The Editors and Board of Trustees of the Russian Review

Kropotkin and Lenin

Author(s): David Shub
Source: Russian Review, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Oct., 1953), pp. 227-234
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Editors and Board of Trustees of the Russian Review
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Kropotkin

and

Lenin

BY DAVIDSHUB

INthe first years after the Bolshevik coup d'etat, many Americans,

and a few Europeans as well, confused Bolshevism with anarchism. In I917, Lenin had preached the complete destruction of
bourgeois state forms and the establishment of a workers' and
peasants' republic based on local soviets, similar to the local communes of which the anarchists had dreamed. Dictatorship of the
proletariat, Lenin had said, was only a temporary expedient, necessary to destroy the bourgeois state and wipe out forces hostile to
the new order; when the revolution was complete, the state would
gradually disappear. Some of the methods, moreover, which Lenin
employed in destroying the old order were similar to those preached
by Mikhail Bakunin, the father of Russian anarchism. As a result,
a majority of anarchists in Russia, and a large proportion of anarchists abroad, sympathized with the Bolsheviks during their first
half-decade in power. Only with the extension of Bolshevik terror
to anarchists and the later suppression of the Kronstadt revolt did
this sympathy begin to waver.
It is an indisputable fact, however, that the greatest of all the
anarchists-Peter Kropotkin-opposed Lenin from the start and
considered the Bolshevik ideology more hostile to anarchism than
so-called "bourgeois liberalism." The moral gulf that separated
Bolshevism from democratic socialism also divided it from the
anarchism-communism conceived by Kropotkin. Nothing more
dramatically illustrates this basic hostility than the relations between Kropotkin and Lenin during the first years of the Revolution.
In the meeting and correspondence between these two men, the
details of which have only recently become clear, may be viewed the
monumental divergence between a philosophy of the free individual
spirit, many of whose insights will still play a part in building a
better life, and a philosophy of institutional subjugation which, for
all its present vaunted power, is doomed to oblivion.
No one could better represent Bolshevism at such a confrontation
than Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, for in his mind all its basic elements were
conceived and through his iron will they were brought to fruition.
And Peter Kropotkin, the Russian prince turned geologist, explorer, historian, and revolutionary, embodied the highest ideals
227

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toward which his creed strove-science, art, literature, philosophy,

music were all within his ken, and the moral force of his loving
personality was a legend even among his bitterest foes.
Both men had been abroad when the Russian people overthrew
the tsarist autocracy, Kropotkin in England, Lenin in Switzerland.
Both had had to flee the tsarist police many years before. But where
the 47-year-old Lenin was known only to a small circle of European
socialists, Kropotkin, at 75, had been a world figure for two decades.
His scientific articles had already won him scholarly acclaim when,
in the i88o's, writing in the London Times, The Nineteenth Century,
the North American Review, and other periodicals, he had done more
than any other man to awaken the Western world to the realities of
Russian life under Tsarism. In 1882, the French government, pressed
by its burgeoning entente with the Romanovs, had arrested him in
connection with anarchist violence in Lyons (in which he had no
part); a petition asking his release was signed by Victor Hugo,
Herbert Spencer, Algernon Charles Swinburne, and leading contributors to the Encyclopedia Britannica. When Kropotkin was
sentenced to five years in prison, the historian Ernest Renan and the
French Academy of Science each offered Kropotkin the use of their
libraries. (His French prosecutor, meanwhile, was decorated by
Tsar Alexander III.)
Kropotkin's Memoirs of a Revolutionist, published in 1899,
brought him international admiration, and the venerable Scandinavian critic Georg Brandes stated flatly in its preface, "There are
at this moment only two great Russians who think for the Russian
people, and whose thoughts belong to mankind-Leo Tolstoy and
Peter Kropotkin." When, in I9go, Kropotkin exposed in the North
American Review the repressive character of the tsarist school
system, Pobedonostsev, Nicholas II's chief adviser, felt compelled
to answer him personally.
Kropotkin's own warm and tender character (he was as at ease
with children and animals as with political groups) had a marked
influence on the direction of the anarchist movement. Where Bakunin had been predominantly negative-concentrating on the task
of destroying existing state coercion, Kropotkin addressed his
thoughts to the positive program for building a society based on free
cooperation. Both as a physical scientist and as a social theorist, he
postulated another law just as important as that of the struggle for
existence: he called it the law of "mutual aid." The solidarity of
people-their natural inclination to work out together, unhampered

Kropotkinand Lenin

229

by coercion,the most satisfactoryapproachto their commonproblems-was the foundationof Kropotkin'sphilosophicalanarchism.

