Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid, Part 1

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. Recently, we did an episode
on Tayfield Steinlan, who was an artist, and we talked

(00:22):
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

(00:43):
we were talking about labor organizers who were also anarchists,
or fears of anarchy that we're driving things like the
First Red Scare and some of the CIA's co intel pros,
Like we haven't really talked about when people were talking
about anarchy, what did they mean beyond a very dictionary

(01:03):
level definition of believing that governments and sometimes also other
systems of authority are harmful and should be abolished. So
Pyotr Kerpotkin, who is called Peter pretty universally in English
language writing, was incredibly influential in the development of anarchism

(01:24):
as a political philosophy in the nineteenth and early twentieth 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

(01:45):
two parters, I had a feeling from the beginning that
this might need more than one episode. Kerpotkin's most famous work,
which is sometimes described as his masterpiece, was Mutual Aid
A Factor of Evolution. This is really a word of
zoology and anthropology, but it is also considered to be
a foundational text of anarchist communism. So today we are

(02:09):
going to focus on a series of formative moments in
Krapotkin'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. Prince
Pyotr Alexeyevitch Krapotkin was born on December twenty first, eighteen

(02:30):
forty two, or December ninth in the Old style calendar,
in Moscow. He was the son of Prince Alexei Petrovitch
Krabatkin and Yakarina Nikoleevya Sulima. 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

(02:53):
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 miserly economy.

(03:13):
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 twelve hundred souls
in three different provinces, and who had, in addition to

(03:33):
his peasants holdings, large tracts of land which were cultivated
by these peasants, 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 ten or twelve, but fifty servants at Moscow

(03:56):
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 maid servants room.

(04:20):
How could anyone do with less than this? 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 serfs required
contributions of grain, meat, and other provisions from what they

(04:43):
had been able to grow and raise. Kerpotkin 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

(05:05):
age of ten, 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 sort. I must own that few of them became
masters of their respective arts. The tailors and the shoemakers

(05:28):
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 Tremblaze
while our own confectioner was beating the drum in the
music band. In April of eighteen forty six, when Peter
was three, his mother died of tuberculosis. She was thirty five.

(05:50):
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,

(06:11):
and one of the nurses who had cared for them
after her death also was not retained at the new
house when they moved. 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

(06:34):
them to the police with a note that they needed
to be given one hundred lashes. In Kerpotkin's words, quote
terror and absolute mutinous 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,

(06:56):
often in much more cruel forms. The flogging of the
was a regular part of the duties of the police
and of the fire brigade. Krapakin 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

(07:16):
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.

(07:36):
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 Krapotkin 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

(07:59):
hoped to be reed and to marry another woman, he
was instead forced to join the military. So all of
this sounds cruel and dehumanizing, but what krapot Can 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

(08:21):
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 dissolate masters of flogging in the stables, which occurred

(08:44):
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 which were suppressed by Nicholas the first
generals by flogging to death each tenth or fifth man

(09:06):
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

(09:28):
be adequate to describe the misery to readers who have
not seen it. In eighteen fifty four, when Peter was twelve,
his French tutor, Monsieur Poulains, 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

(09:49):
aware of the inequities of the world he was living in,
including the enslavement of the serfs in the way that
they were treated, and he decided to do the same,
abandoning his title of pres and instead styling his signature
just as p. Kropotkin. Yeah, that title was apparently something
that they just used routinely, even at home, in private,

(10:11):
all the time. Uh. Before he was like, Nope, I'm
not doing that anymore. By this point, Zar Nicholas the
First had selected Peter for the elite Core of Pages.
That happened when Peter was only eight, but he had
to wait for a vacancy before he could actually join
the Core. There was not a spot open for him

(10:32):
until he was fifteen, and by that point Nicholas the
First was no longer the czar. He died in eighteen
fifty five and was succeeded by Alexander the Second. 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,

