Did Lenin & Nechaev Really Imitate Rakhmetov?

[Rakhmetov]

Lenin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin) imitated Rakhmetov with daily weight lifting, while Nechaev (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nechaev) copied him by sleeping on a wooden bed and living on black bread.

An 1863 novel by Nikolai Chernyshevsky

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Chernyshevsky

http://img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n60/n300551.jpg

[Volcanicity]

I doubt lenin copied him the probable reason he kept fit was for health reasons and while exiled to Siberia to keep warm.

Didn't Rakhmetov sleep on a bed of nails?

[RED DAVE]

I'm not sure about the imitation, but Lenin did title on of this most famous pamphlets, What Is to Be Done? after the Chernyshevski novel of the same name.

RED DAVE

[Olentzero]

Chernyshevsky's What is to be Done? had a profound effect on radicals of the late 19th century, Lenin and Aleksandr Ulyanov included. Probably the Russian radical equivalent of Atlas Shrugged. I would be surprised if it didn't affect Lenin's habits and lifestyle to some extent - if not his thoughts - but more than likely his daily regimen of exercise was more due to just finding something to do to try to keep in some semblance of health while locked up.

[Rakhmetov]

Nice book entitled:
Saints and revolutionaries: the ascetic hero in Russian literature



http://books.google.com/books?id=cjucPBX8ORMC&pg=PA140&lpg=PA140&dq=rakhmetov+bed+of+nails&source=bl&ots=DOfTPGyAMG&sig=Ggz6aOYseWrZsbZHNYHpmL2d2tw&hl=en&ei=jAzDTajZNoq4sQPd1-TyDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=rakhmetov%20bed%20of%20nails&f=false

[chegitz guevara]

The effect of Chernyshevsky's novel on the minds of Russian revolutionaries can hardly be overstated.

[RED DAVE]

Here's some links for this thread. You really need to read all of this at some points. No kidding.

Text of Chernyshevski's What Is to Be Done? (http://www.archive.org/details/whatstobedonerom00cher)
(as literature, crap; as a political document, priceless)

Text of Lenin's What Is to Be Done? (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/)
(absolutely crucial analysis of the role of the party in revolution)

Text of Nechaev's Catechism of a Revolutionist (http://pages.uoregon.edu/kimball/Nqv.catechism.thm.htm)
(insane credo of revolutionary individualism; Bakunin helped write it)

Text of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons (http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/ist/fas.htm)
(a sympathetic liberal portrait of the nihilist personality)

Text of Dosteyevski's The Possessed (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8117)
(a reactionary but brilliant analysis of the various kinds of pre-Marxist revolutionaries and radicals in mid-19th Century Russia)

Quiz Monday. :D

RED DAVE

[Os Cangaceiros]

There was a funny part in a book I read called Angel of Vengeance, about the Russian revolutionaries around the time of the narodniks, in which some visitor to the Russian radical scene reads "What Is To Be Done?", and, realizing it's a huge chunk of steaming crap as a book, decides to explain this to all the people who like it. He went first to Lenin, who thundered at him that it was one of, if not the greatest book ever written. Lenin read it almost religiously. He then went and asked Vera Zasulich why people liked this crappy-ass book, only to be yelled at yet again for desecrating one of the pillars of Russian radicalism. He asked someone else, too, but I forget who...one of the old Bolsheviks I think.

But yeah, it was an influential book that cut across the political spectrum...it was admired by certain Bolsheviks and narodniki alike. My understanding is that it's somewhat whimsical as a political document, though, and it originally appealed to the same sorts of people who were into Charles Fourier and Alexander Herzen: basically the naive "middle class" children of the aristocracy who became radicalized and thought that they'd make the world a better place if they only indoctrinated enough peasants in the countryside (or, later on, if they slayed enough figures in power).

[milk]

I have read Chernyshevsky’s Chto Delat? a while ago, and as someone noted, Lenin also used this title for his 1902 outline of revolutionary organisation. On Chernyshevsky’s novel, admittedly I needed help in understanding a lot of the Aesopian language (characteristic of the time) and references to certain things, such as utilitarianism and French utopian socialism. I didn’t enjoy the novel though, and Rahkmetov, the 'bogatyr of the intelligentsia,' doesn’t appear much in it. Indeed he is talked about more by the other characters than he appears.

