Peter Kropotkin

The Great French Revolution, 1789-1793

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Students of French history and lovers of rousing tales alike will find in this hard-to-find work an alternative look at the French Revolution from one of the great anarchist thinkers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Communist advocate PETER ALEXEYEVICH KROPOTKIN (1842-1921) was deemed "perfect" by Oscar Wilde, who described Kropotkin as a man with "a soul of that beautiful white Christ which seems coming out of Russia." Here, he takes the first serious look at the economic side of the popular Gallic uprising, exploring: ¿ the spirit of the revolt ¿ the declaration of the rights of man ¿ the fears of the middle classes ¿ financial difficulties of the Revolution ¿ feudal legislation in 1790 ¿ social demands and arbitrary taxation ¿ the problems with paper money ¿ schemes for the socialization of the means of subsistence and exchange ¿ and much more. Originally published in two small volumes, this replica edition combines the authorized 1927 American publication into one book that may change how modern readers think about the French Revolution.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cosimo Classics
• Seitenzahl: 626
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. September 2009
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 203mm x 127mm x 36mm
• Gewicht: 742g
• ISBN-13: 9781605206608
• ISBN-10: 1605206601
• Artikelnr.: 27054572

Autorenporträt

Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (9 December 1842[a] - 8 February 1921) was a Russian activist, writer, revolutionary, scientist, economist, sociologist, historian, essayist, researcher, political scientist, biologist, geographer[11] and philosopher who advocated anarcho-communism. Born into an aristocratic land-owning family, he attended a military school and later served as an officer in Siberia, where he participated in several geological expeditions. He was imprisoned for his activism in 1874 and managed to escape two years later. He spent the next 41 years in exile in Switzerland, France (where he was imprisoned for almost four years) and in England. While in exile, Kropotkin gave lectures and published widely on anarchism and geography.[12] He returned to Russia after the Russian Revolution in 1917 but was disappointed by the Bolshevik state. Kropotkin was a proponent of a decentralised communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations of self-governing communities and worker-run enterprises. He wrote many books, pamphlets, and articles, the most prominent being The Conquest of Bread and Fields, Factories and Workshops; and his principal scientific offering, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. He also contributed the article on anarchism to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition[13] and left unfinished a work on anarchist ethical philosophy. Pyotr Kropotkin was born in Moscow, into an ancient Russian princely family. His father, major general Prince Alexei Petrovich Kropotkin, was a descendant of the Smolensk branch,[14] of the Rurik dynasty which had ruled Russia before the rise of the Romanovs. Kropotkin's father owned large tracts of land and nearly 1,200 male serfs in three provinces.[15] His mother was the daughter of a Cossack general.[15] "Under the influence of republican teachings", Kropotkin dropped his princely title at age 12, and "even rebuked his friends, when they so referred to him."[16] In 1857, at age 14, Kropotkin enrolled in the Corps of Pages at St. Petersburg.[17] Only 150 boys - mostly children of nobility belonging to the court - were educated in this privileged corps, which combined the character of a military school endowed with exclusive rights and of a court institution attached to the Imperial Household. Kropotkin's memoirs detail the hazing and other abuse of pages for which the Corps had become notorious.