Nechaev: Revolutionary Titan or asshole

[Guerrilla22]

what do you think of Sergei Nechaev? Lenin hailed him as a "revolutionary titan" he was no doubt a committed revolutionary, however his methods seemed misguided.

[Sky]

From the outset, Nechaev was guided in his revolutionary activity in the Jesuit slogan "the end justifies the means," which lay at the basis of his Cathechism. In a programmatic article, "The Basic Principles of the Future Society", he outlined his concept of a communist system. Marx and Engels called the system concocted by Nechaev "a sample of barracks communism"

Nechaev's abuse of the name of the First International forced the General Council in 1871 officially to disassociate itself from him. His theoretical unscrupulousness and fraudulent, provocateur methods, which were revealed with the help of G.Lopatin, provoked Ogarev and Bakunin to sever all ties from him in the summer of 1860. A man of great personal courage, fanatically devoted to the revolutionary cause, Nechaev nonetheless used methods unworthy of a revolutionary and brought great harm to the Russian revolutionary movement. Such methods, known collectively as nechaevshchina, were descieively condemned and rejected by Russian revolutionaries.

[Red Terror Doctor]

Dostoevsky wrote the reactionary novel, The Possessed, based on Nechaev's revolutionary activities. Nechaev together with Bakunin wrote the Catechism of the Revolutionary.

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

http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/russia/sp000116.txt

[Luís Henrique]

Evidently, a person like Nachaev is unfit to live in a post-revolutionary society. And how can one effectively dedicate him/herself to a transformation that would make him/her totally obsolete?

That Catechism must be one of the most stupid things I ever read.

Luís Henrique

[Red Terror Doctor]

Evidently, a person like Nachaev is unfit to live in a post-revolutionary society. And how can one effectively dedicate him/herself to a transformation that would make him/her totally obsolete?

That Catechism must be one of the most stupid things I ever read.

Luís Henrique


How can it make him obsolete???

It will make him obsolete only if you believe that a revolutionary period will take less than one generation???? Nechaev was obviously thinking that a revolutionary struggle would not be easy. I mean look at the black panthers.

I am reminded of a quote by the French revolutionary Saint-Just

"Those who would make revolutions in the world, those who want to do good in this world must sleep only in the tomb. -Saint-Just

[Luís Henrique]

I think we want to build a world in which people will be practically the opposite of Nachaev's superman fantasy. And frankly, I don't see how people who strive to correspond to Nachaev's fantasy can suppress


the gentle and enervating sentiments of kinship, love, friendship, gratitude, and even honor, without suppressing, at the same time, the desire for a world in which the sentiments of love, friendship, and gratitude will be the common feelings of people.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Those who would make revolutions in the world, those who want to do good in this world must sleep only in the tomb.

Saint-Just demands us to be restless, unfadigable (though I am sure he slept each night), which is reasonable. Nechaev demands us to be soulless, callous, insensitive, inhuman, cunning, criminal. Which is not reasonable at all.

Luís Henrique

[blabla]

I think we want to build a world in which people will be practically the opposite of Nachaev's superman fantasy. And frankly, I don't see how people who strive to correspond to Nachaev's fantasy can suppress

without suppressing, at the same time, the desire for a world in which the sentiments of love, friendship, and gratitude will be the common feelings of people.

Luís Henrique


If Nechaev did not have sentiments of love, friendship, and gratitude as you suggest then why did he choose to side with the poor and oppressed, at great cost to himself, when he could have reaped great rewards that comes with serving the high-placed and the powerful?

[Red October]

Nechaev definitely had a hell of a lot of commitment to the cause, but it seems like his methods ended up alienating many of his comrades, as well as hurting many others. A revolutionary needs to have more than just a commitment to the cause, and I don't think Nechaev really had much more than that. And like LH said, what would a man like Nechaev do after the revolution? I doubt he would be able to adjust to a world he wasn't trying to overthrow.