Peter Kropotkin - How many scientific papers did you write?
Thanks for asking. I published about 50-100 papers, depending on what you want to count.
My core scientific field was geography, with an emphasis on glaciology. I published 40–50 papers on ice sheet formation, river basins, orography (mountain structures), permafrost, exploration reports and the glacial history of Siberia. These papers appeared in the Royal Geographical Society, Nature, The Geographical Journal, and Russian imperial science publications.
I also published 10–15 scientific essays in biology and anthropology. My book Mutual Aid, although best known as political philosophy, is a collection of my scientific critiques of Social Darwinism.
I also wrote another 10-20 short papers on mathematics, cartographic studies, and summaries of physical geography, plus I wrote several major entries in the Encyclopædia Britannica, and a variety of reports to the Russian Geographical Society.
I prefer to be modest, but in the interest of accuracy, I need to explain that there’s a glacier in Siberia named after me, and a mountain range, and I was elected to the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
Do you have a favorite geographic place in the world?
My first and deepest love is for Siberia. I spent years as a young officer and geographer mapping and exploring Siberia and Manchuria. Siberia gave me “a sense of boundless freedom.” I adored the taiga forests, the steppes, the profound quiet, the generosity of indigenous Siberian peoples, and the harsh beauty that “made equality natural.”
Siberia is where I discovered freedom and became a revolutionary.
I love other places too. My happiest refuge was in the Jura Mountains of Switzerland, living among watchmakers and anarchists. I adored this region because it embodied mutual aid; The watchmakers worked in decentralized networks, they organized cooperatively and helped one another survive long winters. The Jura is “the cradle of the anarchist spirit.”
London also became the intellectual home I never expected to love, particularly the East End. I admired the mutual aid among the poor, the diverse immigrant communities and the freedom of speech and press. London’s working class had a spirit of cooperation, with “the best of humanity” living there.
Was there anything about studying geography that made you an anarchist?
Absolutely — Yes. My geographical explorations destroyed my faith in hierarchy, empire, and centralized rule, they transformed me from a prince into a revolutionary. Geography showed me cooperation—not competition—is the rule of nature. As I explored Siberia and Manchuria, I saw animals surviving through cooperation, not tooth-and-claw competition, I saw human communities thriving through mutual aid, especially under harsh conditions, I saw entire ecosystems functioning through balance, not dominance. These observations led me to my central argument, that mutual aid is a law of nature. This became the foundation of my anarchist ethics.
Geographical expeditions also revealed to me the cruelty and stupidity of centralized authority. My travels showed me peasants managing forests better than the state, villages starving while granaries overflowed, and enormous local knowledge totally ignored by Russian bureaucrats. I realized poverty is not caused by nature, hunger isn’t caused by scarcity, and inequality isn’t caused by lack of abilities. Wealth inequity is caused by property, the state structure, and exploitation.
Geography made me see the world as interconnected. Geographers study networks — watersheds, trade routes, climatic flows. I came to believe that no region is self-contained, no nation is independent, no empire is sustainable, and humanity is fundamentally interdependent This inspired my belief in global anarchist federalism — a world of communities cooperating freely across regions.
On my expeditions I stayed with indigenous Siberian tribes, Chinese farmers, Russian peasants, exiles, hunters, and traveling laborers. I admired their ingenuity, generosity, and autonomy. I realized ordinary people can organize their lives without without bosses, and without the state. “The peasant and the worker taught me more of liberty than all the philosophers.”
Geography didn’t just influence my anarchism; it created it. Through studying geography I saw cooperation, not domination; wisdom in the people, folly in the rulers.