opposite Oranienbaum on the Russian mainland, and, lying close to Kronstadt, has been strongly guarded by batteries. The approach to the capital has been greatly facilitated by the construction in 1875–1885 of a canal, 23 ft. deep, through the shallows. The town of Kronstadt is built on level ground, and is thus exposed to inundations, from one of which it suffered in 1824. On the south side of the town there are three harbours—the large western or merchant harbour, the western flank of which is formed by a great mole joining the fortifications which traverse the breadth of the island on this side; the middle harbour, used chiefly for fitting out and repairing vessels; and the eastern or war harbour for vessels of the Russian navy. The Peter and Catherine canals, communicating with the merchant and middle harbours, traverse the town. Between them stood the old Italian palace of Prince Menshikov, the site of which is now occupied by the pilot school. Among other public buildings are the naval hospital, the British seaman’s hospital (established in 1867), the civic hospital, admiralty (founded 1785), arsenal, dockyards and foundries, school of marine engineering, the cathedral of St Andrew, and the English church. The port is ice-bound for 140 to 160 days in the year, from the beginning of December till April. A very large proportion of the inhabitants are sailors, and large numbers of artisans are employed in the dockyards. Kronstadt was founded in 1710 by Peter the Great, who took the island of Kotlin from the Swedes in 1703, when the first fortifications were constructed. (P. A. K.; J. T. Be.)
KROONSTAD, a town of Orange River Colony, 127 m. by
rail N.E. of Bloemfontein and 130 m. S.W. of Johannesburg.
Pop. (1904), 7191, of whom 3708 were whites. Kroonstad lies
4489 ft. above the sea and is built on the banks of the Valsch
River, a perennial tributary of the Vaal. It is a busy town,
being the centre of a rich agricultural district and of the
diamond and coal-mining industry of the north-western parts
of the colony. It is also a favourite residential place and
resort of visitors from Johannesburg. It enjoys a healthy
climate, affords opportunities for boating rare in South Africa,
and boasts a golf-links. The principal building is the Dutch
Reformed church in the centre of the market square.
On the capture of Bloemfontein by the British during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902 Kroonstad was chosen by the Orange Free State Boers as the capital of the state, a dignity it held from the 13th of March to the 11th of May 1900. On the following day the town was occupied by Lord Roberts. The linking of the town in 1906 with the Natal system made the route via Kroonstad the shortest railway connexion between Cape Town and Durban. Another line goes N.W. from Kroonstad to Klerksdorp, passing (17 miles) the Lace diamond mine and (45 miles) the coal mines at Vierfontein.
KROPOTKIN, PETER ALEXEIVICH, Prince (1842– ),
Russian geographer, author and revolutionary, was born at
Moscow in 1842. His father, Prince Alexei Petrovich Kropotkin,
belonged to the old Russian nobility; his mother, the daughter
of a general in the Russian army, had remarkable literary and
liberal tastes. At the age of fifteen Prince Peter Kropotkin, who
had been designed by his father for the army, entered the Corps
of Pages at St Petersburg (1857). Only a hundred and fifty
boys—mostly children of the nobility belonging to the court—were
educated in this privileged corps, which combined the
character of a military school endowed with special rights and
of a Court institution attached to the imperial household. Here
he remained till 1862, reading widely on his own account, and
giving special attention to the works of the French encyclopaedists
and to modern French history. Before he left Moscow
Prince Kropotkin had developed an interest in the condition of
the Russian peasantry, and this interest increased as he grew
older. The years 1857–1861 witnessed a rich growth in the intellectual
forces of Russia, and Kropotkin came under the influence
of the new Liberal-revolutionary literature, which indeed largely
expressed his own aspirations. In 1862 he was promoted from
the Corps of Pages to the army. The members of the corps had
the prescriptive right of choosing the regiment to which they
would be attached. Kropotkin had never wished for a military
career, but, as he had not the means to enter the St Petersburg
University, he elected to join a Siberian Cossack regiment in the
recently annexed Amur district, where there were prospects of
administrative work. For some time he was aide de camp
to the governor of Transbaikalia at Chita, subsequently being
appointed attaché for Cossack affairs to the governor-general of
East Siberia at Irkutsk. Opportunities for administrative work,
however, were scanty, and in 1864 Kropotkin accepted charge
of a geographical survey expedition, crossing North Manchuria
from Transbaikalia to the Amur, and shortly afterwards was
attached to another expedition which proceeded up the Sungari
River into the heart of Manchuria. Both these expeditions
yielded most valuable geographical results. The impossibility
of obtaining any real administrative reforms in Siberia now
induced Kropotkin to devote himself almost entirely to scientific
exploration, in which he continued to be highly successful. In
1867 he quitted the army and returned to St Petersburg, where
he entered the university, becoming at the same time secretary
to the physical geography section of the Russian Geographical
Society. In 1873 he published an important contribution to
science, a map and paper in which he proved that the existing
maps of Asia entirely misrepresented the physical formation of
the country, the main structural lines being in fact from
south-west to north-east, not from north to south, or from east
to west as had been previously supposed. In 1871 he explored
the glacial deposits of Finland and Sweden for the Russian
Geographical Society, and while engaged in this work was offered
the secretaryship of that society. But by this time he had
determined that it was his duty not to work at fresh discoveries
but to aid in diffusing existing knowledge among the people at
large, and he accordingly refused the offer, and returned to
St Petersburg, where he joined the revolutionary party. In 1872
he visited Switzerland, and became a member of the International
Workingmen’s Association at Geneva. The socialism
of this body was not, however, advanced enough for his views,
and after studying the programme of the more violent Jura
Federation at Neuchâtel and spending some time in the company
of the leading members, he definitely adopted the creed of
anarchism
(q.v.) and, on returning to Russia, took an active part
in spreading the nihilist propaganda. In 1874 he was arrested
and imprisoned, but escaped in 1876 and went to England,
removing after a short stay to Switzerland, where he joined the
Jura Federation. In 1877 he went to Paris, where he helped to
start the socialist movement, returning to Switzerland in 1878,
where he edited for the Jura Federation a revolutionary newspaper,
Le Révolté, subsequently also publishing various revolutionary
pamphlets. Shortly after the assassination of the tsar
Alexander II. (1881) Kropotkin was expelled from Switzerland by
the Swiss government, and after a short stay at Thonon (Savoy)
went to London, where he remained for nearly a year, returning
to Thonon towards the end of 1882. Shortly afterwards he was
arrested by the French government, and, after a trial at Lyons,
sentenced by a police-court magistrate (under a special law passed
on the fall of the Commune) to five years’ imprisonment, on the
ground that he had belonged to the International Workingmen’s
Association (1883). In 1886 however, as the result of repeated
agitation on his behalf in the French Chamber, he was released,
and settled near London.
Prince Kropotkin’s authority as a writer on Russia is universally acknowledged, and he has contributed largely to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Among his other works may be named Paroles d’un révolté (1884); La Conquête du pain (1888); L’Anarchie: sa philosophie, son idéal (1896); The State, its Part in History (1898); Fields, Factories and Workshops (1899); Memoirs of a Revolutionist (1900); Mutual Aid, a Factor of Evolution (1902); Modern Science and Anarchism (Philadelphia, 1903); The Desiccation of Asia (1904); The Orography of Asia (1904); and Russian Literature (1905).
KROTOSCHIN (in Polish, Krotoszyn), a town of Germany, in
the Prussian province of Posen, 32 m. S.E. of Posen. Pop. (1900),
12,373. It has three churches, a synagogue, steam saw-mills,