In that anarchism,no privilegedpart was to be played by "professional revolutionists."Rather, Kropotk'mbelieved that social
justice could only be achievedthroughthe consciouscooperationof
all the people-workers, farmers, tradesmen, and intelligentsia.
Thus, while personallyintimate with the leadersof Russia'sPeople's
Will movement, Kropotkindisapprovedof their idea of making a
revolutionforthe people. A decent and durablesocial order,he said,
couldonly emergethroughthe effortsof the peoplethemselves.
Despite these doubts about other strains of Russian radicalism,
Kropotkin bitterly opposed isolating anarchism as the only true
anti-tsaristfaith, wagingwar against all infidels. He greetedliberal,
SocialistRevolutionary,and Social Democraticfoes of despotismas
allies in the common struggle for basic political liberties. The
dangersof narrowsectarianismand of "professionalrevolutionists"
wereapparentto him even beforeI909, whenhe wrote:
Every revolutionist dreams about a dictatorship, whether it be a "dictatorship of the proletariat," i.e., of its leaders, as Marx said, or a "dictatorship of
the revolutionary staff" as the Blanquists maintained. . . . They all dream
about a revolution as a possible means of destroying their enemies in a legal
manner, with the help of a revolutionary tribunal, a public prosecutor, a guillotine. .. All of them dream of capturing power, of creating a strong, allpowerful totalitarian state which treats the people as subjects and rules them
All
with thousands or millions of bureaucrats supported by the state. ...
revolutionists dream of a Committee of Public Safety, the aim of which is to
eliminate everyone who d,aresthink differently from those who are at the helm
of the government. . . . Thinking, say many revolutionists, is an art and a
science which is not devised for common people. ...

When Kropotkin arrived in Petrograd on June Io, I917, after

41 years of exile (he had braved GermanU-boats in the North Sea
to reach Stockholmand the train for Russia), he was greeted by a
crowd of 60,ooo people, who had waited for him in the cold night
till 2 A. M. Moved as he was by "that crowd of intelligent, bold,
proud faces, celebratingthe triumphof light over the shadows, of
truth over falsehood, of freedom over slavery," Kropotkin soon
began to feel the war-wearinessof the Russian people and their
subtle demoralizationin the face of continued war losses and the
concentratedpro-Germanpropagandaof the Bolsheviks. The return
to Petrograd, two months earlier, of Lenin (who came through
Germanyin a sealedtrain by arrangementwith the Kaiser'sGeneral
Staff) had quickly transformedthe Bolsheviks'early collaboration

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with the democratic parties into a virulent assault on all of them,

on the ProvisionalGovernment,andon the Alliedwareffort.

Kropotkin,even in 1914,had declaredthat the duty of all freedomloving peoples was to support the Allies against German militarism,

which he consideredthe most potent center of Europeanreaction

and a threat to all peoples. When, in those early days, he was
remindedthat an Allied victory would also be a triumphfor Tsarist
Russia, he replied that he was sure that Tsarism would be overthrownand a new regimeestablishedin Russia. Asked why he was
so sure of a revolution,he would answer:"Simplybecauseeveryone
in Russiais awaitingone."
The democratic revolution in Russia had made Kropotkin an
even more passionate believer in the Allied cause. For with the
overthrowof Tsarism and the entry of Americaunder Wilson into
the war, the Allies had become,in fact as well as word, the camp of
humanitarian democracy in a mortal struggle against reactionary
militarism.

