Sergey Nechayev
Encyclopedia
Sergey Gennadiyevich Nyechayev was a Russian revolutionary
associated with the Nihilist movement
and known for his single-minded pursuit of revolution by any means necessary, including political violence.
, 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 his 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 10, Nechayev 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. Nechayev's response was: "I won't wipe the boots of those devils." His family paid for good tutors who taught him Latin, German, French, History, Maths and Rhetoric.
In 1865 at age 18, Nechayev moved to Moscow
, where he worked for the historian Mikhael Pogodin. A year later, he moved to St. Petersburg, passed a teacher's exam and began teaching at a parish
school. From September 1868, Nechayev attended lectures at St. 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 Chernyshevsky's novel What Is to Be Done?.
Inspired by the failed attempt on the Tsar's life by Karakozov, Nechayev participated in student activism in 1868-1869, leading a radical
minority
with Petr Tkachev
and others. Nechayev 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 Nechayev would become famous.
In December 1868 he met Vera Zasulich
(who would assassinate Trepov, governor of St. 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 Robespierre and St Just on the table while reading. At these meetings he plotted to assassinate the Tsar on the 9th anniversary of serfdom's abolition.
The last of these student meetings occurred on January 28 1869. Nechayev presented a petition calling for freedom of assembly for students. "Those that do not fear for their own skin, let them separate themselves from the rest; let them write their names on this petition." 97 did though he wouldn't say what he'd do with the petition. Two days later, he handed it to the police, intending to radicalize the students through prison and exile.
, Switzerland
, he pretended to be a representative of a revolutionary committee
who had fled from the Peter and Paul Fortress
, and he won the confidence of revolutionary-in-exile Mikhail Bakunin
(who called him 'my boy')and his friend and collaborator Nikolai Ogarev. Ogarev, on Bakunin's suggestion, dedicated a poem to Nechayev:
Bakunin saw in Nechayev the authentic voice of Russian youth, which he regarded as "the most revolutionary in the world". He would hold onto this idealised vision long after his association with Nechayev became damaging to him.
Ogarev, Bakunin and Nechayev 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 Nechayev's fanaticism and strongly opposed the campaign, believing Nechayev 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.
Nechayev had a list of 387 people who were sent 560 parcels of leaflets for distribution April-August 1869. The idea was the activists would be caught, punished and radicalized. Amongst these people was Vera Zasulich, she got five years exile because of a crudely coded letter Nechayev sent.
", a program for the "merciless destruction" of society and the state. The main principle of the "Catechism
" — "the ends justify the means" — became Nechayev's slogan
throughout his revolutionary career. He saw the ruthless immorality in the pursuit of total control by the Church and State, and believed that the struggle against them must therefore be carried out by any means necessary, with an unwavering focus on their destruction. The individual self is to be subsumed by a greater purpose in a kind of spiritual asceticism
which for Nechayev was far more than just a theory, but the guiding principle by which he lived his life. According to the Catechism,
The book was to influence generations of radicals, and was re-published by the Black Panther Party
in 1969 — one hundred years since its original publication. It also influenced the formation of the militant Red Brigades
in Italy the same year.
of a secret society called Narodnaya Rasprava (Народная расправа, "People's Reprisal"), which, he claimed, had existed for quite some time in every corner of Russia. He spoke passionately to student dissidents about the need to organise. Marxist writer Vera Zasulich
(whose sister Alexandra sheltered him in Moscow) recalls that when she first met Nechayev, he immediately tried to recruit her:
Many were impressed by the young proletarian and joined the group. However, the already fanatical Nechayev appeared to be becoming more distrustful of the people around him, even denouncing Bakunin as doctrinaire, "idly running off at the mouth and on paper". One Narodnaya Rasprava member, I. I. Ivanov, disagreed with Nechayev about the distribution of propaganda, and left the group. On November 21, 1869, Nechayev and several comrades beat, strangled and shot Ivanov, hiding the body in a lake through a hole in the ice. This incident was fictionalised by writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky in his political novel, Demons, published three years later, in which the character, Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky, is based on Nechayev.
The body was soon found, and some of his colleagues arrested, but Nechayev eluded capture, and left for Saint Petersburg
in late November where he tried to continue his activities to create a clandestine society. On December 15, 1869, he fled the country, heading back to Geneva.
s aimed at different strata of the Russian population. Together with Ogarev, he published the Kolokol magazine (April-May, 1870, issues 1 to 6). In his article "The Fundamentals of the Future Social System" (Главные основы будущего общественного строя), published in the People's Reprisal (1870, №2), Nechayev shared his vision of a communist system which Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels
would later call "barracks communism
".
