Wise Protocol. Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Blessing for 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 the Landsberg prison, an ugly, nervous man dictated long, rhetorical commandments to his associates in the unsuccessful putsch, calling for saving Europe and the nation from destruction. These revelations were recorded by two of his cellmates: a native of Egypt, Rudolf Hess, and a dark-skinned, resembling a Jew, Frenchman Emil 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 name is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This "document" opened the eyes of the future "Fuhrer of the German nation" to the secret mechanics of the world, 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 "small people".

The person who opened the “protocols of the Elders of Zion” learns from them that the Jewish elite intended to exterminate the noble nobility by cunning and deceit. That the Jews want to replace the old order with a decadent democracy. What are their plans to seize (or have they already seized?) All the gold in the world, all the banks and the media. That they instill in the unstable minds of people new disgusting doctrines - Marxism, Darwinism and Nietzscheanism - and destroy the traditional values ​​\u200b\u200bthat man has adhered to for many centuries. That capitalism, communism and liberalism are different forms of systematic decomposition of society by Jews. That the Jews, having taken possession of the world in the end, will put a king from the line of David to rule and rule over all nations, and they will remain under him. What lies ahead for us? Pax Judaica ("Jewish Peace")! In this beautiful world, only ghettos will be open for the Aryans...

This thin little book has become a collection of the most common prejudices against Jews - a kind of "antology of anti-Semitic ideas." Later they were washed in blood - and cursed. It seemed that along with those who read those slogans and precepts, this book itself was supposed to disappear from the memory of people. But she is alive, her ideas are still seductive. In the countries of the Arab world, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were reprinted about fifty times (in particular, this book was liked by the Hero Soviet Union Gamal Abdel Nasser). In America, only in 10 years (since 1990) more than 30 publications have been published. Reading these "Protocols" complacently reconcile any nationalists - from fans of Hitler to radicals from the "Nation of Islam". Their hatred is directed at a common enemy. The Protocols, like a tuning fork, set up the rage of the crowd, directing its energy towards a “just cause”…

... It was 1921. Three years remained before the writing of the book "My Struggle" by the prisoner of the Landsberg prison. But already by that time it became clear that the notorious "Protocols" are nothing but a fake. Mr. Philip Graves, a correspondent for the London newspaper The Times in Istanbul, managed to establish that most of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is ... plagiarism. He was able to find the source book, which everyone had already forgotten about by that time.

As it turned out, in 1864, when Emperor Napoleon III ruled France, a pamphlet came out of the press entitled "Dialogue in hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, or the Politics of Machiavelli in the 19th century." Behind this pompous name was a biting satire. Its author, turning into an obscure stenographer for averting eyes, who wrote down the confessions of two famous political scientists of the past, sent to hell for reforging, ridiculed, giving vent to hyperbole and fantasies, the policy of the “new Napoleon”. His anonymity could not protect against the police. Whether the lawyer Maurice Joly (1829–1878) ended up in hell, we do not know (although how he could find his way there), but still 15 months in french prison he "for his libel" received. The police confiscated most of the Dialogues and destroyed them...

In three days, from August 16 to August 18, 1921, Mr. Graves published a series of sensational articles in his newspaper, in which he exposed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as an old fake. He convincingly proved that we are talking about plagiarism, while the long-standing fiction was interpreted by the compilers of the "Protocols" as an indisputable fact. They managed to squeeze into their opus almost 40% of the text stolen from Joly.

The aimed shot of Mr. Graves, meanwhile, fell "in the milk." Joly's "Dialogue" has 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 equated Jews in civil rights with other European populations. Many Jews are leaving the ghetto, some of them are rapidly getting 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 the years 1811-1816, almost half of all the subsidies allocated by England to its continental allies passed through their hands. Their wealth aroused envy, irritated. The upstarts and the nouveau riche were met with hostility by representatives of the upper classes, especially those who came from the old, well-born nobility, who quickly lost influence on the politics of bourgeois governments.

Jews from the pages of liberal publications persistently defended civil liberties, which they knew how to dispose of with such dexterity. In the eyes of a well-intentioned society, they could not help but seem 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, watching with horror the decline of their contemporary morals. The conclusion was made. The time has come to collect the facts and prepare an indictment against "the spirit of the Jews that escaped the walls of the ghetto and vulgarized the life and culture of European peoples."

1862 - An anonymous article was published in the Munich magazine Historisch-politische Blaetter. It talked about the fact that the Jews were allegedly grouping behind the scenes of political life, creating "pseudo-Masonic" lodges in order to manipulate nationalist movements in Italian and German countries from there. This was said at the beginning of the decade that exploded the customary order in Italy and Germany and united many small principalities and lands in united 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, liked to relax). One of the chapters of this novel, stretching for 40 pages, is entitled "At the Jewish Cemetery in Prague." It describes a secret night meeting that took place among the graves and crypts. 12 figures dressed in white clothes surrounded the tomb of the famous rabbi. They were messengers from every 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" arrange such a gathering once every 100 years. The peoples are only pawns in their game: they exterminate Christians, setting them off in fratricidal wars, and then appropriate the wealth collected by others...

Sir Ratcliffe, a.k.a. Herr Gedsche, carefully described the strategy of the Jews. Firstly, many of them are baptized, trying to merge with Christians so that it would be easier to carry out their policy among them. Each such cross is a spy, each one is more terrible than hundreds of Russian Cossacks. Secondly, they seek to subjugate stock exchanges, banks, etc. Cash flows can be compared with the blood vessels of the state. Jews stick to them and, like vampires, drink them without a trace. Thirdly, Jewish bankers obligingly provide loans to aristocrats, entangling them like spiders in their nets, in order to ruin and destroy them later. 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 Gödsche'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. Particularly popular was the chapter on the Last Jewish Supper at the Prague churchyard. Finally, someone dared to openly say what had been whispered 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 talking about. Soon the mentioned chapter began to be published as a separate pamphlet. It has been translated into many European languages. She 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! At the end of the 19th century, only 100,000 Jews lived in France (out of a population of almost 38 million), but Drumont was sure that this was too many. In those years, he published the anti-Semitic newspaper Free Word. Its circulation rose to 300,000 in the mid-1890s. It was from the pages of this newspaper that the accusations against the officer of the French General Staff Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew by nationality, fell.