(10:55):
and he kept that up until leaving for the Core
that included keep it up after his brother Alexander went
off to military school. We will get to Peter's time
at the Core of Pages and Alexander the Second's impact
on Russia. After a sponsor break in August of eighteen

(11:22):
fifty seven, Peter Kropotkin joined the Core of Pages in
Saint Petersburg. He described the Core this way quote. Only
one hundred and fifty boys, mostly children of the nobility
belonging to the court, received education in this privileged corps,
which combined the character of a military school endowed with

(11:42):
special rights and of a court institution attached to the
imperial household. After a stay of four or five years
in the Core of Pages, those who had passed the
final examinations were received as officers in any regiment of
the Guard or of the Art they chose irrespective of
the number of vacancies in that regiment, And each year

(12:06):
the first sixteen pupils of the highest form were nominated
pages to 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. Kropotkin had hoped
to finish his education there in four years, but he
was sorted into the fifth form that was the lowest,

(12:28):
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. Quote. I got into
the habit of learning my lessons by merely listening to
what the teachers said in the classroom, and the lessons

(12:50):
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 Ostrowski. When I reached the higher
special forms, I was also better prepared to master the
variety of subjects we had to study. At various points

(13:13):
in his memoir, which is what we have been reading from,
Krapotkin just casually drops things about his life that 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 were not born at Saint Petersburg, I had

(13:36):
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. Kropotkin's education
was focused largely on mathematics, physics, and astronomy, although he
also enjoyed history, poetry and music. As he moved into

(13:57):
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 Corps,
he also started writing his first revolutionary essay, in which
he criticized corruption and waste and advocated for the creation
of a constitution for Russia. So Peter had been personally

(14:21):
selected by the Czar 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

(14:42):
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 the Second, who wanted to
institute some of the liberal reforms that had been seen
in part of Western Europe in the early years of

(15:03):
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

(15:24):
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. On March third, eighteen
sixty one, Alexander also issued his Emancipation Manifesto, which set
February nineteenth, eighteen sixty three, as the day that the

(15:47):
serfs would be free. Kropotkin wrote of reading the Manifesto
over and over after it was issued. Quote, it was liberty,
but it was not liberty yet, the peasants having to
remain serfs for two years more till February nineteenth, eighteen
sixty three. Notwithstanding all this, one thing was evident serfdom

(16:09):
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. Kropotkins 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

(16:31):
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

(16:53):
no other options. This also wasn't something Alexander had done
out of purely humanitarian impulse. There had been more than
seven hundred peasant uprisings across Russia in the twenty five
years before he became czar. He wanted to get rid
of a potential source of disruption to the Russian economy. Yeah,

(17:14):
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,

(17:37):
and then just sort of trapped in a system that
they still couldn't get out of. And Kerpotkin 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 eighteen sixty
one he was nominated to be sergeant, the privileged position

(18:01):
at the school. He essentially became an officer over the
other students, and in addition to that, he also served
as page to Chambre for the Emperor, so he was
essentially the Tsar'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

(18:23):
at the Core. In Krapotkin's words quote at the beginning
of my service, I felt a great admiration for Alexander
the Second, 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 Czar,
I should have covered him with my body. But as

(18:47):
time went on, he said, quote, various small incidents, as
well as the reactionary character which the policy of Alexander
the second 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. In May of eighteen

(19:13):
sixty two, as his graduation was approaching, Kerpotkin 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

(19:33):
be sent to Siberia. Russia had annexed the Amur region
in the southeast of Siberia on the border with China
in eighteen fifty eight. Kerpotkin 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

(19:54):
I shall find a field of action to my tastes.
To Kropotkin, this was an opportunity to bring change to
Siberia and to make a difference. But of course to
everyone else, the Tsar's personal page and one of the
top students in the Core, was asking to be sent
to a place where people were normally exiled. As a punishment,

(20:15):
they questioned whether he was in his right mind. His
father refused to allow it. That spring fires broke out
in Saint 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

