"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion": the incredible truth.

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Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Proven fraud

Burtsev Vladimir Lvovich

17.11.1862 – 21.08.1942

Some books have a strange fate.

Particularly strange, at first glance even incredible, was the fate of the so-called. “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” or “The Protocols of Zion”, or, as they are usually called, simply “The Protocols”. Since 1917, in Germany they began to be called the “Zionist Protocols,” and there they were associated with the Zionist movement in general and specifically with the Zionist congress of 1897 in Basel and some participants in this congress were named as their compilers. They were also published under the titles: “The program for the conquest of the world by the Jews”, “The root of our misfortunes”, “Enemies of the human race”, “The plan for the conquest of the world by the Judeo-Masons”, “Documentary data proving the origin of Bolshevism and what the Bolsheviks are really striving for” and etc.

These “Protocols” were fabricated 40 years ago in Paris by Russian anti-Semites, mainly agents of the Russian secret police. Everything in them is built on blind, boundless malice against the Jews. This is a virulent anti-Semitic pamphlet. But this, it turns out, is not an original work at all. This is obvious plagiarism. In the “Protocols” there are some excerpts from the vast, decades-centuries-long anti-Semitic literature on different languages. They also cynically used some works that had nothing to do with the Jewish question.

The “Protocols” by their authors themselves were obviously not intended for agitation among the general public. Yes, they, in general, apparently, were not intended for printing at all. If they had been intended for publication, they would, in all likelihood, have been fabricated more carefully.

They were compiled by Russian anti-Semites for the behind-the-scenes bureaucratic struggle in Russia, mainly to influence personally the young Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, who had recently ascended the throne, and some of the representatives of the highest bureaucracy who surrounded him.

But despite the fact that these “Protocols” were subsequently (apparently, without the participation - and perhaps even against the wishes of their authors) more than once published in Russia soon after their fabrication and were liked by Russian reactionary anti-Semites - their the spread in Russia at first was still relatively insignificant, and abroad they knew nothing at all for a very long time - until 1918.

For many years, the first twenty years, the general public, if they talked about the “Protocols”, then for the most part only as an insignificant libel. For a long time they had no influence on the political life of the country. Only later unexpected fatal events in Russian life in 1917...18. gave them wide distribution!

In Russian, the Protocols first appeared in print in Russia in the early 1900s. They began to appear in translation into other languages ​​later - after 15...20 years. First of all, they appeared in Germany. There they were immediately distributed in hundreds of thousands of copies, and then in millions. There have been discussions about them for decades numerous books, again in hundreds of thousands and millions of copies - and articles in periodicals in all countries. Hundreds of periodicals in different countries reprinted them in the form of feuilletons. An entire library could be compiled about them in different languages. This is now undoubtedly one of the most widely circulated books in the world.

But among those who wrote in defense of the “Protocols,” there is not a single serious historian writer who would dare to defend their authenticity and take up the question: who were these Elders of Zion, or whether no Elders of Zion ever existed, and Is not what is presented as their “Protocols” the most crude forgery of evil anti-Semitic reactionaries to slander the Jews?

Those who published and distributed them in Russia did not believe in the authenticity of the Protocols. Both of them knew that the “Protocols” were forged, but they hoped - and in this case they were not mistaken - that they would nevertheless be very useful for their anti-Semitic agitation among the dark masses. Indeed, as it turned out, the “Protocols” were to the taste of both Russians and German shady people - “fools”. Subsequently, anti-Semites from all countries were able to use them with such extraordinary cynicism and such success.

But the “Protocols” are not only a document of our immediate past, but also have current significance. Today's German policy is largely based on them. They also play a major role in some other states.

Of course, over time, when life in the countries where the propaganda of the “Protocols” is now developed becomes normal, and the “Protocols” are looked upon as a proven forgery, they will only be amazed at how for decades they could have such a fatal influence.

In the future, the Jewish question will undoubtedly be resolved in the way it was once planned by the Provisional Government in 1917, and as this issue is resolved in such cultural countries as France and England.

In my long literary and political life Due to various circumstances, I constantly had to deal with the Jewish question. I studied him in literature and followed his development in life, and asked about him competent persons - Jews and non-Jews, with whom I came across. For more than 20 years I have been familiar with the issue of the “Zion Protocols”.

I studied them from printed sources and talked about them with those from whom I could learn something interesting about them. He often spoke about them with anti-Semites who believed in their authenticity or who, although they did not believe in their authenticity, nevertheless defended and propagated them.

All these many years of studying the “Protocols” led me to the decision to write a book about them. I began compiling it in the last two years, mainly under the impression of what I saw and heard about them at the trial in Bern in 1934...35.

In my present work, I am very indebted to my friend Yu. Delevsky, the author of the famous book on the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which for the first time laid a solid foundation for their study. I used it, with the consent of the author, in many ways in the first chapters of this book.

In the compilation and publication of this book of mine, I also owe a lot to a number of people who, regardless of their political views provided me with very valuable assistance: A. V. Kartashev, G. V. Sliozberg, V. A. Basili, S. G. Svatikov, I. M. Cherikover, A. V. Rumanov, Ya. Sh. and A. B Shvartsman.

With special gratitude I remember the late G.V. Sliozberg, who involved his friends in the publication of this book of mine.

Vl. Burtsev.

2. History of forgery-plagiarism

The history of forgery and plagiarism of the “Zion Protocols”

In the days of coarsening and savagery that followed the World War, when economic decline, social disorder, political instability, red reaction and black reaction, racial hatred, national discord, unbridled appetites and the power of petty interests created the work of insane decomposition - he was resurrected with extraordinary energy Anti-Semitism began to manifest itself. The product of barbarism and ignorance, anti-Semitism, nurtured in the traditions of lies, stupidity and malice, fed by the miasma of social and moral decay, opened new era monstrous persecution of Jews. The cult of anti-Semitism was looking for a new book, a new Koran. The Zion Protocols came to his aid.

In terms of the poisonousness of the grandiose slander and the scope of the slander, this book surpasses everything that could hitherto be fabricated against the Jews in the anti-Semitic camp. “The Protocols of Zion” are, in appearance, the most terrible accusatory act against Jewry, moreover, allegedly drawn up by the leaders and representatives of Jewry itself. The Protocols of Zion expose the imagined mystery of Jewry - the mystery of the worldwide conspiracy of Jewry against the rest of humanity. The organized power of Jewry is pushing the Christian world onto the path of disintegration in order to erect a worldwide Jewish kingdom on the ruins of the kingdom of the “goyim,” or Christians, in which a Jewish ruler will dominate all humanity. Democracy, financial peace, the press, Freemasonry, bribery and deceit are all just tools for this imaginary conspiracy.

The “Protocols of Zion” could seem like a kind of revelation to those who were looking for the culprit of the World War and all revolutions in Jewry. A scapegoat for all the sins of mankind has been found. The Protocols of Zion were supposed to explain all the troubles of our dark days. And so the “Protocols of Zion” became a reference book for anti-Semitism. In the hands of Hitler and the “Nazis” they became a weapon of frenzied persecution against Jewry.

What is the origin of the "Protocols of Zion"?

Where did they come from? How did they appear? Who is their compiler? What is their purpose?

The “Protocols of Zion” are a forgery.

At the same time, they are plagiarism.

They are the most absurd document that could ever be invented against Jewry, for they are a mediocre forgery and inept plagiarism.

The strange history of Russian editions of the Protocols of Zion.

The “Protocols of Zion” have their own history and their own prehistory.

For the first time, the “Protocols of Zion” were published by a famous anti-Semite, who was later a member of the State. Duma, Krushevan in his newspaper published in St. Petersburg “Znamya” - in 9 issues from August 28 to September 7, 1903, under the title “Program for the Conquest of the World by the Jews.” This Krushevan was one of the main organizers of the Jewish pogrom in Chisinau in the same 1903.

For the second time, the “Protocols of Zion” were published by S. Nilus in 1905 in Tsarskoe Selo in his book “Great in Small and Antichrist, as a Close Political Possibility.” In the preface to this edition of the Protocols, Nilus reports that the person to whom he owes the French copy received the latter from a woman who allegedly stole it in a French village from a freemason of the highest Scottish 33rd degree in order to provide a service to her fatherland. The theft was committed at the end of a secret meeting of initiates in France, that nest of the “Jewish-Masonic conspiracy.”

In 1907, the “Protocols of Zion” were published by the famous reactionary G. Butmi in a book called “Accusatory Speeches. Enemies of the human race." The book was dedicated to the “Union of the Russian People”.

At the end of the “Protocols” there is a translator’s note, which reads as follows: “The stated protocols were signed by Zion’s representatives. They were snatched from an entire book of Protocols, the entire contents of which could not be rewritten due to the short time given to the translator of these Protocols to read them. Attached to them was a small addition and a plan for the conquest of the world by the Jews through peaceful means. These protocols and drawings were obtained from the secret vaults of the Zion General Chancellery, now located on French territory.”

A new edition of Nilus’s “Protocols” appeared in 1911. It was printed in the printing house of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. In this edition, Nilus repeats the 1905 version of his receipt of a French copy from a woman who stole it from the Freemasons. The next edition of Nilus’s “Protocols” was published in 1917 in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, in the book: “It is here at our doors.” Here Nilus stated that the manuscript of the “Protocols” was given to him by the nobleman Alexei Nikolaevich Sukhotin. Sukhotin at one time became famous after he, as the Chernsky zemstvo chief, put under arrest an entire village of peasants who refused to carry manure from his stable because there was glanders in his stable. Here Nilus also states that he learned from a reliable Jewish source that the “Protocols” are nothing more than a strategic plan for the conquest of the world, long ago developed by the leaders of Jewry and finally presented by Theodor Herzl to the council of elders at the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897. Herzl allegedly complained about the negligence due to which the secret of the “Protocols” was exposed.

Herzl's dissatisfaction was allegedly expressed in some circulars of the Zionist Committee...

In 1920, the “Protocols of Zion” were reprinted in the 3rd book of the collection “Ray of Light”, published in Berlin. “Necessary Clarifications” by Sergei Nilus, here following the “Protocols”, begins as follows:

“Signed by the Zion Representatives of the 33rd Degree. These protocols are secretly extracted (or stolen) from an entire book. All this was obtained by my correspondent from the secret repositories of the Zion General Chancellery, now located on French territory.”

In the introduction to the German translation of Nilus's book, another version of the opening of the Protocols is given:

“The Russian government never gave in to the assurances of the Zionists. When it became known from the newspapers that the Zionists had decided to convene a congress in Basel in the fall of 1897, the Russian government, as we were informed by a person who had occupied a prominent position in one of the ministries in St. Petersburg for many years, sent a secret agent there. The latter bribed a Jew who enjoyed trust senior management Freemasons and at the end of the congress received instructions to deliver reports of secret meetings, about which, naturally, nothing penetrated into society, to Frankfurt am Main, from where a Jewish lodge was founded on August 16, 1807 with the significant name “to the practicing dawn,” for a century maintained contact with the “Grand Orient” of France. This trip presented an excellent opportunity for the implementation of the planned enterprise. The messenger spent the night on the way in a small town, where the Russian agent was waiting for him with a group of copyists who made copies of the documents overnight. The reports of the meetings, therefore, may not be complete: people transcribed what they could accomplish overnight from the original French text. Copies were handed over to reliable persons in Russia, including the scientist S. A. Nilus, who translated these reports into Russian in December 1901.”

The compiler of this introduction also cites Nilus’s own version, according to which the person to whom he owes the French copy received the latter from a woman who allegedly stole it from the Masons. “We, however,” he adds, “consider the testimony of our like-minded person to be correct: the story of the theft was probably invented to divert attention from the trace of the traitor.”

As can be seen, “Protocols” appears in Nilus’s dramatization of melodramatic mystery.