However Nechayev's suspicion of his comrades had grown even greater, and he began stealing letters and private papers with which to blackmail Bakunin and his fellow exiles, should the need arise. He enlisted the help of Herzen's daughter Natalie. Bakunin rebuked Nechayev upon discovery of his duplicity: "Lies, cunning [and] entanglement [are] a necessary and marvelous means for demoralising and destroying the enemy, though certainly not a useful means of obtaining and attracting new friends". Although Bakunin continued to defend the young radical he called "my tiger cub", he began warning friends about his behaviour.
The General Council of peak left-wing organisation the "First International"
officially dissociated themselves from him, claiming he had abused the name of the organisation. After writing a letter to a publisher on Bakunin's behalf, threatening to kill the publisher if he didn't release Bakunin from a contract, Nechayev became even more isolated from his comrades. First International member German Lopatin
accused him of theoretical unscrupulousness and pernicious behaviour, prompting Ogarev and Bakunin to publicly sever their relations with him in the summer of 1870 — although Bakunin continued to write Nechayev letters passionately begging for reconciliation and warning him of the danger he was in from the law, who were still pursuing him for Ivanov's murder.
In September 1870, Nechayev published an issue of the Commune magazine in London
and later, hiding from the tsarist police
, went underground in Paris
and then Zurich
. He also kept in touch with the Polish
blanquists, such as Caspar Turski and others. In 1872, Karl Marx
produced the threatening letter Nechayev had written to the publisher at a meeting of the First International
, in which Bakunin was also expelled from the organisation.
On August 14, 1872, Nechayev was arrested in Zurich
and handed over to the Russian police. He was found guilty on January 8, 1873, and sentenced to 20 years of katorga
(hard labor) for killing Ivanov. Nechayev, while locked up in a ravelin
of the Peter and Paul Fortress, managed to win over his guards with the strength of his convictions, and by the late 1870s, he was using them to pass on correspondence with revolutionaries on the outside. In December 1880, Nechayev established contact with the Executive Committee of Narodnaya Volya and proposed a plan for his escape. However, he abandoned the plan due to his unwillingness to distract the efforts of the members of Narodnaya Volya from attempting to assassinate Alexander II
.
Vera Zasulich, who ten years earlier had been among those investigated for Ivanov's murder, heard that a young political prisoner had been flogged, by order of the head of the St. Petersburg police, General Trepov
. Though not a follower of Nechayev, she was outraged by his mistreatment and plight of other political prisoners, and she walked into Trepov's office and shot and wounded him. In an indication of the popular political feeling of the time, she was found not guilty by the jury on the grounds that she had acted out of noble intent.
In 1882, Nechayev died in his cell.
Despite his personal courage and fanatical dedication to the revolutionary cause, Nechayev's methods (later called Nechayevshchina) were viewed to have caused harm to the Russian revolutionary movement by endangering clandestine organizations. According to a playwright Edward Radzinsky Nechayev's methods and ideas have been successfully implemented by many revolutionaries including Vladimir Lenin
and Joseph Stalin
.
Revolutionary
A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.-Definition:...
associated with the Nihilist movement
Nihilist movement
The Nihilist movement was a Russian movement in the 1860s which rejected all authorities. It is derived from the Latin word "nihil", which means "nothing"...
and known for his single-minded pursuit of revolution by any means necessary, including political violence.
Early life in Russia
Nechayev was born in IvanovoIvanovo
Ivanovo is a city and the administrative center of Ivanovo Oblast, Russia. Population: Ivanovo has traditionally been called the textile capital of Russia. Since most textile workers are women, it has also been known as the "City of Brides"...
, 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 his two sisters and grandparents. They were ex serfs who had moved to Ivanovo. He had already developed an awareness of social inequality
Social inequality
Social inequality refers to a situation in which individual groups in a society do not have equal social status. Areas of potential social inequality include voting rights, freedom of speech and assembly, the extent of property rights and access to education, health care, quality housing and other...
and a resentment of the local nobility in his youth. At 10, Nechayev 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. Nechayev's response was: "I won't wipe the boots of those devils." His family paid for good tutors who taught him Latin, German, French, History, Maths and Rhetoric.
In 1865 at age 18, Nechayev moved to Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, where he worked for the historian Mikhael Pogodin. A year later, he moved to St. Petersburg, passed a teacher's exam and began teaching at a parish
Parish
A parish is a territorial unit historically under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of one parish priest, who might be assisted in his pastoral duties by a curate or curates - also priests but not the parish priest - from a more or less central parish church with its associated organization...
school. From September 1868, Nechayev attended lectures at St. Petersburg University (as an auditor, he was never enrolled) and became acquainted with the subversive Russian literature of the Decembrists, the Petrashevsky Circle
Petrashevsky Circle
The Petrashevsky Circle was a Russian literary discussion group of progressive-minded commoner-intellectuals in St. Petersburg organized by Mikhail Petrashevsky, a follower of the French utopian socialist Charles Fourier. Among the members were writers, teachers, students, minor government...
