I don’t know why it surprised me but I have always had a pragmatic admiration of Lenin and developed my political leanings from Kropotkin.

Mutual aid highlights the natural way to live before society became corrupted with greed and power (I believe they call it capitalism) but Kropotkin was naive in his belief that this could be achieved by education alone.

Who knows what Russia would have been like had Lenin lived longer and Stalin never came to power.

The joys of what ifs. Philosophy is good but it also has to be applied practically in order to flourish.