Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/404



N our account of modern Russian anarchism we shall first describe the system of Petr Kropotkin. Prince Petr Kropotkin sprang from the family of Rjurik, and was born in the year 1842. From 1857 to 1862 he was in the pages' corps at St. Petersburg, and from 1863 to 1867 was in the army as aide-de-camp to the viceroy of Transbaikalia. Retiring from military service, from 1868 to 1872 he studied geography, geology, and the natural sciences in general, making a name for himself as geographer by his observations upon Asiatic orography. In 1872 he visited Europe and came into contact with the International Working-Men's Association. In 1874 he was arrested as a member of the Čaikovcy; and in 1876, having escaped from the infirmary of the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, he took refuge in Europe. Here he entered into close association with the Bakuninist wing of the International, and laboured to promote the organisation of anarchism. In 1883, having been arrested by the French government for his participation in the second anarchist congress at Geneva, he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment after a trial wherein much irrelevant matter was introduced as evidence. Pardoned in 1886, he removed to London. A well-known book is his Memoirs of a Revolutionist, 1900. He has given humerous expositions of anarchist doctrines, briefly in the Scientific Basis of Anarchy ("Ninetcenth Century," 1887), and in fuller detail in La morale anarchiste, 1891. See also his Paroles d'un révolté, ouvrage publié, annoté et accompagné d'une préface par Elysée Reclus. In Russian Literature, Ideals and Realities, 1905, Kropotkin deals with the leading figures of the Russian literary world. In The Great French Revolution, 1789–1793, Kropotkin describes the revolution from his own outlook. Consult also: Mutual Aid, a Factor of Evolution; Fields, Factories and Workshops; The Conquest of Bread. For the most part Kropotkin is a disciple of Bakunin, but is a less highly strung revolutionist than his predecessor, his anarchism being more temperate, or shall I say less rugged, than Bakunin's, not only in form but in content. Bakuninist pandestruction is in Kropotkin's hands a sociological and ethical criticism