#nechaev

'Sergei Nechaev preached that the revolutionary was someone who had "broken every tie with the civil order ... and with the ethics of this world," and he put his concept into practice. He set up a secret society, persuading its other members that it was but one cell of a vast network, whose sole representative among them was himself. He visited Switzerland, where, on the strength of his fabrications, he persuaded Bakunin to part with a good deal of money he had been saving for revolutionary purposes. Back in Russia, he alleged to his followers that one of their number was a police spy and that they must murder him. They did so, and after a police investigation Nechaev was brought to trial in 1872 - a trial which the authorities decided to hold openly, in the expectation that the evidence presented would awaken public repugnance toward the revolutionaries. In fact, as it turned out, the newspaper reports inspired many young people with admiration for Nechaev's courage, for his single-mindedness, and even for his break with conventional morality. Others, however, rejected his example with abhorrence, as one which would pervert the fine aims of the movement.'