Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid, Part 1

Summary

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Stuff You Missed in History Class

Episode: Peter Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid, Part 1

Hosts: Tracy V. Wilson & Holly Fry
Date: April 13, 2026
Podcast by: iHeartPodcasts

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Episode Overview

In this first segment of a two-part exploration, Tracy and Holly delve into the formative years of Peter Kropotkin—a Russian prince, scientist, and one of the most influential anarchist thinkers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The episode examines the events, experiences, and social realities that shaped Kropotkin’s philosophy, culminating in his identification as an anarchist communist. The hosts focus on the intersection of his privileged upbringing, the dehumanizing institution of serfdom, and his scientific endeavors, leading up to his immersion into revolutionary circles and eventual embrace of anarchism.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Kropotkin’s Aristocratic Roots and the Reality of Serfdom

• Birth and Family Background:

  • Born December 21, 1842, in Moscow to a wealthy aristocratic family.
  • His father owned “nearly 1200 souls” (male serfs); family lived lavishly but household life was marked by strict hierarchy and discipline.
  • Quote: “We were a family of eight, occasionally of 10 or 12. But 50 servants at Moscow and half as many more in the country were considered. Not one too many…” (Tracy, 05:22)

• Serfdom and Cruelty:

  • Kropotkin witnessed his father’s authoritarian cruelty—ordering serfs to be flogged and dictating their marriages.
  • Quote: "Terror and absolute muteness reign in the house. Yet father was not among the worst of the landowners..." (Tracy, 08:27)
  • Shared stories of serfs sold, gambled away, and driven to desperation—contextualizing the brutality of Russian feudalism.
  • Quote: "Stories of men and women torn from their families and their villages and sold... no words would be adequate to describe the misery..." (Tracy, 10:14)

Early Disillusionment and Rejection of Nobility

• Influence of the French Revolution:
  • His tutor, Monsieur Poulain, inspired reflection on aristocrats joining revolutionary causes.
  • As a young teen, Kropotkin chose to abandon his noble title, signing simply "P. Kropotkin."
  • Quote: “That title was apparently something they just used routinely, even at home, in private, all the time before he was like, nope, I'm not doing that anymore.” (Tracy, 12:14)

Education in the Corps of Pages (St. Petersburg)

• Military and Academic Life:

  • Entered the elite Corps of Pages in 1857, receiving advanced education, particularly in math and sciences.
  • Began writing revolutionary essays within the imperial institution—dangerous given his position.
  • Quote: “[He] spent some of his time at that school writing essays, criticizing the government and calling for a constitution.” (Tracy, 18:57)

• Reform and Reaction Under Alexander II:

  • Amidst initial liberal reforms (e.g., judicial independence, emancipation of serfs), Kropotkin felt admiration for the Tsar.
  • Quote: "At the beginning of my service, I felt a great admiration for Alexander ii, the liberator of the serfs..." (Holly, 23:03)
  • Soon became disillusioned as reform efforts were stalled or reversed following unrest.

Siberian Sojourn and Scientific Discovery

• Seeking Reform, Finding Obstacles:

  • Requested assignment in Siberia after graduation, aiming to aid reforms but found bureaucratic inertia and resistance to change.
  • Quote: “I soon realized the absolute impossibility of doing anything really useful for the mass of the people by means of the administrative machinery. With this illusion, I parted forever beyond that.” (Tracy, 30:03)

• Firsthand Education in Human Nature:

  • Lived and worked among all levels of society, observing both privilege and deprivation.
  • Quote: "I was brought into contact with men of all descriptions, the best and the worst... had ample opportunities to watch the ways and habits of the peasants in their daily life..." (Tracy, 30:33)
  • Extensive travels reshaped his understanding of what humans truly need outside “the enchanted circle of conventional civilization.”

• Scientific Contributions:

  • Corrected prevailing misconceptions about Siberian geography, arguing much was an elevated plateau, not lowland.
  • Quote: "There are not many joys in human life equal to the joy of the sudden birth of a generalization illuminating the mind..." (Tracy, 32:42)

Encounters with Revolutionary Groups and New Ideals

• Disillusionment in Russia, Influence of European Left:

  • After leaving military service, enrolled at St. Petersburg Imperial University, finding the political climate increasingly repressive.
  • Inspired by women’s movements for access to education, which he found uniquely united and egalitarian.
  • Quote: “Above all, it was through the unlimited devotion of a mass of women in all possible capacities that they gained their successes.” (Holly, 36:38)

• Western European Radicalism:

  • Traveled to Zurich and Geneva to observe the International Workingmen’s Association (First International), noting the spirit and sacrifices among workers but recognizing issues of leadership and bureaucracy.
  • Quote: “One must have lived among the workers at that time to realize the effect which the sudden growth of the association had…” (Tracy, 42:49)

