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Sergei Nechaev
Sergei Gennadiyevich Nechaev (Russian: Сергей Геннадиевич Нечаев; 2 October [O.S. 20 September] 1847 – 3 December [O.S. 21 November] 1882) was a Russian communist, part of the Russian nihilist movement, known for his single-minded pursuit of revolution by any means necessary, including revolutionary terror.
Nechaev fled Russia in 1869 after having been involved in the murder of a former comrade (Ivan Ivanov), who disagreed with some actions of Nechaevites. Complicated relationships with fellow revolutionaries caused him to be expelled from the International Workingmen's Association. Arrested in Switzerland in 1872, he was extradited back to Russia, where he received a twenty-year sentence and died in prison.
Nechaev was born in Ivanovo, then a small textile town, to poor parents—his father was a waiter and sign painter. His mother died when he was eight. His father remarried and had two more sons. They lived in a three-room house with their two sisters and grandparents. They were ex-serfs who had moved to Ivanovo. He had already developed an awareness of social inequality and a resentment of the local nobility in his youth. At the age of 10, he had learned his father's trades—waiting at banquets and painting signs. His father got him a job as an errand boy in a factory, but he refused the servant's job. His family paid for good tutors who taught him Latin, German, French, history, mathematics and rhetoric.
Aged 18, Nechaev moved to Moscow, where he worked for the historian Mikhael Pogodin. A year later, he moved to Saint Petersburg, passed a teacher's exam, and began teaching at a parish school. From September 1868, Nechaev attended lectures at the Saint Petersburg University as an auditor (he was never enrolled) and became acquainted with the subversive Russian literature of the Decembrists, the Petrashevsky Circle and Mikhail Bakunin among others as well as the growing student unrest at the university. Nechaev was even said to have slept on bare wood and lived on black bread in imitation of Rakhmetov, the ascetic revolutionary in Nikolay Chernyshevsky's novel What Is to Be Done?.
Inspired by the failed attempt on the Tsar's life by Dmitry Karakozov, Nechaev participated in student activism in 1868–1869, leading a radical minority with Pyotr Tkachev and others. Nechaev took part in devising this student movement's "Program of revolutionary activities" which stated later a social revolution as its ultimate goal. The program also suggested ways for creating a revolutionary organization and conducting subversive activities. In particular, the program envisioned composition of the Catechism of a Revolutionary, for which Nechaev would become famous.
In December 1868, Nechaev met Vera Zasulich (who would make an assassination attempt on General Fyodor Trepov, governor of Saint Petersburg in 1878) at a teachers' meeting. He asked her to come to his school where he held candlelit readings of revolutionary tracts. He would place pictures of Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just on the table while reading. At these meetings, he plotted to assassinate Tsar Alexander II on the 9th anniversary of serfdom's abolition. The last of these student meetings occurred on 28 January 1869, where Nechaev presented a petition calling for freedom of assembly for students.
In January 1869, Nechaev spread false rumors of his arrest in Saint Petersburg, then left for Moscow before heading abroad. He tried to get Vera Zasulich to emigrate with him by declaring love for her, but she refused. He sent her a letter claiming to have been arrested. In Geneva, Switzerland, he pretended to be a representative of a revolutionary committee who had fled from the Peter and Paul Fortress and won the confidence of revolutionary-in-exile Mikhail Bakunin (who called him "my boy") and his friend and collaborator Nikolai Ogarev. Bakunin saw in Nechaev the authentic voice of Russian youth which he regarded as "the most revolutionary in the world".
Nechaev, Bakunin, and Ogarev organized a propaganda campaign of subversive material to be sent to Russia, financed by Ogarev from the so-called Bakhmetiev Fund, which had been intended for subsidizing their own revolutionary activities. Alexander Herzen disliked Nechaev's fanaticism and strongly opposed the campaign, believing Nechaev was influencing Bakunin toward more extreme rhetoric. However, Herzen relented to hand over much of the fund to Nechaev, which he was to take to Russia to mobilise support for the revolution. Nechaev had a list of 387 people who were sent 560 parcels of leaflets for distribution April–August 1869. The idea was that the activists would be caught, punished, and radicalized. Amongst these people was Zasulich, who got five years' exile because of a crudely coded letter sent by Nechaev.
