Sergey Nechayev
| Sergey Gennadiyevich Nechayev | |
|---|---|
Nechayev in 1870.
|
|
| Born |
October 2, 1847 Ivanovo, Vladimir Governorate, Imperial Russia |
| Died | November 21 or December 3, 1882 St. Petersburg, Imperial Russia |
| Nationality | Russian |
Sergey Gennadiyevich Nechayev (or Nyechayev; Russian: Серге́й Генна́диевич Неча́ев) (October 2, 1847 – November 21 or December 3, 1882) was a Russian revolutionary associated with the Nihilist movement and known for his single-minded pursuit of revolution by any means necessary, including terrorism. He was the author of the radical Catechism of a Revolutionary.
He fled Russia in 1869 after having been involved in the murder of a former comrade. Complicated relationships with fellow revolutionaries caused him to be expelled from the "First International". Arrested in Switzerland in 1872, he was sent back to Russia, received a 20-year sentence and died in prison.
The character Verkhovensky in Dostoyevsky's anti-nihilistic novel, Demons, is based on Nechayev.
Sergey Nechayev was born in Ivanovo, then a small textile town, to poor parents—his father was a waiter and sign painter. His mother died when he was eight. His father remarried and had two more sons. They lived in a three-room house with his two sisters and grandparents. They were ex serfs who had moved to Ivanovo. He had already developed an awareness of social inequality and a resentment of the local nobility in his youth. At 10, Sergey had learned his father's trades—waiting at banquets and painting signs. His father got him a job as an errand boy in a factory, but Sergey refused the servant's job. His family paid for good tutors who taught him Latin, German, French, History, Maths and Rhetoric.
In 1865 at age 18, Nechayev moved to Moscow, where he worked for the historian Mikhael Pogodin. A year later, he moved to St. Petersburg, passed a teacher's exam and began teaching at a parish school. From September 1868, Nechayev attended lectures at St. Petersburg University (as an auditor, he was never enrolled) and became acquainted with the subversive Russian literature of the Decembrists, the Petrashevsky Circle, and Mikhail Bakunin, among others, as well as the growing student unrest at the university. Nechaev was even said to have slept on bare wood and lived on black bread in imitation of Rakhmetov, the ascetic revolutionary in Chernyshevsky's novel What Is to Be Done?.
...
Wikipedia