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Kropotkin in America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Paul Avrich
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It is a well-established fact that foreign immigrants and visitors played a major role in the emergence of American anarchism. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, European-born artisans and peasants – Germans and Czechs, Italians and Spaniards, Russians and Jews – constituted the mass base of the movement, while its intellectual leadership included well-known speakers and writers from diverse countries, who came either as permanent settlers or on extended lecture tours.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , April 1980 , pp. 1 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1980

References

1 See Avrich, Paul, “Bakunin and the United States”, in: International Review of Social History, XXIV (1979), pp. 320–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Hecht, David, “Kropotkin and America”, in: Bulletin of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages, 09 15, 1952, pp. 5–7.Google Scholar

3 See Kropotkin, P., The Great French Revolution, 1789–1793 (London, 1909), pp. 21–22, 141–42.Google Scholar

4 Id., Russian Literature (New York, 1905), pp. 4, 223–24.Google Scholar

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9 Kelly, Harry, “Reminiscences and Reflections on Peter Kropotkin”, in: Centennial Expressions on Peter Kropotkin, 1842–1942 (Los Angeles, 1942), p. 27.Google Scholar

10 The Commonweal (London), 10 22, 1887Google Scholar; Freedom (London), 12 1898Google Scholar; David, Henry, The History of the Haymarket Affair (New York, 1936), p. 534.Google Scholar

11 Quoted in Martin, James J., Men Against the State, revised ed. (Colorado Springs, 1970), pp. 219–20.Google Scholar

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13 The first American translation, by Marie Le Compte, appeared in the San Francisco Truth from January 5 to 26,1884. Afterwards there were numerous pamphlet editions in a variety of languages.

14 Walling, Anna Strunsky, “Three Contacts with Peter Kropotkin”, in: Mother Earth, 12 1912.Google Scholar

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18 See II Grido degli Oppressi (New York), 06 14, 1893Google Scholar; Solidarity (New York), 07 29, 1893Google Scholar; The Firebrand (Portland), 10 4, 1896Google Scholar. It was hoped in 1893 that Kropotkin might attend an International Anarchist Conference in Chicago, and there were erroneous reports the same year that he attended the unveiling of the Haymarket monument in Chicago's Waldheim Cemetery.

19 Mavor's, An Economic History of Russia (2 vols; London and Toronto, 1914)Google Scholar remains a standard work on the subject.

20 Id., My Windows on the Street of the World (2 vols; London and Toronto, 1923), I, p. 371.Google Scholar

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23 Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist, op. cit., p. 277.

24 Kropotkin to Geddes, November 27, 1897, Geddes Papers, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; Woodcock, George and Avakumović, Ivan, The Anarchist Prince (London, 1950), pp. 273–75.Google Scholar See also Kropotkin's, Canadian diary, 08 5, 1897Google Scholar, quoted by Pirumova, Natalia, Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin (Moscow, 1972), p. 157.Google Scholar A Soviet edition of Kropotkin's, memoirs contains a sketch he made of a Canadian landscape on September 5, 1897Google Scholar, Zapiski revoliutsionera, ed. by Tvardovskaia, V. A. (Moscow, 1966), p. 472.Google Scholar

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26 Woodcock, George and Avakumović, Ivan, The Doukhobors (New York, 1968), pp. 130–32Google Scholar; Mavor, My Windows, op. cit., II, p. 1.

27 Kropotkin, , “Recent Science”, in: The Nineteenth Century, 11 1897, pp. 799–820Google Scholar; Kropotkin, , “Some of the Resources of Canada”, p. 514.Google Scholar

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29 Kropotkin to Geddes, November 27, 1897; Kropotkin, , “Some of the Resources of Canada”, p. 495.Google Scholar

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31 Levin, A., “A derinerung vegn Pyotr Kropotkin”, in: Fraye Arbeter Shtime (New York), 04 10, 1936Google Scholar; Most, Johann, “Peter Krapotkin”, in: Freiheit (Buffalo), 10 30, 1897.Google Scholar

32 New York Herald, October 24.

33 Interview with Laurance Labadie, Suffern, N.Y., March 22, 1975; note entered by Jo Labadie on his copy of the San Francisco Truth of August 1884, which bears a portrait of Kropotkin.