(20:36):
by radicals, or maybe students, or maybe people from Poland,
much of which had been annexed by Russia at the
end of the eighteenth century. These suspicions led to arrests
and crackdowns and rollbacks of earlier reforms, and Kerpotkin's words
quote after it, Alexander the Second surrendered to the reactionaries,

(20:57):
and what was still worse, the public opinion of that
part of society in Saint Petersburg and especially at Moscow,
which carried most weight with the government, suddenly threw off
its liberal garb and turned against not only the more
advanced section of the Reform Party, but even against its

(21:18):
moderate wing. Krepakin became even more determined to leave Western
Russia and to go somewhere that might be more open
to reforms. 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

(21:40):
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. We'll talk
about what happened to Kerpotkin in Siberia after we have
a sponsor break. When Peter Krapotkin arrived in East Siberia

(22:10):
in eighteen sixty two, the Governor General was Mikhail Korsokov.
He was the successor to Count Nikolay mrvyev Amersky, who
had negotiated the treaty that had annexed the Amur region
from the Qing dynasty he had retired in eighteen sixty one.
Before his retirement and now by the time Kerpotkin arrived,

(22:32):
these men were interested in reforming and modernizing Siberia. Kirpotkin
was appointed to two committees, one to reform Siberia's prisons
in 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, but Krapotkin's proposed reforms

(22:57):
were never implemented. The rollback and crackdowns that he had
witnessed in Saint Petersburg ultimately made their way to Siberia
as well, and by the time Krapakin 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 masses of the people by means of

(23:19):
the administrative machinery. With this illusion, I parted forever beyond that,
Potkin 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,

(23:40):
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

(24:01):
by the very best intentions. Finally, my extensive journeys, during
which I traveled over fifty thousand miles in carts, on board, steamers,
and 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

(24:22):
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
freshly cut spruce twigs, a man feels wonderfully independent even

(24:44):
amidst unknown mountains thickly clothed with woods or capped with snow.
All of this had a huge impact on Kropotkin as
both a scientist and a political philosopher. During those fifty
thousand miles of travel, he did a lot of military work,
and he also studied the geography of northern Asia. He

(25:06):
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 in its structure that actually aligned
with reality. His conclusion was that much of Siberia was

(25:27):
an elevated plateau, not a lowland plane as it had
previously been understood. 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.

(25:49):
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

(26:13):
its proper position, with nharmonious 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

(26:33):
moment before, glittering under the rays of the sun, in
all its simplicity and variety, in all its mightiness and beauty.
Grapodkin 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,

(26:56):
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. In terms of his
political philosophy, as one example, the January Uprising began in
early eighteen sixty three. This was an uprising against Russian

(27:18):
imperial rule in Poland. The uprising failed and led to
even tighter imperial control over Poland. During its travels, Kerpotkin
often met and spoke with Polish exiles about what had happened,
and his words quote, some of them understood the fault
that had been committed. A revolution from its very outset

(27:41):
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 tax that they forget the main thing to be revolutionists,

(28:04):
and failed to prove to the masses that a new
era has really begun for them is to ensure the
certain ruin of the attempt. Kropotkin also described this uprising
as a definitively ending that period of reform in Russia.
Krapatkin's brother Alexander joined him in Siberia in eighteen sixty four,

(28:27):
and in eighteen sixty seven 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 Saint Petersburg, where Peter lived with Alexander and
his family. Peter also finally enrolled at Saint Petersburg Imperial University.

(28:53):
His father was furious. The atmosphere in Saint Petersburg was
much different than it had been before Krapotkin went to Siberia.
An assassination attempt on Czar Alexander the second and April
of eighteen sixty six had led to a crackdown on
suspected radicals. Kropotkin thought that there had only been one

(29:14):
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 from the Czar.
Krapotkin also found this movement and its success to be instructive.

