4. He despises public opinion; he despises and hates the existing social ethic in all its demands and expressions; for him, everything that allows the triumph of the revolution is moral, and everything that stands in its way is immoral.
Paragraph 5. The revolutionary is a lost man; with no pity for the State and for the privileged and educated world in general, he must himself accept no pity. Every day he must be prepared for death. He must be prepared to bear torture.
Paragraph 6. Hard with himself, he must be hard towards others. All the tender feelings of family life, of friendship, of love, gratitude and even honour must be stifled in him by a single cold passion for the revolutionary cause. For him there is only one pleasure, one consolation, one reward, and one satisfaction – the success of the revolution. Day and night he must have one single thought, one single purpose: merciless destruction. With this aim in view, tirelessly and in cold blood, he must be always prepared to die and kill with his own hands anyone who stands in the way of achieving it.
Paragraph 7. The character of the true revolutionary has no place for any romanticism, sentimentality, enthusiasm or seduction. Nor has it any place for private hatred or revenge. This revolutionary passion which in him becomes a daily, hourly passion, must be combined with cold calculation. Always and everywhere he must become not what his own personal inclination would have him become, but what the general interest of the revolution demands.
The other paragraphs in the Catechism, more hair-raising in their details, deal with a variety of subjects, including how to treat each stratum of Russian society and the degree of hatred that must be expended on the upper echelons. The most intelligent personnel in high places pose the biggest threat to the revolution. For these worthies there is a single solution: extermination. Those who are of lesser intelligence should be left alone for the time being, since their stupidity only leads them to make decisions that enrage the people and push them in the direction of revolution. The majority of dignitaries are mere ‘animals’, in constant fear of losing their power and privileges; their punishment (outlined in Paragraph 19) is simple blackmail: ‘We must get hold of their dirty secrets and so make them our slaves.’
The pamphlet concludes with a call to destroy the old state and for a revolution that ‘annihilates all State traditions, order and classes in Russia’. The final paragraphs set out the parameters of what is required and how it should be achieved:
Paragraph 25. To do this we must draw close to the people: we must ally ourselves mainly with those elements of the people’s life which ever since the foundation of the State of Moscow have never given up protesting, not just in words but in deeds, against anything directly or indirectly tied to the state; against the nobility, the bureaucracy, the priests, against the world of guilds and against the kulaks. We must ally ourselves with the doughty world of brigands, who in Russia are the only true revolutionaries.
Paragraph 26. All our organization, all our conspiracy, all our purpose consists in this: to regroup this world of brigands into an invincible and omni-destructive force.
In the fall of 1869, Nechaev returned to Russia and formed a clandestine group that could simultaneously spread the word and accomplish the deed. Notepaper of the still non-existent Central Committee of the People’s Justice, adorned with an interlocking axe, dagger and pistol, was used to intimidate opponents. Up to this point, Nechaev had been regarded as a courageous and charismatic character, with numerous stories about his adventures (many of them untrue) circulating in the Russian underground. Soon after his return to Russia, however, he fell out with Ivanov, another member of his group, for reasons that remain obscure. Nechaev accused Ivanov of being a police agent (for which there was no evidence), charged him with, among other things, a ‘breach of discipline’ (which probably meant a disagreement with Nechaev) and then ambushed and killed him. The discovery of Ivanov’s stabbed body a few days later created a huge sensation. Nechaev was accused of murder and, once again, fled into exile. Three hundred revolutionaries were arrested and seventy-four Nechaevites were tried in 1871, though many of them had not supported their leader’s more outlandish tactics. Bakunin had broken with him in the summer of the previous year for a variety of reasons. He was shocked by the murder, and his vanity was wounded: he had been abandoned by his ‘boy’, who had turned to seducing liberal women to help destroy the bourgeois family. The institution survived the onslaught, though various individual families found themselves the poorer. Nechaev ruthlessly employed blackmail to raise funds for the anarchist cause and, on this particular issue, had Bakunin’s support.
Sympathizers with the movement in Russia were horrified. One of them, Fyodor Dostoevsky, broke publicly and dramatically by devoting an entire novel, The Possessed, to the grisly episode. In the novel, the character Verkhovensky represents Nechaev, while Shatov is based on Ivanov. It’s a savage portrayal and largely justified, but it did not succeed in destroying the appeal of Nechaev, whom many continued to regard as a heroic figure and a courageous revolutionary, not completely without reason. In 1872, Nechaev’s whereabouts were betrayed to the Swiss police by a Polish revolutionary turned Russian spy. Due to the murder of Ivanov, the Swiss did not accept his status as a political exile this time and extradited him, as a criminal, to Russia.
Nechaev remained unbowed at his trial, refusing to accept the authority of the tsarist court. When he was taken for a mock execution, a quaint custom unique to tsarist Russia, he contemptuously rejected the services of a priest. As he was dragged away he shouted his defiance by invoking the peasant leaders Razin and Pugachev, who had strung up the Russian nobles as the French did much later. ‘Before three years are over’, he screamed, ‘their heads will be hacked off on this very spot by the first Russian guillotine. Down with the tsar. Long live Freedom. Long live the Russian people.’
Alexander II read the report of the mock execution and scribbled a marginal note:
As a result of this we have every right to have him tried again as a political criminal. But I don’t think that this would be of much use. And so the more prudent course is to keep him for ever [underlined by the tsar] in prison.
This was the sentence that Nechaev served.
The rest of his life was spent in isolation in cell number 5 of the Alexeyevsky dungeon in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg, where he won over quite a few policemen, soldiers and warders. They were impressed by his intelligence and dignity. He used them to send supportive messages to various groups, including one to the central committee of the People’s Will, on the eve of their fateful, unanimous decision to assassinate Alexander II. As Vera Figner later recalled in her memoirs, they were amazed and excited to hear that Nechaev was still alive. They wanted to postpone the planned assault on the tsar and free Nechaev instead, but he vetoed the plan, insisting that they stick to their original intention. After they had carried out the act, he suggested, there were other imprisoned revolutionaries – including Leon Mirsky, who had tried to assassinate the chief of police – who deserved the honour much more than him.
On 1 March 1881, the decision made by the leadership of the People’s Will was carried out to the letter by a suicide bomber. The tsar, who had survived a number of attempts on his life, was duly assassinated. This emotionless account of the incident by Kropotkin sums up the story:
In February, 1881, Melikoff reported that a new plot had been laid by the Revolutionary Executive Committee, but its plan could not be discovered by any amount of searching. Thereupon Alexander II decided that a sort of deliberative assembly of delegates from the provinces should be called. Always under the idea that he would share the fate of Louis XVI, he described this gathering as an assembly of notables, like the one convoked by Louis XVI before the National Assembly in 1789. The scheme had to be laid before the Council of State, but then again he hesitated. It was only on the morning of March 1 (13), 1881, after a final warning by Loris Melikoff, that he ordered it to be brought before the council on the following Thursday. This was on Sunday, and he was asked by Melikoff not to go out to the parade that day, there being danger of an attempt on his life. Nevertheless he went. He wanted to see the Grand Duchess Catherine, and to carry her the welcome news. He is reported to have told her, ‘I have determined to summon an assembly of notables.’ However, this belated and half-hearted concession had not been made public, and on his way back to the Winter Palace he was killed.