34 Kropotkin, , Memoirs of a Revolutionist, p. 490Google Scholar; Kelly, Harry, “Roll Back the Years: Odyssey of a Libertarian”, ch. 8, p. 1Google Scholar, Tamiment Library.

35 Harry Kelly to Joseph J. Cohen, October 18, 1943, Cohen Papers, Bund Archives; id. to John N. Beffel, July 7, 1948, Beffel Papers, Archives of Labor History and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University.

36 New York Herald, October 24, 1897.

37 Ibid.

38 Kelly, , “Roll Back the Years”, ch. 8, pp. 1, 6.Google Scholar

39 New York Herald, October 25.

40 Liberty, September 3, 1881.

41 New York Times and New York Herald, also The World (New York), 10 25, 1897.Google Scholar

42 New York Herald, October 25.

43 Stepniak, , Underground Russia (London, 1883), p. 99.Google Scholar

44 Rudash, “Kropotkin's Two Visits”, loc. cit.; de Cleyre, Voltairine, “American Notes”, in: Freedom, 02 1898.Google Scholar

45 Free Society (San Francisco), 12 17, 1897Google Scholar; Freedom, February 1898; Woodcock and Avakumović, The Anarchist Prince, op. cit., p. 275.

46 Kropotkin, P., “La tuerie de Hazleton”, in: Les Temps Nouveaux, 10 9–15, 1897Google Scholar; Woodcock, and Avakumović, , The Anarchist Prince, p. 276.Google Scholar

47 Kropotkin, P., “The Development of Trade-Unionism”, in: Freedom, 03 1898.Google Scholar

48 “Kropotkin in Boston”, in: Free Society, November 14, 1897, quoted from the Boston Herald.

49 S.C.B., “Boston Letter”, in: Free Society, 12 12Google Scholar; Kropotkin to Geddes, November 27. Because of his crowded schedule, Kropotkin declined an invitation from his old friend William Bailie to speak before the Central Labor Union of Boston, Kropotkin to Bailie, November 5, Bailie Papers, New York. Bailie, a former member of the Manchester branch of the Socialist League, had emigrated to America in 1892 and joined the circle around Tucker's Liberty.

50 Kropotkin, P., Kommunizm i anarkhiia (St Petersburg, 1906), p. 11Google Scholar; Mutual Aid, op. cit.

51 Norton, to Ward, S. G., 11 28, 1897, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, ed. by Norton, Sara and Howe, M. A. DeWolfe (2 vols; Boston, 1913), II, p. 255.Google Scholar

52 Nettlau, Max to Tucker, Benjamin R., 03 22, 1937, Tucker Papers, New York Public Library.Google Scholar

53 Levin, “A derinerung vegn Pyotr Kropotkin”, loc. cit. Apparently Kropotkin understood Yiddish from his knowledge of German and his contacts with the Jewish anarchists of London.

54 Yanovsky, S., “Kropotkin as I Knew Him”, in: Peter Kropotkin: The Rebel, Thinker and Humanitarian, ed. by Ishill, Joseph, Berkeley Heights, N.J., 1923, pp. 131–32.Google Scholar

55 Sturmvogel (New York), 11 15, 1897Google Scholar; New York Tribune, November 20; Kropotkin to Geddes, November 27.

56 Rudash, “Kropotkin's Two Visits”. This group, located in Geneva, issued pamphlets by Jean Grave, Elisée Reclus, Johann Most, and Kropotkin himself. See Avrich, Paul, The Russian Anarchists (Princeton, 1967), p. 38.Google Scholar

