(Peter Kropotkin was born into the nobility of 19th centur...)
Peter Kropotkin was born into the nobility of 19th century Russia, however even at an early age he began to reject the trappings of aristocracy. Kropotkin advocated for a form of socialism that differed from the Bolsheviks. His version of socialism was one in which the society was free from central government and based on voluntary associations between workers. He believed that any socialist state that rose to power through authoritarian means would be doomed to failure and would ultimately lead to the restoration of a capitalistic system. Collected together in this volume is a representative collection of Kropotkin's writings on Anarchism including "Anarchist Morality," "Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal," "Law and Authority," "Prisons and Their Moral Influence on Prisoners," "Revolutionary Government," "The Russian Revolution and the Soviet Government," "An Appeal to the Young," and "Anarchism-Encyclopedia Britannica Article."
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
Memoirs of a Revolutionist: The Autobiography of Peter Kropotkin
(Born a Russian Prince, Peter Kropotkin became the leading...)
Born a Russian Prince, Peter Kropotkin became the leading theorist of the political philosophy of Anarchism. This is Kropotkin's autobiography, recounting his life as the son of a Russian noble, his experiences as a boy in the Court of the Russian Tsar, his work in Siberia as a professional geologist, his involvement with radical student groups and his conversion to Anarchism, his arrest and subsequent escape from the Peter and Paul prison, and his political work in Western Europe.
(A collection of writings from Peter Kropotkin, the leadin...)
A collection of writings from Peter Kropotkin, the leading theorist on Anarchism. Contains "Revolutionary Government", "Anarchist Communism; Its Basis and Principles", "Anarchist Morality" and "Anarchism; Its Philosophy and Ideal".
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
The Prince Peter Alekseevich Kropotkin was a Russian revolutionary anarchist, a geographer and geomorphologist. He was also a researcher of the tectonic structure of Siberia and Central Asia and the Ice Age as well.
Background
Peter Alekseevich Kropotkin was born on December 9 in 1842 in Moscow in a noble family. His father, Alexei Petrovich Kropotkin, was a prince in Rurikids Dynasty, which ruled Russia before the Romanov family did. His mother, the daughter of a general in the Russian army, had remarkable literary and liberal tastes. Ekaterina Nikolaevna Sulima, died when Peter was three and a half years old. On the mother's side, Peter was the grandson of the Patriotic War hero of 1812, General Sulima.
Education
Peter Alekseevich Kropotkin received his secondary education in the 1 st Moscow Gymnasium, graduated with honors from the Corps of Pages (1862), was promoted to officer. After the completion of the Pages Corps, he voluntarily chose military service in Siberia in the Cossack units. In the early autumn of 1867 Kropotkin and his brother moved to St. Petersburg with the whole family. At the same time, the 24-year-old Peter entered the mathematical department of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of the St. Petersburg Imperial University and at the same time the civil service in the Statistical Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was headed by the great scientist-geographer and traveler Semyonov (Tian-Shansky).
Career
October 8, 1862, 19-year-old Peter was appointed to Chita in the rank of a captain by the special order of the Trans-Baikal region Governor and Major-General Boleslav Kazimirovich Kukele. Under the command of Kukel, he served in the Amur Cossack Host for several years. He participated in expeditions in Eastern Siberia, Manchuria, he rafted along the rivers of Ingoda, Shilka, Amur, (1864-1865), where he was engaged in geological, orographic, cartographic and paleoglaciological research. In 1864, under the name of "merchant Peter Alekseev, " he crossed Manchuria from west to east, following from Staro-Tsuruutuy in Blagoveshchensk through the mountains of the Great Khingan (2, 034 m). He discovered volcanogenic relief in the Ilkhuri-Alin ridge (1290 m) . .. In the autumn of that year he participated in the expedition of Chernyaev along the Sungari river, from the mouth to the city of Girin, by the steamship Ussuri. He collected material on the social structure of the Buryats, Yakuts and Tungus. In 1865, he made an expedition to the Eastern Sayan Mountains, passed the entire Irkut River (488 km, the left tributary of the Angara River). He examined the Tunka depression and the upper course of the Oka river (also the left tributary of the Angara), where he discovered volcanic craters. In 1866 he headed the Vitim expedition of the East Siberian Branch of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. He participated in the commissions on drafting the reform of prisons and reference systems, as well as on drafting city self-government, but was soon disappointed by the existing apparatus management and lost interest in the idea of reformist transformation. He was a freelance correspondent for the newspaper Moskovskye Vedomosti, published articles on Transbaikalia in the Sunday appendix "Contemporary Chronicle", as well as in the editions of Russkiy Vestnik and Zapiski. In the spring of 1867 (after the uprising of the Polish convicts in 1866), Peter and his brother Alexander parted with military service. Neither of them participated in the suppression of the uprising. In November 1868 Kropotkin was elected as a secretary of the Department of Physical Geography of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. He earned by translations (including Spencer, Disterweig), writing scientific satirical articles for the newspaper "Petersburg Gazette". For several years, he had been engaged in scientific work on the structure of mountainous Asia and the laws of the location of its ridges and highlands. In the summer of 1871 from the Geographical Society he went on a research trip to Finland and Sweden. But the "contradiction plaguing society" of the surrounding world made him abandon scientific work.
