Peter Kropotkin

He had a daughter named Alexandra.

Peter Kropotkin died of pneumonia in Dmitrov near Moscow, Russia, on February 8, 1921.

Peter Kropotkin was born on December 12, 1842 in Moscow, Russia.

His father was Prince Aleksei Petrovich Kropotkin, a Prince from Smolensk, and his mother was Yekaterina Nikolaevna Sulima, the daughter of a Cossack general.

His father married Yelizaveta Markovna Korandino two years after his own mother died of tuberculosis in 1846.

He had two elder brothers, Nikolai and Alexander and an elder sister named Yelena.

He joined the ‘First Moscow Gymnasium’ initially where he developed great interest for geography and history.

In 1862 Peter Kropotkin joined the ‘Corps of Pages’ and received a commission in the Cossack Regiment stationed in Eastern Siberia.

He worked as an ‘aide de camp’ for the governor of Transbaikalia located in Chita for some time and then as an attaché to the governor-general of East Siberia located at Irkutsk for Cossack affairs during 1863.

In 1864, finding very little administrative work in Irkutsk, he toured North Manchuria from Tranbaikalia up to Amur and then up the Sungari River with scientific expeditions.

Seeing the impossibility of any reforms occurring in Siberia, he started reading the works of the French anarchist and political thinkers like Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Alexander Herzen and John Stuart Mill in 1866.

In 1867 he resigned from the army and chose to study mathematics at the ‘Saint Petersburg Imperial University’.

Peter Kropotkin published the book ‘In Russian and French Prisons’ in 1887 and his autobiography ‘Memoirs of a Revolutionist’ in 1899.

His famous second book ‘Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution’ was followed by ‘The Conquest of Bread’ and then by ‘Fields, Factories and Workshops’ during 1901 to 1902.

His book ‘The Great French Revolution’ published in 1909 turned him into a world renowned figure.