Peter Kropotkin

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Lore & Background

Kropotkin was born in Moscow on 9 December 1842, in the Konyushennaya district. His father, Alexey, was a typical royal officer who owned serfs in three provinces; his mother, Ekatarina Sulima, died of tuberculosis when Peter was three. He attended the Page Corps, an elite school in St. Petersburg, and became a sergeant-major in 1861, serving as the emperor's personal Page de Chambre. For his tour of service in 1862, he chose the Amur Cossacks in east Siberia. His 1866 Olekminsk-Vitimsk expedition confirmed his hypothesis that the Siberian area from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean was a plateau, winning him a gold medal from the Russian Geographical Society. Disillusioned after the Baikal Insurrection, he left the military. In 1872, he visited Switzerland, where he was converted to anarchism by the Jura Federation. Back in St. Petersburg, he joined the Chaikovsky Circle. He was arrested in March 1874 and held in the Peter and Paul Fortress, but escaped two years later, spending 41 years in exile.

Reader's Guide

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 (1892) and Fields, Factories, and Workshops (1899), with Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902) being his principal scientific offering. He contributed the article on anarchism to the eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica and left an unfinished work on anarchist ethical philosophy. His geographical work included the discovery of the Patom and Vitim Plateaus, which 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 that region was later named for him. He also participated in a 1870 polar expedition plan that postulated the existence of what was later discovered as the Franz Josef Land Arctic archipelago. Kropotkin's theories on the Ice Age included the glaciation of Europe and the glacial lakes of its northeast.

Did You Know?

• Kropotkin's mountain measurements from his 1866 Olekminsk-Vitimsk expedition confirmed that the Siberian area from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean was a plateau, not a plain.
• He won a gold medal from the Russian Geographical Society for discovering the Patom and Vitim Plateaus, and a range of mountains in the region was later named for him.
• Kropotkin participated in an 1870 polar expedition plan that postulated the existence of what was later discovered as the Franz Josef Land Arctic archipelago.
• He was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress in 1874 for agitation, but escaped two years later.
• Kropotkin contributed the article on anarchism to the eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.