Catechism of a sociopath

The less said about Sergei Nechayev's bizarre tract "Catechism of the Revolutionist", the better.

Nechayev was a 19th century Russian "revolutionary" who briefly collaborated with the more well-known Mikhail Bakunin, the de facto founder of modern anarchism. Bakunin's alliance with Nechayev destroyed the former's reputation, and is still the main argument used against him by critics of anarchism. "Catechism of the Revolutionist" was written by Nechayev, but Bakunin apparently approved of it at the time. (An earlier document, written by Bakunin himself, is sometimes also referred to as "Revolutionary catechism", but that text is less controversial.)

The text speaks for itself. Nechayev was obviously a quite literal sociopath, and his catechism isn't really a manual for creating a serious revolutionary organization. Rather, we are talking about a murderous cult. The "revolutionary" hates and wants to destroy society, but nevertheless lives right inside it, which would take quite a lot of dissimulation. In other words, only a psychopath could get away with it. The "revolutionary" should turn other people into his virtual slaves, by getting hold of their dark secrets and threaten to reveal them to the world at large, unless they support the revolution. Women in particular should be manipulated, in order to get influence over their husbands or lovers. Competing revolutionaries should be forced to incriminate themselves by being duped into making fiery revolutionary speeches, which would lead to their arrest and elimination. In other words, Nechayev wanted to act as a provocateur.

Enemies of the "revolution" should be killed without mercy. The mind of the manipulative sociopath shines through most obviously in the following lines: "Hard towards himself, he must be hard towards others. All the tender and effeminate emotions of kinship, friendship, love, gratitude and even honour must be stifled in him by a cold and single-minded passion for the revolutionary cause. ... The nature of the true revolutionary has no place for any romanticism, any sentimentality, rapture or enthusiasm. ... The revolutionary passion, which in him becomes a habitual state of mind, must at every moment be combined with cold calculation".

I took a little souvenir, a pretty head!

These were not the sensationalist scribblings of a frivolous youth. Nechayev and his secret organization actually acted precisely as laid out in the "Catechism". They incriminated other radicals, extorted them for money, etc. In Russia, Nechayev murdered a defector from his group, a student with the improbable name Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov. Finally, Bakunin broke with his younger ally, who eventually died in Russian imprisonment, but only after having manipulated the prison guards! (Paul Avrich's book "Anarchist Portraits" tells the full story.)

It's pretty obvious that Nechayev, under different circumstances, might have become a particularly vile serial killer, or (more likely) the leader of some cult in the American West. His "Catechism" is essentially fascist, but nevertheless has some comic relief in the last section, where the "revolutionaries" are said to be fighting for the liberation of the people: "Therefore our society does not intend to impose on the people any organization from above". No? Marx and Engels, when exposing the anarchists during the factional struggles in the First International, quoted a document apparently written by Nechayev's group in which the future society looks suspiciously similar to a Spartan military barrack.

However, it's unlikely that people such as Sergei Nechayev can ever take power. Hitler and Stalin had other qualities apart from being cold-blooded and vile. People like Nechayev can act only as lone wolf assassins or agent provocateurs, and their self-destructiveness will eventually bring about their downfall. (Small wonder they often commit suicide, witness Jim Jones and perhaps David Koresh.)

The main problem, of course, is that they tend to take dozens of others with them into the eternal darkness.