• The Jura Federation—Seeing Anarchism in Practice:

  • Inspired by the egalitarian, leaderless, and mutual aid–oriented organization among watchmakers in the Jura Mountains:
  • Quote: "Here I saw that the workers were not a mass that was being led and made subservient... Their leaders were simply their more active comrades, initiators rather than leaders." (Tracy, 45:27)

• Definitive Embrace of Anarchism:

  • The practical and philosophical dimensions of anarchism—community, mutuality, and anti-authoritarianism—became Kropotkin’s convictions.
  • Quote: “When I came away from the mountains after a week's stay with the watchmakers, my views upon socialism were settled. I was an anarchist.” (Holly, 46:34)

Philosophical Conclusions Leading to “Mutual Aid”

• Necessity of Clarity and Enthusiasm for Change:
  • Advocated for revolutionary action with a clear purpose and inclusive enthusiasm to attract allies and avoid needless violence.
  • Quote: “The question is then not so much how to avoid revolutions as how to attain the greatest results with the most limited amount of civil war, the least number of victims, and a minimum of mutual embitterment…” (Tracy, 47:23)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Dehumanization of Serfs:
  • “Women did not count. My father, who owned nearly 1200 souls in three different provinces… was accounted a rich man.” (Tracy, 05:22)
• On Early Revolutionary Influence:
  • “Peter was becoming more aware of the inequities… and he decided to do the same [give up his title], abandoning his title of prince and instead styling his signature just as P. Kropotkin.” (Holly, 11:42)
• On Realizing Limits of Reform:
  • “I soon realized the absolute impossibility of doing anything really useful for the mass of the people by means of the administrative machinery. With this illusion, I parted forever beyond that.” (Tracy, 30:03)
• On Anarchist Organizing:
  • “The clearness of insight, the soundness of judgment, the capacity for disentangling complex social questions…” (Tracy, 45:27)
• On His Conversion to Anarchism:
  • “When I came away from the mountains after a week's stay with the watchmakers, my views upon socialism were settled. I was an anarchist.” (Holly, 46:34)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Kropotkin’s Early Life and Family System – [04:34–07:52]
• Cruelties of Serfdom, Class Structure – [08:27–10:14]
• Rejection of Nobility, Education – [11:42–13:12]
• Military School, Early Revolutionary Thoughts – [15:51–19:41]
• Emancipation of the Serfs & Kropotkin’s Reaction – [20:15–21:52]
• Siberian Assignment, Bureaucratic Disappointment – [29:09–30:33]
• Scientific Discoveries in Siberia – [31:59–33:51]
• Encounters with European Radical Movements – [42:14–46:34]
• Formulation of Anarchist Philosophy – [47:23–48:32]

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Tone and Style

Holly and Tracy maintain their signature approachable, knowledgeable, and often wryly humorous tone. The hosts balance direct readings from Kropotkin’s memoirs with lively discussion, empathetic analysis of 19th-century context, and frequent asides that relate historical conditions to modern issues.

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Coming Up Next

The episode closes with the promise to explore Kropotkin’s mature contributions to anarchist theory, specifically focusing on his influential work “Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution,” in the upcoming second part.

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For more details and references, visit missinhistory.com, where episode show notes include works by Peter Kropotkin referenced during this episode.

Transcript

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

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[Holly Fry]

Welcome to STUFF you MISSED in History Class, a production of iHeartradio.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Recently we did an episode on Theophil Steinlen who was an artist and we talked about his connections to anarchists and anarchist groups in France. And after that discussion I wanted to return to the topic of anarchism because we have talked about anarchists on the show before, but we've not really talked about anarchism as a philosophy. A lot of the time it's like we were talking about labor organizers who were also anarchists, or fears of anarchy that were driving things like the first red scare and some of the CIA's COINTELPROS. Like we haven't really talked about. When people were talking about anarchy, what did they mean beyond a very dictionary level definition of believing that governments and sometimes also other systems of authority are harmful and should be abolished? So Pyotr Kropotkin, who is called Peter pretty universally in English language writing, was incredibly influential in the development of anarchism as a political philosophy in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This was especially true in the UK and Russia, but also in France, Belgium, Switzerland and the United States. And he was also a scientist and a prince and I just find him deeply fascinating. Unlike a lot of our two parters. I had a feeling from the beginning that this might need more than one episode. Kropotkin's most famous work, which is sometimes described as his masterpiece, was Mutual Aid, A Factor of Evolution. This is really a work of zoology and anthropology, but it is also considered to be a foundational text of anarchist communism. So today we are going to focus on a series of formative moments in Kropotkin's early life that contributed to him becoming an anarchist communist. And then on Wednesday we will take a closer look at his work as an anarchist, including this book.

