
38
.
ISBN
978-0-226-16364-2
.
OCLC
1319580316
– via Internet Archive.
- ^
Jabado, Salwa (2008).
Fodor's Moscow and St. Petersburg
. Fodor's.
ISBN
9781400007172
.
- ^
Everett-Heath, John (7 December 2017).
The Concise Dictionary of World Place Names
. Oxford University Press.
ISBN
978-0-19-255646-2
.
- ^
Alberts, Fred G. (1995).
"Geographic Names of the Antarctic"
.
Bibliography
[
edit
]
- Avrich, Paul (1988).
Anarchist Portraits
. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. pp. 53?106.
ISBN
0-691-04753-7
.
OCLC
17727270
.
- Crowder, George (2003). "Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin". In Dinega, Alyssa W. (ed.).
Russian Literature in the Age of Realism
. Vol. 277. Detroit, MI: Gale. pp. 191?198.
Gale
OOSVCP062651800
.
- Green, Lara (2022). "The Transnational Life and Death of Peter Kropotkin, 1881-1921: Terrorism, the Anarchist Body, and the Russian Revolution".
Anarchist Studies
.
30
(1): 83?.
ISSN
0967-3393
.
Gale
A708386012
.
- Marshall, Peter
(1992). "Peter Kropotkin: The Revolutionary Evolutionist".
Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism
. London: HarperCollins. pp. 309?338.
ISBN
978-0-00-217855-6
.
- Osofsky, Stephen (1979).
Peter Kropotkin
. Boston: Twayne Publishers.
ISBN
978-0-8057-7724-6
.
OCLC
4497420
.
- Kropotkin, Peter; Walter, Nicolas (1971).
Memoirs of a Revolutionist
. New York: Dover.
ISBN
978-0-486-22485-5
.
- Woodcock, George
(1986). "The Explorer".
Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements
(2nd ed.). Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. pp. 153?182.
ISBN
978-0-14-022697-3
.
OCLC
489971695
.
Further reading
[
edit
]
Books on Kropotkin
[
edit
]
- Butterworth, Alex (9 August 2011).
The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists, and Secret Agents
. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
ISBN
978-0-307-38675-5
.
OCLC
676726867
.
- Cahm, Caroline (1989).
Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism 1872?1886
. Cambridge University Press.
ISBN
0-521-36445-0
.
OCLC
19553164
.
- Davis, Mike (2018).
"The Coming Desert: Kropotkin, Mars and the Pulse of Asia"
.
Old Gods, New Enigmas: Marx's Lost Theory
. London: Verso Books.
ISBN
978-1-78873-217-8
.
OCLC
1014051592
.
- Engelbert, Arthur (2012).
Help! Gegenseitig behindern oder helfen. Eine politische Skizze zur Wahrnehmung heute
. Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann.
ISBN
978-3-8260-5017-6
.
OCLC
822991908
.
- Joll, James (1980).
The Anarchists
. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
ISBN
978-0-674-03641-3
.
OCLC
6016024
.
- Mac Laughlin, Jim (4 November 2023).
Kropotkin and the Anarchist Intellectual Tradition
. London: Pluto Press.
doi
:
10.2307/j.ctt19qgdvc
.
ISBN
9780745335131
.
JSTOR
j.ctt19qgdvc
.
OCLC
937451696
.
- Maiz, Jordi, ed. (2021).
Kropotkin. Cien anos despues
. Madrid: Fundacion de Estudios Libertarios Anselmo Lorenzo.
ISBN
978-84-123507-1-5
.
OCLC
1264877365
.
- Miller, Martin A. (1976).
Kropotkin
. University of Chicago Press.
ISBN
978-0-226-52594-5
.
OCLC
1035901653
.
- Morris, Brian (2004).
Kropotkin: The Politics of Community
. Oakland, California: PM Press.
ISBN
9781629635057
.
OCLC
1030892242
.
- Walter, Nicolas (2004). "Kropotkin, Peter".
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(online ed.). Oxford University Press.
doi
:
10.1093/ref:odnb/42326
.
(Subscription or
UK public library membership
required.)
- Woodcock, George; Avakumovi?, Ivan (1950).
The Anarchist Prince: A Biographical Study of Peter Kropotkin
. Kraus Reprint.
ISBN
9780805203059
.
OCLC
242229
.
Periodical articles
[
edit
]
- Afinogenov, Greg (4 May 2023).
"What should the action be?"
.
London Review of Books
. Vol. 45, no. 9.
ISSN
0260-9592
.
- Alan, Barnard (March 2004). "Mutual Aid and the Foraging Mode of Thought: Re-reading Kropotkin on the Khoisan".
Social Evolution & History
.
3
(1): 3?21.
CiteSeerX
10.1.1.515.4372
.
- Chisholm, Hugh
, ed. (1911).
"Kropotkin, Peter Alexeivich"
.
Encyclopædia Britannica
. Vol. 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 928.
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1922).
"Kropotkin, Peter Alexeivich, Prince"
.
Encyclopædia Britannica
. Vol. 31 (12th ed.). London & New York: The Encyclopædia Britannica Company. p. 688.
- Efremenko, Dmitry; Evseeva, Yaroslava (2012). "Studies of Social Solidarity in Russia: Tradition and Modern Trends".
The American Sociologist
.
43
(4): 349?365.
doi
:
10.1007/s12108-012-9165-2
.
ISSN
0003-1232
.
JSTOR
23319618
.
S2CID
255519594
.
- Gould, S. J. (June 1997).
"Kropotkin Was No Crackpot"
.
Natural History
.
106
: 12?21.
- "Prince P. A. Kropotkin"
.
Nature
.
106
(2675): 735?736. February 1921.
Bibcode
:
1921Natur.106..735.
.
doi
:
10.1038/106735a0
.
ISSN
1476-4687
.
S2CID
4292571
.
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edit
]
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