57 Rudash, “Kropotkin's Two Visits”.

58 Ibid.; Woodcock, and Avakumović, , The Anarchist Prince, p. 276.Google Scholar

59 Centennial Expressions, op. cit., p. 27. See also the New York Times, November 23, 1897.

60 Kropotkin to Geddes, November 27.

61 Freedom, March 1898.

62 Ibid., February.

63 Ibid., January.

64 Kropotkin to Geddes, November 27, 1897.

65 The World, November 22.

66 Kropotkin to Geddes, November 27.

67 Edelmann, John H., “Solidarity”, in: Solidarity, 07 15, 1898Google Scholar; Kelly to Beffel, July 7, 1948. Solidarity, however, was able to publish only eight additional numbers before running out of money again. Edelmann died two years later at the age of forty-eight.

68 Goldman, Living My Life, op. cit., p. 252.

69 Freedom, January 1898. Contrast Miller, Martin A., Kropotkin (Chicago, 1976), p. 171.Google Scholar According to Miller, who cites a letter from Kropotkin to Peter Lavrov, Kropotkin had a mixed reception in America and his lectures in New York and Boston were poorly attended. This, however, conflicts with all other available evidence.

70 Free Society, January 16, 1898.

71 Goldman, , Living My Life, p. 253Google Scholar. Yet when young Will Durant called on Kropotkin in 1912, he was scolded for “lecturing so much about sex”, Mother Earth, October 1912.

72 Mavor, , My Windows, II, p. 93Google Scholar; Baldwin, Roger N., “The Story of Kropotkin's Life”, in: Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets (New York, 1927), p. 25.Google Scholar

73 Ely, Robert Erskine, “Prince Kropotkin”, in: The Atlantic Monthly, 09 1898, pp. 338–446.Google Scholar At Kropotkin's suggestion, Page solicited an article on China from the anarchist geographer Elisée Reclus, which appeared in the same issue.

74 Kropotkin, to Brandes, , 09 22, 1898, Correspondance de Georg Brandes, II, p. 132Google Scholar. Autour d'une vie became the title of the French edition.

75 Elisée Reclus suggested still another title, “Memoirs of an Anarchist”, Rectus, to Kropotkin, , 08 28, 1898, Correspondance d'Elisée Reclus (3 vols; Paris, 1911–1925), III, p. 213.Google Scholar

76 Mavor, , My Windows, II, p. 93.Google Scholar

77 Kropotkin, to Brandes, , 03 28, 1901, Correspondance de Georg Brandes, II, p. 171.Google Scholar

78 Quoted in Woodcock, and Avakumović, , The Anarchist Prince, p. 284.Google Scholar

79 Kelly, Harry, “American Notes”, in: Freedom, 07 1901.Google Scholar

80 Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, op. cit., p. 26; Kropotkin, , Russian Literature (New York and London, 1905)Google Scholar, later re-issued as Ideals and Realities in Russian Literature.

81 Weiner, Leo, Anthology of Russian Literature (2 vols; New York and London, 1902)Google Scholar; Coolidge, Archibald Cary: Life and Letters, ed. by Coolidge, H. J. and Lord, R. H. (Boston and New York, 1932), p. 45Google Scholar; Kropotkin, Russian Literature, op. cit., p. 39.

82 Kropotkin's, Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 26.Google Scholar

83 “Comrade Kropotkin at Boston”, in: Free Society, March 17, 1901; Harry Kelly, “Kropotkin in America”, in: Freedom, March-April, based on accounts in the Boston Post and Boston Transcript.

84 Free Society, March 17; Freedom, March-April. For the printed text of Kropotkin's lecture, which differs in many details from the newspaper summaries, see Kropotkin's, Revolutionary Pamphlets, pp. 114–44.Google Scholar

85 Boston Post, quoted in Freedom, March-April.

86 Freedom, July.

87 Kropotkin's, Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 26Google Scholar; New York Times, March 30.

88 Goldman, , Living My Life, p. 287Google Scholar; Havel, Hippolyte, “Emma Goldman”, in: Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays (New York, 1911), pp. 29–30.Google Scholar Among those who assisted Emma Goldman was the Austrian anarchist Rudolf Grossmann, who later became well known as “Pierre Ramus”. Grossmann to Joseph Ishill, 01 3, 1924, Ishill Papers, Harvard University.Google Scholar

89 Goldman, , Living My Life, p. 361.Google Scholar

90 Ulman, I., “Kropotkin in New York”, in: Discontent (Home, Wash.), 04 24, 1901Google Scholar; New York Times, March 31.

