A truly pathological case: Kropotkin, war and anarchist remembrance

This article examines anarchist responses across three generations to the split in the anarchist movement at the outbreak of the First World War. Focusing on appreciations of Peter Kropotkin’s role in that division, it demonstrates how shifting contextual circumstances and a developing memory of the war subsequently reshaped the narrative of these events in ways that reflected the broader memory of the war. Arguing that curation of a political tradition’s history is central to the self-identity of that tradition, the article investigates this process as successive generations of anarchists tried to make sense of the anarchist split in 1914, and, in turn, define their own political projects.