Meetings of the Elders of Zion take place in an atmosphere of extraordinary secrecy. Their documents are stolen or copied by secret agents. Through third parties they are delivered to Nilus, who publishes them.

Conspiracy considerations shroud the entire history of the transfer of documents in a cloak of anonymity. The persons whose documents were stolen or copied are not indicated. The intermediaries, except for Sukhotin, were not named. But from whom did Sukhotin receive the “Protocols”? Anonymity prevents any possibility of verifying the story told by Nilus or his associates.

Why are the conspirators themselves, the “Elders of Zion”, not named?

Where are the 33 signatures?

Why are the enemies of the human race not exposed by name? Why is Herzl's name given, and only Herzl's after his death?

Further, where does the contradiction in the more precise qualification of the “Elders of Zion” come from? Why does Butmi insist not to confuse the Elders of Zion with representatives of the Zionist movement, and S. Nilus declares, in the 1917 edition of the Protocols, that they represent the Zionist plan?

Finally, how to explain the contradiction between Nilus’s version about the abduction of the “Protocols” in France by one woman and the version German translation about copying the “Protocols” with the assistance of a Russian secret agent? Why, in addition to the fantastic nature of the stories, is their inconsistency added?

Fantasticity, anonymity and contradiction are natural attributes of lies - already in the very story about the receipt of the “Protocols” by S. Nilus. But this is only a prologue to a monstrous lie.

Contradictions in forgery and plagiarism.

Logical analysis of the “Protocols” allows us to anatomize the document and assess its authenticity.

A conspiracy of one people against all humanity, a conspiracy in all countries and throughout the world, a conspiracy lasting centuries, a conspiracy before and after the coup. A conspiracy carried on from generation to generation, but known only to a select few; a conspiracy of all Jewry, into which only a few “Elders of Zion” are initiated, and which remains unknown to Jewry as a mass; a conspiracy of worldwide Freemasonry, but Freemasonry as a tool of only a few central lodges, which, in turn, turns out to be only a tool of Jewish conspirators... Rocambole and the Eternal Jew, Eugene Sue and Ponson du Terrail in a monstrous mixture and a supernaturally grandiose scale!

The conspirators gather at congresses, read reports, and keep minutes. They make speeches, praise their genius and their cunning, they convince themselves and, as it were, others of the greatness and rightness of their cause. They are full of anger, hatred and contempt for the “goyim”, for the rest of humanity. And the conspirators - the sages, the conspirators of the conspirators, the insidious of the insidious, the geniuses of intrigue, all the secrets of the conspiracy, all the most secret plans and thoughts are captured in written acts, reproduce their speeches in the “Protocols”, enter into them not only their own projects, but and the expression of their feelings, their satanic swagger, their hatred and contempt for the peoples. They are frivolous and criminal, preparing and storing documents that can fall into the hands of not only the uninitiated, but also enemies and those doomed to be victims themselves. They create something terrifying. incriminating material against oneself, a genuine indictment.

And now they are finally exposed. But in what a romantic setting. According to one version, the woman stole documents that were transferred to Nilus through Sukhotin. Why Sukhotin and Nilus? According to another version, the conspirators were observed by an agent of the Russian tsarist guard, through whose efforts part of the “Protocols” was rewritten, and the copy again ended up with Nilus. Everywhere there are “dames voilees” - everything is so pretentious, absurd, senselessly confused.

In this environment of those exposed and whistleblowers, everything is draped for the eyes of criticism. Only anonymous people, pseudonyms, unknown persons, dead people and contradictory options appear here. The truth is blocked by the disguised and fantastic characters. Truth is strangled by the ghosts of absurd facts. Lies appear in the guise of comedy.

The idea of ​​a conspiracy to achieve world domination, its goals, its means, its methods, is so imbued with the logic of madness that it could only have been born as a product of the imagination of a frivolous forger.

The Elders of Zion rebel against the power of gold through gold to establish a new kingdom of gold. Through anarchy they strive to achieve lasting power for themselves. By influencing the masses with demagoguery they want to create discipline of the masses. By destructive propaganda of unbelief they think to prepare the triumph of their true religion.

But why can't destruction be a long-term destruction followed by no creation? The thoughtful Elders of Zion, if they really existed, would have, in the full armor of historical experience, weighed all the chances and possibilities of the success of their conspiracy. Social and political struggle can give rise to turmoil lasting decades and centuries, without the end of a strong legal order - even under the power of the Jewish king, about whom the Elders of Zion dream.

Such is the class struggle between rich and poor in ancient Greece, which lasted for centuries (from the 7th to the 2nd century BC) and which, in the never-ending paroxysm of ancient “Bolshevism,” played a significant role in the evolution that led to the death of Greece. The political anarchy that accompanied the disintegration of the Western Roman Empire lasted for centuries and led to the establishment of a feudal system. The social unrest that arose in the Sassanid Empire in the 5th and 6th centuries under the influence of Mazdakism - a kind of Iranian Bolshevism - lasted several decades and was defeated by terror, which drowned the movement in an ocean of blood.

The Elders of Zion - if they existed in reality, and not in the creativity of forgers - would have to reckon with the terrible risk of their enterprise - for their cause and Judaism. They should have known that a revolution is often followed by a counter-revolution and the triumph of reaction and, therefore, anti-Semitism, the onset of a period of new suffering for Jewry. Does Zion's plan also include the cultivation of anti-Semitism?

Another feature of the madness inherent in the Zion conspiracy plan is that the conspirators destroy everything that they will essentially restore and strengthen after the coup. Their ideal is the ideal of integral reactions.

A Jewish ruler is an autocratic monarch, an oriental despot, a king, a deity, a pharaoh, or a god. The country is his property, and his subjects are his slaves. Every trace of freedom in his kingdom is eradicated, and people become automata, without will, without thought, without initiative, passively obeying established authorities. In his imaginary kingdom of Zion, orders were established imbued with the spirit of “totalitarian” Black Hundreds. The ideal of the Elders of Zion is to a certain extent only a copy of what has been established in autocratic monarchies, in police states, in the countries of Caesarism, Bonapartism, and the latest dictatorships. The Protocols contain a praise of absolute despotism, dynastic rule, and aristocratic privileges. They are imbued with contempt for the people and hatred for all the gains of democracy. They glorify the Russian autocracy, the papacy and even the Jesuit order.

Doesn’t the King of the Jews, God’s helper and Patriarch-Pope, the head of secular and ecclesiastical power, resemble the Russian autocrat? Isn’t the secret guard of the Jewish king, recommended by the Protocols, a copy of the guard of the Russian autocrat? Weren't arrests on first suspicion, executions, terror, administrative exile of unreliable people and other similar measures recommended by the Protocols real practice the tsarist regime, as well as, on the other hand, the Third Empire in France in the era of the post-December coup, and subsequently the Hitler regime? . Isn’t the apology for espionage and denunciation reminiscent of the rehabilitation of political detective work by Russian reaction theorists? The idea of ​​equating political crimes with criminal ones, formulated as a project to combat sedition under the king of the Jews, was long ago implemented in tsarist Russia under Durnovo, during the reign of Alexander III.

The “neutralization of universities” projected in the “Protocols”, the deprivation of their autonomy, the project of turning professors into obedient officials, the system of depersonalization of students and the change in the teaching program were all carried out in tsarist Russia, after the abolition of the university charter of the liberal period of the 60s. Those measures to curb or corrupt the press that are so diligently proposed in the “Protocols”, in the form of censorship control, bail, fines, closure of press organs, etc., were practiced in the most merciless manner in autocratic Russia.

In a word, autocratic Russia and other police absolutist monarchies were a kind of promised land for the Elders of Zion, in the sense of the already accomplished embodiment of the ideal and some of the most significant aspirations expressed in the Protocols. Is it not sheer madness on the part of the Elders of Zion - if such existed - because of the "King of the Jews", so to speak, pour le roi de Prusse, to undermine and destroy the foundations of these countries in order to recreate them after the success of their conspiracy?

The explanation for all these contradictions, oddities and paradoxes is very simple: the “Protocols of Zion” are a forgery, and their certain content is a function of the psychology, understanding and abilities of the forgers. The authors of the forgery are reactionaries; they acted for the purposes of reaction. The Black Hundred ideal was close, familiar and clear to them. Possessing neither knowledge nor talent, they were not able to endow the “Elders of Zion” they staged in the “Protocols” they fabricated with any opposite, but integral organic ideal. The outlook of the forgers was exclusively Black Hundred. They attributed the Black Hundred program to the monsters from Zion, mechanically combining it with hatred of the “goyim” and with the idea of ​​the “King of the Jews.” We are talking, as it were, only about a struggle, a rivalry for supremacy between two reactions. Hence all the insane incoherence of the conspiracy and program of the Elders of Zion.

Moreover, the forgers, without any scientific baggage and without theoretical training, were not able to give a sensible, even seemingly independent, justification for their worldview of reaction. They were forced to copy. The forgery drew its resources from plagiarism.

When the authors of the “Protocols of Zion” talk about several phases through which the existence of each republic passes, namely, the alternation of demagoguery, anarchy and despotism, then we recall the law of changing states of the political system, formulated, in the form of the law of cycles, by Plato, Aristotle and Polybius. The counterfeiters borrowed the corresponding reasoning from old textbooks or popular books and unceremoniously and absurdly adapted it for their purpose.

When the authors of the “Protocols” put into the mouths of the “Elders of Zion” sayings such as “might makes right”, that “the end justifies the means”, that “politics has nothing to do with morality”, that evil motivates good, that in politics there are no immoral means of struggle, or that “the word should not be consistent with the actions of a diplomat” - then we recall Machiavelli and his treatise “On the Monarch”.

All the reasoning of the Elders of Zion against the principles of democracy and in favor of “absolutism by the grace of God” is a mediocre transfer of old clichés and hackneyed maxims of reaction theorists during the Restoration era - traditionalists and theocrats.

In some cases, forgers did not disdain, for their purpose, thoughts and views expressed in socialist literature. Such, for example, is the tirade that freedoms have no meaning for the unfortunate proletarian, or that monopoly, concentration of wealth, speculation and a general economic crisis will lead to revolution. When the Elders of Zion propose to introduce, instead of a gold currency, “a currency of the value of labor power, be it paper or wood,” then we recall the projects of the Owenists Gray and Bray in England and Proudhon in France.

Even N.K. Pobedonostsev, this retrograde and obscurantist minister, was plagiarized. One of his diatribes against democracy, from a book about “New Democracy”, was copied or paraphrased in “Protocol” No. 1.

But these are only relatively minor borrowings included in the content of the forgery-plagiarism. They have comparatively general character. Later we will move on to more important elements a forgery adapted specifically for the fabrication of a “Jewish conspiracy.”

Mr. Kartashov’s joy was, of course, very insincere, because no matter how Yu. Delevsky puffed himself up, no matter how much he scolded anti-Semites, he still could not prove and did not prove the falsity of the “Zion Protocols”.

The entire system of evidence of this nimble Jew was built on a painstaking selection of quotes and individual passages from the literature preceding the Protocols of Zion, which expressed the same thoughts as in the Protocols. Here are Abbé Chaboty, Gougenot de Mousseau, and Edouard Drumont, even the shadow of Pobedonostsev is disturbed, Ratcliffe’s novel is examined and, like the crown of creation, a certain “Dialogue of Maurice Joly” is found in the dust of the archive.

This last document indeed contains many passages in common with the “Protocols” not only in content, but also in individual expressions - with the only difference that in the “Protocols” the secret Jewish rulers speak, and in the “Dialogue” - Machiavelli, under which Joly meant Napoleon III.

From this undoubted similarity of the "Dialogue", written in the 60s of the 19th century, with the "Protocols", Yu. Delevsky triumphantly concluded that the "Zion Protocols" are plagiarism - a reworking of the "Dialogue". At first glance, this conclusion seems correct. But this is only at first glance.

