Pyotr Alekseevich
Kropotkin
1842-1921
Pyotr Alekseevich Kropotkin was a scientist-geographer and geologist, explorer of Siberia, one of the theorists of anarchism. He was born on December, 9, 1842 in Moscow. In 1862 he graduated with honours from the Corps of Pages in St. Petersburg and was promoted to officer. Refusing a court career, he went of his own free will to Siberia, to serve in the Amur Cossack Army. In 1867 he resigned and entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University (1867-1871), at the same time he served in the Central Statistical Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He gave a special role to geography, which he considered a science of laws governing the processes of change in the ‘face of the Earth’, integrating the achievements of related natural sciences. From 1868 to 1872 he was secretary of the Department of Physical Geography of the Russian Geographical Society. His research showed the wide spread of continental glaciation on the territory of Europe and Asia, formed a scientific idea of glacial landforms and their genesis. The scientist made physical maps of the Vitimsky Plateau, the Minusinsk and Krasnoyarsk districts of the Yenisei governorate, parts of Mongolia, Manchuria and Sakhalin Island, which radically changed the ideas about the relief of Asia. P.A. Kropotkin also worked on the problem of development of the northern seas, in 1871 he theoretically substantiated the existence of land in the Arctic Ocean, which was discovered two years later and named Franz Josef Land. In the field of biology, P.A. Kropotkin formulated his own theory of the evolution of living beings, according to which the determining factor of development is not the struggle for existence, but solidarity and mutual help. He extended this theory to human communities as well. P.A. Kropotkin is also known as the author of works on ethics, sociology and history. In 1865 P.A. Kropotkin was awarded a small gold medal of the Russian Geographical Society ‘for his journey up the Sungari River to the Chinese town of Girin and from the Tsurukhaituev guardhouse on the Argun to the Manchurian town of Mergen, and from there to Blagoveshchensk’. He was the author of the book of memoirs ‘Notes of a revolutionary’. There is a memorial plaque on the building where P.A. Kropotkin, Honorary Member of the Russian Geographical Society, was born.
Address: Moscow, Kropotkinsky lane, 26