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Sergei Nechaev
Sergei Gennadiyevich Nechaev (Russian: Сергей Геннадиевич Нечаев; 2 October [O.S. 20 September] 1847 – 3 December [O.S. 21 November] 1882) was a Russian communist, part of the Russian nihilist movement, known for his single-minded pursuit of revolution by any means necessary, including revolutionary terror.
Nechaev fled Russia in 1869 after having been involved in the murder of a former comrade (Ivan Ivanov), who disagreed with some actions of Nechaevites. Complicated relationships with fellow revolutionaries caused him to be expelled from the International Workingmen's Association. Arrested in Switzerland in 1872, he was extradited back to Russia, where he received a twenty-year sentence and died in prison.
Nechaev was born in Ivanovo, then a small textile town, to poor parents—his father was a waiter and sign painter. His mother died when he was eight. His father remarried and had two more sons. They lived in a three-room house with their two sisters and grandparents. They were ex-serfs who had moved to Ivanovo. He had already developed an awareness of social inequality and a resentment of the local nobility in his youth. At the age of 10, he had learned his father's trades—waiting at banquets and painting signs. His father got him a job as an errand boy in a factory, but he refused the servant's job. His family paid for good tutors who taught him Latin, German, French, history, mathematics and rhetoric.
Aged 18, Nechaev moved to Moscow, where he worked for the historian Mikhael Pogodin. A year later, he moved to Saint Petersburg, passed a teacher's exam, and began teaching at a parish school. From September 1868, Nechaev attended lectures at the Saint Petersburg University as an auditor (he was never enrolled) and became acquainted with the subversive Russian literature of the Decembrists, the Petrashevsky Circle and Mikhail Bakunin among others as well as the growing student unrest at the university. Nechaev was even said to have slept on bare wood and lived on black bread in imitation of Rakhmetov, the ascetic revolutionary in Nikolay Chernyshevsky's novel What Is to Be Done?.
Inspired by the failed attempt on the Tsar's life by Dmitry Karakozov, Nechaev participated in student activism in 1868–1869, leading a radical minority with Pyotr Tkachev and others. Nechaev took part in devising this student movement's "Program of revolutionary activities" which stated later a social revolution as its ultimate goal. The program also suggested ways for creating a revolutionary organization and conducting subversive activities. In particular, the program envisioned composition of the Catechism of a Revolutionary, for which Nechaev would become famous.
In December 1868, Nechaev met Vera Zasulich (who would make an assassination attempt on General Fyodor Trepov, governor of Saint Petersburg in 1878) at a teachers' meeting. He asked her to come to his school where he held candlelit readings of revolutionary tracts. He would place pictures of Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just on the table while reading. At these meetings, he plotted to assassinate Tsar Alexander II on the 9th anniversary of serfdom's abolition. The last of these student meetings occurred on 28 January 1869, where Nechaev presented a petition calling for freedom of assembly for students.
In January 1869, Nechaev spread false rumors of his arrest in Saint Petersburg, then left for Moscow before heading abroad. He tried to get Vera Zasulich to emigrate with him by declaring love for her, but she refused. He sent her a letter claiming to have been arrested. In Geneva, Switzerland, he pretended to be a representative of a revolutionary committee who had fled from the Peter and Paul Fortress and won the confidence of revolutionary-in-exile Mikhail Bakunin (who called him "my boy") and his friend and collaborator Nikolai Ogarev. Bakunin saw in Nechaev the authentic voice of Russian youth which he regarded as "the most revolutionary in the world".
Nechaev, Bakunin, and Ogarev organized a propaganda campaign of subversive material to be sent to Russia, financed by Ogarev from the so-called Bakhmetiev Fund, which had been intended for subsidizing their own revolutionary activities. Alexander Herzen disliked Nechaev's fanaticism and strongly opposed the campaign, believing Nechaev was influencing Bakunin toward more extreme rhetoric. However, Herzen relented to hand over much of the fund to Nechaev, which he was to take to Russia to mobilise support for the revolution. Nechaev had a list of 387 people who were sent 560 parcels of leaflets for distribution April–August 1869. The idea was that the activists would be caught, punished, and radicalized. Amongst these people was Zasulich, who got five years' exile because of a crudely coded letter sent by Nechaev.
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