In reality, there was no plagiarism here, but only different writers using the same document at different times - the program of Jewish messianism. Is it possible to call authors who, say, quote the Bible, plagiarists? There is no doubt that each such author, copying pages and texts from the Bible, always writes the same words and expressions, expresses the same thoughts. And if Yu. Delevsky had gone through a number of writers who wrote on biblical topics, he could easily have caught them plagiarizing from each other: - after all, they all cite the same texts, and, accordingly, express the same thoughts.

The revolutionary of the 2nd Empire, the Communard of 1871, the French Freemason Maurice Joly undoubtedly belonged to the secret Jewish community and therefore had access to the secret program of the Messinists - the conquerors of the world. Naturally, having received an order from his order to issue a pamphlet against Napoleon III with accusations of imperialism and terror, he attributed to his Macchiaveli (i.e. Napoleon III) all those plans that his, Maurice Joly’s, leaders actually carried out over and over again. forever, a program developed over centuries.

No matter how vengeful the messianists were, there were still quite a few apostasy from them, there were quite a few people who were horrified by Satanism and left their ranks; and it is not surprising that other writers, like Gougenot de Mousseau, Redcliffe and others, learned about the existence of the messianic program and reported some excerpts from it.

S.A. Nilus was lucky enough to obtain most of this mysterious program and publish it. And if certain passages of this program are similarly set out by previous writers, then this is only evidence confirming the constant existence of the messianic program, and in no way refuting it.

The most important and most significant consideration was expressed by the same Henry Ford: “It is not important who and how obtained and published the Protocols of Zion, but the fact that the Jewish program, published in 1905, was actually implemented in all its main parts over the next twenty years.

On my own behalf, I will add: The program of the Jewish takeover of the state and peoples was not only carried out at all, but was carried out by the very Jewish force on whose behalf the program of the “Zion Protocols” was announced.

The appearance of this governing, entirely Jewish, clique of terrorists speaks for itself. This villainous gang of Jews achieved despotic power over the 150 million Russian people by 1917 only because Jewry has always had its own Zionist program, and Jewry has carried out and continues to carry out this misanthropic program with an iron, never-yielding persistence.

Prince M.K. Gorchakov

Prince M.K. Gorchakov created the monarchical publishing house “Down with Evil” in Paris, in which the Protocols of Zion were published in 1927 (from the book of Nilus in 1911)

Protocols of the Elders of Zion

taken from the original edition of S. Nilus,

printed in the Holy Trinity printing house

Sergius Lavra in 1911.

Protocol 1.

The right stands. Freedom is an idea. Liberalism. Gold. Faith. Self management. Despotism of capital. The internal enemy. Crowd. Anarchy. Politics and morality. The right of the strong. The invincibility of Masonic-Jewish power. End justifies the means. The crowd is blind. Political ABC. Party discord. The most appropriate form of government is autocracy. Alcohol. Classicism. Debauchery. The principle and rules of the Masonic-Jewish government. Terror. Freedom equality Brotherhood. The principle of dynastic rule. Abolition of the privileges of the goyim aristocracy. New aristocracy. Psychological calculation. Abstraction of freedom. Change of people's representatives.

Putting aside the phrase-mongering, we will talk about the meaning of each thought, illuminating the circumstances with comparisons and conclusions.

It should be noted that people with bad instincts are more numerous than good ones, therefore the best results in controlling them are achieved through violence and intimidation, and not through academic reasoning. Every person strives for power, everyone would like to become a dictator if only he could, but at the same time, it is rare that he would not be ready to sacrifice the benefits of everyone in order to achieve his own benefits.

What held back the predatory animals called humans? What has guided them until now?

At first social order they submitted to brute and blind force, then to the law, which is the same force, only disguised. I conclude that according to the law of nature, the right is in force.

Political freedom is an idea, not a fact. One must be able to apply this idea when it is necessary to attract the masses of people to one’s party as an ideological bait, if one is planning to break another party in power. This task is made easier if the enemy himself becomes infected with the idea of ​​freedom, with so-called liberalism, and sacrifices his power for the sake of the idea. This is where the triumph of our theory will manifest itself: the loose reins of government are immediately, according to the law of existence, picked up and picked up by a new hand, because the blind power of the people of the day cannot live without a leader, and the new government only takes the place of the old one, weakened by liberalism.

In our time, the power of gold has become the substitute of liberal rulers. There was a time, faith ruled. The idea of ​​freedom is impracticable because no one knows how to use it in moderation. As soon as the people are left to self-government for a while, it turns into licentiousness. From this moment on, civil strife arises, soon turning into social battles, in which states burn and their significance turns to ashes.

Whether the state is exhausted in its own convulsions, or internal strife gives it over to external enemies, in any case, it can be considered irretrievably lost: it is in our power. The despotism of capital, which is entirely in our hands, hands it a straw that the state has to hold on to unwillingly, otherwise it will slide into the abyss.

To the one who, from a liberal soul, would say that reasoning of this kind is immoral, I ask: if each state has two enemies and if in relation to an external enemy it is allowed and is not considered immoral to use all sorts of measures of struggle, such as, for example, not acquainting the enemy with plans of attack or defense, to attack him at night or with an unequal number of people, then why can the same measures against the worst enemy, the violator of the social order and prosperity, be called unlawful and immoral?

Can a sound logical mind hope to successfully lead crowds with the help of reasonable exhortations or persuasion in the face of the possibility of a contradiction, even if it is senseless, but which may seem more pleasant to a superficially intelligent people? Guided exclusively by petty passions, beliefs, customs, traditions and sentimental theories, people in the crowd and the people of the crowd succumb to party splits, which prevent any agreement even on the basis of completely reasonable exhortation. Every decision of the crowd depends on a random or rigged majority, which, due to ignorance of political secrets, pronounces an absurd decision, laying the germ of anarchy in government.

Politics has nothing to do with morality. A ruler guided by morality is apolitical and therefore unstable on his throne. Whoever wants to rule must resort to both cunning and hypocrisy. The great national qualities - frankness and honesty - are vices in politics, because they overthrow the strongest enemy from the thrones better and more accurately. These qualities should be attributes of the goyim kingdoms, but we should not be guided by them.

Our right is in force. The word “right” is an abstract and unproven thought. This word means nothing more than: Give me what I want, so that I thereby receive proof that I am stronger than you.

Where does law begin? Where does it end?

Blessing on genocide

“...The sharp opposite of the Aryan is the Jew... The black-haired Jewish youth waits for hours with satanic joy in the eyes of unsuspecting Aryan girls, whom he will disgrace with his blood and in this way rob the nation.” Sitting in Landsberg prison, ugly, nervous man dictated long, rhetorical commandments to his comrades in the unsuccessful putsch, calling to save Europe and the nation from destruction. These revelations were recorded by two of his cellmates: a native of Egypt, Rudolf Hess, and a dark, Jewish-looking Frenchman, Emile Maurice - two examples of the “true Aryan breed.”

The author of Mein Kampf has been thinking about “the culprits of our troubles” for 20 years. This ardent fighter for the purity of the race drew his ideological “capital” from the pages of a book that he learned by heart. Its title is “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” This “document” opened the eyes of the future “Führer of the German nation” to the secret mechanics of the world, and became for him a real manifesto of the “brown revolution”. From there he carefully rewrote the plans of the Jewish conspiracy, which threatened to give the whole world to the “little people.”

A person who opens the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” learns from them that the Jewish elite intended to use cunning and deceit to destroy the high-born nobility. That the Jews want to replace the old order with decadent democracy. What are their plans to seize (or maybe they have already seized?) all the gold in the world, all the banks and the media. That they are introducing new disgusting doctrines into the unstable minds of people - Marxism, Darwinism and Nietzscheanism - and destroying the traditional values ​​​​that man has adhered to for many centuries. That capitalism, communism and liberalism are different forms of systematic disintegration of society by Jews. That the Jews, having finally taken possession of the world, will install a king from the line of David to rule and rule over all nations, and they will remain subordinate to him. What lies ahead of us? Pax Judaica (“Peace in the Jewish Way”)! In this beautiful world, only ghettos will be open to Aryans...

This thin book became a compilation of the most common prejudices against Jews - a kind of “anthology of anti-Semitic ideas.” Later they were washed in blood - and cursed. It seemed that, along with the reciters of those slogans and covenants, this book itself should have disappeared from people’s memory. But she is alive, her ideas are still tempting. In the countries of the Arab world, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” was republished about fifty times (this book was especially liked by the Hero of the Soviet Union Gamal Abdel Nasser). In America, more than 30 publications have been published in just 10 years (since 1990). While reading these “Protocols,” any nationalists are complacently reconciled - from Hitler fans to radicals from the Nation of Islam. Their hatred is directed at a common enemy. “Protocols”, like a tuning fork, tune the rage of the crowd, directing its energy to a “just cause”...

...It was 1921. Three years remained before he wrote the book “My Struggle” as a prisoner at Landsberg Prison. But by that time it had already become clear that the notorious “Protocols” were nothing more than a fake. The correspondent of the London newspaper "The Times" in Istanbul, Mr. Philip Graves, managed to establish that most of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is... plagiarism. He was able to find the original book, which everyone had already forgotten about by that time.

As it turned out, in 1864, when France was ruled by Emperor Napoleon III, a pamphlet was published entitled “Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, or the Politics of Machiavelli in the 19th Century.” Behind this pompous name was hidden a caustic satire. Its author, as a distraction, turned into an unknown stenographer who recorded the confessions of two famous political scientists of the past, sent to hell for reforging, ridiculed, giving free rein to hyperbole and fantasies, the politics of the “new Napoleon.” His anonymity could not protect him from the police. We don’t know whether lawyer Maurice Joly (1829–1878) ended up in hell (although how he could have found his way there), but nevertheless he received 15 months in a French prison “for his libel.” The police confiscated most of the Dialogues and destroyed them...

Over the course of three days, from August 16 to 18, 1921, Mr. Graves published a series of sensational articles in the pages of his newspaper in which he exposed the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” as a long-standing fake. He convincingly proved that this was a case of plagiarism, while the long-standing fiction was interpreted by the compilers of the “Protocols” as an immutable fact. They managed to squeeze almost 40% of the text stolen from Joly into their opus.

Mr. Graves' aimed shot, meanwhile, hit the milk. Joly's "Dialogue" remained a forgotten pamphlet, and the "Protocols" have been disturbing the minds of people for a whole century, turning their despair and vague protests into a clear, enduring hatred of the Jews...

At the beginning of the 19th century, Emperor Napoleon I equalized the civil rights of Jews with other European populations. Many Jews leave the ghetto, some of them quickly become rich. The name of the Rothschild bankers becomes a household name. They came to the forefront of history at the very end of the Napoleonic wars. In 1811–1816, almost half of all subsidies allocated by England to its continental allies passed through their hands. Their wealth aroused envy and irritation. The upstarts and nouveau riche were also greeted with hostility by representatives of the upper classes, especially those from the old, well-born nobility, who were quickly losing influence on the policies of bourgeois governments.

Jews, on the pages of liberal publications, persistently defended civil liberties, which they knew how to use with such dexterity. In the eyes of a well-intentioned society, they could not help but appear as the most dangerous troublemakers and revolutionaries. “Protect the monarchs from the indignation of the mob, and the country from the dominance of the Jews” - conservative thinkers came to this conclusion, observing with horror the decline of contemporary morals. The conclusion was made. The time has come to collect facts and prepare an indictment against “the spirit of Jewry, which broke out beyond the walls of the ghetto and vulgarized the life and culture of European peoples.”

1862 - an anonymous article was published on the pages of the Munich magazine “Historisch-politische Blaetter”. It talked about how Jews allegedly grouped behind the scenes of political life, creating “pseudo-Masonic” lodges in order to manipulate from there nationalist movements in Italian and German countries. This was said at the beginning of that decade, which blew up the usual order in Italy and Germany and united many small principalities and lands into single states. Crisis, collapse of the old... Who is to blame? Jews.

