The Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin was the world`s foremost spodesman of anarchism at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries.The Conquest of Bread is his most detailed de*ion of the ideal society ，embodying anarchist communism，and of the social revolution that was to achieve it.Marshall Shatz`s introduction to this edition traces Kropotkin`s evolution as an anarchist from his origins in the Russian aristocracy to his disllusionment with the Russian Revolution，and the volume also includes a hitherto untranslated chapter from his clallic Memeoirs of a Revolutionist，which contains colourful character - sketches of some of his fellow anarchists，as well as an article he wrote summarizing the history of anarchism ，and some of his views on the Revolution.MARSHALL.S.SHATZ，is Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.His Publications include Soviet Dissent in Historical Perspective （Cambridge，1980），Jan Wadaw Machajski：A Radical Critic of the Russian Intelligentsia and Socialism （Pittsburgh，1989），and an edition of Bakunin s Statism and Anarchy for this series（Cambridge，1990）.

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