Although Kropotkinhad declinedthe post of Ministerof Educa-

tion in the Provisional Government (he saw little reason to alter his

principledopposition to governmentsper se), he largely defended

its efforts. The Bolsheviks' unsuccessful July putsch upset him
deeply, as did the resignationof GeorgeLvov, the nobleLiberalwho
was the democratic government'sfirst Premier. At the National
State Conferencein Moscowin August (attendedby representatives
of all political parties, social associations, and military organiza-

tions, as well as cabinet ministers,army leaders,and formerDuma

members), Kropotkin looked forward to the coming Constituent
Assembly-elections for which were scheduledfor late Novemberand to the type of republicRussia would become:"And, citizens,"
the great anarchistdeclared,"the republicmust be a federatedone,
in the sense in which we see it in the United States, where every
state has its own legislativebodies, these legislativebodies deciding
all the internalproblems,while the Republicin all its decisionsneeds
the consentof severalstates or of all the states."
Kropotkinalso deliveredan impassionedplea for national unity
and for continued resistance to the German aggressor.His voice
did not prevail. First the German rout of Kerensky's summer
offensive, then the struggle between rightists, centrists, and socialists, climaxedby the Kornilovaffair,paved the way for the Bolshevik coup d'etat. When, in Moscow that November, Kropotkin

Kropotkinand Lenin

23I

heard the first cannon volleys of the Bolshevik uprising, he exclaimed:"This is the burialof the RussianRevolution."
Although the Bolsheviks treated Kropotkin with deference, he
refused to accept any support from them (even turning down
royalties from his books re-publishedby the state) and declined
to play any part in the Soviet regime. Soon after Lenin's surrender
to the Germans at Brest-Litovsk, Kropotkin described the Bolsheviksto a representativeof WoodrowWilsonin this manner:
They have deluded simple souls. The peace they offer will be paid for with
Russia's heart. The land they have been given will go untilled. This is a country of children-ignorant, impulsive, without discipline. It has become the
prey of teachers who could have led it along the slow, safe way. . . . There
was hope during the summer. The war is bad-I am the enemy of war-but
this surrender is no way to end it. The Constituent Assembly was to have met.
It could have built the framework of enduring government.

By this time, the Bolsheviks had brutally suppressedthe Constituent Assembly,elected by universalsuffragewith a clear majority for the Socialist Revolutionariesand only 25 percent for the
Bolsheviks. The red terror, which preceded and followed the dissolution of the Assembly, had erupted into the horrorof the Civil
War. All this while, Kropotkinlived in the small town of Dmitrov,
not far from Moscow, and kept aloof from the bloody political
warfare. Much as he opposedthe Bolsheviks,he could not approve
of foreign military interventiononce it had become clear that the
aims of England, France, and Japan in the intervention were so
largelyterritorial.
On May Io, I919, however,Kropotkinfelt compelledto speak to
Lenin on a personalmatter. An old friend and colleaguewas being
held as a hostage, earmarkedfor execution,and Kropotkinwent to
the Kremlinto plead for his life. But the conversation,which took
place in the apartmentof the old BolshevikVladimirBonch-Bruyevich, soon developed into a long discourseon the revolution and
Russia'sfuture.
Kropotkinnot only pleaded for his comrade, but tried hard to
influenceLenin to abolish the entire system of taking hostages and
shooting people in reprisal for opposition activity. He reminded
Lenin of the Committeeof Public Safety, which had killed so many
outstandingleadersof the FrenchRevolution,pointingout how one
of its membershad later been discovered to have been a former
judge under the Bourbons. "I scaredhim a little," Kropotkinlater
told his friend Dr. AlexanderAtabekian, who first disclosed the

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details of the conversationin a speech at Dmitrov a year after

Kropotkin's death. To Atabekian, also, Kropotkin confessed his
own personalshame at visiting a dictator whose subordinateswere
busy executing at that very moment the finest representativesof
Russiandemocracy.
Nevertheless, Lenin showed Kropotkin considerablerespect at
this meeting, the only personalencounterbetween them after the
revolution.' The two men talked about Bolshevik methods, about
the cooperativemovement (dear to Kropotkin'sheart), about the
development of bureaucratismin the Soviet state. Lenin tried
brieflyto sketch his own ideal conceptionof future Soviet development. Kropotkin listened attentively and then told Lenin: "You
and I have differentpoints of view. Our aims seem to be the same,
but as to a numberof questionsabout means, actions, and organization, I differ with you greatly. Neither I, nor any of my friends,
will refuseto help you; but our help will consist only in that we will
report to you all the injusticestaking place everywherefrom which
the peoplearegroaning."
-Lenin took up this offer and asked Kropotkin to send him informationabout injustices,which he would take into consideration.
On March4, I920, Kropotkinwrote such a letter, in which he outlined the chaotic and miserableconditionof the countrysideunder
"WarCommunism,"and the soddenattitude of the sufferingpeople
towardlocalinitiative:
At every point, people who don't know actual life are making awful mistakes for which we have to pay in hundreds of thousands of human lives and
the ruination of whole regions. Without the participation of the local population in construction-the participation of the peasants and workers themselves-it is impossible to build a new life. ...
Russia has become a Soviet Republic only in name. .. . At present it is
If the present situation
ruled not by Soviets but by party committees. ...
should continue much longer, the very word "socialism" will turn into a curse,
as did the slogan of "equality" for forty years after the rule of the Jacobins.
1Contrary to this report, based on the account of Atabekian a year after Kropotkin's death, the British writers Woodcock and Avakumovich in their book The
Anarchist Prince, maintain that there were other meetings. A check of their account of the "other meetings" with Atabekian and other sources indicates that they
have divided the conversation of this May, I919, meeting and the correspondence
which followed into new "meetings." Since publication of their book, Kropotkin's
daughter Alexandra, now in New York, has personally confirmed to me the fact
that there was only one meeting. Alexandra was living near her father at the time.

