‘Western Europe’, from Memoirs of a Revolutionist

Summary

Kropotkin's autobiography, Memoirs of a Revolutionist, was first serialized in the American magazine Atlantic Monthly in 1898–9 and appeared in book form in 1899. Kropotkin composed both Russian and English versions of the memoirs, which differed somewhat from each other, and never completed the Russian text. Some passages contained in the Russian version, however, were omitted from the 1899 publication, including an entire chapter entitled ‘Western Europe’. This chapter, which Kropotkin left unfinished, recounts his activities in the Jura Federation in Switzerland in the late 1870s. (The book as published treats the subject briefly and in different form in Part Six, also entitled ‘Western Europe’.) It is illuminating in regard both to his anarchism and to his personality. On the one hand, it details his strong objections to Marxism and Social Democracy, and on the other it paints a series of characteristically warm-hearted portraits of his fellow anarchists.

The Russian text, first published in 1924, is from the seventh Russian edition of Memoirs of a Revolutionist (Zapiski revoliutsionera), edited by N. K. Lebedev (Moscow: Politkatorzhan, 1929), 11, 235–66. It has been translated and annotated for this volume by Marshall Shatz.

In 1876, it must have been in November, I made it to Switzerland, to the Jura, and renewed my acquaintance with Guillaume, Schwitzguebel, and the other Jurassians.

I had written to James Guillaume as soon as I landed in England in the summer of 1876, and since then we had corresponded frequently.