Memoirs of a Revolutionist - Softcover

Kropotkin, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0486473163 ISBN 13: 9780486473161

Publisher: Dover Publications, 2010

Synopsis

Born into a wealthy family of landowners, Prince Peter Alexeivich Kropotkin (1842-1921) served in the court of the Tsar and held prestigious diplomatic posts. But the prince renounced his life of privilege to embrace nonviolent anarchism, a revolutionary alternative to Marxism. A leading theoretician of his day, Kropotkin wrote the basic books in the library of anarchism, prepared countless pamphlets and speeches, and worked tirelessly to subvert the class structure and promote a philosophy of collective action.
In this autobiography, Kropotkin recounts his early life in the royal court and his military service in Siberia, along with his imprisonment, escape, and European exile. His portraits of nineteenth-century Russian life rival those of the great novelists, ranging from moving examples of the unbridgeable chasm between nobles and serfs to gripping scenes of midnight plots enacted outside the Kremlin’s walls. An eminent geographer and cartographer, Kropotkin also offers fascinating views from his explorations of Siberia. An Introduction and explanatory notes enhance this unabridged edition of a thrilling real-life story of idealism and adventure.

About this title

From the Author:

"The worst was the silence, as of the grave, which reigned about me. In vain I knocked on the walls and struck the floor with my foot, listening for the faintest sound in reply. None was to be heard. One month passed, then two, three, fifteen months, but there was no reply to my knocks. We were only six, scattered among 36 casemates, all my arrested comrades being kept in the Litovskiy Zamok prison. When the noncommissioned officer entered my cell to take me out for a walk, and I asked him, 'What kind of weather have we, Does it rain,' he cast a furtive side glance at me and without saying a word promptly retired behind the door..."

"We certainly foresaw that if full freedom is left to the individual for the expression of his ideas and for action, we should have to face a certain amount of extravagant exaggerations of our principles. I had seen it in the Nihilist movement in Russia. But we trusted - and experience has proved that we were right - that social life itself... would be the most effective means for threshing out opinions."

About the Author:

Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) rejected his aristocratic birthright and the inequalities of Russian society to pursue a philosophy of nonviolent anarchism based on mutual aid.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0486473163
• ISBN 13: 9780486473161
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 608