SOURCE: "St. Petersburg—First Journey to Western Europe," in Memoirs of a Revolutionist, 1899. Reprint by Black Rose Books, 1989, pp. 209-319.

Peter Kropotkin, a Russian of noble descent who lived most of his adult life in London, was the primary anarchist theorist of the late-nineteenth century. His writings include Mutual Aid, a seminal text of anarcho-communism, and the autobiographical Memoirs of a Revolutionist. In the following excerpt from his memoirs, originally published in 1899, Kropotkin recalls the mark Bakunin had made on a group of Swiss radicals.

Bakúnin was at that time at Locarno. I did not see him, and now regret it very much, because he was dead when I returned four years later to Switzerland. It was he who had helped the Jura friends to clear up their ideas and to formulate their aspirations; he who had inspired them with his powerful, burning, irresistible revolutionary enthusiasm. As...