Sergey Nechayev
Russian communist revolutionary
1847 CE to 1882 CE
Sergey Gennadiyevich Nechayev (October 2, 1847 – November 21 or December 3, 1882) is a Russian communist revolutionary, often associated with the nihilist movement and known for his single-minded pursuit of revolution by any means necessary, including terrorism and revolutionary terror.
He is the author of the radical Catechism of a Revolutionary.
Nechayev flees Russia in 1869 after having been involved in the murder of a former comrade.
Complicated relationships with fellow revolutionaries cause him to be expelled from the International Workingmen's Association.
Arrested in Switzerland in 1872, he is sent back to Russia, where he receives a twenty-year sentence and dies in prison.
The character Pyotr Verkhovensky in Fyodor Dostoevsky's anti-nihilistic novel Demons is based on Nechayev.
Nechayev is often called a "Bolshevik before the Bolsheviks" and many other Russian revolutionaries will be accused of Nechayevshchina by their opponents.
The term is associated with authoritarianism, radicalism and sectarianism in the time that precedes the Russian Revolution of 1917.
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The Great Crossroads
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In the 1860s, Nikolay Chernyshevsky, the most important radical writer of the period, posits that Russia can bypass capitalism and move directly to socialism.
His most influential work, What Is to Be Done? (1861), describes the role of an individual of a "superior nature" who guides a new, revolutionary generation.
Other radicals such as the incendiary anarchist Mikhail Bakunin and his terrorist collaborator, Sergey Nechayev, urge direct action.
The calmer Pyotr Tkachev argues against the advocates of Marxism, maintaining that a centralized revolutionary band has to seize power before socialism can fully develop.
Disputing his views, the moralist and individualist Pyotr Lavrov makes a call "to the people" that is heeded in 1873 and 1874 when hundreds of idealists leave their schools for the countryside to try to generate a mass movement among the narod.
The Populist campaign fails, however, when the peasants show hostility to the urban idealists and the government more willingly begins to consider nationalist opinion.