Kropotkin, Peter

Kropotkin, Peter (Alekseyevich)

Peter Alekseyevich Kropotkin.

(credit: Brown Brothers)

(born Dec. 21, 1842, Moscow, Russia—died Feb. 8, 1921, Dmitrov, near Moscow) Russian revolutionary and geographer, foremost theorist of anarchism. The son of a prince, he renounced his aristocratic heritage in 1871. Although he achieved renown in such fields as geography, zoology, sociology, and history, he shunned material success for the life of a revolutionist. He was imprisoned on political charges (1874–76) but escaped and fled to western Europe. He was imprisoned in France on trumped-up charges of sedition (1883–86), and in 1886 he settled in England, where he remained until the Russian Revolution of 1917 allowed him to return home. While in exile, he wrote several influential books, including Memoirs of a Revolutionist (1899) and Mutual Aid (1902), in which he attempted to put anarchism on a scientific basis and argued that cooperation rather than conflict is the chief factor in the evolution of species. On his return to Russia, he was bitterly disappointed that the Bolsheviks had made their revolution by authoritarian rather than libertarian methods, and he retired from politics.