91 Freedom, July; Ulman, “Kropotkin in New York”, loc. cit.

92 Ferm, Alexis C. to Hourwich, Sasha, 05 23, 1951, Modern School Collection, Rutgers University.Google Scholar

93 Herron, George D., “Kropotkin as Scientist”, in: Mother Earth, 12 1912.Google Scholar

94 Ulman, “Kropotkin in New York”.

95 Ibid.; New York Times, April 1.

96 Freedom, July.

97 Most, Johann, “Eine Stunde mit Peter Kropotkin”, in: Freiheit (New York), 04 13.Google Scholar See also Rocker, Rudolf, Johann Most: das Leben eines Rebellen (Berlin, 1924), pp. 396–99.Google Scholar

98 Kropotkin's, Revolutionary Pamphlets, pp. 26–27Google Scholar; Woodcock, and Avakumović, , The Anarchist Prince, p. 285.Google Scholar According to Kropotkin's daughter, it was her father who induced Booker T. Washington to write his memoirs. Interview with Alexandra Kropotkin, New York, 03 10, 1965.Google Scholar

99 Goldman, , Living My Life, p. 287.Google Scholar

100 Ulman, “Kropotkin in New York”; Yanovsky, S., “Kropotkin kakim ia ego znal”, in: P. A. Kropotkin i ego uchenie: Internatsional'nyi sbornik posviashchennyi desiatoi godovshchine smerti P. A. Kropotkina, ed. by Maksimov, G. P. (Chicago, 1931), p. 216.Google Scholar

101 “A ‘Real Revolutionist’”, in: Weekly People, April 6, 1901.

102 Yanovsky, “Kropotkin kakim ia ego znal“, loc. cit. According to Woodcock, and Avakumović, , The Anarchist Prince, p. 278Google Scholar, the two men had actually met when Kropotkin wandered into De Leon's office while looking for Johann Most's Freiheit, and they had a pleasant and cordial conversation.

103 Die Autonomie (London), 09 24, 1892.Google Scholar Cf. Solidarity, October 8.

104 Goldman, , Living My Life, p. 169Google Scholar; id., “Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin”, in: P. A. Kropotkin i ego uchenie, op. cit., p. 226. For a different version see Kropotkin's, Revolutionary Pamphlets, pp. 25–26.Google Scholar

105 Berkman, Alexander to Nold, Carl, 08 18, 1902, in id., Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (New York, 1912), p. 442.Google Scholar Cf. Mother Earth Bulletin, February 1918, where Emma Goldman refers to this incident.

106 Interview with Grace Umrath (a granddaughter of the Isaaks), New York, 09 24, 1974Google Scholar; Isaak, Abe Jr, “Kropotkin in Chicago”, in: Free Society, 05 5, 1901.Google Scholar

107 Goldman, , Living My Life, pp. 375–76Google Scholar; Addams, Jane, Twenty Years at Hull House (New York, 1910), p. 402.Google Scholar As late as 1932, Edmund Wilson saw in the polygon room a portrait of Kropotkin among the “patron-saints and heroes of Hull House”, Wilson, , The American Earthquake (Garden City, N.Y., 1958), p. 449.Google Scholar

108 Hamilton, Alice, Exploring the Dangerous Trades (Boston, 1943), p. 86.Google Scholar Dr Hamilton was a leading authority on industrial poisons.

109 Free Society, May 5, 1901. Kropotkin remained a devotee of Free Society until it ceased publication in 1904, and kept in touch with Abe Isaak, whom he sent inscribed copies of his writings. He was especially impressed with C. L. James's “History of the French Revolution”, serialized in Free Society in 1901 and published in book form the following year.

