These periodical memoirs were written to capture the journey of Kropotkin's life, showing how he eventually arrived at his famous philosophy of social anarchy.
He begins by telling of his childhood. He was an aristocrat by birth whose family was pretty wealthy. They afford him an education in the military where he became an officer in the Russian Army, but then, after several missions in Siberia, he ended his career by dishonorable discharge. He was arrested for his political beliefs in 1874, but he escaped his incarceration a couple of years later.
Then he spent many years in Switzerland, living as an expatriate, laying low in exile, and then he traveled to France. Again, he found himself in trouble with the law, and he spent four years in prison in France. After some time in England, he returned to Russia.