1894 - the trial of the "German spy" Dreyfus began. On a trumped-up charge, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, but in 1899 he was pardoned, because otherwise the representatives of America refused to go to the Paris World Exhibition of 1900. We had to choose between profit and integrity. In 1906, Dreyfus - by the way, on his own unpleasant person: upstart, braggart, 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 coryphaeus of 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 "minus the first wave." Rachkovsky closely followed their activities. He was helped by his extensive connections. 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 in tsarist Russia about 5 million Jews lived. Most of them were forced to huddle "beyond the Pale of Settlement" - in impoverished 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 beggars?” 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 Gentiles, unpopular in other countries as well, 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 surmise that it was decided in the high ranks of government to entrust the art of Mr. Rachkovsky to inspire the anti-Jewish campaign. There could be several undoubted benefits from this. These are the motives that could guide the people who set about fabricating the "Protocols".

The revolutionary movement grew in the Russian Empire. It was necessary to discredit him. Why not present the young people who went to the revolution as accomplices of "international Jewry"? This will cause general dislike for them.
Jews, especially wealthy ones, must be forced to emigrate from Russia. This will give an advantage to their Russian competitors.

It is necessary to improve the international prestige of Russia. 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 the governments in the world."
After all, the international situation was also convenient. France was split by the struggle of supporters and opponents of Dreyfus. At the same time, in August 1897, the First Zionist Congress was held in Basel. In this “kagala” of Jews gathered from all over the world, it was easy to see a prototype of the secret gathering of the tribes of Israel…

June 6, 1891 - P. Rachkovsky informed his boss in St. Petersburg that the pogroms in Russia were causing disapproving responses in the French press. Therefore, the chief 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 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 the gathering at the Prague cemetery from Herman Goedsche's novel Biarritz. Rachkovsky probably learned about Joly's pamphlet in Madame Adam's salon. The style of presentation and some of the ideas seemed very amusing, especially since the first version of the "Protocols" in French was compiled. Russian aristocrat Ekaterina Radziwill saw their manuscript, read it, as she admitted many years later, and noted how strange and unnatural it sounded French on which they are supposedly written. 1897 - the text was ready. "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" was translated into Russian.

The decisive moment has come. How to present them to the public so that it does not recognize a fake? The slightest mistake, and there will be a big scandal!

Historians 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 the salon of Juliette Adam in Paris and, perhaps, was an employee of Rachkovsky. So she admitted that under very unusual circumstances she took possession of some strange manuscript ...

Once she happened 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, immediately began to translate into Russian. She never left Shapiro's house that night, spending time with pen, ink, and paper. By the morning of the next day, this industrious lady was able to translate the entire treatise she liked, recklessly left by the hospitable host. In the end, she left Shapiro's house, carrying away (in a reticule? corset? knickers?) 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 a retired major who lived nearby, Alexei Nikolaevich Sukhotin. She convinced that the manuscript "was obtained from the secret vaults of the main Zion office." Sukhotin immediately handed it to his neighbor on the estate, government official Philip Petrovich Stepanov. “He said that a lady of his acquaintance (he did not name her to me), who lived in Paris, found them with her friend (I think from Jews) and, before leaving Paris, secretly translated them from him and brought this translation, in one copy, to Russia and handed over this copy, ”Stepanov later recalled.

The official who did not suspect a dirty trick was the first distributor of this manuscript. He titled 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, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, the emperor's uncle, and his wife Elizaveta Feodorovna, the empress's sister, were awarded readings of these sheets. Many 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 above revelations. The uncle acquainted his nephew, Emperor Nicholas II, and his wife, Alexandra Feodorovna, with the Enslavement of the World. At first, the king was amazed at what he read: “What a depth of thought!” But when he learned from his ministers the origin of this manuscript, he was horrified. In his diary, he wrote that he had decided to refuse any support for this work: "You can't defend a clean 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, the organizer of the pogrom in Chisinau, where 45 Jews were killed. Krushevan immediately considered the “protocols of the wise men” to be a genuine document and in 1903 published them in the pages of his newspaper under the name “Program for the Conquest of the World by the Jews.” The publication stretched from August 28 to September 7 and aroused great interest. The writer Sergey Nilus (1861-1929) put the final end to the history of this fake in 1905. A wealthy landowner in the Oryol province, he lived for a long time in Biarritz with his mistress, but suddenly got most unpleasant news from his manager: "I'm broke, it turns out!". The news shocked him. His whole life is now different. He turned into an eternal wanderer, wandering from one monastery to another and everywhere finding conspiracies against God.

On all the objects that surrounded him, he looked for the terrible stars of David. And the "Protocols" impressed him to such an extent ("It's a document!"), That he released them as an appendix to his novel "Big in Little 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 pamphlet.

Most of those who read this work believed everything written in it. Only a few intellectuals protested. Thus, Maxim Gorky sharply criticized the Protocols.
After the October coup, comrades Ulyanov-Blank, Zinoviev-Radomyslsky, Kamenev-Rosenfeld, Sverdlov, Trotsky-Bronstein came to power in Russia. The Russian Empress died, one might say, with the "Protocols" in her hands, as befitted a victim of a Jewish conspiracy: in the Ipatiev 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 the Russians old surnames, intellectuals, military men, engineers fled to the West, taking away in their suitcases and reticules a pamphlet in which, long before the revolution, everything that was to happen in the country was accurately predicted. Saved from the Russian revolution, the "Protocols" began a truly triumphant march through all the countries of Europe. First of all, they returned to where they were born - to France. But the Protocols found especially fertile ground in Germany.

1918 - Revolution breaks out in Germany. Returning home, German soldiers and officers did not recognize their country - it rolled into chaos, became a toy in the hands of fanatical agitators and rebellious soldiers. Under the pressure of the Entente's superior forces, Germany, devastated by the war, capitulated. After such a catastrophe, 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 marginal of the 20th century - Adolf Hitler. The same thoughts throbbed in the minds of many of his fellow citizens.

Alfred Hugenberg, an ardent German nationalist, one of the founders of the Pan-German Union, the owner of many German newspapers and publishing houses (where did the Jews only look?), He set up a stormy activity in replicating the Protocols. In the early post-war years, hundreds of thousands of copies of the Protocols were sold in Germany. This pamphlet has become a reference book for builders. Lines from the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion resonated with hundreds of pages of Mein Kampf.