1868 - German journalist Hermann Goedsche (1815–1878), hiding under the pseudonym “Sir John Ratcliffe,” published the novel “Biarritz.” It caused a sensation in society (its name, by the way, was reminiscent of the famous French resort where Napoleon III, hated by the Prussians, loved to relax). One of the chapters of this novel, stretching over 40 pages, is entitled “In the Jewish Cemetery in Prague.” It describes a secret night meeting that took place among the graves and crypts. 12 figures dressed in white robes surrounded the tomb of the famous rabbi. These were messengers from each tribe of Israel. Undisturbed by anyone, they began to discuss how to subjugate the entire Christian world to their power. These “secret rulers of the world” organize such a gathering once every 100 years. Peoples are only pawns in their game: they exterminate Christians, pitting them against each other in fratricidal wars, and then appropriate the wealth collected by others...

Sir Ratcliffe, alias Herr Goedsche, carefully described the strategy of the Jews. Firstly, many of them are baptized, trying to merge with Christians so that it is easier to carry out their policies among them. Each such cross is a spy, each one is worse than a hundred Russian Cossacks. Secondly, they seek to subjugate exchanges, banks, etc. Cash flows can be compared to the blood vessels of the state. Jews cling to them and, like vampires, drink them without a trace. Thirdly, Jewish bankers obligingly provide loans to aristocrats, entangling them like spiders in their networks, in order to subsequently ruin and destroy them. Fourthly, they persistently seek to weaken the forces of any power, seeking the separation of church and state. Fifthly, they support troublemakers everywhere, they dream of revolutions and take an active part in each. In the end, sixthly, they subjugate all the newspapers so that ignorant people can judge what is happening only in the way that pleases the Jews...

Such was Gedsche's fantasy. It is easy to see that his ideas - with some amendments - still serve modern anti-Semites. The cartridges cast by the Prussian writer still hit the target. Newspapers? Jewish truth! Finance? Jewish money!

Biarritz became a bestseller. The chapter about the secret Jewish evening in the Prague churchyard was especially popular. Finally, someone dared to openly say what had been whispered about for so long both in the closets of the poor and in the palaces of aristocrats! It was rumored that “Sir Ratcliffe” was Jewish himself and knew what he was writing about. Soon the mentioned chapter began to be published as a separate brochure. It has been translated into many European languages. It entered the “treasury” of world anti-Semitic literature.

1886 - Parisian publicist Edouard Drumont publishes the book “Jewish France”. In a short time, 100,000 copies were sold. In subsequent years, it was reprinted 200 times! IN late XIX centuries, only 100,000 Jews lived in France (out of a population of almost 38 million people), but Drumont was sure that this was too many. In those years, he published the anti-Semitic newspaper Svobodnoe Slovo. Its circulation grew to 300,000 copies in the mid-1890s. It was from the pages of this newspaper that accusations fell against the officer of the French general staff, Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew by nationality.

1894 - the trial of the “German spy” Dreyfus began. On trumped-up charges, he was sentenced to life in hard labor, but was pardoned in 1899 because otherwise American representatives refused to go to the 1900 Paris World Exhibition. It was necessary to choose between profit and integrity. In 1906, Dreyfus - by the way, an unpleasant person in himself: an upstart, a braggart, a spendthrift - was rehabilitated.

The “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, which arose on this wave, as established today, were concocted by immigrants from Russia. Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky (1853–1911) had a direct hand in them. In St. Petersburg he was considered a leading figure in falsifications and a brilliant master of ideological propaganda. 1882 - Rachkovsky headed the Paris bureau of the Tsarist secret police. In those years, a large colony of Russian revolutionaries lived in the French capital - emigrants of the “minus of the first wave”. Rachkovsky followed their activities with attention. His extensive connections helped him. In particular, he was well acquainted with the chief of police of Paris and, on occasion, visited the salon of his wife Juliette.

By the end of the 19th century, about 5 million Jews lived in Tsarist Russia. Most of them were forced to huddle “beyond the Pale of Settlement” - in poor towns and towns in Ukraine and Belarus. Some of the Jews became rich by becoming money changers or merchants. This caused resentment and envy: “Who multiplied the poor?” Jews? Of course, not only them, and not primarily them. And yet, it was the Jews - “not the worst people in Russia” (the words of N.S. Leskov) - who became the object of persecution provoked from above. These infidels, who were also unpopular in other countries, could easily be blamed for all the troubles. Already in 1881–1882, the first pogroms began to break out in the south of Russia.

Historians suggest that in high government spheres it was decided to entrust Mr. Rachkovsky's art to instigate an anti-Jewish campaign. There could be several undoubted benefits from this. These are the motives that could have guided the people who began fabricating the “Protocols.”

The revolutionary movement was growing in the Russian Empire. It was necessary to discredit him. Why not present the young people who went to the revolution as collaborators with “international Jewry”? This will cause everyone to dislike them.
Jews, especially wealthy ones, must be forced to emigrate from Russia. This will give an advantage to their Russian competitors.

We need to improve Russia's international prestige. Pogroms - a relic of the Middle Ages - can only be justified by the fact that the Jews were preparing a conspiracy against the government and even “against all governments in the world.”
In the end, the international situation was also convenient. France was split by the struggle between supporters and opponents of Dreyfus. At the same time, in August 1897, the First Zionist Congress took place in Basel. In this “kahal” of Jews gathered from all over the world, it was easy to see a prototype of the secret gathering of the tribes of Israel...

1891, June 6 - P. Rachkovsky informed his boss in St. Petersburg that the pogroms in Russia were causing disapproving responses in the French press. Therefore, the head of the foreign agents of the police department in Paris proposed, by launching a skillful campaign of slander and discredit, to nip in the bud any sympathy for the Jews and to whitewash any measures taken against them.

The authorities hesitated for a long time. Work began only in 1894. The main sources were a pamphlet by Maurice Joly and a chapter about a meeting in a Prague cemetery from Hermann Goedsche's novel Biarritz. Rachkovsky probably learned about Jolie's pamphlet in Madame Adam's salon. The style of presentation and some of the ideas seemed very interesting, especially since the first version of the “Protocols” was compiled in French. Russian aristocrat Catherine Radziwill saw their manuscript, read it, as she admitted many years later, and noted how strange and unnatural the French language in which they were supposedly written sounded. 1897 - the text was ready. “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” was translated into Russian.

The decisive moment has arrived. How to present them to the public so that they do not recognize a fake? The slightest mistake and a major scandal will occur!

Historians have quite accurately traced the fate of the manuscript on its way from the manufacturers to the reader. The first link in this chain was Yuliana Dmitrievna Glinka (1844–1918). The daughter of the Russian envoy in Lisbon, the maid of honor of the Empress, an admirer of Blavatsky, she loved to visit Juliette Adam's salon in Paris and, perhaps, was an employee of Rachkovsky. So she admitted that under very unusual circumstances she came into possession of a strange manuscript...

Once she had a chance to pay a visit to a Jewish friend named Shapiro. It was already late. Suddenly a manuscript written in French caught her eye. The curious lady leafed through it and, realizing that she was dealing with something highly secret, began immediately translating it into Russian. She never left Shapiro's house that night, spending time with pen, ink and paper. By the next morning, this hardworking lady was able to translate the entire treatise she liked, which had been recklessly abandoned by her hospitable host. She eventually left Shapiro's house, smuggling away (in a reticule? corset? pantaloons?) the manuscript of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Obviously, these events took place on the longest night of the year - the volume of the brochure (more than 80 pages) suggests such an idea - and in the hands of Mrs. Glinka was the largest reticule in the world (we will keep silent about other versions).

Returning to Russia, the lady shared her booty with retired major Alexei Nikolaevich Sukhotin, who lived nearby. She convinced that the manuscript was “obtained from the secret repositories of the main Zion chancellery.” Sukhotin immediately handed it to his neighbor on the estate, government official Philip Petrovich Stepanov. “He said that a lady he knew (he did not name her for me), who lived in Paris, found them with her friend (Jewish, it seems) and, before leaving Paris, secretly translated them from him and brought this translation, in one copy, to Russia and transferred this copy,” Stepanov later recalled.

The official, who did not suspect the trick, was the first distributor of this manuscript. He entitled it “The Enslavement of the World by the Jews” and printed 100 copies on a hectograph. Prominent dignitaries, ministers and even members of the Romanov dynasty were honored with the reading of these leaflets - Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, uncle of the emperor, and his wife Elizaveta Feodorovna, sister of the empress. Many of those who read the manuscript suspected the intrigues of the security department and hastened to stay away from the scandalous pamphlet. But Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and his wife were convinced of the authenticity of the revelations given. The uncle introduced his nephew, Emperor Nicholas II, and his wife Alexandra Fedorovna to the “Enslavement of the World.” At first, the king was amazed by what he read: “What depth of thought!” But, having learned from his ministers what the origin of this manuscript was, he was horrified. In his diary, he wrote that he decided to refuse any support for this work: “You cannot defend a pure cause with dirty methods.”

A copy of the manuscript also fell into the hands of Pavel Krushevan, editor-publisher of the Znamya newspaper, one of the leaders of the Black Hundred, organizer of the pogrom in Chisinau, where 45 Jews were killed. Krushevant immediately considered the “protocols of the sages” to be an authentic document and in 1903 published them in the pages of his newspaper under the title “Program for the Conquest of the World by the Jews.” The publication stretched from August 28 to September 7 and aroused great interest. The final point in the history of this fake was put in 1905 by the writer Sergei Nilus (1861–1929). A wealthy landowner in the Oryol province, he lived for a long time in Biarritz with his mistress, but suddenly received the most unpleasant news from his manager: “I’m ruined, it turns out!” The news shocked him. His whole life went differently now. He turned into an eternal wanderer, wandering from one monastery to another and everywhere finding conspiracies against God.

On all the objects around him, he looked for the terrible stars of David. And the “Protocols” amazed him to such an extent (“This is a document!”) that he released them as an appendix to his novel “Big in Small and as a Close Political Possibility.” Nilus was preparing to present this luxuriously published book to Nicholas II. His wife, Elena Alexandrovna Ozerova, was the queen's maid of honor. She easily obtained permission to reprint the brochure.

Most of those who read this work believed everything written in it. Only some intellectuals protested. Thus, Maxim Gorky sharply criticized the “Protocols”.
After the October revolution, comrades Ulyanov-Blank, Zinoviev-Radomyslsky, Kamenev-Rozenfeld, Sverdlov, Trotsky-Bronstein came to power in Russia. The Empress of Russia died, one might say, with the “Protocols” in her hands, as befitted a victim of a Jewish conspiracy: in Ipatiev’s house, where she spent her last days, she had only three books - the Bible, the first volume of “War and Peace” and the story of Nilus with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And the heirs of ancient Russian families, intellectuals, military men, engineers fled to the West, taking away in their suitcases and reticules a brochure in which, long before the revolution, everything that was going to happen in the country was accurately predicted. Rescued from the Russian Revolution, the Protocols began a truly triumphant march throughout all European countries. First of all, they returned to where they were born - to France. But the Protocols found particularly fertile ground in Germany.

1918 - revolution broke out in Germany. Coming home German soldiers and the officers did not recognize their country - it was sliding into chaos, becoming a toy in the hands of fanatical agitators and mutinous soldiers. Under the pressure of the Entente's superior forces, Germany, devastated by the war, capitulated. After such a disaster, it was impossible not to think about who was to blame for what was happening. But who is the culprit of all the troubles that have befallen the country? This thought repeatedly beat in the inflamed brain of the most famous German outcast of the 20th century - Adolf Hitler. The same thoughts were beating in the minds of many of his fellow citizens.

Alfred Hugenberg, an ardent German nationalist, one of the founders of the Pan-German League, the owner of many German newspapers and publishing houses (where were the Jews looking?), established vigorous activity in replicating the “Protocols”. In the immediate post-war years, hundreds of thousands of copies of the Protocols were sold in Germany. This brochure has become a reference book for builders. Lines from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion resonated across hundreds of pages of Mein Kampf.

