Sergei Nechaev

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Lore & Background

Nechaev was born in Ivanovo to poor parents; his father was a waiter and sign painter. His mother died when he was eight, and his father remarried, having two more sons. They lived in a three-room house with their two sisters and grandparents, who were ex-serfs. At age 10, Nechaev 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 tutors who taught him Latin, German, French, history, mathematics, and rhetoric. At 18, he moved to Moscow, working for 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, he attended lectures at Saint Petersburg University as an auditor (never enrolled) and became acquainted with subversive Russian literature of the Decembrists, the Petrashevsky Circle, and Mikhail Bakunin, as well as growing student unrest. 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 Dmitry Karakozov's failed attempt on the Tsar's life, Nechaev participated in student activism in 1868–1869, leading a radical minority with Pyotr Tkachev and others. He helped devise the student movement's 'Program of revolutionary activities,' which stated social revolution as its ultimate goal and suggested ways for creating a revolutionary organization and conducting subversive activities. In December 1868, he met Vera Zasulich at a teachers' meeting and held candlelit readings of revolutionary tracts, placing pictures of Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just on the table. He plotted to assassinate Tsar Alexander II on the 9th anniversary of serfdom's abolition. The last student meeting occurred on 28 January 1869, where he presented a petition calling for freedom of assembly. In January 1869, he spread false rumors of his arrest in Saint Petersburg, then left for Moscow before heading abroad. In Geneva, he pretended to be a representative of a revolutionary committee who had fled from the Peter and Paul Fortress and won the confidence of Mikhail Bakunin (who called him 'my boy') and Nikolai Ogarev. In late spring 1869, he wrote the Catechism of a Revolutionary, whose main principle—the ends justify the means—became his slogan. He returned to Russia via Romania in August 1869, pretending to be a proxy of the Russian department of the Worldwide Revolutionary Union (which did not exist) and created the People's Reprisal Society, issuing the magazine People's Reprisal. On 21 November 1869, Nechaev and several comrades beat, strangled, and shot Ivanov, hiding the body in a lake through a hole in the ice. The body was soon found, and some colleagues were arrested, but Nechaev eluded capture and fled back to Geneva in December 1869.

Reader's Guide

Nechaev's significance lies in his extreme revolutionary ideology, encapsulated in the Catechism of a Revolutionary, which argued that any means, including terror and deceit, were justified to destroy the existing social order. His single-minded fanaticism and willingness to murder a former comrade, Ivan Ivanov, exemplified the lengths to which he would go. Though he died in prison after a twenty-year sentence, his writings influenced later radical groups: the Catechism was republished by the Black Panther Party in 1969, one hundred years after its original publication, and it also influenced the formation of the militant Red Brigades in Italy the same year. Nechaev's life and methods highlighted tensions within the revolutionary movement, as his complicated relationships with fellow revolutionaries caused him to be expelled from the International Workingmen's Association, and Alexander Herzen disliked his fanaticism and strongly opposed his propaganda campaign. His legacy remains a cautionary example of revolutionary extremism.

Did You Know?

• 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?.
• He plotted to assassinate Tsar Alexander II on the 9th anniversary of serfdom's abolition.
• Nechaev pretended to be a representative of a revolutionary committee who had fled from the Peter and Paul Fortress to win the confidence of Mikhail Bakunin.
• The murder of Ivan Ivanov on 21 November 1869 was fictionalised by Fyodor Dostoevsky in his novel Demons, where the character Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky is based on Nechaev.
• The Catechism of a Revolutionary was republished by the Black Panther Party in 1969, one hundred years after its original publication.