Nechaevsky process. Sergei Nechaev: the evil genius of the revolution

M.N. Katkov

Nechaev case

Today, January 8, in the Moscow District Court with the participation of jurors, the case of Sergei Nechaev, a tradesman from the city of Shuya, was heard on charges of murdering a student of the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy Ivanov. The defendant refused to defend himself. Therefore, after the end of the accusatory speech, questions were immediately raised. The jury, after a brief deliberation, returned a verdict of "guilty," and the court sentenced the criminal to twenty years' hard labor. We are unable to print a transcript of this meeting today; it must first appear in the Government Gazette. But a detailed report is not of interest. The public will be more curious to read the following report from our reporters on the overall impression of the trial. He then repeated this statement more than once, accompanied by various inappropriate antics, which bored the audience so much that it finally exploded and shouts were heard: “Get out! Get him out!” The audience was stopped by a stern remark from the chairman. This was the only time that the chairman allowed himself to raise his voice and break out of a tone of complete calm. But he was forced several times to order the defendant to be taken out. shrilly peering into the audience. When the prosecutor spoke, he punctuated some parts of the speech that he especially did not like with an evil grin, or by biting his lips, or by somehow strangely swaying and spinning on the bench. However, for the most part he only twirled his mustache and beard, twisting it into a pigtail, straightened his hair or silently drummed his fingers on the bars; with his other hand, his left, he supported his head thrown back, facing the audience. When the prosecutor finished his speech, Nechaev said with the greatest emphasis: “The Russian government can take my life, but the honor will remain with me” - and he hit himself in the chest. There was laughter and hissing in the audience, which fell silent when the chairman called.

The general impression of Nechaev was very pitiful and painful. He sat in the dock like an embittered buffoon, devoid of the slightest signs of intelligence and tact. The impression was all the more strange because at the same time the testimonies of witnesses read about “iron character”, “indestructible energy”, “a will that knows no limits”, etc. The public present at the meeting was amazed at the degree of intelligence that ended up in Nechaev. One could expect that a person who had a charming effect on at least someone would be smarter.
The dishonesty and lack of any dignity in Nechaev’s behavior was especially emphasized by the imperturbably even and calm tone of everyday simplicity with which the chairman of the court, Mr. Deyer, conducted the meeting, and the soft speech of the prosecutor, Mr. Zhukov, devoid of any unnecessary effects. It was a meeting of complete powerlessness with the real power of justice.
Nechaev himself managed to flee abroad, but his comrades were found and brought to trial by the St. Petersburg Judicial Chamber. They were tried in 1871 not only for murder, but also for the formation of a revolutionary society. 87 people were involved in the case, including V.I. Kovalevsky (later comrade of the Minister of Finance). The participants in Ivanov’s murder were sentenced to hard labor for various terms, other defendants received more lenient sentences, and some (including Kovalevsky) were acquitted.

Second emigration
Nechaev published the magazine "People's Retribution" abroad. Most Russian emigrants have extremely unpleasant memories of him. Even Bakunin, whose closest follower was Nechaev, writes about him in one letter (printed in the collection of Bakunin’s letters, ed. Drahomanov), as a dishonest person capable of spying, opening other people’s letters, lying, etc.
The extremely negative characterization of the younger generation of revolutionaries made by Herzen (in his posthumous articles) was apparently inspired by his acquaintance with Nechaev.

Extradition and trial
In 1872, the Swiss government extradited Nechaev to Russia as a criminal. The case was tried in the Moscow District Court, with the participation of a jury, in 1873. At the trial, he stated that he did not recognize this “shemyakin trial,” shouted several times: “Long live the Zemsky Sobor,” and refused to defend himself. Found guilty by the jury of Ivanov's murder, he was sentenced to hard labor in the mines for 20 years. Subsequently, the obligation accepted by the Russian government when demanding the extradition of Nechaev was not fulfilled: Nechaev was not sent to the mines, but was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, where he was treated not as a criminal, but as a political one.

