Sergey Nechayev - Downfall

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 proclamations 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. While clearly not breaking with Nechayev, Bakunin rebuked Nechayev upon discovery of his duplicity: "Lies, cunning entanglement a necessary and marvelous means for demoralising and destroying the enemy, though certainly not a useful means of obtaining and attracting new friends". Bakunin continued to defend the young radical he called "my tiger cub," and even advised Nechayev to form a secret society which used "Jesuit methods or even entanglement" against enemy societies and the government. As Bakunin wrote, "Societies whose aims are near to ours must be forced to merge with our society or, at least, must be subordinated to it without their knowledge, while harmful people must be removed from them. Societies which are inimical or positively harmful must be dissolved, and finally the government must be destroyed. All this cannot be achieved only by propagating the truth; cunning, diplomacy, deceit are necessary." Nevertheless, he began warning friends about Nechayev's 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 the playwright Edward Radzinsky, Nechayev's methods and ideas have been successfully implemented by many revolutionaries including Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin.