God give me the strength to change what I can. Lord, give me peace of mind to accept what I cannot change, give me the courage to change what I can change

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Sergei Gennadievich Nechaev(September 20, the village of Ivanovo, now g. Ivanovo- November 21 , St. Petersburg) - Russian nihilist and the revolutionary of the XIX century. Leader of the "People's Massacre". Convicted of the murder of student Ivanov.

Biography

Sergei Nechaev's father is the illegitimate son of the landowner Pyotr Epishev, a serf by birth. Was adopted by the painter G.P. Pavlov and got the surname Nechaev ("unintentional", "unexpected"). Nechaev spent his childhood in Ivanovo. After moving to Moscow (1865), he was engaged in self-education, was close to the writer F. D. Nefedov... Passed the teacher exam; from the fall of 1868, he conducted revolutionary propaganda among students of St. Petersburg University and the Medical Academy; student riots in February 1869 were largely his business.

Emigration

Then he went abroad, entered into a relationship with Bakunin and Ogarev, got through the last one from Herzen 1000 lb. Art.(from the so-called " Bakhmetevsky fund») To the cause of the revolution, and through the former he joined the International Society.

Society of Popular Repression

Second emigration

Nechaev published the magazine "Narodnaya Rasrava" abroad. Most Russian emigrants have extremely unpleasant memories of him. Even Bakunin, whose closest follower was Nechaev, writes about him in one letter (published in the collection of letters by Bakunin, ed. Drahomanov), as a dishonest person, capable of spying, opening other people's letters, lying, etc.

Extremely negative characteristic the younger generation of revolutionaries, made by Herzen (in his posthumous articles), apparently inspired by his acquaintance with Nechaev.

Extradition and trial

Prisoner of the Peter and Paul Fortress

In the fortress Nechaev acquired big influence on the guard soldiers, who considered him a high-ranking person, and entered through them into relations with Narodnaya Volya who were at large. Zhelyabov invited him to arrange his escape from the fortress, but Nechaev refused, not wanting to interfere with the success of the revolutionary plans, which he to some extent directed.

I disagree with this opinion Vera Figner... In her "Sealed Labor" (vol. 1, ch. 10, section 4), she writes about the choice between an attempt on Alexander II and the organization of Nechaev's escape: “In the literature I have come across instructions that the Committee left Nechaev to decide for himself which of the two cases to put first, and that Nechaev spoke in favor of the attempt. The committee could not ask such a question; he could not suspend the preparations at Malaya Sadovaya and doom them to an almost inevitable collapse. He simply notified Nechaev about the state of affairs, and he replied that, of course, he would wait. Pure fiction also a story Tikhomirova as if Zhelyabov had visited the island of Ravelin, was under Nechaev's window and spoke to him. This was not, it could not be. Zhelyabov was assigned a responsible role in the alleged assassination attempt. A mine on Malaya Sadovaya could explode a little earlier or a little later than the passage of the sovereign's crew. In this case, at both ends of the street, four throwers would have to use their explosive shells. But if the shells had missed, Zhelyabov, armed with a dagger, had to finish the job, and this time we decided to finish it at all costs. Is it possible that with such a plan, the Committee would allow Zhelyabov to go to the ravelin, not to mention the fact that it was impossible to take him there at all? And would Zhelyabov himself have taken such a pointless and insane risk not only with himself and his role in Sadovaya, but also with the release of Nechaev? Never!"

Nechaev advised Zhelyabov to resort for revolutionary purposes to methods of spreading false rumors, to extorting money, etc., but Zhelyabov did not agree; on this basis, Nechaev parted with Narodnaya Volya.

Nechaev's conspiracy was handed over to the authorities by the People's Will Leon Mirsky, who was serving a hard-labor term in Alekseevsky ravelin... The soldiers from the garrison Peter and Paul Fortress they were sued for organizing Nechaev's relations with the will and sentenced to various punishments.

In literature

Nechaev served as a prototype for Peter Verkhovensky in the novel Dostoevsky « Demons"; the plot of Shatov's murder is connected with the murder of Ivanov by Nechaev.