I realise that I shouldn't project my own present-day prejudices and/or dislike and transpose them onto the social attitudes and ideas displayed in the novel. After all, Chernyshevsky was a man of his class, and a class of its time (not now). But, a thread running through it all is that Rational, Enlightened Men and Women would steer the dumb, dark and backward masses along the correct path. He was not separate from that tendency of arrogant self-regard and elitism among the intelligentsia. He felt that change needed to be made, that large popular unrest was coming, inevitable even, but that the peasants could only destroy, and would destroy them too. They needed a guiding hand. The labouring classes would not direct change, but a self-appointed intelligentsia that sits above.

This revolutionary asceticism of Rahkmetov's I can see as being inspiring, but not many, including Nechaev, could live up to this model of behaviour. Nechaev contradicted his own Catechisms, when as a 'dangerous' man on the run in western Europe, he still maintained tender contact with his younger sister, Anna. He even showed heartfelt sorrow upon discovering that she was made pregnant, knowing that given her low social position, and with him being unable to be by her side and offer support, that her circumstances would be difficult to cope with back in Russia.

Nechaev was indeed dangerous but also pathetic and comical, with a streak of vanity that went through a lot of his activity, with the high estimation given to himself when compared to the realities others saw him in and as being. He was sensitive and never really got over the humiliations of his poor meschanin childhood. He was brim full of hatred, for privileged people, and that carried him to the Peter and Paul Fortress more than anything. It seems he was a resentful, autodidactic dilettante intellectual that the more sophisticated revolutionaries with a dvorianin background never really took that seriously (they saw him as a third-rate ideologue), except for his seemingly genuine fanaticism. He knew who and when to try and dominate, though - those he thought of as being weaker than himself, usually younger and more impressionable people moving in the radical student circles, of which he was a hanger on.

The current of conspiracy and violence in Russian Jacobinism, with finding utility in unscrupulous means was not created by him though or even mastered. He might have embodied certain aspects of the above but he was not the originator of it all, which (perhaps the wrong word to use) legend seems to suggest. He was a liar and a cheat, inflated the sense of his own importance and his own abilities, and those abilities proved to be amateurish with his limited activity with radical students in Moscow, with the People's Retribution, or Narodnya Rasprava.

Generally speaking, he was part of the left-wing of the French revolutionary tradition but with aims inspired by mid-nineteenth century utopian socialism. He was accused of converting what he understood as the latter into a barracks-style communism, with political control taken from the former, and with a view to conspiracy and the utilisation of unscrupulous methods to achieve what needed to be done. His politics are outdated, belong to an era long gone, the only thing that remains relevant about him or Nechaevism in general is the justification for unscrupulousness in achieving political goals.

But if there is any testament to his genuine force of will as a revolutionary, indomitable against that which he hated, then it is his time as a prisoner in a dungeon of the Alekseevsky Ravelin. Also, at that time, the Russian revolutionary movement had gone full circle, after the Lavrovist-inspired trend among educated youth, gone back towards conspiracy, which aside from it being due to the crushing failure of the above (the foolish and naive Going to the People), was something earlier abhorred by radicals in part because of Nechaev’s actions and reputation. I could be wrong, but I think that it was a member of the organisation People's Will (Narodnaya Volya) who would later carry out what Nechaev had wanted to do (kill a Tsar), and while also held prisoner at the Fortress, this same revolutionary also ruined Nechaev’s painstakingly prepared plan of escape.

[milk]

For those that want to read it, then the edition with an English translation that I read was this (http://www.amazon.co.uk/What-be-Done-N-G-Chernyshevskii/dp/0801495474/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1304753102&sr=8-1) one. This edition was most helpful in that it has useful footnotes throughout explaining the meanings of the Aesopian language used, as well as explaining the references to western European literature, philosophy and politics of the time, and which Chernyshevksy attempted to disseminate through the novel.

As for Nechaev, there are two works on him which are worth getting hold of. A short pamphlet called Bakunin and Nechaev by Paul Avrich, which was superceded by the 1979 biography Sergei Nechaev, by Philip Pomper.