The Protocols were also very popular among the winners. In 1920, their first English version appeared. It was distributed by the Moscow correspondent of the Morning Post Victor Marsden. He lived through terrible times in Russia and was now convinced that all the worst in this world comes from the Jews. However, the majority of the inhabitants of Great Britain, the country where Benjamin Disraeli was the prime minister for almost 10 years, were skeptical about this publication: “If the fruit of the meeting of the most prominent Jews of the whole world, who absorbed all the wisdom accumulated by book, then it is time to doubt the wisdom and mind of the Jewish race.

The pamphlet found an influential admirer in America as well - automobile tycoon Henry Ford. 1920 - He published The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion in the pages of his Dearborn Independent newspaper. Inspired by them, Henry Ford even published his own opus on the same topic. "International Jewry". In it, he accused the Jews of all sorts of crimes, for example, that, by corrupting the souls of ordinary American workers, they came up with such vicious entertainments as the cinema and jazz. However, in 1927, the Zion fighter threw out the white flag and took back his accusations, because they harmed the firm's reputation. He even had to publicly apologize. Ford assured that "only in his naivety" believed in the authenticity of these "Protocols".

The entire print run of his own book was loaded onto three trucks, hauled away and burned. Naive Ford! The genie was already out of the bottle. In Europe, his book was a wild success, although the author, applying to the courts, demanded an immediate ban on its reprint. Today, Ford's International Jewry is reprinted as well as Ford cars are produced.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion survived the Second World War and the defeat of the Nazis, denazification and prosecution 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 that the Nazis pursued,” said Norman Cohn, author of Blessing for Genocide. His other colleagues are more condescending.

“The Protocols only indirectly justified anti-Semitic actions, but did not incite them,” Michael Berger, professor of Jewish history at the University of Munich, assesses. “The whole fault of the Protocols is not that they called for some open anti-Semitic speeches, but that they sowed mistrust towards the Jews, persuaded them to refuse help and sympathy,” notes US historian Richard S. Levy.

The 20th century has disappeared over the horizon, and meanwhile, all new packs of "Protocols" appear on the trays. Their poisonous revelations are still accepted on faith. Their admirers, as before, see in every Jew a “mysterious machine” for the destruction of European and Asian peoples, set in motion by some “puppeteers” from Zion, and are ready to defend the purity of their race with weapons in their hands ...

For a long time, the Protocols were the handbook of anti-Semites. As you know, they are talking about some kind of Jewish-Masonic conspiracy: wars, revolutions and capitalism were supposedly, according to the plans of the "wise men", to 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 the 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. After working 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 penalty for participating in the conspiracy. Subsequently, he was pardoned and he died when Matvey was 10 years old, so the child stayed with his mother and a French governess.

After briefly studying law, Golovinsky joined the Holy Brotherhood, an anti-Semitic secret society that used fraud as a means of fighting revolutionaries. He was engaged in the publication of newspapers and the publication of pamphlets, using falsified materials for this. As a result of these contacts, 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. After 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 success of the reformers in the entourage of Nicholas II, caught fire 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.

In late 1900 - early 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 READERS
This book is of interest to readers in several respects. First of all, it gives an answer to 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 eminent 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 period of preparation for the rise to power of the Nazis.
I myself had to hear about the new appearance 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, which is reflected, for example, in all recent editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica and in other standard Western European and American reference books However, our reader still does not have a sufficiently complete and detailed description of the history of the creation of this forged text.
The main milestones in the disclosure of how the document was fabricated were outlined by Burtsev, an outstanding researcher of modern Russian history. Based on Burtsev's revelations and the work done by other researchers, Kon convincingly traces the stages of creating a fake. Using intertextual research methods, he irrefutably proves that the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and their subsequent modifications, which were widely used for the purposes of Black Hundred propaganda, are based on the 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 the allegedly existing Jewish (in Nazi terminology, "Judeo-Masonic") conspiracy, which aims to enslave other peoples. One of the recent manifestations of this general trend has been the speculation about Russophobia that has 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 it possible for the fake to spread.
Kohn's book will be usefully read by all readers.
Vyacheslav Ivanov
People's Deputy of the USSR
Doctor of Philology, Professor

