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[KROPOTKIN’S AUTOGRAPH] Zapiski revoliutsionera [i.e. Memoirs of a Revolutionist]

Kropotkin, Piotr

Item #2563

London: Fond vol’noi russkoi pressy, 1902. XX, 477 pp. 20,5x14 cm.

In original full cloth with gilt lettering on spine. Very good, slightly rubbed, endpapers faded, with some foxing. Signed by the author on the front flyleaf, with inscription to Russian traveler and archaeologist Piotr Kozlov (1863–1935). They got acquainted in London where the copy was signed as well.

First Russian edition. The translation of the first English edition (1899) to Russian was edited by the author. The book includes the author’s foreword to the Russian edition and the introduction written by Georg Brandes (1842–1927).

This book comprises memoirs by one of the most influential theorists of Russian anarchism and the world-famous scientist Peter Alekseevich Kropotkin (1842-1921). ‘Memoirs of a Revolutionist’ were written in political exile in the late 1890s. The author started writing them in the Russian language in England, then he continued to work on them in English, being in America. Thus, the work was first published in the Atlantic Monthly between 1898 and 1899.

The first book edition was released by the Houghton Mifflin Company in Boston and New York. Within a few years, the memoirs were distributed around the world, being translated into the major languages of the world. The Russian translation appeared in London in 1902. In the Russian Empire, the book was printed in 1906, and all subsequent pre-revolutionary editions remained being translated from English.

In 1917 Kropotkin came back to Russia, he was against Bolsheviks’ hostage policy and centralization of authority, but he had little impact on their actions. Kropotkin died of pneumonia in Bolshevik Russia in 1921. In the early Soviet period, ‘Memoirs of a Revolutionist’ were periodically published, but in the 1930s–1950s, the anarchism was perceived as hostile to Marxism.