, and Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a well-known Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism. He has also often been called the father of anarchist theory in general. Bakunin grew up near Moscow, where he moved to study philosophy and began to read the French Encyclopedists,...
, 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 Chernyshevsky's novel What Is to Be Done?.
Inspired by the failed attempt on the Tsar's life by Karakozov, Nechayev participated in student activism in 1868-1869, leading a radical
Radicalism (historical)
The term Radical was used during the late 18th century for proponents of the Radical Movement. It later became a general pejorative term for those favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic changes to the social order...
minority
Minority group
A minority is a sociological group within a demographic. The demographic could be based on many factors from ethnicity, gender, wealth, power, etc. The term extends to numerous situations, and civilizations within history, despite the misnomer of minorities associated with a numerical statistic...
with Petr Tkachev
Petr Tkachev
Pyotr Nikitich Tkachev, also spelled Pyotr Nikitich Tkachyov was a Russian writer and critic who formulated many of the revolutionary principles to later influence and be adopted by Vladimir Lenin...
and others. Nechayev took part in devising this student movement's "Program of revolutionary activities", which stated later a social revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political 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
Catechism of a Revolutionary
The Revolutionary Catechism or Catechism of a Revolutionary refers to two documents:*a manifesto written by a Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin in 1865-1866;...
, for which Nechayev would become famous.
Vera Zasulich
Vera Ivanovna Zasulich was a Russian Marxist writer and revolutionary.-Radical beginnings:Zasulich was born in Mikhaylovka, Russia, one of four daughters of an impoverished minor noble. When she was 3, her father died and her mother sent her to live with her wealthier relatives, the Mikulich...
(who would assassinate Trepov, governor of St. 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 Robespierre and St Just on the table while reading. At these meetings he plotted to assassinate the Tsar on the 9th anniversary of serfdom's abolition.
The last of these student meetings occurred on January 28 1869. Nechayev presented a petition calling for freedom of assembly for students. "Those that do not fear for their own skin, let them separate themselves from the rest; let them write their names on this petition." 97 did though he wouldn't say what he'd do with the petition. Two days later, he handed it to the police, intending to radicalize the students through prison and exile.
The Geneva exiles
In January 1869, Nechayev spread false rumors of his arrest in St. Petersburg, then left for Moscow before heading abroad. He tried to get Zasulich to immigrate with him by declaring love for her, she refused. He sent her a latter claiming to have been arrested. In GenevaGeneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, he pretended to be a representative of a revolutionary committee
Committee
A committee is a type of small deliberative assembly that is usually intended to remain subordinate to another, larger deliberative assembly—which when organized so that action on committee requires a vote by all its entitled members, is called the "Committee of the Whole"...
who had fled from the Peter and Paul Fortress
Peter and Paul Fortress
The Peter and Paul Fortress is the original citadel of St. Petersburg, Russia, founded by Peter the Great in 1703 and built to Domenico Trezzini's designs from 1706-1740.-History:...
, and he won the confidence of revolutionary-in-exile Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a well-known Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism. He has also often been called the father of anarchist theory in general. Bakunin grew up near Moscow, where he moved to study philosophy and began to read the French Encyclopedists,...
(who called him 'my boy')and his friend and collaborator Nikolai Ogarev. Ogarev, on Bakunin's suggestion, dedicated a poem to Nechayev:
- THE STUDENT (To my young friend Nechaev)
- He was born to a wretched fate
- And taught in a hard school,
- And suffered interminable torments
- In years of unceasing labor.
- But as the years swept by
- His love for the people grew stronger
- And fiercer his thirst for the common good
- The thirst to improve man's fate.
Bakunin saw in Nechayev the authentic voice of Russian youth, which he regarded as "the most revolutionary in the world". He would hold onto this idealised vision long after his association with Nechayev became damaging to him.
Ogarev, Bakunin and Nechayev organized a propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
campaign
Advertising campaign
An advertising campaign is a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme which make up an integrated marketing communication...
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
Alexander Herzen
Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen was a Russian pro-Western writer and thinker known as the "father of Russian socialism", and one of the main fathers of agrarian populism...
disliked Nechayev's fanaticism and strongly opposed the campaign, believing Nechayev 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.