Chapter I
1
The people who spread the myth of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy in the 19th century make up a rather motley society. These are the Barrel and the "Letter of Simonini" at the beginning of the century; much later, in the last third of the century, - Gedsche in Germany and the "Speech of the Rabbi"; Frenchmen Gougno de Musso, Archbishop Meran, Abbé Chabo, Edward Drumont, Russian Brafmann, Pole Lutostansky, Serb Osman-Bey. These people jointly cleared the way for the famous forgery, which for a long time outlived their own, sunk into oblivion, writings.
“About 1840,” Osman Bey wrote in his book The Conquest of the World by the Jews, “the Jewish Parliament was convened in Cracow. fit for the Jews to achieve dominion over everything the globe" .
This fantasy formed the basis of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The "Minutes" consist of reports or notes for reports in which a certain member of the secret Jewish government - the "Wise Men of Zion" - sets 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 pamphlet, which contains about one hundred pages in both English editions of a small format. The content of the "Protocols" is not so easy to convey, because they are wordy and pompous, and their argumentation is evasive and devoid of logic. However, with some care, three main themes can still be distinguished 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 dealt with in the most disorderly fashion, 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 you try to streamline the argumentation of the "Protocols", then it, in in general terms, as follows.
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 with great appeal to the masses, but which has never been put into practice. Liberalism, which undertakes this insoluble task, leads only to chaos in the end, because people are not able to manage themselves, they do not know what they really want, they are easily deceived by ostentatious appearance, they are not able to make the right decision when it is necessary to choose. When the aristocracy was in power, which was quite right, and freedom was in their hands, they used it for the common good; for example, she took care of the workers by whose labor she lived. 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 vicious than good people in the world, force remains the only acceptable means of government. Power is always right, and in the modern world the basis of such power is capital and control over it. Gold rules the world today.
For many centuries there has been a conspiracy to concentrate all political power in the hands of those who are able to properly use it - that is, in the hands of the "wise men of Zion". Much has already been done, although the conspiracy itself has not yet reached 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, non-Jewish states still existing, but already sufficiently weakened, must be destroyed.
First, for this it is necessary to achieve an increase in discontent and anxiety in every state. Fortunately, the means for this are provided by the very nature of liberalism. Even now, by encouraging the endless propaganda of liberal ideas and incessant chatter in parliaments, the "wise men" are helping to achieve complete confusion in the minds common people. Confusion and confusion will be aggravated by a multi-party system: "wise men" carefully deepen divisions, secretly supporting all parties. They will see to the alienation of the people 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 authorities. The aristocracy must eventually be destroyed by increased land taxation; since the 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 presidential posts; preference should be given to people with a "dark past" in order to more easily control their activities. Freemasonry and secret societies must be made obedient instruments in the hands of "wise men"; any Freemason who resists must be physically destroyed. The industry is concentrated in the hands of gigantic 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 strife until mutual understanding between nations is completely lost. Stockpiles of weapons should gradually increase, and wars should 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 carry out a constant undermining of the moral foundations of non-Jews. Widely promote atheism, a beautiful lifestyle, debauchery and vice; for this purpose, the "wise men" are already introducing specially selected educators and governesses as agents into the homes of non-Jews. Drunkenness and prostitution should be especially carefully encouraged.
The "wise men" admit that non-Jews can still prevent their plot from being carried out, but they are quite sure that they are able to break down any resistance. They can use the common people to overthrow the rulers, bringing 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 the entire private property except, of course, property owned by Jews. They can play one government against another; after many years of skillfully weaving intrigues and encouraging mutual enmity, they can easily bring about a war against any nation that opposes their will. Even if by chance all of Europe unites against them, they can turn to the support of the guns of America, China and Japan. In addition, there is also the subway: underground railway lines were invented for the sole purpose of enabling the "wise men" to blow up any capital in the event of serious opposition. After that, the remnants of the opposition can be destroyed at any time with the help of terrible diseases. Even such a possibility was envisaged: if some Jews show obstinacy, they will be finished off with the help of anti-Semitism.
Looking around the modern world with an inner eye, the "wise men" prepare the ground for far-reaching plans. Even 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 falls; murders and threats of assassination make them 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 shook the social fabric. Cunning financial manipulations led to the decline of the economy, to huge public debts; finances fell 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 basis of monetary circulation. It was first installed in the UK in late XVIII century, and in most other capitalist countries at the end of the XIX century. in Russia in the 19th century. this role was played by silver. In 1897, the gold standard was introduced, under which gold coins were freely circulated and exchanged for banknotes. The gold standard met the needs of the developing European and Russian capitalism. - Approx. Ed.] everywhere led to a national catastrophe.
The time will soon come when the non-Jewish states, driven to the limit, will be happy 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 power of gold, and gold is completely under their control. They took control of the legislative activity and brought the laws into a state of total confusion; the invention of arbitration is a clear example of these devilish tricks. They took the education system into their own hands. In this area, their pernicious influence was reflected in the invention of teaching with visual aids. The purpose of this technique is to turn non-Jews into "unthinking, obedient animals, waiting for visuals to figure it out ...".
The "wise men" are already in control of politics and politicians; all parties, from the most conservative to the most radical, are essentially tools in their hands. Hiding behind the back of Freemasonry, the "wise men" have penetrated the secrets of all states, and, as any government knows, they are strong enough to bring to life societies with new social orders, or, conversely, destroy society when they want to. After centuries of struggle that cost thousands of non-Jews and even many Jews, perhaps only a hundred years separate the "wise men" from the final achievement of the 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 age is sanctified from above, for God himself chose the Jews for world domination, but its organization will be distinguished by a well-defined 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 cut off even the slightest interest in politics. All publications are heavily censored, and freedom of speech and association are severely restricted. These restrictions will be presented under the guise of temporary measures that will allegedly be lifted after all enemies of the people are finished, but in fact they will be fixed forever. History will be taught only as a visual aid, which will emphasize the difference between the chaos in the past and the ideal order in the present; the successes of the new world empire will constantly be countered by the political weaknesses and failures of the former non-Jewish governments. Every member of society will be monitored. Numerous secret police are recruited from all sections of the population, and every citizen will be charged with the strict duty to report all criticisms of the regime. Anti-government agitation will be equated with 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 of all. In the indefinite future, freedom will be promised, but this promise is ephemeral.
On the other hand, a high living standard 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 small scale production. Education will be planned so that young people are trained according to their background. Drunkenness is condemned, as is every manifestation of an independent will.
All this will give the masses satisfaction and peace, and in this they will be helped by the example of the leaders. Laws will become clear and unchangeable, and judges will become incorruptible and infallible. All Jewish leaders will be selected from among capable, businesslike 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 the people, accept their petitions; no one will guess that he is constantly surrounded by agents of the secret police. He must lead an impeccable privacy without taking care of their relatives; he will not own any property. He is called 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 peoples of the world will rejoice and glorify the beautiful government, and therefore the kingdom of Zion will endure for a long time.
