TMOP: Chap 5 - pages 32-35

[Bekah]

  Chapters 5 - "Maximov"
pages 32-35  (Nechaev)

[from the book - p 32 - 33:   Maximov calls D.  Mr. Isaev,  so D. is  
"trapped"  in this new name - if not identity.  D. demands the  
papers.  Maximov placates him with showing him one page, a list of  
names beginning with the letter A.  The spidery handwriting is not  
Pavel's but it was possibly transcribed for him.  Another paper is  
shown,  with D's own handwriting because the letter is from him to  
Pavel.   D. now confesses to the name change.]

** Maximov is a character who seems almost straight from  Dostoevsky  
or Dickens.  Great stuff.

**  The letter does not reflect well on either Pavel or D.  because  
it is  D. chiding Pavel about over-spending.   D. is embarrassed.


[page 33: "But how is one to know, how is one to know, which day will  
be the last?"  (Italics from the book.)  ]

** Dostoevsky was sentenced to death for being involved with the  
Petrashevsky Circle,  a group of utopian oriented intellectuals who  
opposed the tsarist state.  - he was led to the firing squad but at  
the last minute he was granted a reprieve and sentenced to Siberia  
for four years after which he served in the tsar's military stationed  
in Mongolia.   During this time he experienced a religious conversion  
(Russian Orthodox)  and became much more conservative in his politics  
- even to the point of being associated with the Slavophiles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavophile

***************
[ page 34:   After denying that the handwriting is either his or  
Pavel's,  D.   finds out from Maximov  that it belongs to a young  
woman,  a friend of Sergei Gennadevich Nechaev.  ]

* Yes,  Dostoevsky knew full well who Nechaev was but in 1869 Nechaev  
had been with the "League of Peace and Freedom,"  and Bukhanin and  
written "The Catechism of a Revolutionist"   http://www.uoregon.edu/ 
~kimball/Nqv.catechism.thm.htm

Nechaev (Nechayev)
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Nechayev
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSnechayev.htm
much more:  http://www.geocities.com/countermedia/5.html


*  Coetzee's Nechaev is a fictionalized version of the infamous  
extremist Russian revolutionary of the times.  Dostoevsky  
fictionalized him  in Demons via the demented but charismatic  
character of Peter Verkhovensky.

* a photo of Nechaev which looks pretty much as Dosoevsky describes.
http://athens.indymedia.org/local/webcast/uploads/metafiles/ 
older_nechayev.jpg

* The historical  Nechaev conceived the idea  of "The Catechism of  
the Revolutionist,"  although that work may have actually been  
written by or co-writen with  Bakunin with whom he was very close  
ideologically as well as personally.  It was written in 1869 - the  
time setting of TMoP.

* In Demons,  Dostoevsky gave Peter Verkhovensky  copies of “What's  
to be done?” and  "catechism"  (pgs 303-304 in the Pevear translation)

  Nechaev returned to Moscow in August,  shortly before the time  
Coetzee has Dostoevsky going to Petersburg.    Demons was published  
in 1872 when Nechayev was arrested in Switzerland and sent back to  
Russia where he eventually died in prison.

There's more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Nechaev

* Re "The Catechism..."

"Although some of these elements were evident in earlier nineteenth- 
century Russian, French, and Italian revolutionary thought, the  
Catechism marked a step toward the systematization of revolutionary  
conspiracy. Together, Bakunin and Nechaev established the terrorists'  
creed and suggested the organizational means to kill in the name of a  
cause. Partly stimulated by Bakunin and Nechaev, terrorism was given  
its specific modern forms as a portion of the next generation of  
Russian radicals became converts to revolutionary conspiracy."

http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7346.html


* Dostoevsky attended Nechaev's  trial  in Moscow in 1871.   It was a  
personal thing with Dostoevsky because he had been a radical  
sentenced to execution in his younger days.   Demons,  which  
satirizes  revolutionaries and their ideas,  was published in 1872  
but he'd been working on it for some time with major (!) alterations  
due to censorship.

**********

  [page 35:   D.  admits to hearing Nechaev speak at a "League of  
Peace and Freedom" meeting but repudiates the man and his ideas. ]

  "League of Peace and Freedom"
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Peace_and_Freedom


Bekah
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