1. Prince Peter Alexeyevitch Kropotkin was born at Moscow in 1842. From 1862 to 1867 he was an officer of the Cossacks of the Amur; during this time he traveled over a great part of Siberia and Manchuria. From 1867 to 1871 he studied mathematics at St. Petersburg; at this time he was also secretary of the Geographical Society; under its commission he explored the glaciers of Finland and Sweden in 1871.

In 1872 Kropotkin visited Belgium and Switzerland, where he joined the Association internationale des travailleurs. In the same year he returned to St. Petersburg and became a prominent member of the Tchaikoffski secret society. This was found out in 1874. He was arrested and kept in prison until in 1876 he succeeded in escaping to England.

From England Kropotkin went to Switzerland in 1877, but was expelled from that country in 1881. Thenceforth he resided alternately in England and France. In France, in 1883, he was condemned to five years' imprisonment for membership in a prohibited association; he was kept in prison till 1886, and then pardoned. Since then he has lived in England.

Kropotkin has published geographical works and accounts of travel, and also writings in the spheres of economics, politics, and the philosophy of law.

2. For Kropotkin's teaching about law, the State, and property, the most important sources are his many short works, newspaper articles, and lectures. The articles that he published from 1879 to 1882 in "Le RÉvoltÉ" of Geneva, appeared in 1885 as a book under the title "Paroles d'un rÉvoltÉ." The only large work in which he develops his teaching is "La conquÊte du pain" (1892).

3. Kropotkin calls his teaching "Anarchism." "When in the bosom of the International there was formed a party which no more acknowledged an authority inside that association than any other authority, this party called itself at first federalist, then anti-authoritarian or hostile to the State. At that time it avoided describing itself as Anarchistic. The word an-archie (it was so written at that time) seemed to identify the party too much with the adherents of Proudhon, whose reform ideas the International was opposing. But for this very reason its opponents delighted in using this designation in order to produce confusion; besides, the name made the assertion possible that from the very name of the Anarchists it was evident that they aimed merely at disorder and chaos, without thinking any farther. The Anarchistic party was not slow to adopt the designation that was given to it. At first it still insisted on the hyphen between an and archie, with the explanation that in this form the word an-archie, being of Greek origin, denoted absence of dominion and not 'disorder'; but it soon decided to spare the proof-reader his useless trouble and the reader his lesson in Greek, and used the name as it stood."[431] And in fact "the word anarchie, which negates the whole of this so-called order and reminds us of the fairest moments in the lives of the nations, is well chosen for a party that looks forward to conquering a better future."[432]