Notes (edit)

Literature

Burtsev, "In a Hundred Years" (L., 1897);
Tun, "The History of Revolutionary Movements in Russia" (St. Petersburg, 1906);
Notes about Nechaev (in a negative spirit, since it is about Nechaev's personal decency, and enthusiastic, since it is about the firmness of his will, energy and convictions) in "Bulletin of Narodnaya Volya", No. 1.
For the speech of Spasovich, who defended Kuznetsov, Tkachev and Tomilova in the first part of the Nechaev trial, see Vol. 5 of Spasovich's Works (St. Petersburg, 1893).
For the Nechaev case, see Art. K. Arsenyev in No. 11 of the "Bulletin of Europe" for 1871

Nihilism
Directions	Mereological nihilism Metaphysical nihilism ( English) Epistemological nihilism Moral nihilism ( English) · Legal nihilism Russian nihilism ( German)
Figures	Ivan Pryzhov · Sergey Nechaev
In culture	Demons (novel) · Fathers and Sons · Evgeny Bazarov Nihilist Nihilist
Explored nihilism	Baudrillard, Jean · Kierkegaard, Soren · Nietzsche, Friedrich · Reich, Wilhelm · Fromm, Erich · Heidegger, Martin · Spengler, Oswald · Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich
Related ideas

Sergei Gennadievich Nechaev(1847-1882) - Russian leader of the revolutionary movement. Organizer of the secret society "People's Repression", the author of the "Catechism of the Revolutionary". He used methods of hoax and provocation. In 1869, in Moscow, he killed a student I. I. Ivanov on suspicion of treason and disappeared abroad. In 1872 he was issued by the Swiss authorities. In 1873 he was sentenced to 20 years in hard labor.

Sergei Nechaev was born October 2 (September 20, old style), 1847, in the village of Ivanovo-Voznesenskoye, Vladimir province, in the family of a tradesman who served in a tavern. From the age of 14 he began to work, where he studied, it is not established. Nevertheless, he told about himself that he was the son of a peasant and learned to read and write 16 years old. In 1865 he moved to Moscow, where he tried to pass the exam for the title of national teacher, but failed. He was close to the writer Philip Diomidovich Nefedov. A year later he passed this exam in St. Petersburg and got a teaching position at the Sergievsky parish school. In 1868 he entered the St. Petersburg University as a volunteer. Participated in the student riots of 1868 - 1869, heading, together with Peter Nikitich Tkachev and others, a radical minority. In the winter of 1868-1869, taking part in student riots, he tried to take on the role of leader, but failed. Having spread the rumor about his arrest and flight from the Peter and Paul Fortress, he hid abroad, fearing persecution by the authorities.

Reality very indelicately touches me with its clumsy paws and makes me do huge jumps. Eh! how to get out of here as soon as possible. However, this acquaintance with reality is useful, it will not allow me to plunge into apathy and contemplate the delights of the world: a constant analysis of the environment gives the correct idea of my strength.

Sergei Nechaev

Abroad. "Catechism of a Revolutionary"

In March 1869, Sergei Gennadievich was in Geneva with Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, declaring himself a representative new wave revolutionary movement. Bakunin was fascinated by Nechaev, gave him every support and even settled him. Nechaev also met with Alexander Ivanovich Herzen, who reacted to the young revolutionary with obvious distrust, but at the insistence of Nikolai Platonovich Ogarev, who also fell under the spell of Nechaev (he even dedicated the poem "Student" to him), passed on the Bakunin-Nechaev "revolutionary undertakings" part of the so-called Bakhmetev fund. This fund was intended to finance the revolutionary movement in Russia and was at the joint disposal of Herzen and Ogarev.

Nechaev, together with Bakunin, published a number of ultra-revolutionary manifestos on behalf of the non-existent "World Revolutionary Union": "Statement of the Revolutionary Question", "The Beginning of the Revolution" (magazine "Narodnaya Rasprava", No. 1). At the same time, apparently, he also wrote the "Catechism of a Revolutionary", the author of which was considered to be Bakunin for a long time, and only after publications recent years authorship of Nechaev can be considered proven, although the influence of Bakunin's ideas in this famous text is undoubtedly felt.