[Holly Fry]

Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was born on December 21, 1842 or December 9 in the Old style calendar in Moscow. He was the son of Prince Alexei Petrovich Kropotkin and Yekater Nikolaevna Suleima. Peter's father was a military officer and the family was ancient, aristocratic and rich. Peter grew up surrounded by opulence, with a continual stream of very prominent guests being entertained in their homes, including one in Moscow for the winter and another in the country for the summer and lavish parties and festivals. But outside all of those guests and events, he described their day to day existence as one of a quote, miserable economy.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In Kropotkin's words, quote, wealth was measured in those times by the number of souls which a landed proprietor owned. So many souls meant so many male serfs. Women did not count. My father, who owned nearly 1200 souls in three different provinces, and who had, in addition to his peasants, holdings large tracts of land which were cultivated by these peasants and was accounted a rich man. He lived up to his reputation, which meant that his house was open to any number of visitors and that he kept a very large household. We were a family of eight, occasionally of 10 or 12. But 50 servants at Moscow and half as many more in the country were considered. Not one too many. Four coachmen to attend a dozen horses, three cooks for the masters and two more for the servants. A dozen men to wait upon us at dinner time. One man, plate in hand, standing behind each person seated at the table, and girls innumerable in the maidservants room. How could anyone do with less than this?

[Holly Fry]

Those serfs were the source of most of the food and provisions that were required to maintain such a large household. Every year around the start of winter, based on his father's orders, peasant sledges would arrive, loaded up with the serf's required contributions of grain, meat and other provisions from what they had been able to grow and raise.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Kropotkin also remarked that the ideal for wealthy landowners was to produce everything they could need or want on their own land by their own men, including the embroideries, the harnesses, the furniture, everything. Quote as soon as the children of the servants attained the age of 10, they were sent as apprentices to the fashionable shops, where they were obliged to spend five or seven years chiefly in sweeping, in receiving an incredible number of thrashings, and in running about town on errands of all sorts. I must own that few of them became masters of their respective arts. The tailors and the shoemakers were found only skillful enough to make clothes or shoes for the servants. And when a really good pastry was required for a dinner party, it was ordered at Tremblay's while our own confectioner was beating the drum in the music band.

[Holly Fry]

In April of 1846, when Peter was 3, his mother died of tuberculosis. She was 35. Peter's oldest siblings had already gone away to school and this left him and his four year old brother Alexander in the care of nurses. Their father remarried two years later and afterward the family moved to a new house. This was very hard for the boys. Their new house was stripped of any kind of connection to their late mother. And one of the nurses who had cared for them after her death also was not retained at the new house when they moved.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Peter and Alexander's education started with being tutored at home and punished with a birch rod when they misbehaved Peter also witnessed his father's cruelty to the serfs, shouting at them, using abusive language and sending them to the police with a note that they needed to be given a hundred lashes. In Kropotkin's words, quote, terror and absolute muteness reign in the house. Yet father was not among the worst of the landowners. On the contrary, the servants and the peasants considered him one of the best. What we saw in our house was going on everywhere, often in much more cruel forms. The flogging of the serfs was a regular part of the duties of the police and of the fire brigade.

[Holly Fry]

Krabatkin also wrote that his father would order marriages between specific serfs and that the serfs worked out a way to try to protect themselves from this. If it seemed like they were being identified for a potential marriage, the two people in question would become godmother and godfather to the same child, which, according to Kropotkin's memoir, made a marriage between them illegal under church law. Once a tailor who belonged to Kropotkin's father fell in love with a girl who belonged to a neighbor. This man hoped to be freed and to earn enough money as a tailor to pay for his freedom and that of the woman he hoped to marry. He and another serf from the Kropotkin estate became godparents to the same child when it seemed like they might be forced to marry. Instead, when Kropotkin's father ordered the marriage and the man explained that they were godparents and how he hoped to be freed and to marry another woman, he was instead forced to join the military.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So all of this sounds cruel and dehumanizing, but what Kropotkin heard about from other estates could be even worse. Quote if I were to relate what I heard of in those years, it would be a much more gruesome narrative. Stories of men and women torn from their families and their villages and sold or lost in gambling or exchanged for a couple of hunting dogs and then transported to some remote part of Russia for the sake of creating a new estate of children taking from their parents and sold to cruel or dissolute masters of flogging in the stables, which occurred every day with unheard of cruelty, of a girl who found her only salvation in drowning herself, of an old man who had grown gray haired in his master's service and at last hanged himself under his master's window, and of revolts of serfs which were suppressed by Nicholas I's generals by flogging to death each 10th or fifth man taken out of the ranks and by laying waste the village whose inhabitants, after a military execution, went begging for bread in the neighboring provinces as if they had been the victims of a conflagration. As to the poverty which I saw during our journeys in certain villages, especially in those which belonged to the imperial family, no words would be adequate to describe the misery to readers who have not seen it.

