Editing Peter Kropotkin (section)

== Life ==

=== Early life ===

Kropotkin was born in Moscow on 9 December 1842, in the [[:ru:Большая Конюшенная слобода|Konyushennaya]] ("[[Equerries]]") district.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=13}}<!-- only Kropotkin appears to use the translation "Old Equerries' Quarter" -->{{efn|His birth date was 27 November in the [[Old Style and New Style dates#Russia|Russian Old Style]] calendar.{{sfn|Kropotkin|Walter|1971|p=504}}}} His father, Alexander, was a typical royal officer who owned serfs in three provinces and [[Kropotkin family|whose family]] descended from the princes of [[Smolensk]].{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|pp=22–23}}<ref>{{Cite website |date=1 June 2015 |website=Embryo Project Encyclopedia |title=Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin (1842-1921)|publisher=University of Arizona |url=https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/petr-alekseevich-kropotkin-1842-1921}}</ref> His mother, Ekatarina Sulima, was the daughter of General [[Nikolai Sulima]] and a descendant of a [[Zaporozhian Cossacks|Zaporozhian Cossack]] leader. Peter, the youngest of her four children, was three years old when she died of [[tuberculosis]].{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=23}} Kropotkin's father remarried two years later. This stepmother was indifferent towards the Kropotkin children and had a streak of jealous vindictiveness, going through great lengths to remove the memory of Kropotkin's mother.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=24}}

With his father mostly absent, Kropotkin and his older brother, [[Alexander Kropotkin|Alexander]], were raised by their German nurse. Kropotkin developed an enduring compassion for the estate's servants and serfs who cared for him and relayed stories of his mother's kindness.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=23}} He was raised in the family's Moscow mansion and an estate in [[:ru:Никольское#Калужская область|Nikolskoye, Kaluga Oblast]], outside Moscow.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=24}}

At the age of eight, Kropotkin attended Tsar [[Nicholas I of Russia|Nicholas I]]'s Royal Ball. Commending the child's costume, the tsar chose Kropotkin for his [[Page Corps]], an elite school in [[St. Petersburg]] that combined military and court education and produced the tsar's imperial attendants.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=13, 24–25}} Kropotkin joined the Page Corps as a teenager and began a 14-year epistolary relationship with his brother that charts his intellectual and emotional development.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|pp=13, 18, 25}} By the time of his arrival, Kropotkin had already shown a populist position towards [[Emancipation reform of 1861|the emancipation of serfs]] and a nature of revolt against his father and the school's [[hazing]].{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=25}} Kropotkin began his first underground revolutionary writings at the school, where he advocated for a Russian constitution.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=13, 26}} He developed an interest in science, reading, and opera. As a top student, Kropotkin became a sergeant-major in 1861{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=25}} and was thrust into court life, serving as the emperor's personal Page de Chambre.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|pp=13, 28}} His views of the tsar and court life soured as imperial policy changed over the next year.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=28}} Privately he was preoccupied with the need to live a societally useful life.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=27}}

=== Siberia ===

For his tour of service, in 1862 he chose the [[Amur Cossacks]] in east [[Siberia]], an undesirable post that would let him study the technical mathematics of artillery, travel, live in nature, and achieve financial independence from his father.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|pp=28–29}} He developed a firm worldview of compassion for the poor and contrasted the pride and dignity of the yeoman peasant farmers against the indignities of serfdom.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=29}} He wrote approvingly of the cultivated [[Transbaikalia]] governor-general [[Boleslav Kukel]], to whom Kropotkin reported.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|pp=29–30}} Kukel engaged Kropotkin in prison reform and city self-governance projects that the central government ultimately denied. The exiled poet and political prisoner [[Mikhail Larionovitch Mikhailov]] introduced Kropotkin to anarchism by recommending he read an essay by [[Pierre-Joseph Proudhon]].{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=30}} Kropotkin's brother came to live with him in [[Irkutsk]].{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|pp=13, 32}}<!-- Osofsky gives conflicting years so don't use --> 

