KROPOTKIN, PETER ALEXEIVICH, PRINCE (1842— 1921), Russian geographer, author and revolutionary, was born at Moscow on Dec. 9, 1842, the son of Prince Alexei Petrovich Kropotkin. At the age of fifteen he entered the Corps of Pages at St. Petersburg (1857), which combined the character of a military school endowed with special rights and of a court insti tution attached to the imperial household. Kropotkin had early developed an interest in the condition of the Russian peasantry, and this interest increased as he grew older. During his last years as a student Kropotkin came under the influence of the new Liberal-revolutionary literature, which largely expressed his own aspirations. In 1862 he was gazetted to a Siberian Cossack regiment in the recently annexed Amur district. For some time he was aide-de-camp to the governor of Transbaikalia at Chita, and subsequently attache for Cossack affairs to the governor general of East Siberia at Irkutsk. In 1864 Kropotkin took charge of a geographical survey expedition, crossing North Manchuria from Transbaikalia to the Amur, and shortly afterwards was attached to another expedition which proceeded up the Sungari river into the heart of Manchuria. Both these expeditions had valuable geographical results.
In 1867 Kropotkin quitted the army and returned to St. Peters burg, where he entered the university, becoming at the same time secretary to the physical geography section of the Russian Geo graphical Society. In 1873 he published a map and paper in which he proved that the existing maps of Asia entirely misrepre sented the physical formation of the country, the main structural lines being in fact from south-west to north-east, not from north to south, or from east to west as had been previously supposed. In 1871 he explored the glacial deposits of Finland and Sweden for the Russian Geographical Society, and while engaged in this work was offered the secretaryship of that society. But by this time he had decided not to work at fresh discoveries but to aid in diffusing existing knowledge among the public, and he accord ingly refused the offer, and returned to St. Petersburg, where he joined the revolutionary party.
In 1872 he visited Switzerland, and became a member of the International Workingmen's Association at Geneva. He found this body too conservative, and after studying the programme of the more advanced Jura Federation at Neuch5.tel and spending Some time in the company of the leading members, he definitely adopted the creed of anarchism (q.v.) and, on returning to Rus
sia, took an active part in spreading the nihilist propaganda. In 1874 he was arrested and imprisoned, but escaped in 1876 and went to England, and then to Switzerland, where he joined the Jura Federation. In 1877 he went to Paris, where he worked in the socialist movement, returning to Switzerland in 1878, where he edited for the Jura Federation a revolutionary newspaper, Le Revolte, also publishing various revolutionary pamphlets. Shortly after the assassination of the tsar Alexander II. (1881) Kropotkin was expelled from Switzerland by the Swiss government, and after a short stay at Thonon (Savoy) went to London, where he re mained for nearly a year, returning to Thonon towards the end of 1882. Shortly afterwards he was arrested by the French gov ernment, and, after a trial at Lyons, sentenced by a police-court magistrate (under a special law passed on the fall of the Corn mune) to five years' imprisonment, on the ground that he had belonged to the International Workingmen's Association (1883).
In 1886, however, as the result of repeated agitation on his behalf in the French Chamber, Kropotkin was released, and settled near London. He now devoted himself to literary work, and to the development of his doctrine of "mutual aid." He was an authority on agriculture as well as on geographical subjects, and put forward many practical suggestions for its development. Kropotkin had a singularly gentle and attractive personality, and was much loved and respected in England. He desired the mini mum of government, and the development of a system of human co-operation which should render government from above super fluous. When the Russian revolution broke out he decided to return to Russia. He arrived in June 1917, and settled near Moscow, taking no part in politics. He died on Feb. 8, 1921.