[Holly Fry]

In 1854, when Peter was 12, his French tutor, Monsieur Poulain, started telling him stories about the French Revolution, including about aristocrats who gave up their titles and sided with the revolutionaries. Peter was becoming more aware of the inequities of the world he was living in, including the enslavement of the serfs and the way that they were treated. And he decided to do the same, abandoning his title of prince and instead styling his signature just as P. Kropotkin.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, that title was apparently something that they just used routinely, even at home, in private, all the time before he was like, nope, I'm not doing that anymore. By this point, Czar Nicholas I had selected Peter for the elite corps of pages. That happened when Peter was only 8, but he had to await for a vacancy before he could actually join the core. There was not a spot open for him until he was 15, and by that point, Nicholas I was no longer the tsar. He died in 1855 and was succeeded by Alexander II. In the meantime, Peter had continued to be educated at home and then at a Moscow gymnasium. He also started his own literary review, which included his writings and his brother's poetry. And he kept that up until leaving for the core. That included keeping it up after his brother Alexander went off to military school.

[Holly Fry]

We will get to Peter's time at the core of pages and Alexander II's impact on Russia. After a sponsor break.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

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Liberty. In August of 1857, Peter Kropotkin joined the Corps of Pages in St. Petersburg. He described the core this way. Quote, Only 150 boys, mostly children of the nobility belonging to the court, received education in this privileged core, which combined the character of a military school endowed with special rights and of a court institution attached to the imperial household. After a stay of four or five years in the Corps of Pages, those who had passed the final examinations and were received as officers in any regiment of the guard or of the army, they chose irrespective of the number of vacancies in that regiment. And each year the first 16 pupils of the highest form were nominated pages de chambre. That is, they were personally attached to the several members of the imperial family, the Emperor, the Empress, the grand duchesses and the grand dukes.

[Holly Fry]

Kropotkin had hoped to finish his education there in four years, but he was sorted into the fifth form, that was the lowest. And he was sorted there because he needed some additional study in math. At first he was really disappointed by this, but it did work out. Aside from the math, most of the rest of his courses in this first year covered material that he already knew. I got into the habit of learning my lessons by merely listening to what the teacher said in the classroom. And the lessons over, I had plenty of time to read and to write to my heart's content. I never prepared for the examinations and used to spend the time which was allowed for that in reading aloud to a few friends the dramas of Shakespeare or of Ostrovsky. When I reached the higher special forms, I was also better prepared to master the variety of subjects we had to study.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

At various points in his memoir, which is what we have been reading from, Kropotkin just casually drops things about his life that seems seem like maybe they should have been more major details. Immediately after this, he wrote quote, besides, I spent more than half of the first winter in the hospital. Like all children who are not born at St. Petersburg, I had to pay a heavy tribute to the capital on the swamps of Finland, in the shape of several attacks of local cholera and finally one of typhoid fever.

[Holly Fry]

Kropotkin's education was focused largely on mathematics, physics and astronomy, although he also enjoyed history, poetry and music. As he moved into more advanced coursework, he continued to focus on math because he thought it was critical to an understanding of any of the sciences. After two or three years in the core, he also started writing his first revolutionary essay in which he criticized corruption and wasted and advocated for the creation of a constitution for Russia.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So Peter had been personally selected by the Tsar to go to a military school that was attached to the imperial household, which would prepare him to be an officer in the Russian military. And now he was spending some of his time at that school writing essays, criticizing the government and calling for a constitution. This was definitely risky, and that is something that the two or three like minded students that he gave this essay to pointed out to him. But this was also right at the beginning of a period of sweeping changes in Russia implemented by Alexander ii, who wanted to institute some of the liberal reforms that had been seen in parts of Western Europe in the early years

[Holly Fry]

of his reign, Alexander reformed the judiciary, making it a separate branch of government and banning secret trials and corporal punishment. He decentralized some of Russia's political power structure, putting some of that power in the hands of local governments. He reformed the military, so compulsory service applied across all of the social classes, rather than only to the serfs. He also relaxed censorship guidelines, which contributed to a rise in populist and revolutionary organizations in Russia.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

On March 3, 1861, Alexander also issued his Emancipation Manifesto, which set February 19, 1863, as the day that the serfs would be free. Kropotkin wrote of reading the manifesto over and over after it was issued, it was liberty, but it was not liberty yet. The peasants having to remain serfs for two years more till February 19, 1863. Notwithstanding all this, one thing was evident. Serfdom was abolished, and the liberated serfs would get the land and their homesteads. They would have to pay for it, but the old stain of slavery was removed. They would be slaves no more.