After Kukel's ouster in early 1863, Kropotkin found solace in geographical work.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|pp=30–31}} He led a disguised reconnaissance expedition to find a direct route through [[Manchuria]] from [[Chita, Zabaykalsky Krai|Chita]] to [[Vladivostok]] the next year. He explored the [[East Siberian Mountains]] in the north the year after. The mountain measurements from his 1866 [[Olekminsk]]-[[Vitimsky|Vitimsk]] expedition confirmed his Manchurian hypothesis that the Siberian area from the [[Ural Mountains]] to the [[Pacific Ocean]] was a [[plateau]] and not a [[plain]]. This discovery of the [[Patom Plateau|Patom]] and [[Vitim Plateau]]s won him a gold medal from the [[Russian Geographical Society]] and led to the commercialization of the [[Lena gold fields]]. A [[Kropotkin Range|range of mountains in this region]] was later named for him.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=31}}

Kropotkin covered Siberia for St. Petersburg newspapers since his arrival, including the condition of the Polish political exiles who participated in the unsuccessful 1866 [[Baikal Insurrection]].{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|pp=31–32}} Kropotkin secured a promise from the governor-general to suspend the prisoners' death sentences, which was reneged upon. Disillusioned, Kropotkin and his brother resolved to leave the military. His time in Siberia taught him to appreciate peasant social organization and convinced him that administrative reform was an ineffectual means to improve social conditions.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|pp=13, 32}}<!-- "prepared to become an anarchist"-->

{{Location map+|Russia
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{{Location map~|Russia
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After five years in Siberia, Kropotkin and his brother moved to St. Petersburg, where they continued their schooling and academic work. Kropotkin took a position with the Russian [[interior ministry]] with no duties. He studied physics, math, and geography at the university.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|pp=13, 32–33}} After presenting his Vitim expedition findings, Kropotkin accepted the Russian Geographical Society's part-time offer of its Physical Geography section Secretaryship. Kropotkin translated [[Herbert Spencer]]'s work for additional income. He continued to develop a theory, which he considered his best scientific contribution, that the East Siberian mountains were part of a large plateau and not independent ridges. Kropotkin participated in an 1870 polar expedition plan that postulated the existence of what was later discovered as the [[Franz Josef Land]] Arctic archipelago.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=33}}

In early 1871, he was commissioned to study the [[Pleistocene|Ice Age]] in Scandinavian geography, in which Kropotkin developed theories of the glaciation of Europe and the [[glacial lakes]] of its northeast.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|pp=33–34}} His father died later that year and Kropotkin inherited a wealthy estate in [[Tambov]]. Kropotkin turned down the Geographical Society's offer of its general secretary position, instead choosing work on his Ice Age data and interest in bettering the lives of peasants.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=34}}

=== Anarchism ===

[[File:Кропоткин, Петр Александрович (1842-1921; примерно 1876).jpg|thumb|Kropotkin in 1876]]

While Kropotkin became increasingly revolutionary in his writings, he was not known for activism.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=18}} He was spurred by the 1871 [[Paris Commune]] and trial of [[Sergey Nechayev]]. He and his brother attended meetings on the [[Franco-Prussian War]] and revolutionism.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=33}} Likely at the encouragement of a Swiss extended family member and his own desire to see the socialist worker's movement, Kropotkin set out to see Switzerland and Western Europe in February 1872. Over three months, he met [[Mikhail Sazhin (revolutionary)|Mikhail Sazhin]] in Zurich, worked and fell out with [[Nikolai Utin]]'s Marxist group in Geneva, and was introduced to the [[Jura Federation]]'s [[James Guillaume]] and [[Adhémar Schwitzguébel]]. The Jura were the main internal opposition to the Marxist-controlled [[First International]], as followers of [[Mikhail Bakunin]].{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=34}} Kropotkin was quickly impressed and was instantly converted to anarchism by the group's egalitarianism and independence of expression,{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|pp=14, 34}} but narrowly missed meeting the leading anarchist, Bakunin, while there.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Shatz |first=Marshall S. |title=The Conquest of Bread and Other Anarchist Writings |date=1995 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-45990-7 |page=xi |language=en |chapter=Introduction |oclc=832639138 }}</ref>{{efn|Kropotkin previously had some passing familiarity with Bakunin.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=33}} Historians wrote that Bakunin likely did not wish to meet Kropotkin based on the latter's familial connection to the socialist [[Peter Lavrov]].{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=35}} }} Kropotkin visited Belgium's movement before returning to Russia in May with contraband literature.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=35}}