In the autumn, when he returned to Moscow, he learned of his father's death. In 1872, Kropotkin received permission to travel abroad. In Belgium and Switzerland, he met with representatives of Russian and European revolutionary organizations; in the same year he joined the Jurassic Federation of the First International (of which Mikhail Bakunin was the real leader). On March 21, 1874, 31-year-old Peter Kropotkin made a sensational report in the Geographical Society on the existence in the recent past of the glacial era. And the next day he was arrested for belonging to a secret revolutionary circle and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. The significance of what was done by the scientist was so great that he, according to the personal instruction of Alexander II, was given a pen, paper and an opportunity to work in prison, where he wrote the work "Studies on the Ice Age", which substantiates the glacial theory - one of the most important in the sciences about the Earth. Conditions of imprisonment and intense mental labor had undermined Kropotkin's health. With signs of scurvy, he was transferred to a prison hospital, whence in the summer of 1876 with the help of Stepnyak-Kravchinsky escaped, and soon left the Russian Empire, after making his way through Finland, Sweden and Norway, from Christiania sailed to Hull (England). Leaving Russia, Kropotkin hoped in a few months, when the active search would be stopped, return under a different name. First he arrived in the UK. Revolutionary interests called him to Switzerland, and, as soon as it became possible (in January 1877), he left London.
In Switzerland, Peter Alekseevich settled in La Chaux-de-Fonds, a small town where the population was engaged primarily in watchmaking. On March 18, 1877, on the sixth anniversary of the Paris Commune, along with other members of the Jurassic Federation he took part in a demonstration held in Bern.
In September, as a delegate from the Swiss Jura, he participated in two anarchist congresses in Belgium: September 6-8 in Verviers, September 9-15 in Ghent, where the Belgian police tried to arrest him. However, he managed to safely hide and get to London. From there Kropotkin went to Paris, where he met with the French socialists. In the spring of 1878, after the anniversary of the Commune, a number of repressions were carried out in Paris, because of which Peter Alekseevich, accidentally escaped arrest, he left France. He again returned to Switzerland, settling in Geneva. The Romance countries became the main arena of Kropotkin's activities. The main force he applied to propaganda and agitation was in French. In February 1879 appeared the newspaper Le Revolte ("Rebel"), created by Kropotkin and his assistants.
In 1881, the Swiss government, at the suggestion of the government of the Russian Empire, ordered Kropotkin, as a dangerous revolutionary, to leave the country. Kropotkin moved to France. On December 22, 1882 Kropotkin, along with Lyons anarchists, was arrested by the French police on charges of organizing bombings in Lyon. In January 1883, a trial took place in Lyon; under the pressure of the government of the Russian Empire, Peter Alekseevich was sentenced to five years' imprisonment on charges of "belonging to the International", which by that time no longer existed. During the year of imprisonment, his health deteriorated: he suffered from pain in his side, scurvy and malaria. But thanks to the efforts of his wife, who took care of him throughout the term of imprisonment, the conditions of his detention soon improved, there was the opportunity to work. In Klervo, Kropotkin wrote an article in English, "What Geography Should Be" first published in 1885. In mid-January 1886, thanks to the protests of leftist deputies and a number of public Kropotkin got freedom.
In the spring of 1886 he moved with his family to the UK, where he lived until 1917. In June 1917, after the February Revolution, 74-year-old Peter Alekseevich Kropotkin returned to Russia. In early 1921, Kropotkin fell seriously ill with pneumonia. On the night of February 8, 1921, at the age of 78, Peter Alekseevich died.
The socialism of this body was not, however, advanced enough for his views, and after studying the programme of the more violent Jura Federation at Neuchatel and spending some time in the company of the leading members, he definitely adopted the creed of anarchism (q. v. ) and, on returning to Russia, took an active part in spreading the nihilist propaganda.
