ABSTRACT
The sudden appearance of Sergei Nechaev as an international renegade seemed to confirm the belief of many tsarist officials in the existence of a vast European revolutionary conspiracy. Despite Nechaev's claims to be a member of the International, however, the Russian government did not make any serious effort to combat or even investigate that organization until 1871, the year of the Paris Commune. Then, as the power most hostile to revolution, Russia would take the lead in forming a new Holy Alliance against it. But in 1870 the police and the Third Section concentrated on rooting out the ‘fives’ inside Russia. Nechaev had, with criminal disregard for the safety of others, communicated with or referred in writing to literally hundreds of people; the new witch-hunt crippled the revolutionary movement as those unfortunates fell into police hands.