Prisoner of the Peter and Paul Fortress
In the fortress, Nechaev acquired great influence over the guard soldiers, who considered him a high-ranking person, and through them entered into relations with the Narodnaya Volya members 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 led.
Vera Figner does not agree with this opinion. In her “Sealed Work” (vol. 1, chapter 10, § 4) she writes about the choice between the assassination attempt on Alexander II and organizing Nechaev’s escape: “In the literature, I came across an indication that the Committee allowed Nechaev to decide which of the two cases. put first, and as if Nechaev spoke out in favor of the assassination attempt. The Committee could not ask such a question; it could not suspend the preparations on Malaya Sadovaya and doom them to almost inevitable collapse. He simply informed Nechaev about the state of affairs, and he replied that, of course. , will wait. Tikhomirov’s story that Zhelyabov visited Ravelin’s island, was under Nechaev’s window and spoke with him is pure fiction. This did not happen, it could not have been that Zhelyabov was destined for a responsible role in the alleged assassination attempt. or a little later than the passage of the sovereign's carriage. In this case, at both ends of the street, four throwers should have launched their explosive shells. But if the shells missed, Zhelyabov, armed with a dagger, had to finish the job, and this time we would finish it. decided 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 generally impossible to take him there? And would Zhelyabov himself take such a pointless and insane risk, not only with himself and his role on Sadovaya, but also with the release of Nechaev? Never!"
Nechaev advised Zhelyabov to resort to methods of spreading false rumors, extorting money, etc., for revolutionary purposes, but Zhelyabov did not agree; On this basis, Nechaev parted ways with Narodnaya Volya.
Nechaev’s conspiracy was revealed to the authorities by Narodnaya Volya member Leon Mirsky, who was serving a prison term in Alekseevsky Ravelin. In 1882, soldiers from the garrison of the Peter and Paul Fortress were tried for organizing Nechaev’s relations with the people and were sentenced to various punishments.
While in the Peter and Paul Fortress, Nechaev held firm, with some success he conducted revolutionary propaganda among the soldiers guarding him, and refused any compromises with the authorities. Died in custody on November 21, 1882.

“A thin, beardless young man with an embittered face and a cramped mouth,” is how one of his contemporaries described Sergei Nechaev in his memoirs. The future disturber of public order was born into a family of freed peasants in 1842. Church books record that the father was the illegitimate son of a landowner. Who knows how the fate of the Russian revolution would have turned out if the nobleman Epishkov had accepted his son and left him at court? But these are hypotheses, but in practice, Nechaev’s father got married and was enrolled in the philistinism. He began to help his father-in-law in the painting business and earned extra money by setting tables at merchants' festivities.

The city of Ivanovo-Voznesensk, where Nechaev was born and spent his childhood

Sergei was irritated by his father’s profession and the provincial city in general, where “all the Ivanovo residents sit motionless in their lairs.” He began to learn to read and write early and, under the influence of the teacher and writer V.A. Dementyev, who came to their city, began to diligently master the gymnasium program, which seemed to him a “bumpy road.” In the end, he, cherishing his own and his parents’ hopes, tried to enter the capital’s university. And although the attempt was unsuccessful, it became an opportunity to escape from the “devil’s swamp” and find myself in the thick of socio-political events, remaining at the university as a volunteer student.

The Force Awakens

The winter of 1868/1869 finally provided Sergei Nechaev with the opportunity he had been waiting for so long. After Karakozov’s shot in 1866, the government began to take a number of reactionary measures, which also affected student freedoms: any gatherings, mutual aid funds and student libraries, which were common at that time, were prohibited. These actions of the authorities became a signal for Nechaev to awaken, and he, running from one circle of dissatisfied students to another, began to incite. Sergei's goal was to lead students to anti-monarchy demonstrations, provoke their mass expulsion and thereby make the remaining student environment seethe with discontent over the fate of their comrades.

Marx considered Nechaev a “political adventurer”

Young students still suffering from youthful maximalism were easy to manage, while Sergei Nechaev did not care about their future and consequences. He despised education, believing that knowledge of chemistry, physics and other sciences is useful only if it can become the “science of destruction,” as he later called it in the “Catechism of a Revolutionary.” And for himself, Sergei Nechaev developed special algorithms for solving its problems: provocation and hoax.

