(1) Peter Kropotkin, Freedom (1893)

The genuine anarchist looks with sheer horror upon every destruction, every mutilation, of a human being, physical or moral. He loathes wars, executions and imprisonments, the crippling and poisoning of human nature by the preventable cruelty and injustice of man to man in every shape and form ... Every well-meant attempt of the men in power to better things tends to confirm people in the belief that to have men in power is not, after all, a social evil.... Not the Parliament, not the Government, but the organised workmen could, if they but knew it, put an end to capitalist monopoly, peacefully, by simply bringing the capitalist to the condition of workmen, not by paper money - dreamed of by Proudhon - but by a general strike.... The guilt of these homicides lies upon every man and woman who intentionally or by cold indifference helps to keep up social conditions that drive human beings to despair. The man who in ordinary circumstances and in cold blood would commit such deeds is simply a homicidal maniac; nor can we believe that they can be justified upon any mere ground of expediency. Least of all do we think that any human being has the right to egg on another person to such a course of action. We accept the phenomena of homicidal outrage as among the most terrible facts of human experience; we endeavour to look such facts in the face with the understanding of human justice, and we believe that we are doing our utmost to put an end to them by spreading anarchist ideas thoughout society.

 

(2) John Taylor Caldwell, Come Dungeons Dark: The Life and Times of Guy Aldred (1988)

Kropotkin spent five years in Siberia, not, like most revolutionaries, in chains or exile, but in tasks to his own liking. He was secretary to two committees set up by the Governor, one to review the whole system of exile and prison reform, and another to prepare a system of municipal self-government. This caused him to reflect on the institution of government; it also brought him into contact with political exiles and `so-called incorrigible criminals.'
Kropotkin was interested in people, and in the way in which they lived; also in the world in which they lived. In 1863 he led an expedition to the Amur. By a Treaty concluded in 1858 between the weak Chinese Government and Rpssia, represented by Bakunin's second cousin, Nicholas Muraviev, the territory north and west of that great river was ceded to the Russians. It had not yet been explored. It is probable that no European had ever set foot on that remote and sparsely populated land. Kropotkins' task was to make maps. That mission completed, he was sent on similar journeys into hitherto unknown parts of Manchuria. He later made geographic and geological surveys of Finland. Before he was thirty he had gained an international reputation for his work. Soon his reputation was to be of another kind.

 

(3) 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.



(4) 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.

 

(5) 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.

 

(6) 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 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.