ABSTRACT
The old saw that life is stranger than fiction is dramatically illustrated by the story of Organization, the group from which came Dmitri Karakozov, the would-be assassin of Tsar Alexander II. But Nechayev's activity was a replay, almost certainly consciously so, of one act of the Karakozov drama: the plan of some members of Organization to create a special subgroup of assassins, appropriately named Hell, who would perpetrate acts of terror not only against government officials, wealthy nobles, merchants, etc., but also against such of their comrades as refused to submit to their rule. By 1862 the young man had developed considerable interest in Russian folklore, in collecting popular songs and folk tales. Khudyakov's revulsion against his own society comes out vividly in his description of the return voyage. Some Soviet historians have swallowed the story of "Constantine's party" and of Dr. Kobilin's being its agent.
