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 anarchist 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 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.
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