Student meeting

It was during this period that he first used his later favorite technique, with which he kept the right people on a tight leash and provoked new arrests, followed by new unrest. He began to use a sheet about organizing a protest movement with 97 signatures from students of the Medical-Surgical Academy who had succumbed to his radical appeals against them: he presented these persons as members of a certain revolutionary circle, then “accidentally” allowed the list of these names to fall into the possession of the Third Department. Sergei Nechaev himself, as soon as the threat of arrest arose, successfully emigrated to Switzerland.

At the age of 27, Nechaev was declared a particularly dangerous political criminal.

Abroad, he continued his activities as a provocateur, which a contemporary called “a sign of feeblemindedness combined with baseness.” Nechaev began sending letters to those of his acquaintances who had long been targeted by the secret police, hinting at the participation of these people in his anti-government organization. Apparently, his expectations were justified: the letters were checked by vigilant censors and arrests followed. By the summer of 1869, Nechaev himself was declared a particularly dangerous state criminal. The illusion of an impending revolution was successfully created.

Fateful Murder

Throughout his revolutionary activities, he was engaged in mythologizing. He came to Geneva to meet M.A. Bakunin, N.P. Ogarev and I.A. Herzen in the guise of an envoy of the Russian revolutionary movement. He managed to convince everyone except the publisher of the Bell that it was necessary to organize the release of proclamations, their ideological support and, most importantly, finances. In co-authorship with Bakunin, the “Catechism of a Revolutionary” was compiled, which made “the most disgusting impression” on the liberal public.

After a while, Bakunin renounced Nechaev and the “Catechism of a Revolutionary”

The legend about the strength of the Russian revolutionary movement turned out to be so successful that Nechaev used it both when meeting with the triumvirate of Russian social thought, and during the further recruitment of members of the “People's Retribution Society”. He imagined himself as the creator of a system of revolutionary cells scattered throughout Russia and headed by a mysterious Committee. However, in reality, such an organization so far existed only in his head.

M.A. Bakunin and A.I. Herzen

“And now, 40 years later, I remember his eyes and understand that people could slavishly obey him,” was the indelible impression Sergei Nechaev made on one of his contemporaries. Returning to Russia, he began recruiting into the first “Nechaev” five, sometimes with the help of intimidation and pressure.

One of the members of the organization, Ivan Ivanov, was outraged by the measures that Nechaev was going to fight, since they could put ordinary students at risk. A fierce dispute ensued, and the head of the “People's Retribution Society” was afraid that Ivanov, who was respected among the students, would lure them to his side. The reprisal, as a warning to others, followed almost immediately: having lured Ivanov to a grotto in Petrovsko-Razumovsky Park, Nechaev killed him along with his accomplices and again fled to Switzerland, from where he was extradited at the request of Russia as a criminal.

Prisoner No. 5

After a public trial in 1872, the public was disappointed by the frail appearance and tragicomic behavior of the revolutionary, who had previously been presented as either a demon in the flesh or a romantic hero. "Moskovskie Vedomosti", trying to completely debunk the image of nihilists, mocked that the main inspirer of the participants in the "People's Retribution Society" was being tried as a "simple murderer."

Dostoevsky about Nechaev: “What a little, little high school student!”

In the end, Sergei Nechaev, on the personal instructions of the emperor, was imprisoned in solitary confinement in the Alekseevsky ravelin - a prison in which former fighters for justice went crazy or, like Bakunin, wrote requests for clemency. It was forbidden to address the prisoner as anything other than “Prisoner No. 5.”

Alekseevsky ravelin in the Peter and Paul Fortress

Until the end of his life, Sergei Nechaev did not give up his ideas. In prison, he managed to accomplish something that had previously seemed impossible: he lured the guards of the Alekseevsky Ravelin to his side. The revolutionary hoped to take advantage of their devotion to escape from the Peter and Paul Fortress, but the plan failed: one of the prisoners began to collaborate with the authorities and denounced the guards involved in the conspiracy. 10 years later, Sergei Nechaev died in the prison infirmary - a year after the assassination of Alexander II by revolutionaries.

