Sofia Grigorievna Kropotkina (née Ananieva-Rabinovich; 1856–1941), commonly known by her anglicised name Sophie Kropotkin, was a Ukrainian teacher, writer, lecturer and museum director.

She then moved to the United Kingdom, where she took up a career in teaching and went on lecture tours of the country, discussing the political issues of the Russian Empire and its revolutionary movement.

[11] Following the assassination of Alexander II of Russia in 1881, the Kropotkin couple volunteered to work for the revolutionary terrorist group Narodnaya Volya, but they were dissuaded by Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky.

[14] Within the space of a year, the two became exhausted by the social isolation they experienced in the city and frustrated by the apathy of local British activists towards the events in Russia.

[15] Despite the risk of her husband's arrest, they decided to move back to France, concluding that even a French prison would be better than life in England: on 26 October 1882, they returned to their house in Thonon.

The Kropotkins were under constant police surveillance and their house was searched by gendarmes, who on one occasion forcibly threw Sophie's dying brother out of his bed.

She wrote to The Boston Globe, alleging that the French Republic's anti-communist laws had enabled him to be convicted without any evidence, and that it had been motivated by a desire to appease the Tsarist autocracy.

[40] As the Kropotkins resumed their political activities in London, they remained fearful of surveillance and infiltration by Russian spies and agents provocateurs, with Sophie screening any strangers before they met her husband.

On one occasion, when a French journalist from the newspaper Le Figaro showed up at their house requesting an interview, Sophie slammed the door in his face.

Assisted by Charlotte Wilson, she became a popular public speaker, lecturing in Surrey and Greater London on the subjects of chemistry and botany; she also wrote a number of scientific articles for The Contemporary Review.

[44] Many people attended her public lectures, in which she discussed the political situation in the Russian Empire, and the British press routinely invoked her title of "Princess".

When she visited Dundee on a lecture tour, the Evening Telegraph wrote of her and other Russian revolutionary women being "selected for the most difficult and dangerous tasks.

[27] At the turn of the 20th century, as her husband fell seriously ill due to overwork, she took to preventing him from further damaging his health, even to such an extent that she would cut him off mid-sentence if she saw him getting too worked up about something.

[47] As Peter believed his illness was to be fatal, he insisted that he spend his last years with his family, but his constitution would prove stronger than he anticipated, allowing him to return to his travels.

[48] In the summer of 1907, Sophie and her husband travelled to Paris, where they met Emma Goldman, who had arrived from North America to attend the International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam.

[53] By the time that their daughter came of age, the Kropotkins had attempted to send her to Russia, but the Tsarist government considered children of Russian citizens born in Britain to be stateless and denied them entry to the country.

[58] Sophie and her husband lived together in centrally-heated rooms, and following the October Revolution, their flatmates helped her sustain the family by taking her place in breadlines.

[59] The two were distressed by the first news of the Red Terror, although Sophie, who appeared to her friends even weaker than her sick husband, was more anxious to find out what had happened to Alexandra.

[61] Having refused an offer from the Soviet government to buy the rights to publishing Peter's literature, the family lived by modest means, together in a single poorly-heated room.

[62] Without telling her husband, who she knew would reject it, Sophie accepted an offer from the People's Commissariat for Education for an academic stipend,[63] which she received for her work as a botanist.

[68] Although towards the end of 1920, her husband had become more optimistic about the prospects of the Russian Revolution, Sophie had herself become more pessimistic, due to widespread food shortages and worsening living conditions.

[75] In April 1921, Sophie received a letter from Mabel Grave, who declared that: "It is my ambition to be to Jean the same sort of wife as you have been to Pierre – your example, the thought of that happy home you made for him, the atmosphere in which he could do his work, will always be an incentive to me to try to do likewise.

[79] Despite disputes with the Soviet government, whose state ideology clashed with Kropotkin's libertarian political theory, Sophie managed to keep the museum open throughout the 1920s and most of the 1930s, up until her death.