The Catechism consisted of four sections, the first of which, The Attitude of a Revolutionary to Oneself, proclaimed that “a revolutionary is a doomed man ... he ... severed all ties with civil order and with the entire educated world and with all laws, decency, generally accepted conditions, the morality of "this world." In the section "The attitude of a revolutionary towards his comrades in the revolution," these comrades were classified according to the degree of their usefulness for the revolution, and a revolutionary of a higher rank should look at "revolutionaries of the second and third ranks" as "a part of the total revolutionary capital placed at his disposal."

Formulating "The attitude of a revolutionary to society" (third section), Nechaev emphasized that he should not stop "before the destruction of a position, attitude or any person belonging to this world, in which everyone - and everyone - should be equally hateful to him." "All this filthy society" Nechaev proposed to divide into several categories, and the first of them was "irrevocably condemned to death." When passing a death sentence, one should be guided not by the personal guilt of this or that person, but by the usefulness of his murder for the revolutionary cause. This was followed by five more categories of people who should be destroyed later or used in the interests of the revolution, without stopping to blackmail, and only a few could "develop" into real revolutionaries.

Finally, the "Attitude of the comradeship towards the people" (the fourth section) consisted in liberating them by pushing them towards a "general uprising." This required getting closer to those elements in the people who were most prepared for the revolt. “Let's unite with the dashing, robber world, this true and only revolutionary in Russia,” Nechaev urged.

... I don't know how it is with you in Moscow, here in Ivanovo, that is, in a damn swamp, I wanted to say: terrible boredom, the snow is melting, there are puddles on the streets, everywhere it flows, pours, dripping, not a human soul is visible, but behind that animal kingdom now fills every nook and cranny, everyone enjoys in their own way: pigs roll in puddles, chickens rummage in dung, dogs run in gangs, only cows walk with the gravity and importance characteristic of Ivanovo merchants.

Sergei Nechaev

Return to Russia. Murder according to the "Catechism"

In August 1869 Sergei Nechaev returned to Russia with the Bakunin mandate of the representative of the "World Revolutionary Union". Here he organized a secret society "People's Repression", mainly from the students of the Petrovsk Agricultural Academy. The secret organization consisted of "fives", subordinate to the "committee", which in fact included only Nechaev. The organization was built on the principles of rigid centralism and unconditional subordination. Faced with resistance to his authoritarian methods from the student I. I. Ivanov, Nechaev organized his murder on November 21, 1869, and involved four more members of the organization - Ivan Gavrilovich Pryzhov, Alexei Kirillovich Kuznetsov, P. G. Uspensky and N. N Nikolaev, trying to "tie" them with blood.

Ivanov was lured into the park at the academy under the pretext of searching for a typographic type, allegedly hidden in the grotto by the "Karakozovites". After a short fierce struggle, Nechaev shot the head of the half-strangled Ivanov, whose corpse was thrown into a pond, but was soon discovered by the neighboring peasants. Nechaev fled abroad, the other participants in the murder were arrested. Upon completion of the investigation, 85 "nechaevites" were brought before the court. The "trial" was covered in detail in the press - the government hoped to discredit the revolutionaries, stigmatize their goals and methods of struggle. At the same time, the text of the Catechism discovered during a search at PG Uspensky's was published in the "Government Gazette". Having received the second half of the Bakhmetev Fund, Nechaev published a number of proclamations addressed to various strata of Russian society. Together with Ogarev he published The Bell (April - May 1870, No. 1 - 6). In the programmatic article "The Main Foundations of the Future Social System" ("People's Repression", 1870, No. 2), he painted a picture of the communist system ("Barracks Communism"). Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels called the system invented by Nechaev "... an example of barracks communism."

Regarding the published Nechaev's text, one of the leading conservative publicists Mikhail Nikiforovich Katkov wrote: “Let's hear how a Russian revolutionary understands himself. At the height of his consciousness, he declares himself a man without convictions, without rules, without honor. He must be ready for any abomination, forgery, deception, robbery, murder and betrayal. He is allowed to be a traitor even to his accomplices and comrades ... Do you not feel that all soil is disappearing under you? Have you not found yourself in a terrible gorge between insanity and fraud? "

I am going to Siberia and I am firmly convinced that millions of people sympathize with me. Down with the king, down with despotism! Long live freedom! I, a political criminal, have been made a simple murderer! Shame on the new Russian court, this is not a court, but a cheating!

