Pyotr Kropotkin

Pyotr Kropotkin (1842-1921), Russian geographer, who was one of the foremost theorists of the anarchist movement.

Pyotr Alekseyevich Kropotkin, Prince Kropotkin, was born in Moscow and educated in Saint Petersburg. He served in the army from 1862 to 1867. During this time he conducted two successive exploratory expeditions in Siberia and Manchuria, which resulted in valuable geographic information. In 1867 Kropotkin returned to Saint Petersburg, where he was appointed an official of the Russian Geographic Society. On behalf of the society he explored the glaciers of Finland and Sweden between 1871 and 1873. While on exploration, Kropotkin also studied the writings of the leading political theorists and eventually adopted socialist revolutionary views. He later became a vociferous exponent of the radical doctrine of anarchism.

Returning to Russia, he began to hand out anarchist propaganda to peasants and workers and in 1874 was arrested and imprisoned. He escaped two years later and joined an international anarchist society, the Jurassic Federation. He subsequently settled in France and in 1883 was arrested and sentenced to imprisonment for five years for anarchistic activities. He was released after three years and lived and worked in England for 30 years. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, he returned to his homeland, settling near Moscow, but he took no active part in Soviet political life.

The central theme of Kropotkin's numerous writings is the abolition of all forms of government in favor of a communistic society operating solely on the principle of mutual aid and cooperation, rather than through governmental institutions. Kropotkin wrote in both French and English; his writings include Memoirs of a Revolutionist (1885; translated 1899); Fields, Factories, and Workshops (1899); Terror in Russia (1909); and Ethics, Origin and Development (1924).