how Charles Darwin and Siberia arise in Russian anarchism
“If centralized states are destroyed, we will not return to the war of all against all … On the contrary, we will solve the issue of mutual assistance, and this will allow us to build a society on new, more humane foundations,” wrote the creator of the ideology of anarcho-communism and one of the most influential theorists . Anarchism in Russia Peter Kropotkin. How a hereditary nobleman and page of Emperor Alexander II became a revolutionary, as well as some great feeling for his “Theory of Mutual Aid” Siberia has, and especially here Charles Darwin – in the RTVI program “Prokudin” tells Professor of Moscow State University named after M. V. Lomonosov, Candidate of Medical Sciences Boris Prokudin.
About how the page of Emperor Alexander II left to serve in Siberia
Pyotr Alekseevich Kropotkin was the title of prince. When he signed in both English and French, he wrote “Prince Kropotkin”. Surprisingly, in childhood, courtyard people were much closer than father and stepmother. This was the reason for Kropotkin’s love, which he capitalized to the common people all his life.
At the age of 15, Kropotkin was enrolled in the Corps of Pages. The best 16 boys of the graduating class were appointed chamber-pages of various representatives of the imperial family, the best – chamber-page of the emperor. Kropotkin became them in 1861. He had to work at all public events in the palace: at large and small results, at gala dinners, balls, etc. D. Kropotkin idolized Alexander II. According to him, “if then someone planned an attempt on the king, he would have covered the restorer with his chest.”
Like all progressive people, Kropotkin considers himself a liberal. Record of the restoration of autocracy Even in the Corps of Pages, he became acquainted with forbidden literature, the journal “Polar Star”, which Herzen published in London, and even in the Corps of Pages he began to publish his underground newspaper called “Echoes from the Corps”, in which he studied the authorities, bureaucracy and wrote down about the Constitution.
After the liberation manifesto, which the emperor’s page accepted with delight, he, like many, was disappointed: explain to the peasants that they are now free, but the land does not belong to them, the landlords, from whom the peasants must rent or buy it. The peasants thought that they had been deceived, and a wave of uprisings swept through Russia, which the government suppressed very harshly. Out of solidarity with the peasants, students appeared on the streets of St. Petersburg, but their performance was also rather brutally dispersed. All this time, Kropotkin could watch Emperor Alexander II, and he no longer seemed to him such a hero as before.
In 1862, when Kropotkin had to choose a place for further service, he decided to leave St. Petersburg and go to work in Siberia. Alexander pointed this out: “Aren’t you afraid to travel that far?” To which Kropotkin rather boldly replied: “No, I want to work, and there are so many things to do in Siberia in order to carry out my reforms in life.” He thought, then said: “Well, go, you can go anywhere.”
How Siberia and Darwin pushed “Mutual Aid Theories” into conversation
“The years spent in Siberia,” he wrote, “here he understood his chain, which made him famous, the chain of mutual assistance.
In Siberia, Kropotkin realized that in places not crushed by serfdom and distribution from some metropolitan centers, people are completely different, much simpler and freer: “men and women talk to you like with a large number, they get you right in the eye.” When Kropotkin arrived in Irkutsk and went to the special chief, General Kukel, he saw on his desk a large binder of banned newspapers, The Bell, which Herzen was publishing in London. When asked if the general was afraid to read “forbidden newspapers”, Kukel replied: “We are in Irkutsk. Forbidden literature is not served beyond Irkutsk. Read, enjoy!
Siberia made Kropotkin a great revolutionary and a great scientist. Here he accepted an offer to engage in geographical research and go on expeditions. The years spent on geographical expeditions completely changed the philosophy of life. Most of all, in these expeditions, he was a discoverer, it was felt that before him there had never been a civilized person here, that he was the first to come here and on some piece of paper brought a map of this virgin area.
In the 1860s, a terrible fashion for science began among freethinking youth, the symbol of which was the hero of I. S. Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons” Bazarov. Kropotkin also became interested in science. He wanted to study nature by the method of different sciences. In 1860, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published in Russian. Everyone knew that this book is roughly applicable to Darwin’s main thesis of intraspecific struggle. But Kropotkin, no matter how much he observed animal life in Siberia, did not see this notorious intraspecific transaction. On the contrary, he saw something completely opposite in front of him.