Sergei Nechaev

After fleeing Russia

Abroad, S. G. Nechaev published the second issue of the journal "People's Massacre" with the programmatic article "The Main Foundations of the Future Social System." Referring to the Communist Manifesto, Sergei Gennadievich portrayed communism as a system under which the principle "to produce as much as possible for society and consume as little as possible" dominates. Labor is compulsory under the threat of death, and all affairs are managed by a committee that is not accountable to anyone and is unknown to anyone, and compulsorily regulates everything. human relations in society. In 1870, he tried to resume the publication of "The Bell" together with Ogarev, but not very successfully - only six issues came out.

Nechaev also tried to use methods of blackmail and threats in emigration to achieve his goals, including in relation to Bakunin and Herzen's daughter Natalya Alexandrovna. Gradually he found himself isolated, even Bakunin recoiled from him, calling Nechaev's "Catechism" "the catechism of abreks." Rejected by everyone, Nechaev was forced to wander around Europe, hiding from the persecution of the tsarist government, but in 1872 he was extradited by Switzerland as a criminal offender. In 1873, at the trial, Nechaev behaved courageously, and when he was sentenced to 20 years of hard labor, he replied with an exclamation: “Long live the Zemsky Sobor! Down with despotism! " On the personal order of Alexander II, instead of sending Nechaev to Siberia "forever" (this word was emphasized by the tsar), he was imprisoned in a solitary confinement cell at the Peter and Paul Fortress.

But the loner did not break Nechaev. He educated himself, working on articles, and even wrote the novel "Georgette". Nechaev managed to win over to his side the guards, which were forbidden to talk to him, and to establish contact with the Narodnaya Volya.

Any abomination for the enemy is a good deed, and if there were no Bakunin, Nechaev and tutti quanti, then the enemies of Russia would have to create them.

Sergei Nechaev

Attitude towards "nechaevism"

"Nechaevism" was condemned by the majority of Russian revolutionaries, and for almost ten years terrorism was not used as a method of struggle. However, this turned out to be by no means an accidental and not transitory phenomenon. The Russian historian, Doctor of Historical Sciences Boris Pavlovich Kozmin wrote quite rightly that “... it is necessary to realize that the non-Chay affair, on the one hand, is organically connected with the revolutionary movement of previous years, and on the other, it anticipates in some respects that the formulation of the revolutionary cause, which it received in the next decade. "

The Nechaev tradition of physical destruction or terrorism of "especially harmful" persons, the unquestioning subordination of the lower classes to higher-ranking revolutionaries, and the justification of any immoralism if it serves the interests of the revolution, was traced throughout the subsequent history of the Russian revolutionary movement. Terror and conspiracies have become an integral part of it, and moral foundations, laid down by the Decembrists and Herzen, more and more eroded.

The Nechaev affair formed the basis of the famous "anti-nihilistic" novel by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky "Demons" (1873), in which Nechaev himself became the prototype of Peter Verkhovensky.

Sergei Gennadievich Nechaev died December 1 (November 21, O.S.), 1882, in the Alekseevsky ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress, in St. Petersburg, exactly 13 years after Ivanov's murder, from "general dropsy complicated by scurvy."

Sergey Gennadievich Nechaev - quotes

Sergei Gennadievich Nechaev is a revolutionary and a nihilist. Leader of the "People's Massacre". He represented such a direction as Russian revolutionary terrorism. He was arrested and imprisoned for the murder of student Ivanov. The article will present short biography revolutionary.

Childhood

Sergei Gennadievich Nechaev was born in Ivanovo in 1847. The boy's family was poor. My father worked as an artist and a waiter. Mother died when Sergei was eight years old. The father married again, and the future revolutionary soon had two brothers. They lived in a three-room house with their grandparents and sisters. In his youth, Nechaev already knew what social inequality was. As soon as Sergei was ten years old, his father taught him to serve banquets and arranged for him as an "errand boy" to the plant. But the hero of this article did not want to work as a servant.

Studies

In 1865 Sergei Gennadievich Nechaev moved to Moscow. There the young man got a job as an assistant to the historian M.P. Pogodin. A year later, Sergei went to Northern capital, passed the teacher examination and began teaching at a parish school. In the fall of 1868, the young man became a volunteer at St. Petersburg University. It was there that he became acquainted with Russian anti-government literature. Nechaev learned about Mikhail Bakunin, the Petrashevists and the Decembrists. Soon Sergei got into one of the student circles and realized that this was his native element. He left all sorts of things, almost abandoned the service and completely surrendered himself to a new hobby. A twenty-year-old student by vocation and teacher by profession formulated his life purpose- "political and social revolution".