Back in St. Petersburg, Kropotkin joined the [[Circle of Tchaikovsky|Chaikovsky Circle]], a group of revolutionaries that Kropotkin considered more educational than revolutionary in their activities.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=35}} Kropotkin believed in the inevitability of [[Social revolution]] and the need for stateless social organization. His [[Populism|Populist]] revolutionary program for the group focused on urban workers and peasants whereas the group's moderates focused on students. Partially for this reason, he declined to contribute his personal wealth to the group. He viewed professionals as unlikely to forgo their privileges and judged them to not live societally useful lives. His program emphasized federated agrarian communes and a revolutionary party. While he could speak powerfully, Kropotkin was not a successful organizer.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=36}}

Kropotkin's first political memo in November 1873 covered his basic plan for stateless social reconstruction including common property, worker control of factories, shared physical labor towards societal need, and labor vouchers in lieu of money. He emphasized living among commoners and using propaganda to focus mass dissatisfaction. He rejected the Nechayev conspiracy model.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|pp=36–37}} Members of the circle began to be arrested in late 1873 and the [[Third Section]] secret police came for Kropotkin in March 1874.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=37}}

His arrest for agitation, as a former ''page de chambre'' and officer, was scandalous.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|pp=14, 37}} Kropotkin had just filed his Ice Age report and had been recently elected president of the Geographical Society's Physical and Mathematical Department. At the society's request the tsar granted Kropotkin books to finish his glaciation report. Kropotkin was held in the [[Peter and Paul Fortress]].{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=37}} His brother, who had also radicalized as a follower of Lavrov,{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=35}} was also arrested and [[katorga|exiled in Siberia]], where he committed suicide about a decade later.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=38}}

Kropotkin was moved to the House of Detention prison military hospital in St. Petersburg for poor health, with the help of his sister. With assistance from friends, he escaped from the minimal-security prison in June 1876. By way of Scandinavia and England, Kropotkin arrived in Switzerland by the end of the year, where he met Italian anarchists [[Carlo Cafiero]] and [[Errico Malatesta]]. He visited Belgium and Zurich, where he met French geographer [[Élisée Reclus]], who became a close friend.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=38}}

=== Exile ===

Kropotkin associated with the Jura Federation and began editing its publication.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|pp=38–39}} There he met [[Ukrainian Jewish]] student [[Sophie Kropotkin]], and the two were married in 1878.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=39}} In 1879, he started ''[[Le Révolté]]'', a revolutionary fortnightly, in Geneva that published his personal articulation of [[anarchist communism]], the idea of distributing work product communally based on need rather than by work.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|pp=14, 39}} He became the philosophy's most prominent proponent,  despite not creating it. The philosophy became part of the Jura program in 1880 at Kropotkin's advocacy. ''Le Révolté'' also published Kropotkin's best known pamphlet, "An Appeal to the Young", in 1880.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=39}} 

Switzerland expelled Kropotkin at Russia's behest after the [[assassination of Alexander II]] in early 1881. He moved to [[Thonon-les-Bains]], [[French Third Republic|France]], near Geneva, so that his wife could finish her Swiss education. Upon learning that the Holy League, a tsarist group, intended to kill him for his alleged association with the assassination, he moved to London, but could only bear to live there for a year.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=39}} Upon his return in late 1882, the French arrested him for agitation, partly to appease Russia. He was sentenced to five years in [[Lyons]]. In early 1883, he was transferred to the [[Clairvaux Prison]], where he continued his academic work. A public campaign of intellectuals and French legislators called for his release. Reclus published ''Words of a Rebel'', a compilation of Kropotkin's ''Révolté'' writings while he was in prison, which became a main source of Kropotkin's thoughts on revolution. As Kropotkin's health worsened from [[scurvy]] and [[malaria]], France released him in early 1886.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=40}} He would stay in England through 1917, settling in [[Harrow, London]], apart from brief trips to other European countries.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|pp=40–41}}

In London in late 1886, he co-founded ''[[Freedom (British newspaper)|Freedom]]'', an anarchist monthly and the first English anarchist periodical, which he continued to support for almost three decades.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|pp=14, 41}} His first and only child, [[Alexandra Kropotkin]], was born the next year. He published multiple books over the next coming years including ''In Russian and French Prisons'' and ''The Conquest of Bread''.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=14}} His intellectual circle in London included [[William Morris]] and [[W. B. Yeats]] as well as old Russian friends [[Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky]] and [[Nikolai Tchaikovsky]]. Kropotkin contributed to the ''Geographical Journal'' and ''Nature''.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=41}}