Reasons for murder

In 1869, the Nechaevites decided to organize solidarity performances (posting leaflets) at the Petrine Academy on the occasion of regular student unrest at Moscow University. Such actions were a clear provocation of the authorities to close the academy or its parts, so one of the authoritative members of the circle, 23-year-old student of the academy Ivan Ivanov, spoke out against it. Feeling a threat to his autocracy, Nechaev decided to unite the group through murder.

Sergey Nechaev

To this end, Nechaev accused Ivanov of treason and collaboration with the authorities (during the murder trial it turned out that the accusation was false and Ivanov did not cooperate with the authorities). Only two members of the circle were privy to the details: student Alexei Kuznetsov and former prison guard Nikolai Nikolaev.

Murder scene

An ancient grotto in the park of the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy was chosen for the murder. This 18th-century grotto, once located on the shore of a swampy pond to the left of the central alley of the Historical Park, behind the main building of the Timiryazev Academy, was destroyed already in the 1890s.

Moscow guides often take interested visitors to another grotto from the early 19th century preserved in the park, mistakenly pointing it out as a crime scene.

Nechaev lured Ivanov to the grotto under the pretext of removing the printing press from the cache in which Nikolai Ishutin allegedly hid it in 1866 before his arrest (no press was buried in the grotto).

Murder

On the morning of November 21, 1869, Nechaev appeared in the apartment that Kuznetsov and Nikolaev were renting, near Bronny Streets, and called the writer Ivan Pryzhov and Pyotr Uspensky there. From the apartment the whole group headed to Petrovsko-Razumovskoye to meet with Ivanov.

Nechaev's plan was to strangle Ivanov with a scarf (although Nikolaev had a revolver with him just in case). Pryzhov and Uspensky did not know about the true purpose of the trip to the grotto (as it turned out later at the trial, many members of the circle did not even know about the existence of the “Catechism of a Revolutionary”). It was not possible to carry out the plan; Ivanov’s resistance led to him being stunned with blows to the head, after which Nechaev himself finished off the victim with a shot in the head from a revolver that belonged to Nikolaev.

After the murder, the corpse was wrapped in Kuznetsov’s coat, loaded with bricks and lowered into a pond under ice in the hope of hiding the murder until spring.

However, already on November 25, 1869, a peasant from the village of Petrovskie Vyselki, Pyotr Kalugin, who happened to be passing by, saw a hat, hood and club near the grotto, followed the bloody trail to the pond and discovered a corpse under the ice at a depth of half a meter. After the body was identified by fellow students, the case was taken under control by the chief of the provincial gendarme department, I. L. Slezkin (such attention was due to the fact that Ivanov was registered with the gendarmes as a revolutionary).

Arrest, trial and sentence

The documents forgotten by the killers in Kuznetsov's coat pocket immediately pointed the investigation to Uspensky and Kuznetsov himself. By the end of December, Uspensky, Kuznetsov, and Pryzhov were arrested along with other members of the “People's Retribution” - the Likhutin brothers and Negreskul. Nikolaev, who lived on someone else’s passport, was arrested in February 1870.

Due to the significance of the case, the trial took place in the St. Petersburg Judicial Chamber from July 1 to July 15, 1871. Well-known lawyers V.D. Spasovich, D.V. Stasov, A.M. Unkovsky spoke on the defense side. The trial took place in conditions of wide publicity (reports of the meetings were published by the Government Gazette); the guilt of the defendants was established by the collected evidence and the confessions of the killers themselves. All participants in the murder received prison sentences:

Uspensky - 15 years;
Pryzhov - 12 years old;
Kuznetsov - 10 years;
Nikolaev - 7.5 years.

87 people were involved in the case, including V.I. Kovalevsky (later Comrade Minister of Finance), V.I. Lunin, M.A. Tikhomirov. The participants in Ivanov’s murder were sentenced to hard labor for various terms, other defendants received more lenient sentences, and some (including Kovalevsky) were acquitted.