[Holly Fry]

Kropotkin celebrated the liberation of the serfs, but also described the costs involved with paying for their land as simultaneously ruinous for them and extremely lucrative for the landlords, who also got compensation for the property they were losing. Serfs who had done household work also faced a different problem. They were free, but they were offered no land and no other compensation. Many of them left the households they had been working in to find other work because they had no offer of paid employment and no other options. This also wasn't something Alexander had done out of purely humanitarian impulse. There had been more than 700 peasant uprisings of across Russia in the 25 years before he became czar. He wanted to get rid of a potential source of disruption to the Russian economy.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. Writing about all this from the US perspective today a lot of the time will draw parallels to the abolition of slavery in the United States. And how many freed people then were trapped into a system of sharecropping in which they were not enslaved anymore, technically, but they were still doing in the same work, still in really dehumanizing conditions, and then just sort of trapped in a system that they still couldn't get out of. And Kropotkin recognized these things as also being true with the liberation of the serfs in Russia. He had been a very good student and was often at the top of his form, at the core of pages. And In June of 1861, he was nominated to be sergeant. This was a privileged position at the school. He essentially became an officer over the other students. And in Addition to that, he also served as page de chambre for the emperor. So he was essentially the Czar's personal page. This was definitely an honor, and it had the potential to really set the stage for the trajectory of his life. After finishing his education at the core,

[Holly Fry]

in Kropotkin's words, quote, at the beginning of my service, I felt a great admiration for Alexander ii, the liberator of the serfs. Imagination often carries a boy beyond the realities of the moment, and my frame of mind at that time was such that if an attempt had been made in my presence upon the Tsar, I should have covered him with my body. But as time went on, he said, quote, various small incidents, as well as the reactionary character which the policy of Alexander II was decidedly taking, instilled more and more doubts into my heart. One source of those doubts was the suppression of unrest at universities in Russia after authorities abolished scholarships and reversed earlier progressive reforms.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In May of 1862, as his graduation was approaching, Kropotkin was asked what regiments he would be interested in joining. He didn't really want to join a regiment at all. His dream was to go to university. But he knew that his father would never agree to that. So he asked to be sent to Siberia. Russia had annexed the Amur region in the southeast of Siberia, on the border with China in 1858. Kropotkin thought that in this part of Siberia there would be, quote, an immense field for the application of the great reforms which have been made or are coming. The workers must be few there, and I shall find a field of action to my tastes.

[Holly Fry]

To Kropotkin, this was an opportunity to bring change to Siberia and to make a difference, but of course, to everyone else. The Czar's personal page and one of the top students in the corps was asking to be sent to a place where people were normally exiled as a punishment. They questioned whether he was in his right mind. His father refused to allow it.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

That spring, fires broke out in St. Petersburg and they burned for about two weeks. These fires spread primarily because of unusually warm, dry weather, but there were rumors that they had been intentionally set by radicals or maybe students, or maybe people from Poland, much of which had been annexed by Russia at the end of the 18th century century. These suspicions led to arrests and crackdowns and rollbacks of earlier reforms and Kropotkin's words quote after it, Alexander II surrendered to the reactionaries and what was still worse, the public opinion of that part of society in St. Petersburg, and especially at Moscow, which carried most weight with the government suddenly threw off its liberal garbage and turned against not only the more advanced section of the Reform Party, but even against its moderate wing. Kropotkin became even more determined to leave western Russia and to go somewhere that might be more open to reforms.

[Holly Fry]

Kropotkin and some of his classmates helped fight the fires one night, and the next day he accompanied a grand duke on his rounds. Kropotkin told him about his desire to go to Siberia, and the grand duke said he would recommend Kropotkin to the governor general to make sure he wasn't posted to a tiny, remote village somewhere. This apparently reconciled Kropotkin's father to his going.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

We'll talk about what happened to Kropotkin in Siberia after we have a sponsor break.

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[Traveler 1]

It feels like we're going round in circles. I'm gonna ask that man for directions. Hi there. We're trying to get to the state fairgrounds.

[Traveler 2]

Well, you're going to take a left at the old oak tree at this here road. Nah, I'm just kidding. Let me get my phone out.

[Traveler 1]

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[Traveler 2]

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[Traveler 1]

Actually, can you pull up the way to a T Mobile store?

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

Good morning.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

Liberty. Liberty.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

Liberty. When Peter Kropotkin arrived in East Siberia in 1862, the Governor General was Mikhail Korsakov. He was the successor to Count Nikolay Murvayev Amirsky, who had negotiated the treaty that had annexed the Amur region from the Qing dynasty. He had retired in 1861. Before his retirement, and now, by the time Kropotkin arrived, these men were interested in reforming and modernizing Siberia. Kropotkin was appointed to two committees, one to reform Siberia's prisons and its system of exile, and one to bring about municipal self government. He also worked on other projects, and a lot of them were focused on improving the lives and conditions of people in Siberia.