The Protocols were also very popular among the winners. Their first English version appeared in 1920. It was distributed by the Moscow correspondent of the Morning Post, Victor Marsden. He had lived through terrible times in Russia and was now sure that all the worst things in this world came from the Jews. However, the majority of residents of Great Britain - a country where Benjamin Disraeli was Prime Minister for almost 10 years - were skeptical about this publication: “If the fruit of a meeting of the most prominent Jews of the whole world, who absorbed all the wisdom accumulated by generations of their ancestors, is this modest book, then it’s time to doubt the wisdom and intelligence of the Jewish race.”

The brochure also found an influential admirer in America - automobile magnate Henry Ford. 1920 - He published “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” in the pages of his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. Inspired by them, Henry Ford even published his own opus dedicated to the same topic. "International Jewry". In it, he accused the Jews of all sorts of crimes, for example, that, corrupting the souls of ordinary American workers, they came up with such vicious entertainment as cinematography and jazz. However, in 1927, the fighter against Zion threw out the white flag and took back his accusations, because they harmed the reputation of the company. He even had to publicly apologize. Ford insisted that “it was only out of naivety” that he believed in the authenticity of these “Protocols.”

The entire circulation of his own book was loaded onto three trucks, taken away and burned. Naive Ford! The genie was already out of the bottle. In Europe, his book enjoyed wild success, although the author, turning to the courts, demanded an immediate ban on its reprint. These days, Ford's International Jewry is reprinted as regularly as Ford cars are produced.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion successfully survived the Second world war and the defeat of the Nazis, denazification and prosecutions for pro-fascist views, although they also bear, albeit indirectly, blame for the Holocaust. What do historians say about this? “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are largely responsible for the genocidal policies of the Nazis,” says Norman Cohn, author of A Blessing for Genocide. His other colleagues are more lenient.

“The Protocols only indirectly justified anti-Semitic actions, but did not incite them,” says Michael Berger, professor of Jewish history at the University of Munich. “The whole fault of the Protocols lies not in the fact that they called for some open anti-Semitic speeches, but in the fact that they sowed distrust of Jews and convinced them to deny them help and sympathy,” notes US historian Richard S. Levi.

The 20th century has disappeared over the horizon, and yet new packs of “Protocols” appear on trays. Their poisonous revelations are still taken for granted. Their admirers, as before, see in every Jew a “mysterious machine” for the destruction of European and Asian peoples, set in motion by certain “puppeteers” from Zion, and are ready to defend the purity of their race with arms in hand...

Many Arab and Muslim governments and political leaders have taken a position in support of the authenticity of the Protocols. In some countries, the study of the Protocols is included in school curriculum.

Over the course of its existence, the Protocols have been reprinted in millions of copies and have been translated into many languages ​​of the world. The circumstances surrounding the creation of the Protocols were fictionalized by Umberto Eco in his best-selling book The Prague Cemetery (2010).

Authorship and origin

The origin of documents was indicated differently by different people and in different publications, often various interpretations were in conflict with each other.

There are a number of versions about the origin of the protocols. Proponents of the protocol authenticity theory do not give an exact answer to this question. So Sergei Nilus tells three versions of how he received the protocols, differing from each other with different guesses about their possible origin. Nikolai Markov claims, without citing sources, that “the original manuscript of the Protocols was seized in 1897 during the Zionist Congress in Switzerland from the portfolio of the Zionist leader Theodor Herzl,” and the “seizure” was carried out by an agent of the Russian secret police.

Some supporters of the authenticity of the protocols (for example, Yuri Begunov and Oleg Platonov) rely on a document (note) written in 1927 by the emigrant Philip Petrovich Stepanov, who lived in Yugoslavia, a former prosecutor of the Moscow Synodal Office, chamberlain and actual state councilor

In 1895, my neighbor on the estate of the Tula province, retired major Alexei Nikolaevich Sukhotin, gave me a handwritten copy of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” He told me that a lady he knew (he did not name her), who lived in Paris, found them with her friend (I think he was Jewish), and, before leaving Paris, secretly translated them from him, and brought this translation , in one copy, to Russia and gave this copy to him - Sukhotin.

I first printed it in one hundred copies on a hectograph, but this edition turned out to be difficult to read and I decided to print it in some printing house, without indicating the time, city and printing house; Arkady Ippolitovich Kellepovsky, who was then an official on special assignments under Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, helped me do this; he gave them to the Provincial Printing House to print; this was in 1897. S. A. Nilus reprinted these protocols in full in his work, with his comments.

Currently, this document is stored in the archives of the Holy Trinity Monastery (Jordanville, USA). There is no factual confirmation of Stepanov’s words; the publications he mentioned have not been found to date. Stepanov's statement is considered one of the important documents on the history of the protocols by both authenticity supporters and critics.

Scientists and researchers also do not agree on the time when the protocols appeared. Thus, Norman Cohn dates their compilation between 1897 and 1899 in France in French by Russian agents. Cesare J. De Michelis believes that they were created in Russian between April 1902 and August 1903. Michael Hagemeister says that the witnesses Sliozberg and Tikhomirov, who claimed that the protocols existed in handwritten form and were even in circulation in Russia at the turn of the century, are trustworthy, but he himself concludes that the question is “by whom, when and for what purpose was this text created - remains open."

In studies devoted to this problem, the name of Matvey Golovinsky, a journalist who lived in Paris and collaborated with Russian intelligence, is most often named as the author. It is believed that it was Golovinsky who compiled the “Protocols”, working under the leadership of the police official Rachkovsky. The version of Golovinsky’s authorship was initially based on the testimony of the Polish-French writer Katarzyna Rzewuska-Radziwill and the American Henrietta Herblat. This version was criticized both by supporters of the authenticity of the “Protocols” (for example, General Nechvolodov) and by those who were confident in their falsification - in particular, Burtsev and Nikolaevsky. Burtsev pointed out that Golovinsky left Paris much earlier than, according to the version of Radziwill and Herblat, he worked on the creation of the Protocols.

Publications, events and research

For the first time in the general press, the existence of the protocols was mentioned by Mikhail Menshikov in the article “Conspiracy against humanity”, published in No. 9372 of the newspaper “Novoye Vremya” (St. Petersburg) on ​​April 7 (20), 1902. Menshikov wrote that a certain secular lady suggested that he familiarize himself with the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” He doubted the authenticity of the Protocols and called their distributors “people with elevated brain temperatures.”

Later, the “Protocols” were published several times, including abroad. The “Protocols” became one of the tools of anti-Jewish propaganda; they were used for these purposes by anti-Semites in different countries, sometimes they are remembered even now.

The fact that the “Protocols” are a fake was suggested by a number of researchers, and in 1921 the falsification was confirmed by the found primary source. In an article dated May 8, 1920, The Times published an article about the Protocols, describing them as an authentic document and calling for an investigation into the "Jewish conspiracy." However, later, on August 18, 1921, The Times published an editorial in which it reported that the Protocols were a plagiarism of an obscure mid-19th century pamphlet directed against Napoleon III. The pamphlet was called “Dialogue in Hell between Montesquieu and Machiavelli”, its author was the French lawyer and satirist Maurice Joly. Immediately after printing in 1864, the pamphlet was banned in France. The text of the Protocols mainly uses Machiavelli's remarks from the Dialogue, although there are also borrowings from Montesquieu's remarks. The textual similarities are so great that the fact of plagiarism is completely obvious. Subsequently, some researchers have suggested that the Protocols were possibly fabricated from the Dialogue in the early 1990s in France and were originally written in French. It is interesting to note that, according to Umberto Eco, Maurice Joly’s pamphlet, in turn, contains plagiarism from Eugene Sue’s novels “The Secrets of a People” (about the Jesuits) and “The Mysteries of Paris.” Moreover, the Masonic program, which Su attributed to the Jesuits, was in turn invented by Dumas.

Professor of the Russian-American educational and scientific center for biblical studies and Jewish studies of the Russian State University for the Humanities, Doctor of Philology Leonid Katsis noted that “There was a whole series of similar mystical and conspiracy texts that borrowed ideas, pieces, and so on from each other.” And therefore there is simply no point in talking about authenticity or authorship. He pointed out that the statement of supporters of the authenticity of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” that the decision of the court in Bern, which established their inauthenticity, was allegedly overturned by a higher court does not correspond to reality. He claims that only 1 out of 11 clauses was repealed - the ban on their distribution.

Ban in Russia

In Russia, in January 2006, members of the Public Chamber and human rights activists called for amendments to the legislation that would create a list of extremist literature prohibited for distribution in Russia, which would include the “Protocols”, but the Protocols were included in this list much later. By decision of the Leninsky District Court of Orenburg dated July 26, 2010, the brochure “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” was included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials under number 1496.

Protocol topics

Twenty-four protocols were published, containing instructions for establishing complete control over the world. They describe various ways deception of the “goyim nations”. The main topics of the protocols are shown in the table:

Comparison of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion with Dialogue in Hell between Montesquieu and Machiavelli

The first publication that shed light on plagiarism was a series of articles in the newspaper The Times, published by Irish journalist Philip Graves, who proved the Protocols were a hoax. Sections 1 - 19 of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion correspond to Dialogues 1 - 17 of Maurice Joly. For example:

Modern supporters of the authenticity of the Protocols

Texts and videos containing arguments by Yu. K. Begunov on the origin of the “Protocols” are popular in anti-Semitic circles. Begunov is trying to create an evidence base to confirm the authenticity of the “Protocols” and the existence of a worldwide conspiracy. Literary historian A. I. Reitblat believes that Begunov’s article “Secret Forces in the History of Russia,” dedicated to the circumstances of the creation and publication of the “Protocols,” has no scientific value.

Notes

1. Investigation of P. A. Stolypin, 1905 - see Burtsev Proven forgery
2. *Publication of the article The truth about “The Protocols”: a literary forgery in the Times, 1921
3. Berne court (English) Russian , 1934-1935
4. (English) United States Congress, Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Protocols of the Elders of Zion: a fabricated “historic” document. A report prepared by the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws (Washington, U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 1964)
5. Islamic Antisemitism in Historical Perspective
6. (English)
7. Markov N. E. The history of the Jewish assault on Russia. Harbin, 1937
8. Begunov Yuri. Secret forces in the history of Russia: Collection of articles and documents. 2nd ed. St. Petersburg, 1996. P. 77
9. Platonov Oleg. Russia's crown of thorns. The mystery of the Zion Protocols. M., 1999. pp. 198-199.
10. Michael Hagemeister. IN SEARCH OF EVIDENCE ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERDS OF ZION: AN EDITION DISAPPEARED FROM LENIN’S LIBRARY. nlobooks.ru. Archived from the original on June 23, 2012. Retrieved January 23, 2012.
11. Norman Cohn. Blessing on Genocide, Chapter II. vehi.net. Archived from the original on February 4, 2012. Retrieved January 23, 2012.
12. , With. 98-102
13. L'origine des protocoles des sages de Sion
14. , With. 104
15. , With. 7
16. Sergey Nilus. “The coming Antichrist and the kingdom of the devil on earth are near.” Ch. X
17. G. Butmi. Accusatory speeches. Enemies of the human race. Dedicated to the Union of the Russian People. Fourth, revised and expanded edition. St. Petersburg, 1907.
18. Max Wallace, The American Axis St. Martin's Press, 2003
19. Umberto Eco Six walks in literary forests. - St. Petersburg: Symposium, 2003
20. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Between History and Fiction.
21. Nikolaevskii to Vera Cohn, August 30, 1964, Boris I. Nikolaevsky Collection, Series 11, Box 20, Folder 24, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
22. (German) Norman Cohn. “Die Protokolle der Weisen von Zion” Der Mythos der jüdischen Weltverschwörung. - Elster Verlag, 1998. ISBN 3-89151-261-9, page 236
23. http://lib.aldebaran.ru/author/burcev_vladimir/burcev_vladimir_protokoly_sionskih_mudrecov/burcev_vladimir_protokoly_sionskih_mudrecov__1.html Introductory article “From the author”
24. The mystery of the anti-Semitic “Protocols”
25. The Public Chamber will create a list of prohibited literature
26. Charny S. Anti-Semitic books will go to embassies. Jewish News Agency (05/13/2011). Archived
27. The Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation is sending antisemitic books all over the world (English). CFCA (29-05-2011). Archived from the original on October 16, 2012. Retrieved September 28, 2012.
28. RUSSIA (English). state.gov. Archived from the original on October 16, 2012. Retrieved September 28, 2012.
29. Balashova Yu. Orthodoxy, autocracy, anti-Semitism // New Newspaper. - M., May 16, 2011. - V. 51.
30. Y. K. Begunov “THE CASE OF BERN “THE ELDERDS OF ZION””
31. “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” - history and modernity. Conversation with Professor Yuri Begunov on the website of the newspaper “Orthodox Rus'”
32. Reitblat A. I. Nilus and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion // UFO. - M., 2006. - V. 78.