“In those cases when all living things can pass after a while and disappear, in those cases when a week-long downpour can pass, which will leave a swamp, which will later end up in a Central European state, I saw mutual assistance to animals,” he wrote. This contains the idea of the main descendant of Kropotkin, which will be the basis of all his anarcho-communist teachings.
“Obviously, in nature there is both struggle and mutual assistance, and it is rather difficult for us to determine which sphere is larger. But it is assumed that those animals that have acquired the skills of solidarity are offered more comfortable. And therefore, as a factor in evolution, mutual assistance is more likely to be important than struggle.”
Kropotkin created the Russian version of Darwinism and the evolution of theory. According to the statement, a person, like any other creature, has his belonging to mutual assistance, and people do not necessarily eat another friend, but unite with each other in order to do some great things together.
Kropotkin will substantiate the theory of mutual assistance in his large book entitled “Mutual Assistance as a Factor of Evolution” in 1902. In it, he writes about examples of mutual aid in animals, about cases of savagery and barbarism, shows the institutions of mutual aid in the Middle Ages and in the cities known to him. As an example, he cited the lifestyle of ants. According to him, they “have absolutely no struggle for resources within the colony, and, on the contrary, each ant causes the spread of infection from excess food with everyone who asks for it, and the self-sacrifice of the radiation society is absolutely normal for them.”
Kropotkin had the opportunity to observe not only the life of animals, but also the creative work of people outside the state. For example, he played about the Doukhobor sectarians who moved to the Amur, about how much the communist organization gave them, and how well they settled down where they suffered the conquests of other settlers.
“Then I understood the differences between acting on the preferences of disciplines and mutual support, mutual assistance. Discipline is good in parades, but worthless when the goal must be achieved by all common efforts. I was prepared to be an anarchist. Then I completely lost faith in state discipline.
On why the formation of large states is aimed at progress, and on the disappointment in the revolution of the Bolsheviks
According to Kropotkin, the development of savagery, barbarism may have been actively developing in the New Age, but during the period of development it ended, progress stopped. This happened when the formation of centralized states began in European countries, neglecting the principles of federalism. They are the main enemies of mutual aid. When everything is subject to some alienated power, when people do not need to agree, when people no longer need to unite, when someone has already decided everything for the people, then the principle of mutual assistance weakens.
“That is why, if centralized states are destroyed, we will not return to the war of all against all, which is why conservatives scare us. On the contrary, we will restore the scope of mutual aid, and this will allow us to build a society on new, more humane foundations.”
Kropotkin justified anarchy through science, through observation of nature. For him, anarchy is more of a restoration of solidarity that has been stolen by territorial communities. He was more focused on creation, on ethics. Without a developed ethics, that is, without an understanding of a person that he needs to follow the path of mutual assistance, that he needs to take responsibility for himself, anarchy is impossible.
After returning from Siberia, Kropotkin got into a catastrophe, escaped from prison, and left for a shipment. After 40 years spent in exile, in 1917 he returned to Russia again. At the Finland Station he was met by 60,000 people, they sang the Marseilles, they were greeted as the head, and Kropotkin, naturally, that self-government bodies replace the state and use the people of freedom.
Kropotkin’s authority throughout the world and in general among patients with deviations from the norm was so high that on July 7, 1917, they came to him in a huge car, military and naval. In turn, Kerensky, alarmed by the social situation, told Kropotkin about this. Thus, it is possible to reconcile radicals warring with each other. The former chamber page of the head of state almost became the head of state himself, only by this moment he had already denied any state.
“I told him not to forget that I am an anarchist after all and cannot head the government.”
After the October Revolution, when the Soviets, the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs came to power, Kropotkin dressed that this was the beginning of the decline of the Soviets and that the centralization of the state was starting again. He left Petrograd, arrived in the city of Dmitrov, where he settled and began to write his work on ethics. It turned out that the theory of his mutual assistance was several times ahead of its time; that for the triumph of anarchy it is not enough only to destroy the centralized state; that mutual aid must be developed in the minds of people. Kropotkin, because mutual assistance is an instinct of life itself.