[Holly Fry]

But Kropotkin's proposed reforms were never implemented. The rollbacks and crackdowns that he had witnessed in Saint Petersburg ultimately made their way to Siberia as well. And by the time Kropotkin was done with his proposals, they were no longer wanted. He wrote, quote, I soon realized the absolute impossibility of doing anything really useful for the mass of the people by means of the administrative machinery. With this illusion, I parted forever beyond that.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Kropotkin called the five years he spent in Siberia, which did include some trips back home, quote, a genuine education in life and human character. I was brought into contact with men of all descriptions, the best and the worst, those who stood at the top of society and those who vegetated at the very bottom, the tramps and the so called incorrigible criminals. I had ample opportunities to watch the ways and habits of the peasants in their daily life, and still more opportunities to appreciate how little the state administration could give to them, even if I were animated by the very best intentions. Finally, my extensive Journeys during which I traveled over 50,000 miles in carts, on board steamers, in boats, but chiefly on horseback, had a wonderful effect in strengthening my health. They also taught me how little man really needs, as soon as he comes out of the enchanted circle of conventional civilization with a few pounds of bread and a few ounces of tea in a leather bag, a kettle and a hatchet hanging at the side of the saddle, and under the saddle a blanket to be spread at the campfire, upon a bed of fish, freshly cut spruce twigs. A man feels wonderfully independent, even amidst unknown mountains, thickly clothed with woods or capped with snow.

[Holly Fry]

All of this had a huge impact on Kropotkin as both a scientist and a political philosopher. During those 50,000 miles of travel, he did a lot of military work, and he also studied the geography of northern Asia. He realized that most of the maps that were in use showed huge mountains that weren't really there. He started cross referencing his own observations with those of other researchers and travelers and anything else he could find to create a map of the landscape and its structure that actually aligned with reality. His conclusion was that much of Siberia was an elevated plateau, not a lowland plain as it had previously been understood.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Sometimes this is summed up, as Peter Kropotkin discovered. The plateau, which is like a little oversimplified, it oversimplifies in a way that obfuscates the reality, right, he said of this realization and sort of the process of coming to this realization. Quote, there are not many joys in human life equal to the joy of the sudden birth of a generalization illuminating the mind. After a long period of patient research, what has seemed for years so chaotic, so contradictory and so problematic, takes at once its proper position with an harmonious whole. Out of the wild confusion of facts and from behind the fog of guesses contradicted almost as soon as they are born, a stately picture makes its appearance, like an alpine chain suddenly emerging in all its grandeur from the mists which concealed it the moment before, glittering under the rays of the sun, in all its simplicity and variety, in all its mightiness and beauty.

[Holly Fry]

Kropotkin described his study of the geography of northern Asia and the work he created from it to be his greatest contribution to science. Although he didn't get to do everything he wanted with it due to going to prison, which we will be getting to in the next episode. He also served as secretary of the Russian Geographical Society in its section on physical geography.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In terms of his political philosophy, as one example, the January Uprising began in early 1863. This was an uprising against Russian imperial rule in Poland. The uprising failed and led to even tighter imperial control over Poland. During his travels, Kropotkin often met and spoke with Polish exiles about what had happened. In his words, quote, some of them understood the fault that had been committed. A revolution from its very outset must be an act of justice towards the downtrodden and oppressed, not a promise of making such reparation later on. Otherwise it is sure to fail. Unfortunately, it often happens that the leaders are so much absorbed with mere questions of military tactics that they forget the main thing to be revolutionists and fail to prove to the masses that a new era has really begun for them is to ensure the certain ruins of the attempt. Kropotkin also described this uprising as definitively ending that period of reform in Russia.

[Holly Fry]

Kropotkin's brother Alexander joined him in Siberia in 1864, and in 1867 they both decided to leave military service. One reason was that they were called on to put down an insurrection. Alexander had gotten married in Siberia, so leaving had some additional difficulties for him. They went back to St. Petersburg, where Peter lived with Alexander and his family. Peter also finally enrolled at St. Petersburg Imperial University. His father was furious.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The atmosphere in St. Petersburg was much different than it had been before Kropotkin went to Siberia. An assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander II in April of 1866 had led to a crackdown on suspected radicals. Kropotkin thought that there had only been one successful social movement while he had been gone. That was a movement for women's access to higher education, which had succeeded in opening women's universities and a medical school for women. In spite of political opposition, including opposition

[Holly Fry]

from the tsar, Kropotkin also found this movement and its success to be instructive. He wrote, quote, above all, it was through the unlimited devotion of a mass of women in all possible capacities that they gained their successes. In short, women took any position, no matter how low in the social scale and no matter what privations it involved. If only they could be in any way useful to the people, not a few of them, but hundreds and thousands, they have conquered their rights in the true sense of the word.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I did not try to track down whether Kropotkin's perceptions of this movement were accurate. But like his perceptions and what he found to be instructive were the important part here. He also said that he did not see any division between the older and the younger elements of this movement, even though they often had very different goals and strategies. This included the older women being very focused on respectability and correctness and avoiding political agitation, while a lot of the younger women were nihilists who were also involved with revolutionary or radical organizations. Sometimes there was friction between these two overall groups, but they were all on the same side, and neither of them ever denounced the other or tried to shut them out of the movement. As someone who just sees perpetual online discourse about various left wing activism, I find that idea so refreshing. He also described the movement's leaders as not feminists. That meant that he did not think they were trying to get a share of the privileged positions in society in the state that were being held only by men, and opening some of those things up to women. So getting women a share of the privilege. They were instead working for the masses.

