Spartacus, USA History, British History, Russian Revolution, First World War, Journalists, Votes for Women,
Slavery, Teaching History, Teaching History Websites, History Lessons Online, Author, Search Website, Email

 

Peter Alekseevich Kropotkin was born in Moscow, Russia, on 12th December, 1842. At the age of 15 he entered the aristocratic Corps des Pages of St. Petersburg and four yeas later became personal page to Alexander II.

Kropotkin took a keen interest in politics and volunteered to help implement the reforms being introduced in Siberia. Disillusioned by the limits of these reforms, he undertook a geographical exploration in East Siberia and produced a paper on his theory of mountain structure.

Kropotkin became openly critical of the Russian political system and in 1874 he was arrested and imprisoned. Two years later he escaped and fled to Switzerland. His radical socialist views made him unwelcome in Switzerland and in 1881 he moved to France where he became a member of the International Working Men's Association (the First International).

In 1883 Kropotkin was arrested and imprisoned by the French authorities. While in prison Kropotkin's ideas on anarchism were published. Released in 1886 Kropotkin moved to England where he wrote In Russian and French Prisons (1887). He was wrote a series of articles attacking the ideas of Charles Darwin. Kropotkin argued that it was cooperation rather than struggle that accounted for the evolution of man and human intelligence.

The publication of Kropokin's books, Conquest of Bread (1892), Memoirs of a Revolutionist (1899), Fields, Factories and Workshops (1901), Mutual Aid (1902) and The Great French Revolution (1909) turned him into a world known political figure.

In 1899 Kropotkin moved to Chicago and lived in the Hull House settlement. However, his anarchists views made him an unwelcome guest in the United States and so he returned to London.

In 1912 Kropotkin moved to Brighton where he stayed for the next five years. After the overthrow of the Tsar Nicholas II in 1917, he returned home to Russia and welcomed the October Revolution. Kropotkin was critical of the Bolshevik government and described its members as "state socialists". Peter Kropotkin died of pneumonia on 8th February, 1921. His final book, Ethics, Origin and Development (1922) was published posthumously.

---

(1) Robert Lovett, All Our Years (1948)

Hull House was emphatically the refuge of lost causes. The anarchist agitation had died out, but the fear of it was maintained by press and police to haunt the slumbers of the best people. Miss Addams was attacked for entertaining Peter Kropotkin in Hull House. The celebration of his birthday was an occasion for the visit to Chicago to the mild ghost of anarchism.


(2) Alice Hamilton, Exploring the Dangerous Trades (1943)

Prince Peter Kropotkin was one of the most lovable persons I have ever met. He was a typical revolutionist of the early Russian type, an aristocrat who threw himself into the movement for emancipation of the masses out of a passionate love for his fellow man, and a longing for justice.

He stayed some time with us at Hull House, and we all came to love him, not only we who lived under the same roof but the crowds of Russian refugees who came to see him. No matter how down-and-out, how squalid even, a caller would be., Prince Kropotkin would give him a joyful welcome and kiss him on both cheeks.

It was most unfortunate that his visit to us came just a short time before the assassination of McKinley. That event woke up the dormant terror of anarchists which always lay close under the surface of Chicago's thinking and feeling, ever since the Haymarket riot. It was known that Czolgosz, the assassin, had been in Chicago at the time when both Emma Goldman and Kropotkin were there, and a rumor started that he had met them and the plot had been of their making - Czolgosz had been their tool. Then the story came to involve Hull House, which had been the scene of these secret, murderous meetings.


(3) Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House (1910)

When Peter Kropotkin came to America to lecture, he was heard throughout the country with great interest and respect; that he was a guest at Hull House during his stay in Chicago attracted little attention at the time, but two years later, when the assassination of President McKinley occurred, the visit of this kindly scholar, who had always called himself an "anarchist" and had certainly written fiery tracts in his younger manhood, was made the basis of an attack upon Hull House. It is impossible to overstate the public excitement of the moment and the unfathomable sense of horror with which the community regarded an attack upon the chief executive of the nation, as a crime against government itself which compels an instinctive recoil from all law-abiding citizens.

 

(4) Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (1945)

In February, old Kropotkin died in Dimitrovo, near Moscow. I had made no effort to see him, fearing that any conversations between us would be painful; he still believed that the Bolsheviks between us would be painful; he still believed that the Bolsheviks had received German money, etc. My friends and I had known that he was living in cold and darkness, working on his Ethics and playing the piano a little for recreation, and so we had sent him a luxurious parcel of wax candles.

I went up to Moscow for his funeral. These were heartbreaking days: the great frost in the midst of the great hunger. I was the only member of the party to be accepted as a comrade in anarchist circles. The shadow of the Cheka fell everywhere, but a packed and passionate multitude thronged around the bier, making this funeral ceremony into a demonstration of unmistakable significance.

Available from Amazon Books (order below)