Nechayev had a list of 387 people who were sent 560 parcels of leaflets for distribution April-August 1869. The idea was the activists would be caught, punished and radicalized. Amongst these people was Vera Zasulich, she got five years exile because of a crudely coded letter Nechayev sent.
Catechism of a Revolutionary
In late spring 1869, Nechayev wrote the "Catechism of a RevolutionaryCatechism of a Revolutionary
The Revolutionary Catechism or Catechism of a Revolutionary refers to two documents:*a manifesto written by a Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin in 1865-1866;...
", a program for the "merciless destruction" of society and the state. The main principle of the "Catechism
Catechism
A catechism , i.e. to indoctrinate) is a summary or exposition of doctrine, traditionally used in Christian religious teaching from New Testament times to the present...
" — "the ends justify the means" — became Nechayev's slogan
Slogan
A slogan is a memorable motto or phrase used in a political, commercial, religious and other context as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose. The word slogan is derived from slogorn which was an Anglicisation of the Scottish Gaelic sluagh-ghairm . Slogans vary from the written and the...
throughout his revolutionary career. He saw the ruthless immorality in the pursuit of total control by the Church and State, and believed that the struggle against them must therefore be carried out by any means necessary, with an unwavering focus on their destruction. The individual self is to be subsumed by a greater purpose in a kind of spiritual asceticism
Asceticism
Asceticism describes a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from various sorts of worldly pleasures often with the aim of pursuing religious and spiritual goals...
which for Nechayev was far more than just a theory, but the guiding principle by which he lived his life. According to the Catechism,
The book was to influence generations of radicals, and was re-published by the Black Panther Party
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party wasan African-American revolutionary leftist organization. It was active in the United States from 1966 until 1982....
in 1969 — one hundred years since its original publication. It also influenced the formation of the militant Red Brigades
Red Brigades
The Red Brigades was a Marxist-Leninist terrorist organisation, based in Italy, which was responsible for numerous violent incidents, assassinations, and robberies during the so-called "Years of Lead"...
in Italy the same year.
Return to Russia
Having left Russia illegally, Nechayev had to sneak back to Moscow via Romania in August 1869 with help from Bakunin's underground contacts. On the way he met Christo Botev, a Bulgarian revolutionary. In Moscow he lived an austere life, spending the fund only on political activities. He pretended to be a proxy of the Russian department of the "Worldwide Revolutionary Union" (which didn't exist) and created an affiliateAffiliate
An affiliate is a commercial entity with a relationship with a peer or a larger entity.- Corporate structure :A corporation may be referred to as an affiliate of another when it is related to it but not strictly controlled by it, as with a subsidiary relationship, or when it is desired to avoid...
of a secret society called Narodnaya Rasprava (Народная расправа, "People's Reprisal"), which, he claimed, had existed for quite some time in every corner of Russia. He spoke passionately to student dissidents about the need to organise. Marxist writer Vera Zasulich
Vera Zasulich
Vera Ivanovna Zasulich was a Russian Marxist writer and revolutionary.-Radical beginnings:Zasulich was born in Mikhaylovka, Russia, one of four daughters of an impoverished minor noble. When she was 3, her father died and her mother sent her to live with her wealthier relatives, the Mikulich...
(whose sister Alexandra sheltered him in Moscow) recalls that when she first met Nechayev, he immediately tried to recruit her:
- 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... 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.
Many were impressed by the young proletarian and joined the group. However, the already fanatical Nechayev appeared to be becoming more distrustful of the people around him, even denouncing Bakunin as doctrinaire, "idly running off at the mouth and on paper". One Narodnaya Rasprava member, I. I. Ivanov, disagreed with Nechayev about the distribution of propaganda, and left the group. On November 21, 1869, Nechayev and several comrades beat, strangled and shot Ivanov, hiding the body in a lake through a hole in the ice. This incident was fictionalised by writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky in his political novel, Demons, published three years later, in which the character, Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky, is based on Nechayev.
The body was soon found, and some of his colleagues arrested, but Nechayev eluded capture, and left for Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
in late November where he tried to continue his activities to create a clandestine society. On December 15, 1869, he fled the country, heading back to Geneva.
