This book appears in the following booklists

• Anarchist Lives & Histories

in categories:Politics & Philosophy, History & Biography, Changing the World,

The Anarchist-Geographer: an Introduction to the Life of Peter Kropotkin

by Brian Morris
£8.00   paperback  Genge Press (2007)

Prince Peter (Pyotr Alexeivich) Kropotkin was born into the wealthy Russian aristocracy in 1842, but chose to identify himself with the suffering of the workers and peasants. He became a convinced anarchist, opposed to the power of the state, after witnessing the brutality of the Tsarist regime. Imprisoned twice, he spent most of his life in exile. In his writings and speeches, he strove to bring about revolution by the Russian people themselves, hoping that local peasant communes would govern themselves in Russia. The arrival of Bolshevism dashed these hopes, but Kropotkin’s ideas were influential, inside and outside Russia.
 
A geographer by profession, Kropotkin was also a forerunner of today’s ecologists with his love and understanding of nature. He was one of the first to challenge Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest in evolution, suggesting instead in his influential Mutual Aid (London, 1902) that human beings and other creatures also co-operate to survive.
 
The author, Brian Morris, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Goldsmiths College, London, has written books and articles on a wide range of issues and topics in the fields of ecology, botany, philosophy, history, religion and anthropology. His titles include Western Conceptions of the Individual (Berg, 1991), The Anthropology of the Self (Pluto Press, 1994), Religion and Anthropology (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and a full-length book about Peter Kropotkin: Kropotkin – the Politics of Community (Humanity Press, 2004)

ISBN 13: 9780954904333 | ISBN 10: 0954904338