Such is the design attributed to these mysterious gentlemen, the "wise men of Zion."
* * *
The general public first became aware of him after several editions of the Protocols were published in Russia between 1903 and 1907. The earliest printed version, with slight reductions, 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 "The Banner" was P.A. Krushevan, a well-known ardent anti-Semite. A few months before the appearance of the "Protocols" in print, he organized a pogrom in Chisinau, during which 45 Jews were killed, more than 400 were injured, and 1,300 Jewish houses and shops were destroyed.
Krushevan did not say who forwarded or gave him this manuscript; he only mentioned that it is a translation of a document written in France, which is entitled by the translator "Minutes of the meetings of the worldwide union of Freemasons and the Elders of Zion"; he himself titled them as follows: "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. Extracts from Ancient and Modern Protocols of the World Union Freemasons". This work was submitted to the St. Petersburg Censorship Committee on December 9, 1905; permission for publication was obtained immediately, and in the same month the pamphlet appeared in St. Petersburg with the imprint of the Imperial Guard. The name of the editor was not mentioned, but it is likely that in reality it was a retired officer named G.V. Butmi, a close friend of Krushevan, both of them come from Bessarabia.
At that time, from October 1905, Butmy and Krushevan took an active part in the formation of an extreme right organization - the Union of the Russian People - known as the Black Hundred, which created armed detachments to fight radicals, liberals and for mass bloody massacre of the Jews. In January 1906, this organization republished the pamphlet The Root of Our Troubles, but this time the editor's name, Boothmy, was on the cover and a new heading was given, Enemies of the Human Race. The main part of the book is subtitled "Protocols retrieved from the secret vaults of the Zion General Chancellery (Where is the root of the modern turmoil in the social system of Europe in general, and in Russia in particular)". This pamphlet appeared this time with the imprint 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, at the same time they were printed in Kazan with the subtitle "Excerpts from the ancient and modern protocols of the Elders of Zion of the World Fran Masson Society."
"The Root of Our Troubles" and "The Enemies of the Human Race" are cheap pamphlets addressed to the general reader. The "Protocols" are presented in a completely different way in a book that appeared under the title "Great in the Small and the Antichrist as a Close Political Possibility". Its author was the mystic writer Sergei Nilus. The first edition of his book (1903) "Protocols" was not included. They were included in the second edition, published in December 1905, with the imprint of the local branch of the Red Cross in Tsarskoye Selo. Subsequently, we will see that this edition was prepared for a specific purpose - to impress Nicholas II, therefore, it bore the imprint of the mystery of the original source. The beautifully published book was disguised as those mystical writings that the king loved to read so much. In addition, it contained references to events in France and other countries, while Kruchevan-Butmi's edition was more focused on events that took 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 was still 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 Metropolitan of Moscow gave the order to read a sermon containing an exposition of his version of the "Protocols" in all 368 churches in Moscow. This was done on October 16, 1905, and besides, the sermon was hastily reprinted in the right-wing newspaper Moskovskie Vedomosti, effectively becoming another edition of the Protocols. It was the Nilus variant, not Boothmi, that influenced world history. But this did not happen in 1905, and not even in 1911 or 1912, when new editions of Great in Small appeared. This happened only when the named book appeared again, in a slightly modified and revised form, in a large 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, then how not to ask yourself: who wrote these reports, to whom, on what occasion; 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 bewildering. While the translator claimed that this document was obtained "from the secret vaults of the Zion General Chancellery" in France, the publisher admits: "How, where, in what way the minutes of these meetings in France could be written off, who exactly wrote them off, we do not know ..." But that is not all. The translator in the postscript says: "The protocols set forth were written by the representatives of Zion" and strongly warns us not to confuse the "Zion representatives" with the representatives of the Zionist movement - but this does not stop the publisher, who claims that the protocols are a threat of Zionism, "designed to unite all Jews on earth into one alliance, even more united and dangerous than the Jesuit order.
Boothmy also explained that the Protocols were taken from the secret archives of the "Zion Chief Chancellery", but tells a much more colorful story:
"These protocols, as secret, were obtained with great difficulty, in fragmentary form, and translated into Russian on December 9, 1901. It is almost impossible to get to the secret vaults in the secret archives a second time, where they are hidden, and therefore they cannot be supported by accurate indications of the place, day, month, year, where and when they were drawn up.
The main argument in favor of the fact that the "Protocols" were not forged, the author calls "shameless self-praise, contempt for all mankind, as well as shamelessness in choosing means to achieve their goals, that is, the qualities that are inherent in such a measure only to the Jews."
Nilus gets confused in his statements and ends up contradicting not only Boothmy, but himself as well. In the 1905 edition of the Protocols, after the text, a note follows: "These protocols were secretly extracted (or stolen) from a whole book of protocols. All this was obtained by my correspondent from the secret vaults of the Zion General Chancellery, now in French territory."
This fiction echoes Boothmy's version, but, unfortunately, the same edition of the Protocols is accompanied by a note that says that they were stolen by a woman from a very influential, very high-ranking leader of the Freemasons after one of the secret gatherings of "initiates "in France, that nest of Masonic conspiracy. And in the 1917 edition, Nilus further confuses the origin of the Protocols:
"... only now it became known to me for certain, according to Jewish sources, that these "Protocols" are nothing but a strategic plan for conquering the world under the heel of the God-fighting Israel, worked out by the leaders of the Jewish people during many centuries of its dispersion and reported to the council of elders" prince of exile" by Theodor Herzl during the days of the First Zionist Congress, convened by him in Basel in August 1897."
The author couldn't have come up with anything better! The original manuscript was allegedly found written in French, but there was not a single French delegate at the First Zionist Congress, and German was the official language. Herzl himself, the founder of modern Zionism, was an Austrian journalist; all the work of the congress proceeded 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 talks were read not in Basel, but in France, "that modern nest of the Freemasonic conspiracy."
In an atmosphere of general confusion, the publishers of the Protocols continued to invent new versions. Publisher German translation(1919), known as Gottfried zur Beck, argued that the "wise men 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 worried about the active activities of the Jews, sent a spy to the congress to monitor them. A Jew assigned to take a verbatim record of the (nonexistent) secret meetings from Basel to the "Jewish-Masonic lodge" in Frankfurt am Main was bribed by a Russian spy into giving him the manuscript for one night in some town along the way. Fortunately, the spy had a whole platoon of scribes at hand. During a night of feverish work, they managed to copy many of the protocols, which were then sent to Russia to Nilus for translation into Russian.
So said Gottfried zur Beck. 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 Zionist production - he even called them "Zionist protocols" - but they were not stolen from the Basel Congress by the Russian police, but from some unnamed Jewish house. Moreover, they were not written in French, but in Hebrew, so that the police handed them over for translation to "Professor Orientalist Nilus" (who in fact, as we shall see, was neither a professor nor an Orientalist, nor even a translator " protocols").
An entirely different story is given by Roger Lambelin, who produced the most popular edition; according to him, the Protocols had been stolen from a closet in some Alsatian town by the wife or fiancée of a 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 discussion were arguments proving that the author of the "Protocols" was none other than Asher Gintsberg, who wrote under the pseudonym Ahad Gaam (that is, "one of the people"), the author, in fact, is so apolitical that it's hard to imagine another. According to Madame Frey, the "Protocols" were written by Ginsberg in Hebrew, read by him at a secret meeting of the "initiates" in Odessa in 1890, and then forwarded in French translation to the World Jewish Union in Paris, and then in 1897 to Basel congress, where, obviously it must be assumed, they were translated into German for the convenience of the delegates. Too confusing hypothesis, but nevertheless it finds quite influential support.
