Memoirs of a Revolutionist - Softcover

Kropotkin, Peter; Brandes, Dr Georg

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1605206628 ISBN 13: 9781605206622

Publisher: Cosimo Classics, 2009

Synopsis

Oscar Wilde deemed his life "perfect," and described him as a man with "a soul of that beautiful white Christ which seems coming out of Russia." He is PETER ALEXEYEVICH KROPOTKIN (1842-1921), communist advocate and "anarchist prince." A member of the Russian aristocracy and the best known of the revolutionaries before Lenin, Kropotkin originally serialized the story of his life and work for The Atlantic Monthly magazine, from September 1898 through September 1899, and when published in book form, it became his best known work. From his privileged childhood to his role in upending the social order during the turmoil of the late-19th-century Europe, this is an extraordinary firsthand account of a fabled time and place, told by a writer of exquisite insight and talent.

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 this edition

• Publisher: Cosimo Classics
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1605206628
• ISBN 13: 9781605206622
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 542