Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

A revolution, from its very outset, must be an act of justice towards the ‘down-trodden and the oppressed’--not a promise of making such reparation later on--otherwise it is sure to fail.

To be revolutionists, and fail to prove to the masses that a new era has really begun for them, is to ensure the certain ruin of the attempt.

It has often been said that Alexander II. committed a great fault, and brought about his own ruin, by raising so many hopes which later on he did not satisfy.

The most cordial relations were established after this little adventure between ourselves and the Chinese--I mean, of course, the people, who seemed to dislike very much their arrogant Manchurian officials.

But the practical realization of the measures went into the hands of some old drunkard, who would squander the money and pitilessly flog the unfortunate Cossacks for the purpose of converting them into good agriculturists.

Whatever was started for the good of the country by local men was looked at with distrust, and was immediately paralyzed by hosts of difficulties which came, not so much from the bad intentions of the administrators, but simply from the…

Then I began to understand not only men and human character, but also the inner springs of the life of human society.

The constructive work of the unknown masses, which so seldom finds any mention in books, and the importance of that constructive work in the growth of forms of society, appeared before my eyes in a clear light.

Although I did not then formulate my observations in terms borrowed from party struggles, I may say now that I lost in Siberia whatever faith in State discipline I had cherished before.

Men of initiative are required everywhere; but once the impulse has been given, the enterprise must be conducted, especially in Russia, not in military fashion, but in a sort of communal way, by means of common understanding.

Several batches of Russian political exiles had been sent during the last century to Siberia, but, with the submissiveness to fate which is characteristic of the Russians, they never revolted; they allowed themselves to be killed inch by…

Now, the logic of the Siberian military authorities was that as a Russian officer had been killed several Poles had to be executed.

We realized what it meant to belong in any way to the army.

What if that knowledge--and only that--should become the possession of all?

Education was considered as a sort of luxury, for the few only.

Many new ways to fortune had been opened since serfdom had been abolished, and the crowd rushed with eagerness into these channels.

When I came to Zürich in 1872, and became acquainted with some of the students, I was astonished to see quite young girls, who were studying at the Polytechnicum, solving intricate problems of the theory of heat, with the aid of the…

It seems almost incredible, but it is a fact that notwithstanding all the prosecutions which the Women’s Medical Academy had to live through, and its temporary closure, there are now in Russia more than six hundred and seventy women…

The idea of an international union of all trades, and of a struggle against capital with the aid of international support, carried away the most indifferent of the workers.

I could thus follow the movement from the inside, and know the workers’ view of it.

The mean, the trivial disappeared to leave room for the grand, the elevating inspirations.

I saw how eager the workers were to gain instruction, and how despairingly few were those who volunteered to aid them.

More and more I began to feel that I was bound to cast in my lot with them.

It set people thinking about the evils of any government, however democratic its origin.

And the division and subdivision--the permanent subdivision--of functions has been pushed so far as to divide humanity into castes which are almost as firmly established as those of old India.