Protocol texts

• Publication of the protocols of S. Nilus, printed in the printing house of the Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra in 1911
• Yakov Krotov. The text of the “Protocols” in the library of Yakov Krotov
• Maurice Joly. Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu (original text of Maurice Joly's pamphlet) at the Project Gutenberg Library
• Scan of the 1922 Berlin edition in PDF at archive.org

Literature

• Vladimir Burtsev. "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion". Proven forgery Paris, (city)
• Norman Cohn. Blessing for Genocide: The Myth of the Worldwide Jewish Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. , Per. from English S. S. Bychkova, Moscow, Progress, 1990.

For a long time, the Protocols were a reference book for anti-Semites. As is known, they are about a kind of Jewish-Masonic conspiracy: wars, revolutions and capitalism were supposedly supposed to, according to the plans of the “wise men,” lead to the fall of the monarchy and the destruction of Christian civilization, clearing the way for world Jewish domination.

As a result of research conducted by leading Russian historian Mikhail Lepekhin, it became known that the protocols were written by Matvey Golovinsky, who devoted his life to espionage and propaganda activities. Having worked for the Tsarist secret police, he subsequently changed his political orientation and joined the Bolsheviks.

Golovinsky was born in 1865 in Ivashevka (Simbirsk province). His father was friendly with Dostoevsky and was sentenced to death for his participation in the conspiracy. He was subsequently pardoned and died when Matvey was 10 years old, so the child remained to live with his mother and French governess.

After briefly studying law, Golovinsky joined the Holy Brotherhood, an anti-Semitic secret society that used falsification as a means of fighting revolutionaries. He was engaged in publishing newspapers and pamphlets using falsified materials. As a result of the contacts established, Golovinsky managed to get a job in the government press department, where he published articles in “obedient” newspapers and paid remuneration to some journalists.

After the death of his patron, Golovinsky was publicly exposed by Maxim Gorky as an informant and was forced to go abroad. Settling in Paris, he came into contact with the head of the Russian secret police, Pierre Ratchkovsky, who offered him a job writing stories about Russia for the French press.

Subsequently, Golovinsky was entrusted with a more important task. Reactionary circles in Moscow, shocked by the successes of the reformers around Nicholas II, were fired up with the idea of ​​fabricating a fake that would show the Tsar that the growth of capitalism in Russia was in fact a Jewish conspiracy to overthrow the monarch himself and the entire Tsarist regime.

At the end of 1900 - beginning of 1901, Golovinsky sat down to work. In writing the Protocols, he took much from a pamphlet written in 1864 by an anti-Bonapartist lawyer who accused Napoleon III of being involved in a conspiracy to usurp all power in France.
TO THE READERS
The book brought to the attention of readers is of interest in several respects. First of all, it answers the question of the authenticity of the document, which is still in circulation as one of the grounds for Black Hundred anti-Semitic propaganda.
The prominent English scholar Norman Cohn, based on a significant number of documents, traces the history of the creation of a fake, which, under the name “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” was launched at the beginning of the 20th century by pogromists in Russia, and then used in Germany during the preparation for the Nazis’ coming to power.
I myself had to hear about the reappearance of this fake in the “samizdat” of the Black Hundreds in 1977, and later “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” became widely known in our country. Unfortunately, the history of the fake was covered in detail only in the foreign press. Although the inauthentic nature of the document is generally recognized, as reflected, for example, in all recent editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica and other standard Western European and American reference works, our reader has not yet had a sufficiently complete and detailed description of the history of the creation of this forged text .
The main milestones in revealing how the document was fabricated were outlined by the outstanding researcher of modern Russian history Burtsev. Drawing on Burtsev's revelations and work done by other researchers, Cohn convincingly traces the stages of creating a fake. Using intertextual research methods, he irrefutably proves that the basis for the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and their subsequent modifications, which were widely used for Black Hundred propaganda purposes, was a brilliant French political pamphlet of the last century.
One of the main methods of this propaganda was and still is the spread of fiction about an alleged Jewish (in Nazi terminology, “Judeo-Masonic”) conspiracy aimed at enslaving other peoples. One of the recent manifestations of this general trend was the discourse on Russophobia that flooded our press.
Unfortunately, this is further evidence of the relevance of Norman Cohn’s book, which recreates that gloomy atmosphere, first in Russia at the beginning of the century, then in pre-fascist Germany, which made the spread of fakes possible.
Kohn's book will be usefully read by all readers.
Vyacheslav Ivanov
People's Deputy of the USSR,
Doctor of Philology, Professor