[Holly Fry]

In 1871, Kropotkin went on an expedition for the Russian Geographical Society to study glaciers in Finland and Sweden. As he observed dry lake beds there, he had a realization that had parallels to what he had experienced with the Siberian Plateau. He concluded that Scandinavia and Finland had been covered in ice in the distant past. Then ages passed away till the melting of the ice began, and with it came the lake period, when countless lakes were formed in the cavities and a wretched subpolar vegetation began timidly to invade the unfathomable marshes with which every lake was surrounded. Another series of ages passed before an extremely slow process of drying up set in and vegetation began its slow invasion from the south. And now we are fully in the period of a rapid desiccation, accompanied by the formation of dry prairies and steppes. And Mayon has to find out the means to put a check to that desiccation, to which Central Asia already has fallen a victim and which menaces southeastern Europe.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This was connected to an ongoing scientific debate about the history of the Earth. You could really have a whole different two parter. Just about Kropotkin's work as a scientist so extremely briefly. The European scientific community had long believed that the earth was largely unchanging. God had created it, and with the exceptions of catastrophes like earthquakes or massive floods, after that creation things stayed largely the same. The idea of a past ice age and detectable natural changes, normal ones that happened over time, rather than being brought on by sudden, intense catastrophes. His ideas were both fairly new, and Kropotkin's work was part of that changing understanding.

[Holly Fry]

As with his time in Siberia, Kropotkin's expedition to Finland affected his political philosophy. He saw peasants who were living in poverty, and his first Impulse was to tell them about tools and machines that could make their lives better and their work easier. But he realized that trying to talk to them about these kinds of innovations would be absurd and accomplish nothing. How dare I talk to him of American machines when all that he can raise must be sold to pay rent and taxes? He needs me to live with him, to help him to become the owner or the free occupier of that land. Then he will read books with profit. But not now.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In 1871, Kropotkin was offered the position of secretary of the Russian Geographical Society. So not just the section he had been secretary of before, the whole organization. And this was something he really wanted. But he turned it down. He thought he had so much to do in both scientific and political work and he would not be able to do it if he accepted such a time consuming position. And he said, quote, what right had I to these highest joys when all around me was nothing but misery and struggle for a moldy piece of bread, when whatever I should spend to enable me in that world of higher emotions must needs be taken from the very mouths of those who grew the wheat and had not enough for their children?

[Holly Fry]

The same year, Kropotkin's father died. Then, in 1872, he made his first journey to Western Europe. He wanted to learn about the International Workingmen's association, also known as First International, which was an international coalition of left wing political groups, trade unions and other organizations that had been banned in Russia. Kropotkin went to Zurich and joined one of the local sections, and then to Geneva, which was at the heart of the movement and had been home to First International's First Congress in 1866.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Kropotkin wrote of First International, quote, One must have lived among the workers at that time to realize the effect which the sudden growth of the association had upon their minds, the trust they put in it, the love with which they spoke of it, the sacrifices they made for it. Every day, week after week and year after year, thousands of workers gave their time and their coppers taken upon their very food in order to support the life of each group, to secure the appearance of papers, to defray the expenses of the congresses, to support the comrades who had suffered for the association. Another thing that impressed me deeply was the elevating influence which the International exercised. Most of the Paris Internationalists were almost total abstainers from drink, and all had abandoned smoking. Why should I nurture in myself that weakness? They said. The mean, the trivial disappeared to leave room for the grand, the elevating inspirations.

[Holly Fry]

But after a while, Kropotkin started to have doubts about this movement. It seemed like some of its leaders were pulling strings to get what they wanted or allowing people and organizations to join even though their intentions weren't genuine because it seemed expedient in the moment. And he thought there was too much separation between the association's leaders and the workers.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

When he left Geneva, Kropotkin made his way to the Jura Mountains on the border between France and Switzerland, where another organization had formed the Jura Federation, which was established in 1872. This federation had grown out of a division within First International. On one side were the Marxists, whose ideas were drawn from German philosopher Karl Marx, and on the other side were the Bakuninists, whose ideas were drawn from Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakunin.