Search for associates

Sergei Gennadievich Nechaev understood perfectly well that a coup could not be accomplished alone. That's why young man comrades-in-arms were needed. But this turned out to be very problematic: Sergei almost did not know people and did not know how to communicate well. Nechaev had enough determination and energy, but he did not succeed in recruiting students. He frightened with his fearlessness and passion, rash ardor and calls for demonstrations. As a result, a moderate part of the free-thinking student body declared a boycott to him.

Geneva

Sergei Gennadievich Nechaev, whose biography is familiar to all lovers of the history of revolutions, decided to use a different approach to recruiting associates. As you know, people follow those who have authority. And to get it, you need to be in prison. To speed up the process, arrest and imprisonment can be faked. Nechaev did just that - he planted a note from a police carriage allegedly taking him to prison. Well, Sergei himself went to where he hoped to enlist the support of Ogarev, Herzen and Bakunin. The first two did not want to engage in extremism in their old age, calmly criticizing the Russian government through the Kolokol newspaper. But M. A. Bakunin had a more active position. Indeed, at one time this revolutionary almost lost his head due to participation in the Dresden and Prague popular uprisings. Mikhail Alexandrovich developed his own philosophy - anarchist. It assumed the replacement of countries by free autonomous societies, governed by the bottom-up principle. Bakunin dreamed of realizing this idea for many years. It was only necessary to find volunteers capable of destroying states.

Naturally, Mikhail Alexandrovich considered in Sergei the person with whose hands he could bring the salutary fire of anarchy to Russia. Well, Nechaev simply allowed the thinker to see what he wanted - a large and powerful secret society, under the strict control of Sergei and at any moment ready for an uprising. For this, Bakunin procured funds from the Bakhmetyevsky Fund from Ogarev and Herzen and provided the young man with theoretical support. In particular, the anarchist helped the hero of this article to publish the famous "Catechism of a Revolutionary".

But the main thing is that Mikhail Alexandrovich wrote out a false mandate for Nechaev. This document gave Sergei the right to act on behalf of the "members of the Russian department of the international revolutionary union." Below was Bakunin's original signature. Having received such an authoritative sponsor, Nechaev returned to Russia, feeling like a real revolutionary. He did not think at all about the future and was not interested in Bakunin's anarchism. Sergei Gennadievich Nechaev was guided only by the postulates of his Catechism, one of which read: “A revolutionary despises any doctrinaire. He is indifferent to worldly science. He leaves it to the judgment of future generations. The revolutionary knows only one science - the science of destruction. "

Unfortunately, Nechaev was able to deceive not only his fellow students, the gendarmerie and the Geneva emigrants, but himself. The young man believed in his own power over the all-powerful revolutionary organization. Upon his return to the capital, she numbered only a couple of dozen green students.

The crime

In 1869, the revolutionary organized the assassination of his colleague I. I. Ivanov. This fact is described by any of his biography. Sergei Nechaev did this for the student's refusal to obey his order. The young man acted on behalf of the "People's Repression" society with its head center in Geneva, which, naturally, did not exist in nature. Thus, Sergei created a feeling of involvement in a common cause. And there was only one way out of it - death. Nechaev, together with his comrades-in-arms, lured the unfortunate Ivanov to the wasteland, where he was strangled. They tried to drown the student's corpse in the Neva. The crime was committed in an amateurish way, so the investigators solved it in just a couple of months. All participants were arrested and put on trial. Only the main culprit managed to escape abroad.

Sentence and death

The revolutionary Sergei Gennadievich Nechaev, whose biography was presented above, again arrived in Switzerland. The young man tried to resurrect the hoax he had created in the midst of Russian emigrants. The hounds from the political counterpolice who persecuted him, willy-nilly, contributed to the strengthening of Nechaev's revolutionary reputation. But everyone remembered how Sergei deceived Bakunin and tried to blackmail the heirs of the late Herzen. Therefore, the revolutionary could not inspire confidence in the then public. At the end of July 1872, on a denunciation, Nechaev was caught and sent to Russia.

