A RUSSIAN SAINT-JUST

Nechayev, Sergey Gennadiyevich
born Sept. 20 [Oct. 2, New Style], 1847, Ivanovo, Russia
died Nov. 21 [Dec. 3], 1882, St. Petersburg

During 1868–69 Nechayev participated in the student revolutionary movement in St. Petersburg and composed his “Catechism of a Revolutionary,” which embodied his militant philosophy and a morality under which any means was justified that served the revolutionary end.

In September 1869 Nechayev returned to Moscow, where he founded a small secret revolutionary group, the People's Retribution (Russian: Narodnaya Rasprava), also called the Society of the Axe, based on the principles of the Catechism and requiring its members to submit unquestioningly to the will of the leader. When I.I. Ivanov, a student member of the group, protested Nechayev's methods, Nechayev organized his execution. The murder, committed in November 1869, was Nechayev's work, although other members of the group were present.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky used Nechayev as a model for the character Pyotr Verkhovensky in The Possessed.

SOURCE: Nechayev, Sergey Gennadiyevich. (2006). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved December 20, 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9055145

From his "Catechism":

4. For him, morality is everything which contributes to the triumph of the revolution.

6. Tyrannical toward himself, he must be tyrannical toward others. ... Night and day he must have but one thought, one aim -- merciless destruction. Striving cold-bloodedly and indefatigably toward this end, he must be prepared to destroy himself and to destroy with his own hands everything that stands in the path of the revolution.

13. He is not a revolutionary if he feels sympathy for anything in that world or if he halts before the destruction of any situation, relationship, or person belonging to that world in which all must be equally hated.