Memoirs of a Revolutionist (Peter Kropotkin)

Peter Kropotkin
Memoirs of a Revolutionist

Starts with an early autobiography in various selected chunks relevant to Kropotkin forming his political views and then goes on to detail his activist activities and imprisonments. The first part is very interesting from the point of view of the life of a young Russian aristocrat who is involved in the very highest circles of the Tsarist machine. We glean a fair bit of Russian history too from a fairly personally connected angle. Kropotkin is obviously very intelligent and driven his first love being geography. His adventures take him to re-discover new routes along the Russian Chinese (Sino–Russian) border with exciting journeys down rivers on rafts. Should have been a travel writer. Maybe he was I'll have to check it out. He then becomes more politicized and the story flips between his political views, the socialist / anarchist movements of the time including ructions, personal accounts of his political adventures and escaping from jail. All of which is fascinating in different ways. His life swings between Russian cities and exile in western Europe flitting between Britain, Switzerland and France. The latter of whom lock him up again which towards the end of the book he uses to compare different methods of punishment / rehabilitation between Britain and France (the former is all about punishment, the latter less) concluding that prisons, for criminals rather than political prisoners, are excellent breeding grounds for learning your trade from other inmates, giving you a chip to put on your shoulder in readiness for release and generally being exactly the opposite to ensuring that the prisoner goes the straight and narrow on release. Throughout his political activism and imprisonment Kropotkin continues with his geographical work often having national geographic societies petition the authorities to either release him or at least let him carry on his research and writing in prison. He seems to have been treated pretty well in prison if you disregard the incarceration element. There are aspects that don't sit quite comfortably with me; his privileged upbringing and contacts, the dismissive attitude to others in the socialist camp who don't agree exactly with his views (surely that's the point of true anarchism) and on prisoners he weirdly, at least to modern eyes, dismisses a certain class of prisoner as being immoral by looking in their eyes. And that intelligence is measured by weight of the brain. But I guess these moans are due to me looking at his life and writings through my modern eyes. I think he's written a whole book about prisons and how they are counter productive. Despite this the memoirs are thoroughly readable and fascinating. Even more so as I was also reading Bulgakov's The White Guard which takes place just 18 years after these memoirs were published. The ending is an analysis of the difference between various countries paths to socialism particularly Britain where we seem to evolve rather than revolt. With Corbyn's manifesto nationalising private industry, again, maybe he was right....