Thus, there is no consensus among the various authors writing about the "Protocols" about their origin. Even the belief that the "wise men of Zion" are delegates to the Basel Congress is not shared by everyone. An unknown Russian translator of the French text, according to Krushevan and Boutmy, states unequivocally that the "wise men" cannot be identified with representatives of the Zionist movement. For Nilus, prior to its belated opening, the "Chancery General of Zion" was the headquarters of the World Jewish Union in Paris; Urbain Gauthier, 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 both hypotheses - no easy task, since the Union is a purely philanthropic, apolitical organization that pinned all its hopes on the adaptation of the Jews to their compatriots and was so hostile to Zionism that it aroused everyone's surprise. Of course, there were also Masons, who were very often mentioned in connection with the "Protocols" ...
In the meantime, in 1921, something came to light that most decisively proved that the "Protocols" were fake. Moreover, the "Protocols" are such an obvious and ridiculous forgery that it may seem surprising, for the sake of which 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 sane people took them quite seriously. To understand this, it is enough to refer to what the Times wrote on May 8, 1920:
"What are these 'Protocols'? Are they reliable? If so, what evil assembly has drawn up such plans and rejoices in their stormy implementation? fall into the snares of the "All-Jewish Union"?" A year later, on August 18, 1921, The Times ran a sensational editorial admitting its error. In the issues of 16, 17 and 18 August, she published a detailed report from her correspondent in Constantinople, Philip Graves, stating that the Protocols were basically a copy of a pamphlet against Napoleon III, a pamphlet dating from 1864. Here is what Philip Graves said:
"... I must confess that when the discovery came to me, I at first refused to believe it. Mr. X., who gave me the evidence, was convinced of them. "Read this book," he told me, "and you find irrefutable evidence that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a plagiarism."
Mr X., who does not want his name to be known, is a Russian landowner whose relatives live in England. Orthodox by religious beliefs, by political - 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 referred to in the Protocols. It turned out that there was only one organization - the monarchist. He attacked the clue to the appearance of the "Protocols" quite by accident.
A few months ago, he bought a stack of old books from a former Okhrana officer who had fled to Constantinople. Among them he found a small volume in French without title page 15x9 cm in size, cheaply bound. The word "Joli" is imprinted on the leather spine in large Latin letters. The preface, entitled "Just an announcement," is marked: "Geneva, October 15, 1864..." Both the paper and the font are very characteristic of the 60s and 70s of the last century. I include these details in the hope that they may lead to the discovery of the title of the book...
Mr. X. regards this book as a bibliographic rarity, for otherwise the Protocols would immediately be recognized as plagiarism by anyone who read the original.
The authenticity of the book will not raise doubts among anyone who has seen this book. Its first owner, an Okhrana 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 eyes rested and the 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 Genevan original...
Before receiving the book from the hands of Mr. X., I did not believe this. I did not consider Sergei Nilus' "Protocols" 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 shameless plagiarist.
The Book of Geneva 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 report 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 has been identified: it is the Dialogue in Hell between Montesquieu and Machiavelli, which was written by the French jurist 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 banks of the Seine in Paris and suddenly the idea came to him to write a dialogue between Montesquieu and Machiavelli. Direct criticism of Napoleon's regime was forbidden. 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 at the time of crossing 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 stood trial and was sentenced to fifteen months' imprisonment. His book was banned and confiscated.
Joly's further life was just as unsuccessful. Witty, aggressive, not showing respect for the authorities, he became increasingly disillusioned with everything and, finally, in 1879 he committed suicide. He certainly deserved a better fate. Joly was not only a brilliant stylist, but possessed excellent intuition, the gift of foresight. In his novel The Starving Ones, he showed a rare understanding of the tensions in the modern world that have given rise to revolutionary movements on 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 to the various authoritarian regimes of our time. Moreover, some of Joly's predictions were revived when the "Dialogue in Hell" was turned into the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"; and this is the reason why, as we shall see later, the Protocols often seem to be a prediction of twentieth-century authoritarianism. But, in the end, this is unenviable immortality, and it is a cruel irony of fate that a brilliant but long-forgotten defense of liberalism served as the basis for a nightmarishly written reactionary nonsense that misled the whole world.
Joly's pamphlet is indeed a remarkable work, precise, ruthless, logical, beautifully constructed. The argument is started by Montesquieu, who claims that in this century the enlightened ideas of liberalism have given rise to a despotism that has always been immoral and also unsustainable. Machiavelli answers him with such eloquence and length that he gains the upper hand in the rest of the pamphlet. "The masses of the people," he says, "are not capable of governing themselves. They are usually inert and happy only when they are ruled by strong personality; at the same time, if something awakens them, they show only the capacity for senseless violence, and then again they need a strong personality to bring them under control. Politics has never had anything to do with morality, and as far as the practical side of things, it has never been so easy as it is now to establish a despotic government. The modern ruler has only to 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 willingly agree to any decision that they consider their own; therefore, the ruler must only transfer the decisions of all questions to the people's assembly, preliminary, of course, arranging the matter in such a way that the assembly will take exactly those decisions that he needs. Opposition forces that might oppose his will are easily dealt with by tightening censorship and instructing the police to keep an eye on their political opponents. He fears neither the power of the Church nor financial difficulties. As long as the statesman blinds the people with the power of his authority and wins military victories, he can be completely sure of support.
Such is the book that inspired the author of the false 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]. Over 160 passages in the Protocols - two-fifths of the entire text - are frankly 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 that of Joly, and one gets the impression that the author of the "Protocols" worked on the "Dialogue" mechanically, rewriting page after page. Even the arrangement of chapters 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 scribe allow himself some digressions from the original. This is a truly undeniable case of plagiarism and forgery.
The author of the fake built his arguments on the calculations drawn from the dispute between two opposing sides in the "Dialogue": the defense of Machiavelli's despotism and the defense of Montesquieu's liberalism. But his borrowings are drawn mainly from Machiavelli. What Joly puts into the mouth of Machiavelli, the author of the fake 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 the 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, and the result is 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 spread them with the sole purpose of disorganizing and demoralizing non-Jews.
With free time, one could build a brilliant forgery on such material, but when one reads the Protocols one gets the impression that they were fabricated in a hurry. For example, in the "Dialogue" a very clear distinction is made between the policy of Napoleon III, when he was only striving to seize power, and his policy, when he already firmly held power in his hands. The "Protocols" are unaware of such nuances. At one point, the speaker speaks as if the "wise men" already have absolute control, and at another, it seems that they have to wait another hundred years for this. Sometimes he boasts that 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 their existence. Other illogicalities are explained by the fact that the despot described by Joly seeks to achieve dominance over France, the "wise men" are trying to achieve domination over the whole world. The author of the fake does not bother to somehow reconcile such differences - moreover, he likes to tear the verbal fabric of the "Dialogue" with absurdities of his own invention, 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 retains all the passages that are devoted to attacking liberal ideas and praising the landed aristocracy as a necessary stronghold of the monarchy... These passages are so non-Jewish in character that they caused confusion even among the publishers of the Protocols. Some publishers have simply left them out, others have 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 shall soon see, cursing political freedom and praising the aristocratic and monarchical system will help us to discover the true nature and causes of this fake.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A worldwide conspiracy. 1922 S.A. Nilus.

