Sergei
Nechaev, the son of a serf, was born in Ivanovo in 1847. While a student
in St. Petersburg he became involved in radical political activities.
Nechaev
moved to Geneva where he met Mikhail Bakunin.
The two men wrote several political pamphlets together including Catechism
of a Revolutionist (1869) that included the famous passage:
"The Revolutionist is a doomed man. He has no private interests,
no affairs, sentiments, ties, property nor even a name of his own.
His entire being is devoured by one purpose, one thought, one passion
- the revolution. Heart and soul, not merely by word but by deed,
he has severed every link with the social order and with the entire
civilized world; with the laws, good manners, conventions, and morality
of that world. He is its merciless enemy and continues to inhabit
it with only one purpose - to destroy it."
Catechism
of a Revolutionist had a great
influence on radical young students throughout Europe. In August,
1869, Nechaev returned to Russia and settled in Moscow where he set
up a secret terrorist organization, People's Retribution. When one
of its members, I. I. Ivanov, questioned Nechaev's political ideas,
he murdered him. He told the rest of the group, "the ends justify
the means".
Nechaev
went to live in Geneva but when the Russian authorities discovered
he was responsible for Ivanov's death, he was extradited from Switzerland.
In 1873 he was found guilty and sentenced to twenty years' hard labour.
He continued to be involved in politics and was in contact with the
People's Will group while in prison. Sergei
Nechaev was
found dead in his cell in 1882.
(1) Mikhail Bakunin
and Sergei Nechayev, Catechism of a Revolutionist
(1869)
The Revolutionist is a doomed man. He has no private
interests, no affairs, sentiments, ties, property nor even a name
of his own. His entire being is devoured by one purpose, one thought,
one passion - the revolution. Heart and soul, not merely by word but
by deed, he has severed every link with the social order and with
the entire civilized world; with the laws, good manners, conventions,
and morality of that world. He is its merciless enemy and continues
to inhabit it with only one purpose - to destroy it.
He
despises public opinion. He hates and despises the social morality
of his time, its motives and manifestations. Everything which promotes
the success of the revolution is moral, everything which hinders it
is immoral. The nature of the true revolutionist excludes all romanticism,
all tenderness, all ecstasy, all love.
(2)
When Vera Zasulich met Sergei
Nechayev in 1869 he immediately tried
to recruit her into the People's Retribution group.
Nechayev began to tell me his plans for carrying out
a revolution in Russia in the near future. I felt terrible: it was
really painful for me to say "That's unlikely," "I
don't know about that". I could see that he was very serious,
that this was no idle chatter about revolution. He could and would
act - wasn't he the ringleader of the students?
I could
imagine no greater pleasure than serving the revolution. I had dared
only to dream of it, and yet now he was saying that he wanted to recruit
me, that otherwise he wouldn't have thought of saying anything. And
what did I know of "the people"? I knew only the house serfs
of Biakolovo and the members of my weaving collective, while he was
himself a worker by birth.
Available
from Amazon Books (order below)
