Peter Kropotkin

Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin[lower-alpha 1] (December 9, 1842[lower-alpha 2] – February 8, 1921) was a Russian anarchist and geographer known as a proponent of anarchist communism.

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Peter Kropotkin
Пётр Кропоткин
Kropotkin c. 1900
Born	Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (1842-12-09)December 9, 1842 Moscow, Russian Empire
Died	February 8, 1921(1921-02-08) (aged 78) Dmitrov, Russian SFSR
Resting place	Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow
Education	Corps of Pages (1857–1862) Saint Petersburg Imperial University (1867; no degree)[1]
Notable work	The Conquest of Bread (1892) Fields, Factories, and Workshops (1899) Memoirs of a Revolutionist (1899) Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902)
Spouse	Sofia Ananyeva-Rabinovich
Children	Alexandra
Family	Kropotkin
Era	19th-century philosophy 20th-century philosophy
Region	Russian philosophy Western philosophy
School	Anarchism Communism Socialism
Main interests	Political philosophy Political history Economics Ethics Darwinian theory Geography
Notable ideas	Political, ethical and economic theory of anarcho-communism Mutual aid Criticism of wage labor Five-hour workday Communal kitchens Voluntary communes
Military career
Allegiance	Russian Empire
Unit	Corps of Pages
Commands held	Aide-de-camp to the Governor of Transbaikal Attaché for Cossack affairs to the Governor-General of East Siberia
Signature

Born into an aristocratic land-owning family, Kropotkin attended a military school and later served as an officer in Siberia, where he participated in several geological expeditions. He was imprisoned for his activism in 1874 and managed to escape two years later. He spent the next 41 years in exile in Switzerland, France (where he was imprisoned for almost four years) and England. While in exile, he gave lectures and published widely on anarchism and geography.[3] Kropotkin returned to Russia after the Russian Revolution in 1917, but he was disappointed by the Bolshevik state.

Kropotkin was a proponent of a decentralized communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations of self-governing communities and worker-run enterprises. He wrote many books, pamphlets and articles, the most prominent being The Conquest of Bread and Fields, Factories, and Workshops, with Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution being his principal scientific offering. He contributed the article on anarchism to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition[4] and left an unfinished work on anarchist ethical philosophy.