S. A. Nilus
Name: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A worldwide conspiracy.
Genre: historical document
Publisher: Press, Berlin
The year of publishing: 1922
Language: Russian
Format: PDF
Quality: Good
Number of pages: 125

Annotation:

This edition reproduces the text of the famous "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" in the form in which they were first published in Russia by Sergei Aleksandrovich Nilus. The book is intended for those who are not indifferent to the question of the secret and obvious world domination of the Jewish system, and its penetration into the political, financial, cultural, and religious layers of world society.

CONTENT

Foreword
Sequential editions of "Protolov" in Russia and abroad.
The Jewish program in its implementation.
Conclusion.
Authenticity of the "Sion Protocols". (Translated from French). Translator's preface.
On the Authenticity of the Protocol.
Ahad-Ham and Zionism.
Authenticity.
Asher Gintsberg.

Sources of Ahad-Khamism and its application to life.
Translator's note.

Protocols of the Wise Men of Sion (according to the text of S. A. N and l with a.)
POLITICAL, FINANCIAL, CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS FACTORS FOR THE BIRTH OF THE JEWISH SUPER-NATION
Asher Gintsberg from Kiev

Asher Gintsberg was born in Skvir, Kyiv province, on August 5, 1856. His parents belonged to the Russian Hassid sect and brought him up according to the rules and rites of this sect. We know from the Jewish Encyclopedia and other sources that Gintsberg studied the Talmud at a local cheder (Jewish school). In 1868, the Ginsberg family moved to Gopisgitsa. At the age of seventeen, he married the granddaughter of Menachem Mendel, the famous rabbi from Lubowitz.

In 1878 he visited Odessa, where everything he saw made a very big impression on him. He decided to devote several years to traveling and studying various sciences. He devoted himself especially diligently to the Latin language, mathematics, history and geography. During the period from 1882 to 1884 he visited Vienna, Berlin, Breslau; studied French, German, English, Russian philosophers and, especially with special zeal, great thinkers - Jews. In Vienna he met Karl Netter, the founder of the World Israeli Union. Here he became highly interested in the plans of the Union of Jewish Colonization.

In 1884, Gintsberg returned to Russia and again came to Odessa. This city was then the center of the "Hovevei-Zione" union, which means "Friends of Zion". The organization was headed by its chairman, Leo Pinsker. Very interested in her, Gintsberg joined the union and soon became right hand Pinsker and one of the most active leaders of the movement.

Jewish Question in Odessa

In 1886, he finally settled in Odessa and since then devoted all his energy to resolving the Jewish question.

In 1889, Alexander Zederbaum, the founder of the Jewish newspaper Hamelitz, came to Odessa. He met Gintsberg, appreciated him and realized that he could be an outstanding writer writing in Hebrew: so he invited him to cooperate in his publication. Asher Gintsbere wrote an article entitled "Lo Zo Khaderehe" ("This is not the right way"), which was published in "Chamelitz" and caused a sensation among the Jews. It was signed with the name "Ahad-Hame".

Gintsberg, in his article, proved the failure of the methods used by Hovevei Zion and other organizations to resolve the Jewish problem. In his opinion, their main drawback was the lack of communist spirit and in the preference given to the idea of ​​individualism. Gintsberg argued that this means could not contribute to the revival and strengthening of Jewish nationalism, without which the idea of ​​Judaism could not exist.

Secret society "Bne Moishe"

Shortly thereafter, Asher Giitsbere founded the secret society "Bne Moishe" ("Sons of Moses"). Most of his theories were expressed in the statutes of this society.
Their main apartment was in Odessa, in the Gintsberg house, on Yamskaya Street. The statutes of the society were printed in 1890.

The Book of Protocols is a translation from Hebrew. This opinion is confirmed by the experts who examined the book. Even stronger proof is the testimony of people who lived in Odessa in 1890 and saw this document, written in Hebrew, in the hands of Jewish residents of Odessa, and even held it in their hands.

Since 1905, the details of the organization became known to a wider circle, due to the expansion of the recruitment of new members. The following names appear among the original members of the society: Ben Avigdor, Zalman Epstein, Levin Epstein, Jacob Eisenstadt. The latter was entrusted with the task of recruiting new members among the Russian Jews; he chose candidates whom he considered capable of entering into the species of society and honestly fulfilling its requirements. For members of the Bne-Moishe society, Gintsberg wrote a summary of his theories, now known as the Protocols. The same word - "Protocols" - was also used by Weishaupt, the head of Illuminism.

Jewish Super-Nation born in Russia, Galicia and Odessa

Secretly, without noise, but quickly, the Bne Moishe society began to develop. In a large number of cities in Russia, Romania, Galicia and Poland, the "Bne-Moishe" society founded Lodges called "Lishkot". Their ramifications were extended further, reaching Paris, Berlin, England, Warsaw and Palestine. In 1897, after the Basel Congress, the Bne Moishe society was allegedly disbanded and closed down, giving way to another organization known as Bne Zione, which received the legal right to exist from the Russian government. (!) This new organization was founded in Moscow by Mr. Usyshkin, a student of Asher Gintsberg.

The doctrine that the Jewish nation is a Super-Nation, a people chosen by God, exalted extremely high “above all other nations, not by political power, but by its spiritual strength” was grafted onto the main position, which asserted that the Jewish Nation really exists” (Asher Gintsberg, "Reassessment of Values"). This nation will rule over others. And this nation is Israel, which, among other peoples, is really the highest type of humanity.