The court sentenced him to 20 years of hard labor and civil execution. But Nicholas II canceled this decision with a stroke of the pen, deciding to imprison Sergei in the fortress for life. Exactly 13 years after the murder, the revolutionary died in a prison cell, exhausted by loneliness, malnutrition and disease.

Russian revolutionary, one of the first representatives of revolutionary terrorism Sergei Gennadievich Nechaev (pseudonyms - "Leader", "Pavlov", "Ivan Petrovich" and others) was born on September 20 (October 2), 1847 in the village of Ivanovo-Voznesenskoye, Vladimir province. The illegitimate son of the landowner Pyotr Epishev, a serf by birth. He was adopted by a painter and received the surname Nechaye ("unintentional", "unexpected").

From the age of 14 he began to work, where he studied - it has not been established. He told about himself that he was the son of a peasant and that he had mastered the gymnasium course at the age of 16 as a self-taught person.

In 1865, Nechaev moved to Moscow, where he tried to pass the exam for the title of people's teacher, but failed. A year later he passed this exam in St. Petersburg and got a teaching position at the Sergievsky parish school. In 1868 he entered the St. Petersburg University as a volunteer.

Since the fall of 1868, he conducted revolutionary propaganda among students. In the winter of 1868, 1869, taking part in student riots, he unsuccessfully tried to take on the role of leader.

Together with other radical students, he compiled the "Program of Revolutionary Action", which aimed to create a secret revolutionary organization and planned " social revolution"for the spring of 1870.

In Geneva, declaring himself a representative of a new wave of the revolutionary movement, Nechaev gained confidence in Mikhail Bakunin and Nikolai Ogarev. Bakunin gave him every support and even settled him.

Abroad, Nechaev launched a propaganda campaign on behalf of the fictitious "World Revolutionary Union," whose mandate was signed by Bakunin himself. Together with him, he published a series of manifestos and program documents of this union ("Statement of the Revolutionary Question", "The Beginning of the Revolution", etc.), as well as the first issue of the journal "People's Massacre". This magazine was to become the organ of a secret conspiratorial society under the same name that the revolutionaries were trying to create to organize a "people's peasant revolution."

Funds for Nechaev's propaganda campaign were given by the Ogarevs, despite the opposition of Alexander Herzen, from a fund intended to subsidize revolutionary activities (the so-called "Bakhmetev Fund").

In the summer of 1869, Nechaev compiled the most famous of the programmatic works he wrote - "The Catechism of a Revolutionary". It was based on the thesis "the end justifies the means," widely used by the Jesuits, by which Nechaev himself was guided.

Returning to Moscow in September 1869, Nechaev introduced himself as a confidant of the Russian department of the non-existent "World Revolutionary Union", created a department of the secret society "People's Repression", which was allegedly already everywhere. Faced with the mistrust and opposition of a member of the student organization, Ivan Ivanov, he accused him of treason, and on November 21, 1869, he killed with the participation of four other members.

At the end of November, Nechaev left for St. Petersburg, where he tried to continue his activities to create a secret society. On December 15, 1869, in connection with the beginning of the arrests, he fled to Switzerland. Having received the second half of the Bakhmetev Fund, Nechaev published a number of proclamations addressed to various strata of Russian society.

Together with Ogarev, from April to May 1870 he published the Kolokol magazine. The abuse of the name of the 1st International by Nechaev forced the General Council in 1871 to officially dissociate itself from it. The theoretical lack of principle of Nechaev, his hoax and provocative methods prompted Ogarev and Bakunin to break off all relations with him in the summer of 1870.

In September 1870, in London, Nechaev published the magazine "Community", then, wanted by agents of the tsarist government, he hid in Paris and Zurich, maintaining contacts with the Polish Blanquists. On August 14, 1872, he was arrested in Zurich and extradited to the Russian government as a criminal. On January 8, 1873, in Moscow, Nechaev was sentenced for the murder of Ivanov to 20 years of hard labor. Imprisoned in the Alekseevsky ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress, where at the end of the 1870s he propagandized the soldiers of the sentry squad and brought them under his influence. In December 1880, he established contact with the Executive Committee of the "People's Will", put forward a plan for his release, which he then abandoned, as it is believed,