(29:36):
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

(29:57):
of them, but hundreds and thousands. They have conquered their
rights in the true sense of the word. I did
not try to track down whether Kerpotkin's perceptions of this
movement were accurate, but like his perceptions and what he
found to be instructive or the important part here. He

(30:18):
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

(30:41):
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 prepares stual online discourse about various left wing activism,

(31:05):
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 and society in the state that were
being held only by men, and opening up some of

(31:27):
those things up to women, so getting women a share
of the privilege they were instead working for the masses.
In eighteen seventy one, Krapotkin 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

(31:50):
the Siberian Plateau. He concluded that Scandinavia and Finland had
been covered in ice in the distant past. Then quote
ages past 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

(32:13):
lake was surrounded. Another series of ages passed before an
extremely slow process of drying upset 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 steps. And Ma'am has

(32:33):
to find out the means to put a check to
that desication to which Central Asia already has fallen a victim,
and which menaces southeastern Europe. 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
Krapotkin's work as a scientist. So extremely briefly, the European

(32:58):
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

(33:22):
rather than being brought on by sudden, intense catastrophes. His
ideas were both fairly new, and Kirpotkin's work was part
of that changing understanding. 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

(33:44):
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. Quote, 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

(34:07):
help him to become the owner or the free occupier
of that land. Then he will read books with profit,
but not now. In eighteen seventy one, Kerpotkin 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,

(34:29):
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

(34:51):
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 mouth of those who grew
the wheat and had not enough for their children. The
same year, Kropotkin's father died. Then in eighteen seventy two
he made his first journey to Western Europe. He wanted

(35:14):
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. Krapotkin 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

(35:35):
to First International's first congress in eighteen sixty six. 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.

(35:58):
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

(36:21):
deeply was the elevating influence, which the International exercised. Most
of the Paris Internationalists wore almost total abstainers from drink,
and all had abandoned spoken. Why should I nurture in
myself that weakness? They said, the mean that trivial disappeared
to leave room for the grand, the elevating inspirations. But

(36:46):
after a while Krapotkins 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.

(37:09):
When he left Geneva, Krapotkin 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 eighteen seventy two. This federation had grown out of
a division within First International. On one side were the Marxists,

(37:30):
whose ideas were drawn from German philosopher Karl Marx, and
on the other side were the Bacunonists, whose ideas were
drawn from Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakunin. 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,

(37:55):
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 anarchists.
Many of the organizations involved with this federation were voluntary
support organizations among watchmakers in the Jura mountains. Krapotkin found

(38:19):
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.

(38:43):
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 Federal has played
a prominent part in the development of socialism. It is

(39:04):
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 Jura Watchmakers.
Without their aid, these conceptions might have remained mere abstractions

(39:24):
for a long time. 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

(39:47):
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 unlimit 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

(40:09):
views upon socialism were settled. I was an anarchist. Everything
we have talked about so far led Kerpotkin 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

(40:32):
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

(40:55):
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

(41:19):
class which is possessed of historically grown up privileges. We
are going to talk about what happened after Krapotkin return
to Saint Petersburg with all of these ideas next time.
In the meantime, Tracy, do you have some listener mail
I do. This is from Kathy, and Kathy wrote after
our President's House site episode. Kathy wrote, Dear Holly and Tracy.

(41:44):
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

(42:08):
it about ten 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 cues 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

(42:31):
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

(42:52):
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 tax, pet taxes, pictures of goldfish, and

(43:14):
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 pet tax that isn't a pet. Yeah, not
even a pet. Goldfish are a great example of that.
They are named King Ray and conge as I'm assuming

(43:34):
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

(43:56):
notes and things. After all the signs are taken down
so I am glad to hear that they're has been
continued traffic to the site now that at least some
of the signs are backup. 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.

(44:20):
If you would like to send us a note or
at History Podcast At iHeartRadio dot com, you can find
the show notes to all of our episodes, including this one,
which includes all the works of Peter Patkins that we
have read from and referenced. That's on our website which
is Missed in Hisstory dot com, and you can subscribe
to the show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else

(44:42):
you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff You Missed in
History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid, Part 1