110 Linn, James W., Jane Addams: A Biography (New York, 1935), p. 197.Google Scholar

111 Goldman, , Living My Life, p. 361Google Scholar. Cf. Planche, Fernand and Delphy, Jean, Kropotkine (Paris, 1948), p. 108Google Scholar, where the incident is misdated as November 11th, the anniversary of the Haymarket hangings.

112 Havel, Hippolyte, “Kropotkin the Revolutionist”, in: Mother Earth, 12 1912.Google Scholar

113 Taylor, Graham, Pioneering on Social Frontiers (Chicago, 1930), p. 317.Google Scholar

114 Free Society, May 5, 1901.

115 Kropotkin, P., “Russia and the Student Riots”, in: The Outlook, 04 6, 1901, pp. 760–64Google Scholar; id., “The Present Crisis in Russia”, in: The North American Review, May, pp. 711–23.

116 Kropotkin, , “The Present Crisis in Russia”, pp. 717, 723.Google Scholar

117 Pobedonostsev, Konstantin, “Russia and Popular Education”, in: The North American Review, 09 1901, pp. 349–54.Google Scholar

118 Kropotkin, “Russian Schools and the Holy Synod”, ibid., April 1902, pp. 518–27. See also Hulse, James W., Revolutionists in London (Oxford, 1970), pp. 169–70.Google Scholar

119 Letter from Sonia Edelstadt Keene, December 9, 1974; Hapgood, Hutchins, The Spirit of the Ghetto (New York, 1902), p. 149.Google Scholar See also Lucifer (Chicago), 04 27, 1901Google Scholar, and Freiheit, April 27.

120 Woodcock, and Avakumović, , The Anarchist Prince, pp. 286–87.Google Scholar

121 Free Society, May 5 and 19, 1901.

122 Mavor, , My Windows, II, p. 93.Google Scholar

123 Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House, op. cit., p. 402; Free Society, May 5, 1901; Freedom, July.

124 Kropotkin, to Guillaume, , 12 12, 1901, in: Probuzhdenie (Detroit), 02 1931.Google Scholar

125 Hamilton, Exploring the Dangerous Trades, op. cit., p. 86; Linn, Jane Addams, op. cit., p. 219.

126 Quoted in Drinnon, Richard, Rebel in Paradise (Chicago, 1961), p. 94.Google Scholar Cf. Kropotkin to Goldman, December 16, 1903, Tamiment Library.

127 “Une lettre inédite de Pierre Kropotkine à Max Nettlau”, ed. by Novak, Derry, in: International Review of Social History, IX (1964), p. 282Google Scholar, English translation in Kropotkin, P. A., Selected Writings on Anarchism and Revolution, ed. by Miller, M. A. (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), pp. 303–04.Google Scholar

128 Mother Earth, January 1913. See also Goldman, , Living My Life, p. 510.Google Scholar

129 Goldman, Emma to Ballantine, Stella, 11 4, 1920, Lillian D. Wald Papers, Columbia University.Google Scholar

130 Peter Kropotkin: The Rebel, Thinker and Humanitarian, op. cit.

131 P. A. Kropotkin i ego uchenie; Probuzhdenie, February 1931; The Road to Freedom (New York), 03 1931.Google Scholar

132 Centennial Expressions. Cf. the centennial issue of the Fraye Arbeter Shtime published in December 1942.

133 Berkman, Alexander, “Looking Backward and Forward”, in: Mother Earth, 12 1912Google Scholar; Centennial Expressions, p. 36.

134 The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti, ed. by Frankfurter, Marion Denman and Jackson, Gardner (New York, 1928), p. 108.Google Scholar Vanzetti, ibid., pp. 176, 275, also praised Kropotkin's history of the French Revolution and his Encyclopaedia Britannica article on anarchism.

135 I. F. Stone's Bi-Weekly, December 1971; interview with Harold Hayes, Channel 13, New York, 02 3, 1975.Google Scholar