Kropotkin never liked the slogan propaganda by deed, and did not use it to describe his own ideas of revolutionary action, for, in his view, the deeds of revolutionaries had to be serious and sincere acts of revolt if they were to achieve anything at all. Nevertheless from the very beginning of his revolutionary career, he was just as preoccupied as other bakuninists and anarchists with the necessity of revolutionary action in addition to oral and written propaganda, and he certainly supported the forms of action adopted by the early advocates of propaganda by deed.

Kropotkin's first attempt to outline a policy of revolutionary action appeared in the proposed manifesto he drew up for the Chaikovsky Circle in 1873. By the time he had joined the circle in May 1872 on his return from Switzerland the group was already involved in the production and distribution of illegal socialist literature (Knizhnoe delo – the cause of the book) and had begun to engage in oral propaganda among the workers of St Petersburg (Rabochee delo – the cause of the workers). Kropotkin had taken part in the Knizhnoe delo to the extent of writing the concluding section to Tikhomirov's pamphlet on Pugachev), but his principal and most successful contribution to the work of the group was the role he had played in developing propaganda activity among the workers in the Moscow and St Petersburg factories which began at the end of 1872.