the more distinguished historians of anarchism), possibly his lover.6 The combined political-sexual-emotional hold that Nechaev (in his early twenties) had on his ageing comrade is held responsible for Bakunin’s ultraleftism and joint authorship of the Catechism. The authorship is disputed because of the violence of the language, the ultra-nihilism and political amorality, but the work was far from unpopular at the time. Nechaev, a fantasist in many ways, was not a loner, but a product of the dominant political culture of the period. The Catechism contained fanatical passages that offended some, but its tone and rhetoric were not so far removed from those of other clandestine pamphlets that circulated at the time. Numerous activists were lodged in the notorious Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg and others were suffering in Siberia after the anarchist Karakazov had, in an audacious dress rehearsal, fired a few shots at the tsar. The legend of Nechaev was based partly on falsehood: he claimed he had escaped from the Peter and Paul Fortress and it was this that necessitated exile. No such escape had or could have taken place, as Nechaev was not being held there. Bakunin believed him and helped to carefully construct his reputation. He persuaded Ogarev to write a poem in praise of the young man (a work that circulated widely in Russia) while Bakunin produced his own profile of Nechaev, portrayed unambiguously as the prototype of the 1860s revolutionary:
[He is] one of those young fanatics who know no doubts, who fear nothing and who have decided quite definitely that many, many of them will have to perish at the hands of the government but who will not let this stop them until the Russian people arises. They are magnificent, these young fanatics, believers without God, heroes without rhetoric.
The Catechism itself was probably written by Bakunin, based on the actions of Nechaev and others. It expresses emotions, ideas and rules which are then given enormous power by the author’s literary and political abilities, not all that different from those of his rival Marx but with one important difference. The Communist Manifesto is a distillation of the ideas of Marx and Engels, assembled partially from what they had learnt and rejected from Fichte and Hegel and from the theory and practice of the French Revolution, but largely from a synthesis that was working its way through Marx’s brain based on analysing the development of capitalism. It was conceived as an internationalist text. The Manifesto was a call to delayed action when conditions were rotten-ripe; the transfer of power and authority from one social class to another, while it would require a revolution, would then lead rapidly to a new mode of production and distribution. The transition itself would be painless.
The Catechism is effectively a Russian text, written with the express purpose of recruiting new activists. Its most powerful feature, as in much of Bakunin’s work, is a sense of urgency, of immediatism which itself is the consequence of a burning hatred for the tsarist autocracy and its dark realities. The text resounds with a call to destroy this system by a series of well-organised acts of terror, like those of the peasant leaders of past rebellions, that would arouse the masses. Bakunin often referred to this past in his many calls to action: ‘The times of Stenka Razin are drawing near.’ ‘It is unlikely that there will be another popular hero like Stenka Razin; his place will be taken by the legions of youth without caste or name … collective and therefore invincible.’ Who would carry out these actions? The revolutionary, the main subject of this incendiary pamphlet. To be such a person required a break with every aspect of bourgeois society, all its norms and taboos. There are no means towards such a pure end that were not permissible. Omnia munda mundis.
Mikhail Bakunin – revolutionary anarchist and
Marx’s great political and theoretical rival.
The Revolutionary Catechism, as its name suggests, was a secular instruction manual for radical activists. Its first seven paragraphs (out of a total of twenty-six) concern psychology rather than political economy, a psychology that has reappeared in the twenty-first century and can be observed in full play, although Bakunin and Nechaev’s caste of anarchist warriors differs in several important ways from current jihadi terrorist groups. These groups, who invoke Islam to carry out their deadly acts in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and elsewhere, have no clearly stated political aims and veer from one local potentate to another. The prevailing socioeconomic system poses no problems for them unless it prevents them from taking power. They often target the common people, including those of their own faith. As the paragraphs below indicate, though, there are more than a few analogies between these twenty-first-century jihadis and nineteenth-century anarchists:
Paragraph 1. The revolutionary is a lost man; he has no interests of his own, no cause of his own, no feelings, no habits, no belongings; he does not even have a name. Everything in him is absorbed by a single, exclusive interest, a single thought, a single passion – the revolution.
Paragraph 2. In the very depths of his being, not just in words but in deed, he has broken every tie with the civil order, with the educated world and all laws, conventions and generally accepted conditions, and with the ethics of this world. He will be an implacable enemy of this world, and if he continues to live in it, that will only be so as to destroy it the more effectively.
Paragraph 3. The revolutionary despises all doctrinairism. He has rejected the science of the world, leaving it to the next generation; he knows only one science, that of destruction.
Paragraph 4. He despises public opinion; he despises and hates the existing social ethic in all its demands and expressions; for him, everything that allows the triumph of the revolution is moral, and everything that stands in its way is immoral.
Paragraph 5. The revolutionary is a lost man; with no pity for the State and for the privileged and educated world in general, he must himself accept no pity. Every day he must be prepared for death. He must be prepared to bear torture.
Paragraph 6. Hard with himself, he must be hard towards others. All the tender feelings of family life, of friendship, of love, gratitude and even honour must be stifled in him by a single cold passion for the revolutionary cause. For him there is only one pleasure, one consolation, one reward, and one satisfaction – the success of the revolution. Day and night he must have one single thought, one single purpose: merciless destruction. With this aim in view, tirelessly and in cold blood, he must be always prepared to die and kill with his own hands anyone who stands in the way of achieving it.
Paragraph 7. The character of the true revolutionary has no place for any romanticism, sentimentality, enthusiasm or seduction. Nor has it any place for private hatred or revenge. This revolutionary passion which in him becomes a daily, hourly passion, must be combined with cold calculation. Always and everywhere he must become not what his own personal inclination would have him become, but what the general interest of the revolution demands.
The other paragraphs in the Catechism, more hair-raising in their details, deal with a variety of subjects, including how to treat each stratum of Russian society and the degree of hatred that must be expended on the upper echelons. The most intelligent personnel in high places pose the biggest threat to the revolution. For these worthies there is a single solution: extermination. Those who are of lesser intelligence should be left alone for the time being, since their stupidity only leads them to make decisions that enrage the people and push them in the direction of revolution. The majority of dignitaries are mere ‘animals’, in constant fear of losing their power and privileges; their punishment (outlined in Paragraph 19) is simple blackmail: ‘We must get hold of their dirty secrets and so make them our slaves.’
The pamphlet concludes with a call to destroy the old state and for a revolution that ‘annihilates all State traditions, order and classes in Russia’. The final paragraphs set out the parameters of what is required and how it should be achieved:
Paragraph 25. To do this we must draw close to the people: we must ally ourselves mainly with those