Chapter I. "PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERDS OF ZION" AND "DIALOGUE IN HELL"
1
The people who spread the myth of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy in the 19th century make up a rather motley group. This is Barrel and the Simonini Letter at the beginning of the century; much later, in the last third of the century, Gedsche in Germany and the “Rabbi’s Speech”; the French Gougno de Mousseau, Archbishop Meran, Abbot Chabot, Edouard Drumont, the Russian Brafmann, the Pole Lutostansky, the Serb Osman Bey. These people together cleared the way for the famous forgery, which for a long time outlived their own works, which had sunk into oblivion.
“Around 1840,” Osman Bey wrote in his book “The Conquest of the World by the Jews,” “the Jewish Parliament was convened in Krakow. It was something like an Ecumenical Council, where the leaders of the Chosen People gathered for a meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to determine the means most suitable for the Jews to achieve dominion over the entire globe."
This fantasy formed the basis of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The "Protocols" consist of reports or notes for reports in which a member of the secret Jewish government - the "wise men of Zion" - lays out a plan to achieve world domination.
The number of “protocols,” reports, or chapters in the usual, standard version is twenty-four; they are collected in a booklet, which in both English editions of a small format is about one hundred pages. The content of the Protocols is not so easy to convey, since they are verbose and presented in a pompous style, and their argumentation is evasive and devoid of logic. However, with some effort, three main themes can still be discerned in them: a critique of liberalism, an analysis of the methods supposedly allowing the Jews to achieve world domination, and a description of their future world state. These themes are presented in the most disorderly manner, but in general it can be said that the first two predominate in the first nine "protocols", while the remaining fifteen are devoted mainly to the description of the coming kingdom. If we try to organize the argumentation of the “Protocols”, then, in general terms, it looks like this.
The calculations of the “wise men” are based on a specific understanding of politics. In their opinion, political freedom is just an idea - an idea that has great appeal to the masses, but which has never been put into practice. Liberalism, which undertakes this insoluble task, ultimately leads only to chaos, because people are not able to govern themselves, they do not know what they really want, they are easily deceived by ostentatious appearances, they are not able to accept correct solution when it is necessary to choose. When the aristocracy was in power, which was quite just, and freedom was in its hands, it used it for the common good; for example, she took care of the workers whose labor she lived with. But the aristocracy is a thing of the past, and the liberal order that replaced it is not viable and must inevitably lead to despotism. Only a tyrant can restore order in society. Moreover, since there are more wicked people in the world than good people, force remains the only acceptable means of government. Might is always right, and in the modern world the basis of such strength is capital and control over it. Today gold rules the world.
For many centuries there has been a conspiracy to concentrate all political power in the hands of those who are able to use it correctly - that is, in the hands of the "Elders of Zion." Much has already been done, although the conspiracy itself has not yet achieved its goal. In accordance with the very precisely formulated plans of the "wise men" in the period preceding the establishment of their domination over the whole world, the non-Jewish states that still exist, but are already sufficiently weakened, must be destroyed.
First, for this it is necessary to achieve an increase in discontent and anxiety in each state. Fortunately, the means for this are provided by the very nature of liberalism. Already now, by encouraging endless propaganda of liberal ideas and incessant chatter in parliaments, the “wise men” are helping to achieve complete confusion in the minds of common people. Confusion and disunity will increase thanks to a multi-party system: the "wise men" carefully deepen the differences by secretly supporting all parties. They will ensure that the people are alienated from their leaders. In particular, they will stir up constant discontent among the workers, pretending to support their demands, but at the same time secretly doing everything possible to lower the standard of living.
In any state it is necessary to discredit the government. The aristocracy must ultimately be destroyed by increased taxation on land; Since aristocrats will never give up a luxurious lifestyle, it is necessary to help them get entangled in debt. As a result, a presidential form of government should be introduced, which makes it possible for the “wise men” to nominate their puppets to the presidency; Preference should be given to people with a “dark past” to make it easier to control their activities. Freemasonry and secret societies must be made obedient instruments in the hands of “wise men”; any Mason who resists must be physically destroyed. The industry is concentrated in the hands of giant monopolies so that the property of non-Jews can be instantly destroyed when the “wise men” need it.
Relations between states should also be undermined. It is necessary to aggravate national hatred until mutual understanding between nations is completely lost. Stockpiles of weapons must gradually increase, and wars must be started as often as possible. These wars, however, should not lead to the final victory of any country, but only contribute to the creation of even greater economic chaos. In the meantime, it is necessary to constantly undermine the moral foundations of non-Jews. Widely promote atheism, a beautiful lifestyle, debauchery and vice; For this purpose, the “wise men” are already introducing teachers and governesses specially selected as agents into the homes of non-Jews. Particular care should be taken to encourage drunkenness and prostitution.
The "Wise Men" admit that the Gentiles may still be able to thwart their plot, but they are quite confident that they can break all resistance. They can use the common people to overthrow the rulers, reducing the masses to such a degree of impoverishment that they will simultaneously rise up in all countries at once and, under the complete control of the “wise men,” destroy all private property, with the exception, of course, of property belonging to the Jews. They can play one government off against another; after many years of skillfully weaving intrigues and encouraging mutual hostility, they can easily achieve the outbreak of war against any nation that opposes their will. Even if by chance all of Europe united against them, they could turn to the support of the guns of America, China and Japan. In addition, there is also a metro: underground railway lines were invented for the sole purpose of giving the “wise men” the opportunity to blow up any capital in the event of serious opposition. After this, the remnants of the opposition can be destroyed at any time with the help of terrible diseases. There was even a possibility: if some Jews showed obstinacy, they would be dealt with through anti-Semitism.
Looking around the modern world with their inner gaze, the “wise men” prepare the ground for far-reaching plans. Already now they can state that they have destroyed religions, especially Christianity. Now that the influence of the Jesuits has been reduced to nothing, and the papacy is defenseless, it can be destroyed at any moment. The prestige of secular rulers also declines; murders and assassination threats force them to appear in public only surrounded by bodyguards, and the killers are glorified as true martyrs. Neither rulers nor aristocrats can now rely on the loyalty of the common people. Economic unrest has shaken social foundations. Clever financial manipulations led to economic decline and huge public debts; finances have fallen into a state of complete confusion, the gold standard [The gold standard is a system of monometallism, in which one metal (gold) serves as the universal equivalent and the basis of monetary circulation. It was first established in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, and in most other capitalist countries at the end of the 19th century. In Russia in the 19th century. silver played this role. In 1897, the gold standard was introduced, under which gold coins circulated freely and were exchanged for banknotes. The gold standard met the needs of developing European and Russian capitalism. - Approx. ed.] everywhere led to a national catastrophe.
The time will soon come when the Gentile states, pushed to the limit, will be glad to hand over the reins of government to the “wise men” who have already managed to lay the foundation for future domination. Instead of an aristocracy, they have established a plutocracy, or the rule of gold, and gold is completely under their control. They established control over legislative activity and brought the laws into complete confusion; the invention of arbitration is a clear example of these diabolical tricks. They have firmly taken control of the education system. In this area, their destructive influence was reflected in the invention of teaching with the help of visual aids. The purpose of this technique is to turn non-Jews into “unthinking, obedient animals, waiting for evidence to figure it out...”.
The "wise men" already exercise control over politics and politicians; all parties - from the most conservative to the extremely radical - are essentially tools in their hands. Hiding behind the backs of Freemasonry, the "wise men" penetrated the secrets of all states, and, as any government knows, they are powerful enough to bring into existence societies with new social orders or, conversely, destroy a society whenever they want. After centuries of struggle, costing the lives of thousands of non-Jews and even many Jews, perhaps only a hundred years separate the “wise men” from finally achieving their goal.
Their goal is the advent of the “messianic age”, when the whole world will be united by one religion, that is, Judaism, and it will be ruled by a Jewish ruler from the line of David. This century is sanctified from above, for God himself chose the Jews for world domination, but its structure will be distinguished by a very specific political structure. Society will be organized in full accordance with the principle of inequality; the masses in it are separated from politics; education and the press suppress even the slightest interest in politics. All publications are heavily censored, and freedom of speech and association is severely restricted. These restrictions will be presented as temporary measures that will supposedly be lifted after all the enemies of the people have been dealt with, but in fact they will be permanent. History will be taught only as a visual aid to highlight the difference between the chaos of the past and the ideal order of the present; the successes of the new world empire will be constantly contrasted with the political weakness and failures of the previous Gentile governments. Every member of society will be under surveillance. A large secret police force would be recruited from all sections of the population, and every citizen would be under strict obligation to report all criticisms of the regime. Anti-government agitation will be equated to the most shameful crime, comparable only to theft or murder. Every manifestation of liberalism will be put an end to, and unconditional obedience will be required from everyone. Freedom will be promised in the indefinite future, but this promise is ephemeral.
On the other hand, a high standard of living of the population will be ensured. Unemployment will be eliminated, and taxes will be made dependent on income. The interest of the “little” person will be spurred by the development of small-scale production. Education will be planned so that young people are trained according to their background. Drunkenness is condemned, as is any manifestation of independent will.
All this will give the masses satisfaction and peace, and the example of the leaders will help them in this. Laws will become clear and unchangeable, and judges will become incorruptible and infallible. All Jewish leaders will be selected from among capable, business-minded and benevolent people. Moreover, the paramount chief will be a man of eminent merit; all unsuitable heirs are ruthlessly eliminated. This Jewish ruler will communicate freely with people, accept their petitions; no one will guess that he is constantly surrounded by secret police agents. He must lead an impeccable private life, without patronizing his relatives; he will not own any property. He is called upon to constantly work on the instructions of the government. The result will be a world without violence or injustice, in which all will enjoy the true benefits of society. The nations of the world will rejoice and praise the wonderful government, and therefore the kingdom of Zion will last long.
This is the plan that is attributed to these mysterious gentlemen, the “wise men of Zion.”
* * *
The general public first learned about it after several editions of the Protocols were published in Russia between 1903 and 1907. The earliest printed version, with minor abbreviations, is the version that appeared in the St. Petersburg newspaper Znamya, where it was published from August 28 to September 7, 1903. The editor-publisher of "Znamya" was P.A. Krushevan, a known ardent anti-Semite. A few months before the “Protocols” appeared in print, he organized a pogrom in Chisinau, during which 45 Jews were killed, more than 400 were wounded, and 1,300 Jewish houses and shops were destroyed.
Krushevant did not say who forwarded or gave him this manuscript; he only mentioned that it was a translation of a document written in France, which the translator entitled “Minutes of the Meetings of the World Union of Freemasons and Elders of Zion”; He himself entitled them: “The program for the conquest of the world by the Jews.”
Two years later, the same version, but this time without abbreviations, appeared in the form of a pamphlet entitled “The Root of Our Troubles” with the subtitle “Where is the Root of the Modern Disorder in the Social Order of Europe in General and Russia in Particular. Excerpts from the Ancient and Modern Protocols of the World Union Freemasons." This work was transferred to the St. Petersburg Censorship Committee on December 9, 1905; permission for publication was received immediately, and in the same month the brochure appeared in St. Petersburg with the imprint of the Imperial Guard. The editor's name was not mentioned, but it is likely that in reality it was a retired officer named G.V. Butmi, close friend Krushevana, both of them are from Bessarabia.
At that time, from October 1905, Butmi and Krushevan took an active part in the formation of the far-right organization - the "Union of the Russian People" - known as the "Black Hundred", which created armed units to fight radicals, liberals and for mass bloodshed massacres of Jews. In January 1906, the organization again published the pamphlet The Root of Our Troubles, but this time the editor's name, Butmy, was on the cover and it was given a new title, "Enemies of the Human Race." The main part of the book is subtitled “Protocols extracted from the secret repositories of the Zion General Chancellery (Where is the root of modern disorder in the social system of Europe in general, and in Russia in particular).” This brochure appeared this time with the output data not of the Imperial Guard, but of the School for the Deaf and Dumb. Three new editions of this version of the Protocols appeared in 1906 and two more in 1907, all in St. Petersburg; in addition, they were at the same time published in Kazan with the subtitle "Excerpts from the ancient and modern protocols of the Elders of Zion of the Universal Society of Franc-Massons."
"The Root of Our Troubles" and "Enemies of the Human Race" are cheap pamphlets aimed at the mass reader. The “Protocols” are presented in a completely different way in the book that appeared entitled “The Great in the Small and the Antichrist as a Imminent Political Possibility.” Its author was the mystical writer Sergei Nilus. The “Protocols” were not included in the first edition of his book (1903). They were included in the second edition, which was published in December 1905 with the imprint of the local branch of the Red Cross in Tsarskoe Selo. Subsequently, we will see that this publication was prepared with a specific purpose - to impress Nicholas II, and therefore bore the imprint of the mystery of the original source. The beautifully published book was camouflaged as those mystical works that the king loved to read. In addition, it contained references to events in France and other countries, while the Krushevan-Butmi edition was more focused on events taking place in the Russian Empire.
Let's go back a little. So, Nilus's book was approved by the Moscow Censorship Committee on September 28, 1905, but still remained in manuscript; nevertheless, it appeared in print almost simultaneously with The Root of Our Troubles. But even before that, she attracted attention. Since Sergei Nilus then enjoyed the favor of the Imperial Court, the Moscow Metropolitan gave orders to read a sermon containing an exposition of his version of the “Protocols” in all 368 churches of Moscow. This was performed on October 16, 1905; in addition, the sermon was hastily reprinted in the right-wing newspaper Moskovskie Vedomosti, effectively becoming another edition of the Protocols. It was Nilus' version, not Butmi's, that influenced world history. But this did not happen in 1905, or even in 1911 or 1912, when new editions of “The Great in the Small” appeared. This happened only when the book in question appeared again, in a somewhat modified and revised form, in a larger volume, under the title “There is Near, at the Door.” This happened in 1917.
2
When you come across a top secret document, which is a whole series of reports, you can’t help but wonder: who wrote these reports, to whom, for what reason; and also, how did this document get to those for whom, obviously, it was not intended at all? The various publishers of the Protocols have done their best to satisfy legitimate curiosity, but their answers are, alas, far from clear and consistent.
Even the earliest edition, which appeared in the Znamya newspaper, is puzzling. While the translator claimed that this document was obtained “from the secret repositories of the Zion General Chancellery” in France, the publisher admits: “How, where, how the minutes of these meetings in France could have been copied, who exactly copied them, we do not know ..." But that is not all. The translator, in a postscript, says: “The protocols set forth were written by Zionist representatives” and persistently warns us not to confuse “Zionist representatives” with representatives of the Zionist movement, but this does not stop the publisher, who claims that the protocols represent a threat to Zionism, “called upon to unite all Jews on earth into one union, even more united and dangerous than the Jesuit order."
