Prince Kropotkin

Prince Kropotkin (1842-1921), Russian geographer, who was the foremost theorist of the anarchist movement.

Born in Moscow on December 21, 1842, Pyotr Alekseyevich Kropotkin was the son of Prince Aleksey Pyotrovich Kropotkin. He was educated in St Petersburg and served in the army from 1862 to 1867. During this time he conducted two successive exploratory expeditions in Siberia and Dongbei, which produced some valuable geographic information. In 1867 Kropotkin returned to St 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 thus engaged, 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 disseminate anarchist propaganda 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 five years' imprisonment for anarchistic activities. He was released after three years and thereafter 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. He died at Dmitrov near Moscow on February 8, 1921.

The central theme of Kropotkin's numerous writings is the abolition of all forms of government in favour 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 Revolutionary (1885; trans. 1899); Fields, Factories, and Workshops (1899); Terror in Russia (1909); and Ethics, Origin and Development (1924).