KropotkinandLenin

233

Nine months later, Kropotkin wrote to Lenin again on the subject of hostages:
Is it possible that you do not know what a hostage really is-a man imprisoned not because of a crime committed but only because it suits his enemies
to exert blackmail on his companions? . . . If you admit such methods, one
can foresee that one day you will use torture, as was done in the Middle-Ages.
I hope you will not answer me that power is for political men a professional
duty, and that any attack against that power must be considered a threat
against which one must guard oneself at any price. This opinion is no longer
held even by kings; the rulers of countries where monarchy still exists have
abandoned long ago the means of defense now introduced into Russia with the
seizure of hostages. How can you, Vladimir Ilyich, you who want to be the
apostle of new truths and the builder of a new state, give your consent to the
use of such repulsive conduct, of such unacceptable methods? . . .
What future lies in store for Communism when one of its most important
defenders tramples in this way on every honest feeling?

There were other letters, too, but these were never published. All
we know is that they so enraged Lenin that the Soviet dictator told
Vladimir Obukh, an old Bolshevik: "I am sick of this old fogey.
He doesn't understand a thing about politics and intrudes with his
advice, most of which is very stupid."
The well-known Russian publicist, Katherine Kuskova, met
Kropotkin often in those days, and she has commented that Kropotkin's "stupid advice" consisted largely of (a) vigorous criticism
of the terror, which he said "debases the revolution and will lead
to reactionary dictatorship," and (b) appeals to Lenin to find six
or seven able non-Bolsheviks who would work with his administration in a determined effort to restore normal conditions of living.
From Kuskova, too, we learn of Kropotkin's grim forebodingsafter his meeting with Lenin-of today's global conflict. Kropotkin
was convinced that eventually the Communists would gain the
upper hand in Europe and would bring the same brutality there as
in Russia. Kuskova pointed out that the cultural backwardness of
the Russian people had helped the Bolsheviks, but that things were
different in Western and Central Europe. Kropotkin replied:
To be sure, little concernwas shown for the cultural developmentof the
Russianpeople. But I am very familiarwith the state of WesternEuropeand
I assureyou that a Bolshevikrevolutionthere would be a repetitionof what
we had in Russia. The power of the Communistsderives from the fact that
they supportthemselvesupon the mob, upon the unorganized,unskilledand
ill-paid. Should these elements gain the upper hand in WesternEurope,we
shallwitnessa repetitionof whathas occurredin Russia.

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But would not the mob be restrained, Kuskova asked, by other

groups, responsible, well-organized and experienced in maintaining
justice? "The world," Kropotkin answered slowly, "is in serious
perturbation. The world is badly shaken by war, and in the flame
of war insanity, human beings have lost all common sense. Anything may happen. And when it does, it will happen according to the
Russian style and in no other. The mob everywhere is cruel, corrupt
and animated by beastly instincts."
When Kropotkin died on February 7, I92I, the full measure of
his prophecy was apparent to only a few. But the thirty-two years
that have elapsed-the years of Hitler and Stalin-have made it
plain to all. It might well be said that Kropotkin's dashed hopes
in 1917, his protest at barbarous Bolshevism, and his grave concern
over the emotional balance of a world in flames, represented a
microcosm of our world today, when the citizen of a democracyeducated to the hope of a freer world for all men-faces the unabated challenge of Lenin's heirs.