Sergey Nechayev - The Geneva Exiles

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, yet she refused. He sent her a letter claiming to have been arrested. In Geneva, 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:

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 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 Nechayev, 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 that the activists would be caught, punished and radicalized. Amongst these people was Vera Zasulich, who got five years exile because of a crudely coded letter sent by Nechayev.