ABSTRACT
The arrest of Nechaev caused little stir outside Switzerland and Russia. The wide notoriety which he enjoyed earlier had faded in the wake of the monumental upheaval that was the Paris Commune, and this helps explain the ease with which Switzerland (technically, Zürich) extradited him. European working-class and socialist circles were much more interested, in August 1872, in the impending Congress of the International than in Nechaev. Most eager of all for this meeting were the anarchists, whose strength was growing steadily in most European countries save Russia and Serbia, where the loyalists retained control of the International. But those two countries then carried little weight in the organization and had no well-defined working-class movements.