[Holly Fry]

Broadly speaking, the Marxists were socialists who advocated for centralized leadership, state rule and reforms, including massive reforms to existing economic systems. And Bakuninists were anarchists focused on a total revolution that would dissolve existing social and economic structures and replace them with free communes and other cooperatives. The Jura Federation was anti authoritarian and anarchist. Many of the organizations involved with this federation were voluntary support organizations among watchmakers in the Jura Mountains.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Kropotkin found these organizations and networks to be very egalitarian and the people involved in them showed a lot of independence of thought. He wrote, quote, here I saw that the workers were not a mass that was being led and made subservient to the political ends of a few men. Their leaders were simply their more active comrades, initiators rather than leaders. The clearness of insight, the soundness of judgment, the capacity for disentangling complex social questions which I noticed among these workers, especially the middle aged ones, deeply impressed me. And I am firmly persuaded that if the Jura Federation has played a prominent part in the development of socialism, it is not only on account of the importance of the no government and federalist ideas of which it was the champion, but also on account of the expression which was given to these ideas by the good sense of the juror watchmakers. Without their aid, these conceptions might have remained mere abstractions for a long time.

[Holly Fry]

He went on to say, quote the theoretical aspects of anarchism, as they were then beginning to be expressed in the Jura Federation, especially by Bakunin. The criticisms of state socialism, the fear of an economic despotism far more dangerous than the merely political despotism which I heard formulated there, and the revolutionary character of the agitation appealed strongly to my mind. But the egalitarian relations which I found in the Jura Mountains the independence of thought and expression which I saw developing in the workers, and their unlimited devotion to the cause appealed even more strongly to my feelings. And when I came away from the mountains after a week's stay with the watchmakers, my views upon socialism were settled. I was an anarchist.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Everything we have talked about so far led Kropotkin to believe that in order to make life better for everyone, society needed to move away from centralized governments and wage labor and capitalist systems, and he understood that doing so would require a revolution, maybe even a civil war. Quote the question is then not so much how to avoid revolutions as how to attain the greatest results with the most limited amount of civil war, the least number of victims, and a minimum of mutual embitterment. For that end there is only one means, namely, that the oppressed part of society should obtain the clearest possible conception of what they intend to achieve and how, and that they should be imbued with the enthusiasm which is necessary for that achievement, in which case they will be sure to attract to their cause the best and freshest intellectual forces of the class, which is possessed of historically grown up privileges.

[Holly Fry]

We are going to talk about what happened after Kropotkin returned to St. Petersburg with all of these ideas next time. In the meantime, Tracy, do you have some listener mail?

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I do. This is from Kathy and Kathy wrote after our President's House site episode. Kathy wrote Dear Holly and Tracy, When I heard Philadelphia mentioned in the beginning of yesterday's episode, I remembered I never sent my email about the last Philly episode. I wanted to thank you for your episode about the President's House exhibit. It is a fantastic and important exhibit that I think is so much more interesting than the Liberty Bell exhibit. I've been telling everyone to go to the President's House since I randomly happened upon it about 10 years ago. However, many tourists skip the exhibit even though it's right in front of the Liberty Bell building, because the line to see the Liberty Bell queues up around the exhibit instead of through it. Happily, the executive order to remove the exhibit had the opposite of its intended effect. I happened to pass by on a weekend shortly after the signs were reposted. There were way more people at the exhibit than there usually are in the winter. Also, at the beginning of the Richard Peters episode, I hate to be one of those people who correct you on little details that have nothing to do with the episode, but as a Philadelphia history teacher and nerd, I can't help it. Germantown and Belmont were suburbs of Philadelphia when Peters lived there. Now they are both part of the city proper. Germantown is a neighborhood northwest of Center City and Belmont is part of Fairmont Park. Both of these areas had safe houses on the Underground Railroad, which could make for a good episode topic. Thanks for all you do for pet hacks. Pet tax is pictures of goldfish and we have said a number of times that we are open to any kind of pet tax or even pet tax that is not animals. Other kinds of tax, so or even

[Holly Fry]

pet tax that isn't a pet.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, not even a pet. Goldfish are a great example of that. They are named King Ray and Konge as I'm assuming how that is pronounced. They are Rancho Goldfish and they are all named for the word king in various languages because these are known as King of the Goldfish. Sincerely, Kathy thank you so much for this email, Kathy. I knew there were a lot of folks going to the President's House site to protest and demonstrate and leave signs and notes and things after all the signs are taken down. So I am glad to hear that there has been continued traffic to the site now that at least some of the signs are back up. I meant to go check if there have been new developments about the signs that had not been put back up yet when we recorded that episode and I forgot to go look into that. But thank you again, Kathy for the email and the pictures. If you would like to send us a Note, we'[e-mail] you can find the show notes to all of our episodes, including this one, which includes all the works of Peter Kropotkin that we have read from and referenced. That's at our website, which is missinhistory.com and you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to get your podcasts. Stuff youf Missed in History Class is a production of I Heart Rate. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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