Boutmi also explained that the “Protocols” were removed from the secret archives of the “main Zion Chancellery,” but he sets out a much more colorful story:
“These protocols, as secret ones, were obtained with great difficulty, in fragmentary form, and translated into Russian on December 9, 1901. It is almost impossible to get back to the secret storage facilities in the secret archives where they are hidden, and therefore they cannot be supported by accurate indicating the place, day, month, year, where and when they were compiled."
The author calls the main argument in favor of the fact that the “Protocols” were not forged “shameless self-praise, contempt for all humanity, as well as shamelessness in choosing means to achieve one’s goals, that is, qualities that are inherent to such an extent. only to the Jews."
Nilus becomes confused in his statements and ends up contradicting not only Butmi, but also himself. In the 1905 edition of the Protocols, a note follows after the text: “These protocols were secretly extracted (or stolen) from an entire book of protocols. All this was obtained by my correspondent from the secret vaults of the Zion General Chancellery, now located on French territory.”
This fiction echoes Boothmy's version, but, unfortunately, the same edition of the "Protocols" is accompanied by a note stating that they were stolen by some woman from a very influential, high-ranking leader of the Freemasons after one of the secret meetings of "initiates" "in France, that nest of Masonic conspiracy. And in the 1917 edition, Nilus further confuses the question of the origin of the Protocols:
“...only now it has become reliably known to me, from Jewish sources, that these “Protocols” are nothing more than a strategic plan for the conquest of the world under the heel of the God-fighter Israel, worked out by the leaders of the Jewish people during many centuries of their dispersion and reported to the council of elders.” Prince of Exile" Theodor Herzl during the First Zionist Congress, which he convened in Basel in August 1897."
The author couldn't come up with anything better! The original manuscript was allegedly found written in French, but there were no French delegates at the First Zionist Congress, and the official language was German. Herzl himself, the founder of modern Zionism, was an Austrian journalist; all the work of the congress took place with the participation of the public, and the city of Basel was flooded with journalists who could hardly miss such an unusual meeting. But in any case, Nilus himself, in the 1905 edition, categorically stated that the reports were read not in Basel, but in France, “this modern nest of the Freemason conspiracy.”
In an atmosphere of general confusion, the publishers of the Protocols continued to invent new versions. The publisher of the German translation (1919), known as Gottfried zur Beck, argued that the "Elders of Zion" were simply delegates to the Congress of Basel; he also explains how their machinations were exposed. According to him, the Russian government, long concerned about the active activities of the Jews, sent a spy to the congress to monitor them. A Jew, tasked with taking a shorthand record of (non-existent) secret meetings from Basel to the "Jewish-Masonic lodge" in Frankfurt am Main, was bribed by a Russian spy to give him the manuscript for one night in some town along the way. Fortunately, the spy had a whole platoon of census takers at hand. During a night of feverish work, they managed to copy many protocols, which were then sent to Russia to Nilus to translate them into Russian.
This is what Gottfried zur Beck said. But Theodor Fritsch, the “patriarch of German anti-Semitism,” in his edition of the Protocols (1920), offers a completely different version. For him, this document was also a Zionist product - he even called them the "Zionist Protocols" - but they were stolen not at the Basel Congress by the Russian police, but in some unnamed Jewish house. Moreover, they were not written in French, but in Hebrew, so the police handed them over for translation to "Orientalist professor Nilus" (who in fact, as we will see, was neither a professor, nor an Orientalist, nor even a translator." Protocols").
A completely different story is given by Roger Lambelain, who published the most popular publication; according to him, the “Protocols” were stolen from a closet in some Alsatian town by the wife or fiancée of the leader of the Freemasons. After such colorful stories, the Polish publisher's assertion that the Protocols were simply stolen from Herzl's apartment in Vienna sounds like gray prose.
The lady, known as the American Leslie Frey, and by her husband as Madame Shishmareva, has written a lot about the Protocols since 1922. Her main contribution to the debate was her arguments proving that the author of the Protocols was none other than Asher Ginsberg, who wrote under the pseudonym Ahad Gaam (that is, “one of the people”), an author essentially so apolitical that he It’s hard to even imagine another. According to Madame Frey, the “Protocols” were written by Ginsberg in Hebrew, read by him at a secret meeting of “initiates” in Odessa in 1890, and then forwarded to French translation to the World Jewish Union in Paris, and then in 1897 to the Basel Congress, where, as one can assume, they were translated into German for the convenience of the delegates. The hypothesis is too complicated, but nevertheless it finds quite influential support.
Thus, the various authors writing about the Protocols do not have a common opinion about their origin. Even the belief that the “Elders of Zion” are delegates to the Basel Congress is not shared by everyone. The unknown Russian translator of the French text, according to Krushevan and Boutmi, unequivocally states that the “wise men” cannot be identified with representatives of the Zionist movement. For Nilus, before his belated discovery, the "main Zion office" was the headquarters of the World Jewish Union in Paris; Urbain Gautier, one of the first publishers of the Protocols in France, was also convinced that the "wise men" were members of the Union. Others, following Mrs. Frey, have tried to combine the two hypotheses - no easy task, since the Union is a purely philanthropic, apolitical organization, which pinned all its hopes on the adaptation of the Jews to their countrymen and was so hostile to Zionism that it caused general surprise. Of course, there were also the Freemasons, who were very often mentioned in connection with the “Protocols”...
Meanwhile, in 1921, something came to light that proved in the most decisive way that the Protocols were a fake. Moreover, the “Protocols” are such an obvious and ridiculous forgery that it may seem surprising why it was necessary to prove the fact of forgery. However, in the years immediately following the First World War, when the Protocols emerged from the fog and thundered around the world, many quite sensible people took them completely seriously. To realize this, it is enough to refer to what the Times newspaper wrote on May 8, 1920:
“What are these “Protocols”? Are they reliable? If so, then what evil bunch drew up such plans and rejoices at their rapid implementation?.. Have we not, by straining all the forces of our nation, avoided the “All-German Union” only in order to fall into the snare of the "All-Jewish Union"? A year later, on August 18, 1921, The Times published a sensational editorial in which it admitted its mistake. In the issues of 16, 17 and 18 August, she published a detailed report from her correspondent in Constantinople, Philip Graves, which stated that the Protocols were basically a copy of a pamphlet against Napoleon III, a pamphlet dating from 1864. Here's what Philip Graves reported:
“...I must admit that when the discovery reached me, I initially refused to believe it. Mr. X., who provided me with the evidence, was convinced of it. “Read this book,” he told me, “and you will You will find irrefutable evidence that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is plagiarized."
Mr. X., who does not wish his name to be known, is a Russian landowner whose relatives live in England. Orthodox by religious convictions, by political convictions he is a constitutional monarchist. He arrived here as a refugee after the final failure of the white movement in southern Russia. He had long been interested in the Jewish question in Russia. To this end, he studied the "Protocols" and, during the reign of General Denikin, undertook some research to find out whether there really existed in the south of Russia some kind of secret "Masonic" organization similar to that mentioned in the "Protocols". It turned out that there was only one organization there - the monarchical one. He came upon the solution to the appearance of the “Protocols” completely by accident.
A few months ago, he bought a stack of old books from a former secret police officer who had fled to Constantinople. Among them he discovered a small volume in French without title page size 15x9 centimeters, in cheap binding. Large on leather spine with Latin letters the word "Joly" is imprinted. The preface, entitled “Just an Announcement,” is marked: “Geneva October 15, 1864...” Both the paper and the font are very typical of the 60s and 70s of the last century. I present these details in the hope that they may lead to the discovery of the book's title...
Mr. X. considers this book to be a bibliographic rarity, since otherwise the Protocols would immediately be recognized as plagiarism by anyone who read the original.
The authenticity of the book will not be doubted by anyone who has seen this book. Its first owner, a secret police officer, did not remember where he got it from and did not attach any importance to it. Mr. X., one day, looking through a book, was struck by the similarity between the phrase on which his gaze rested and a phrase from the French edition of the Protocols. He continued his comparative study and soon realized that the Protocols were basically... a paraphrase of the Geneva original...
Before receiving the book from Mr. X.'s hands, I did not believe this. I did not consider the “Protocols” of Sergei Nilus to be authentic... But I would never have believed it if I had not seen for myself that the writer who provided Nilus with the original was a shameless and unscrupulous plagiarist.
The Geneva book is a thinly disguised pamphlet against the despotism of Napoleon III and consists of 25 dialogues... The interlocutors are Montesquieu and Machiavelli..."
Before publishing the message of its correspondent from Constantinople, The Times undertook a search in the British Museum. Joly's name printed on the cover provided a clue. The mysterious volume was identified: it is “Dialogue in Hell between Montesquieu and Machiavelli,” which was written by the French lawyer Maurice Joly. It was first published in Brussels (albeit with a Geneva imprint) in 1864.
In his autobiography, written in 1870, Maurice Joly told how one day he was walking along the Seine embankment in Paris and suddenly had the idea of ​​writing a dialogue between Montesquieu and Machiavelli. Direct criticism of Napoleon's regime was prohibited. In the same way, it became possible, albeit through the mouth of Machiavelli, to reveal the reasons for the actions of the emperor and his methods, freeing them from the usual camouflage. Joly thought so, but he underestimated his opponent. "Dialogue in Hell" was printed in Belgium and secretly delivered to France, but the moment it crossed the border, the cargo was seized by the police, and soon the author of the book was tracked down and arrested. On April 25, 1865, Joly was brought to trial and sentenced to fifteen months' imprisonment. His book was banned and confiscated.
Joly's subsequent life was just as unsuccessful. Witty, aggressive, and disrespectful to authorities, he became increasingly disillusioned with everything and finally committed suicide in 1879. He certainly deserved it better fate. Joly was not only a brilliant stylist, but also had excellent intuition and the gift of foresight. In his novel The Starving People, he showed a rare understanding of the tensions in the modern world that gave rise to revolutionary movements of both the right and the left. But above all, in his reflections on the amateurish despotism of Napoleon III, he achieved a vision that has retained its relevance in relation to the various authoritarian regimes of our time. Moreover, some of Joly's visions came to life again when Dialogue in Hell was turned into The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; and this is the reason, as we will see later, why the Protocols often seem to be a prediction of twentieth-century authoritarianism. But in the end it is an unenviable immortality, and the cruel irony is that a brilliant but long-forgotten defense of liberalism served as the basis for a horribly written reactionary nonsense that has misled the whole world.
Joly's pamphlet is truly a wonderful work, precise, ruthless, logical, beautifully constructed. The debate begins with Montesquieu, who argues that in the present century the enlightened ideas of liberalism have given rise to despotism, which has always been immoral and also unsustainable. Machiavelli answers him with such eloquence and at such length that he dominates the rest of the pamphlet. “The masses of the people,” he says, “are incapable of governing themselves. They are usually inert and happy only when they are ruled by a strong personality; at the same time, if something awakens them, they are capable only of senseless violence , and then they again need a strong personality to bring them under control. Politics has never had anything to do with morality, and as for the practical side of the matter, it has never been so easy as now to establish despotic rule. The modern ruler must only pretend to observe the forms of legality, he must convince his people of the simplest appearance of self-government, in which case he will not have the slightest difficulty in achieving and exercising absolute power. The people readily agree to any decision which they consider their own; therefore the ruler he must only transfer decisions on all issues to the people's assembly, having first, of course, arranged the matter in such a way that the assembly will make exactly the decisions that he needs. It is easy to put an end to opposition forces that might oppose his will: one only needs to tighten censorship and also instruct the police to monitor their political opponents. He is not afraid of either the power of the church or financial difficulties. As long as a statesman dazzles the people with the force of his authority and wins military victories, he can be completely confident of support.
This is the book that inspired the author of the fake Protocols. He shamelessly engaged in plagiarism, and the extent to which this was done shamelessly and unceremoniously can be judged by the parallel texts placed at the end of the book [See: Appendix, p. 195.]. More than 160 passages in the Protocols - two-fifths of the entire text - are openly taken from Joly's book; in nine chapters borrowings reach more than half of the text, in some - up to three quarters, and in one (protocol VII) - almost the entire text. Moreover, with a few exceptions, the order of the borrowed passages remains exactly the same as in Joly's, and it seems that the author of the Protocols worked on the Dialogue mechanically, rewriting page after page. Even the arrangement by chapter is almost the same - the 24 chapters of the "Protocols" almost entirely coincide with the 25 chapters of the "Dialogue". Only at the end, where the prophecies of the “messianic age” predominate, does the copyist allow himself some deviations from the original. This is truly an undeniable case of plagiarism and forgery.
The author of the forgery built his evidence on calculations extracted from the dispute between two opposing sides in the “Dialogue”: Machiavelli’s defense of despotism and Montesquieu’s defense of liberalism. But his borrowings are drawn mainly from Machiavelli. What Joly puts into the mouth of Machiavelli, the author of the forgery makes the nameless “wise man of Zion” speak with the same words, but with some important additions. In Joly's book, Machiavelli, personifying the position of Napoleon III, describes a state of affairs that has always existed, while in the Protocols this description is presented in the form of a prophecy about future times. Machiavelli argues that a despot can find in democratic forms of government a useful cover for his tyranny; in the Protocols this argument is turned on its head, with the result that all democratic forms of government are but a cover for tyranny. But the plagiarist borrows some passages from Montesquieu, and here they acquire a specific meaning from him, that, supposedly, the ideas of liberalism are an invention of the Jews and they disseminate them for the sole purpose of disorganizing and demoralizing non-Jews.
Having free time, such material could be used to build a brilliant forgery, but when you read the “Protocols”, you get the impression that they were fabricated in a hurry. For example, the Dialogue makes a very clear distinction between the policies of Napoleon III when he was just trying to seize power, and his policies when he already had power firmly in his hands. "Protocols" suspects nothing of such nuances. In one place the speaker speaks as if the “wise men” already have absolute control, and in another he gives the impression that they will have to wait another hundred years for this. Sometimes he boasts that the non-Jewish governments are already intimidated by the “wise men,” and sometimes he admits that they know nothing about the conspiracy of the “wise men” and that they have never even heard of its existence. Other inconsistencies are explained by the fact that the despot described by Joly seeks to achieve dominance over France, while the “wise men” try to achieve dominance over the whole world. The author of the fake does not care about somehow reconciling such discrepancies; moreover, he likes to tear apart the verbal fabric of the “Dialogue” with absurdities of his own invention, for example, such as the threat to blow up rebellious capitals, using the subway to achieve this goal.
It is even more strange that the author of the forgery preserves all the passages that are devoted to attacks on liberal ideas and praise of the landed aristocracy as a necessary stronghold of the monarchy... These passages are so gentile in nature that they caused confusion even among the publishers of the Protocols. Some publishers simply excluded them, others tried to explain it by saying that the ardent Russian conservative Sergei Nilus must have inserted his own reasoning here. Their difficulties are understandable. Nilus was not the author of the forgery, but, as we will soon see, the curses against political freedom and the praise of the aristocratic and monarchical system will help us discover the true nature and reasons for the appearance of this forgery.