Downfall
Nechayev was embraced by Bakunin and Ogarev on his return to Switzerland in January 1870 — Bakunin wrote "I so jumped for joy that I nearly smashed the ceiling with my old head!" Soon after their reunion, Herzen died, and a large fund from his personal wealth was made available to Nechayev to continue his political activities. Nechayev issued a number of proclamationProclamation
A proclamation is an official declaration.-England and Wales:In English law, a proclamation is a formal announcement , made under the great seal, of some matter which the King in Council or Queen in Council desires to make known to his or her subjects: e.g., the declaration of war, or state of...
s aimed at different strata of the Russian population. Together with Ogarev, he published the Kolokol magazine (April-May, 1870, issues 1 to 6). In his article "The Fundamentals of the Future Social System" (Главные основы будущего общественного строя), published in the People's Reprisal (1870, №2), Nechayev shared his vision of a communist system which Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
and Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
would later call "barracks communism
Barracks communism
Barracks communism is the term coined by Karl Marx to refer to a 'crude', authoritarian forced collectivism and communism, where all aspects of life are bureaucratically regimented and communal...
".
However Nechayev's suspicion of his comrades had grown even greater, and he began stealing letters and private papers with which to blackmail Bakunin and his fellow exiles, should the need arise. He enlisted the help of Herzen's daughter Natalie. Bakunin rebuked Nechayev upon discovery of his duplicity: "Lies, cunning [and] entanglement [are] a necessary and marvelous means for demoralising and destroying the enemy, though certainly not a useful means of obtaining and attracting new friends". Although Bakunin continued to defend the young radical he called "my tiger cub", he began warning friends about his behaviour.
The General Council of peak left-wing organisation the "First International"
International Workingmen's Association
The International Workingmen's Association , sometimes called the First International, was an international organization which aimed at uniting a variety of different left-wing socialist, communist and anarchist political groups and trade union organizations that were based on the working class...
officially dissociated themselves from him, claiming he had abused the name of the organisation. After writing a letter to a publisher on Bakunin's behalf, threatening to kill the publisher if he didn't release Bakunin from a contract, Nechayev became even more isolated from his comrades. First International member German Lopatin
German Lopatin
German Lopatin was a Russian revolutionary, journalist and writer.-Biography:...
accused him of theoretical unscrupulousness and pernicious behaviour, prompting Ogarev and Bakunin to publicly sever their relations with him in the summer of 1870 — although Bakunin continued to write Nechayev letters passionately begging for reconciliation and warning him of the danger he was in from the law, who were still pursuing him for Ivanov's murder.
In September 1870, Nechayev published an issue of the Commune magazine in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and later, hiding from the tsarist police
Police
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...
, went underground in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and then Zurich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
. He also kept in touch with the Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
blanquists, such as Caspar Turski and others. In 1872, Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
produced the threatening letter Nechayev had written to the publisher at a meeting of the First International
International Workingmen's Association
The International Workingmen's Association , sometimes called the First International, was an international organization which aimed at uniting a variety of different left-wing socialist, communist and anarchist political groups and trade union organizations that were based on the working class...
, in which Bakunin was also expelled from the organisation.
On August 14, 1872, Nechayev was arrested in Zurich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
and handed over to the Russian police. He was found guilty on January 8, 1873, and sentenced to 20 years of katorga
Katorga
Katorga was a system of penal servitude of the prison farm type in Tsarist Russia...
(hard labor) for killing Ivanov. Nechayev, while locked up in a ravelin
Ravelin
A ravelin is a triangular fortification or detached outwork, located in front of the innerworks of a fortress...
of the Peter and Paul Fortress, managed to win over his guards with the strength of his convictions, and by the late 1870s, he was using them to pass on correspondence with revolutionaries on the outside. In December 1880, Nechayev established contact with the Executive Committee of Narodnaya Volya and proposed a plan for his escape. However, he abandoned the plan due to his unwillingness to distract the efforts of the members of Narodnaya Volya from attempting to assassinate Alexander II
Alexander II of Russia
Alexander II , also known as Alexander the Liberator was the Emperor of the Russian Empire from 3 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881...
.
Vera Zasulich, who ten years earlier had been among those investigated for Ivanov's murder, heard that a young political prisoner had been flogged, by order of the head of the St. Petersburg police, General Trepov
Fyodor Trepov
Fedor Fedorovich Trepov Senior was a Russian government official.Feodor Trepov began his military career in 1831 by participating in the suppression of the November Uprising in Poland in 1830–1831. He then commanded a cavalry regiment of gendarmes in Kiev...
. Though not a follower of Nechayev, she was outraged by his mistreatment and plight of other political prisoners, and she walked into Trepov's office and shot and wounded him. In an indication of the popular political feeling of the time, she was found not guilty by the jury on the grounds that she had acted out of noble intent.
In 1882, Nechayev died in his cell.
Despite his personal courage and fanatical dedication to the revolutionary cause, Nechayev's methods (later called Nechayevshchina) were viewed to have caused harm to the Russian revolutionary movement by endangering clandestine organizations. According to a playwright Edward Radzinsky Nechayev's methods and ideas have been successfully implemented by many revolutionaries including Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
and Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
.