After 1890, according to biographers [[George Woodcock]] and [[Ivan Avakumović]], Kropotkin became more of a scholarly recluse and less of a propagandist. His works' revolutionary zeal subsided as he turned to social, ethical, and scientific questions. He joined the [[British Association for the Advancement of Science]]. He continued to contribute to ''Freedom'' but was no longer an editor.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=44}}

Several of Kropotkin's books began as journal articles. His writings on anarchist communist social life were printed in the French successor to ''Le Révolté'' and later revised into ''The Conquest of Bread'' in 1892. Kropotkin's writings on decentralizing production and industry against the countervailing trend of centralized industrialization were compiled into his ''[[Fields, Factories, and Workshops]]'' in 1899.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=42}} His research throughout the 1890s on the animal instinct for cooperation as a counterpoint to [[Darwinism]] became a series of articles in ''Nineteenth Century'' and, later, the book ''Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution'', which was widely translated.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|pp=42–43}}

Following a scientific congress in [[Toronto]] in 1897, Kropotkin toured Canada. His experience there led him to advise the Russian [[Doukhobors]] who sought to immigrate there. He helped facilitate their emigration in 1899.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=44}} Kropotkin entered the United States and met [[John Most]], [[Emma Goldman]], and [[Benjamin Tucker]]. American publishers published his ''Memoirs of a Revolutionist'' and ''Fields, Factories, and Workshops'' by the end of the decade.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=14}} He visited the United States again in 1901 at the invitation of the [[Lowell Institute]] to give lectures on Russian literature that were later published.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=15}}<!-- encourages dropping anticonscription stance; supports strengthening France's military against German military in 1905--> He published ''The Great French Revolution'' (1909), ''The Terror in Russia'' (1909), and ''Modern Science and Anarchism'' (1913). His 70th birthday in 1912 had celebratory gatherings in London and Paris.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=15}}

Kropotkin's support for Western entry into World War I, siding with Britain and France, divided the anarchist movement, which had been anti-war, and damaged his esteem as a luminary of socialism.<!--called "chauvinist" by Lenin for "defensist" stance--> He exacerbated this by insisting, with returning to Russia, that Russians support the war as well.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|pp=15, 18}}

=== Return to Russia ===

[[File:Emma Goldman gives eulogy at Peter Kropotkin's funeral.jpg|thumb|[[Emma Goldman]] delivering a eulogy at Kropotkin's funeral]]

With the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, Kropotkin returned to Russia in June 1917. He refused the Petrograd Provisional Government's offer of a cabinet seat. In August, he advocated for defending Russia and the revolution at the National State Conference. Kropotkin applied for a residence in Moscow in 1918, which was personally approved by Vladimir Lenin, head of the Soviet government. Months later, finding life in Moscow difficult in his old age, Kropotkin moved with his family to a friend's home in the nearby town of Dmitrov.<ref>{{Cite web |title=A meeting between V.I. Lenin and P. A. Kropotkin |url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/kropotkin-peter/1917/a-meeting.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230525151920/https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/kropotkin-peter/1917/a-meeting.html |archive-date=25 May 2023 |access-date=17 May 2023 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref>

In 1919, Emma Goldman visited his family there. Kropotkin met Lenin in Moscow and corresponded by mail to discuss political questions of the day. He advocated for [[Worker cooperative|workers' cooperatives]] and argued against the Bolsheviks' hostage policy and centralization of authority, while simultaneously encouraging Western comrades to stop their governments' military interventions in Russia.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=15}} Kropotkin ultimately had little impact on the Russian revolution, but his advocacy work for political and anarchist prisoners in Russia, and for the Russian revolution,<!--anti-interventionist--> during the last four years of his life replenished some of the goodwill he had lost due to his support for the Western powers in World War I.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=18}}

Kropotkin died of pneumonia on 8 February 1921.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=15}} His family refused an offer of a [[state funeral]].{{sfn|Kropotkin|Walter|1971|p=xvii}} With his Moscow funeral, the Bolsheviks permitted the diminished Russian anarchist movement an official, restrained occasion to memorialize their figurehead.{{sfn|Osofsky|1979|p=18}} It was the last major anarchist demonstration of the period in Russia, because the movement, and Kropotkin's writings, were fully suppressed later that year.{{sfn|Kropotkin|Walter|1971|p=xvii}}