Nechaev himself immediately after the murder fled to Switzerland, where he continued his revolutionary work among Russian students. Russia managed to obtain his extradition from Switzerland, and on August 2, 1872, Nechaev was arrested, and then two months later he was transferred to Moscow, where he was kept in the Sushchevskaya police station on Seleznevskaya Street. The trial took place on January 8, 1873 and sentenced Nechaev to 20 years of hard labor; due to the special danger of the criminal, by order of Alexander II, Nechaev was placed in the Alekseevsky ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress (and even there he managed to propagandize the guards, but the plot was discovered, and after the conditions of detention were tightened, Nechaev died in his cell on November 21, 1882).

Pryzhov died in the settlement after hard labor; Kuznetsov served his entire sentence and died at 80 years old in 1928. The rest of the killers died at hard labor.

Society's reaction

During the process, “Catechism of a Revolutionary” was published. Thanks to this, as well as the testimony of the killers, the crime in the eyes of society turned into an ominous threat to the entire modern world. The revolutionaries declared a deadly war of extermination; and the murder clearly showed that they were not joking.

Citizenship:

Russian empire

Date of death:

Sergei Gennadievich Nechaev(September 20, Ivanovo village, now Ivanovo - November 21, St. Petersburg) - Russian nihilist and revolutionary of the 19th century. Leader of the People's Retribution. 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. He was adopted by the painter G.P. Pavlov and received the surname Nechaev (“unexpected”, “unexpected”). Nechaev spent his childhood in Ivanovo. Having moved to Moscow (1865), he was engaged in self-education and was close to the writer F. D. Nefedov. Passed the teacher exam; from the autumn of 1868 he conducted revolutionary propaganda among students of St. Petersburg University and the Medical Academy; the student unrest in February 1869 was largely his doing.

Emigration

Then he went abroad, entered into relationships with Bakunin and Ogarev, and through the latter received 1000 pounds from Herzen. Art. (from the so-called “Bakhmetyevsky Fund”) for the cause of the revolution, and through the first joined the International Society.

Society of People's Retribution

Second emigration

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

The extremely negative characterization of the younger generation of revolutionaries made by Herzen (in his posthumous articles) was apparently inspired by his acquaintance with Nechaev.

Extradition and trial

Prisoner of the Peter and Paul Fortress

In the fortress, Nechaev acquired great influence over the guard soldiers, who considered him a high-ranking person, and through them entered into relations with the Narodnaya Volya members 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 led.

Vera Figner does not agree with this opinion. In her “Sealed Work” (vol. 1, chapter 10, § 4) she writes about the choice between the assassination attempt on Alexander II and organizing Nechaev’s escape: “In the literature, I came across an indication that the Committee left Nechaev to decide which of the two cases. put first, and as if Nechaev spoke out in favor of the assassination attempt. The Committee could not ask such a question; he could not suspend preparations on Malaya Sadovaya and doom them to almost inevitable collapse. He simply informed Nechaev about the state of affairs, and he replied that, of course, he would wait. Tikhomirov’s story that Zhelyabov visited Ravelin’s island, was under Nechaev’s window and spoke with him is pure fiction. This did not happen, it could not have happened. Zhelyabov was assigned a responsible role in the alleged assassination attempt. The mine on Malaya Sadovaya could have exploded 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 had 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 generally impossible to take him there? And would Zhelyabov himself take such a pointless and insane risk, not only with himself and his role on Sadovaya, but also with the release of Nechaev? Never!"

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

Nechaev’s conspiracy was revealed to the authorities by Narodnaya Volya member Leon Mirsky, who was serving a prison term in Alekseevsky Ravelin. Soldiers from the garrison of the Peter and Paul Fortress were tried for organizing Nechaev's relations with the people and were sentenced to various punishments.

In literature

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

Notes

Literature

Burtsev, “For a Hundred Years” (L., 1897);
Thun, “History of revolutionary movements in Russia” (St. Petersburg, 1906);
Notes about Nechaev (in a negative spirit, since we are talking about Nechaev’s personal integrity, and enthusiastic, since we are talking 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 the fifth volume of Spasovich’s “Works” (St. Petersburg, 1893).
On the Nechaevsky case, see Art. K. Arsenyev in No. 11 of “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
Nihilism explored	Baudrillard, Jean · Kierkegaard, Søren · Nietzsche, Friedrich · Reich, Wilhelm · Fromm, Erich · Heidegger, Martin · Spengler, Oswald · Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich
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