Views
Despite his privileged education and status as chamber page to Tsar Alexander II, Prince Peter Kropotkin opted for state service in Siberia, during which time he undertook geographical and geological research. He then resigned his commission, and from 1867 was Secretary to the Imperial Russian Geographical Society's Department of Physical Geography. After the Paris Commune, he committed himself to revolutionary activity, aligning himself with Bakunin and his faction in the First International. In 1872 he joined the revolutionary populist Chaikovsky circle; two years later, he was arrested and imprisoned. In 1876 he escaped, settling in Switzerland and founding the anarchist journal Le Révolté. He was expelled in 1881, and moved to France, where he was imprisoned again. In 1886 he settled in London, and was active both in
anarchist groups and in the British scientific community. He returned to Russia only after the March Revolution of 1917.
In his theory of ‘anarchist communism. Kropotkin envisaged a global federation of free communities based on unwaged labour. It would emerge through alternating revolutionary leaps and periods of evolutionary change from the historical struggle between natural, autonomous communities and artificial authority, as embodied in the state. It would be marked by the harnessing of modern labour-saving technology and d'e abolition of the division of labour, especially that between manual and mental, and rural and urban work. Kropotkin’s anarchism differed from the ‘collectivist’ version of Proudhon and Bakunin m its emphasis on the distribution of goods according to needs, rather than of rewards according to hours worked. In his optimistic, benevolent anarchist-communist vision, Kropotkin idealized the peasant commune and the institutions of freC medieval cities as the highest point yet of human history. In his later works (notably Mutual Aid (1902) and Modern Science and Anarchism (1901) Kropotkin sought to develop anarchism as a synthetic philosophy based on the natural sciences. He reinterpreted Darwinism, insisting that intraspecific cooperation, as well as interspecific competition and struggle, was a major factor in the evolution of species. In his tmal uncompleted work, he attempted to derive a naturalistic ethics of solidarity and self-sacrifice from the instinct for mutual aid implanted by the processes of evolution.
Quotations:
“Prisons are universities of crime, maintained by the state. ”
“It is only those who do nothing who makes no mistake. ”
“Sometimes he would advise me to read poetry, and would send me in his letters quantities of verses and whole poems, which he wrote from memory. 'Read poetry, ' he wrote: 'poetry makes men better. ' How often, in my later life, I realized the truth of this remark of his! Read poetry: it makes men better. ”
“The means of production being the collective work of humanity, the product should be the collective property of the race. Individual appropriation is neither just nor serviceable. All belongs to all. All things are for all men, since all men have need of them, since all men have worked in the measure of their strength to produce them, and since it is not possible to evaluate every one's part in the production of the world's wealth.
All things are for all. Here is an immense stock of tools and implements; here are all those iron slaves which we call machines, which saw and plane, spin and weave for us, unmaking and remaking, working up raw matter to produce the marvels of our time. But nobody has the right to seize a single one of these machines and say, "This is mine; if you want to use it you must pay me a tax on each of your products, " any more than the feudal lord of medieval times had the right to say to the peasant, "This hill, this meadow belong to me, and you must pay me a tax on every sheaf of corn you reap, on every rick you build. "
All is for all! If the man and the woman bear their fair share of work, they have a right to their fair share of all that is produced by all, and that share is enough to secure them well-being. No more of such vague formulas as "The Right to work, " or "To each the whole result of his labour. " What we proclaim is The Right to Well-Being: Well-Being for All!”
“The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin, and is so deeply interwoven with all the past evolution of the human race, that is has been maintained by mankind up to the present time, notwithstanding all vicissitudes of history. ”
“Men passionately desire to live after death, but they often pass away without noticing the fact that the memory of a really good person always lives. It is impressed upon the next generation, and is transmitted again to the children. Is that not an immortality worth striving for? ”
“Lenin is not comparable to any revolutionary figure in history. Revolutionaries have had ideals. Lenin has none. ”
“. .. do not the bewitching power of all studies lie in that they continually open up to us new, unsuspected horizons, not yet understood, which entice us to proceed further and further in the penetration of what appears at first sight only in vague outline?”
“It often happens that men pull in a certain political, social, or familiar harness simply because they never have time to ask themselves whether the position they stand in and the work they accomplish are right; whether their occupations really suit their inner desires and capacities, and give them the satisfaction which everyone has the right to expect from his work. Active men are especially liable to find themselves in such a position. Every day brings with it a fresh batch of work, and a man throws himself into his bed late at night without having completed what he had expected to do; then in the morning he hurries to the unfinished task of the previous day. Life goes, and there is no time left to think, no time to consider the direction that one's life is taking. So it was with me. ”
Membership
In 1868 Peter Alekseevich Kropotkin was elected as a member of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society.
Connections
In 1878, at his age of 36, Peter Alexeyevich was married to Sofya Grigorievna Ananyeva-Rabinovich, a young girl who came to study in Switzerland from Tomsk. Soon after their marriage, they moved from Geneva to Clarence.