Such are the thoughts and theories which, since 1889, have fed the minds of the Eastern Jews, and which have been propagated by the Eastern Zionist Lodges. They contain the teachings of Ahad-Khamism, which has achieved outstanding success in the thirty-five years that have elapsed since its inception in Odessa.

"Meaning" of Russian, Romanian and Galician Jews

When, in 1903, Hertzl's efforts and negotiations for the purchase of Palestine finally led to a complete failure, the popularity and importance of this man among the Jews began to decline. At the same time, Ahad-Kham, on the contrary, thanks to the millions of K. Vysotsky and J. Schiff, was already almost sure that his plans were beginning to be implemented.
At the 11th Zionist Congress, held in Vienna, in 1913, Ahad-Ham and his supporters achieved the adoption of the program of "practical" Zionism - the Eastern Jews of "Bne-Zion" and declared themselves ready to help fulfill the plans outlined by the "Protocols". Max Nordau and other former leaders of "political" Zionism have lost all their importance and influence.

Ahad-Ham and his creature took control of Zionism and determined its further course. The Jews of B'nai B'rith, whom Ahad-Ham called "assimilated" Jews, were forced to take a secondary role and give way to Eastern Jews, Russian, Romanian and Galician, who had gone through the "school" of Asher Ginsberg.

ZIONIST MOVEMENT AND MODERNITY

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is intended to be a reference book for every statesman who wants, not only in words, but in deeds, to serve his state and his people. A. Rogovich.

Nilus S. A. published three editions of the Protocols: the first in 1905 under the title “Great in the small and near the coming Antichrist”, the second revised edition in 1911 under the title “Near is at the door”, and the third edition, completed by printing in the printing house of the Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra in early 1917, just before the start of the revolution.

Nilus managed to bring his book, still in manuscript, to the attention of the Moscow Governor-General, Grand Duke Sergius Alexandrovich, the Grand Duke instructed him to convey two words in response: "it's too late." Shortly after that, namely on February 4, 1905, the Grand Duke, driving up to the Kremlin Nikolsky Gate, died from a bomb thrown into his carriage.

In 1905, Nilus came to the conclusion about the inevitable, in the near future (in the twenties of the current century), the coming to power of the Jews. At the beginning of 1917, the volume of the book did not have time to go on sale, as the entire main warehouse of the publication at the printing house of the Sergius Lavra and all the partial warehouses in the capital's bookstores, by order of Kerensky, were confiscated and destroyed. Separate surviving copies were sold secretly, with great apprehension, as a book rarity at a price extremely high at that time, up to 600 rubles.

Fierce persecution flared up on the part of the Jews, who were trying to prove the falsity of the "Protocols".

Zionist movement

The origin of the Protocols is closely related to the so-called Zionist movement, which in the 1990s was founded and led by Dr. Theodor Herzl, who published a book in 1896 entitled " Jewish state". Herzl saw the task of resolving the Jewish question in the possibility of acquiring in Palestine, and in extreme cases in Argentina, territories for establishing an independent Zion state, in which Jews from all countries hostile to the idea of ​​assimilation with other nationalities could settle. Herzl at one time showed tireless activity in trying to obtain such permission, petitioning the Turkish Sultan and the German Emperor Wilhelm II, during the latter's visit to Palestine.

But this trend met with the most decisive rebuff from the side of the extreme party, led by the Russian Jew from Odessa, Asher Gintsberg, who acted as an ardent opponent of Herzl: he saw the only and necessary solution to the Jewish question in the preparation by Jewry of a world revolutionary upheaval in all countries of the Jewish diaspora, and in the first place in Russia, the autocratic, royal system of which was undoubtedly the main obstacle to the implementation of Jewish world domination. The struggle between these two currents took place at the congress of the Zionists, convened in Basel in 1897; Asher Gintsberg's party won this congress, for which Gintsberg drew up a program, parts of which form the content of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The Jewish program in its implementation

One of the few major English newspapers that remained true to the Christian national banner, the Morning Post, publishing a study on the "causes of world unrest" and analyzing the "Protocols of Zion", ends the article, placed in the issue of October 27, 1921, with the following words: In any case, one thing is certain, that the Protocols can serve as a good practical guide, outlining the ways in which great Empires have been destroyed and can continue to be destroyed.

Destiny 1897

The irresistibility of Masonic-Jewish power. (Protocol No. 1); Central Administration of Wise Men (Protocol No. 15); Economic warfare is the foundation of Jewish predominance (Protocol No. 2); Showy administration and "privy councillors" (Protocol No. 2); Adjustment to politics (Protocol No. 2); Parliamentary talking shops, pamphlets (Protocol No. 3); Degeneration of the goyim (Protocol No. 3); Hunger and the right of capital (Protocol No. 3); Freedom and Faith (Minutes No. 4) The Religion of the Future (Minutes No. 14) To Whom to Entrust Responsible Positions in Government (Minutes No. 8) The Moment of Proclamation of “World Kings. (Protocol No. 10); King of the Jews, or Patriarch Pope. (Protocol No. 15); The mysticism of power. (Protocol No. 15); Papal Court; American, Chinese and Japanese guns are employees of the Masonic government. (Protocol No. 7).

Russian Patriots and Zionism

If it is undoubtedly a mistake to assert that all are Bolsheviks. - Jews and that all Jews are Bolsheviks, nevertheless it is indisputable that the highest Bolshevik government and all people's commissars of all degrees are replenished by the majority with Jews and, moreover, in the majority and not less than 75%.

Therefore, many Russian patriots, even those of the advanced trend, are absolutely right when they assert that Russia is perishing under the yoke of Jewish domination and Jewish terror.
Irritation against Jewry, which is brewing in the depths of modern Russia and which will violently erupt in the Russia of the future, seems to the Jews, perfectly aware of everything that is happening in all corners of the world, so inevitable that they often, sometimes even unconsciously, strain their efforts to strengthen the modern Jewish community. -Bolshevik rule, arguing that it will take on milder forms and seeing this as the only way to prevent a backlash with its inevitable pogroms and extermination.

Current page: 1 (the book has 25 pages in total)

Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Proven forgery

Burtsev Vladimir Lvovich

17.11.1862 – 21.08.1942

Some books have a strange fate.

Particularly strange, at first glance even incredible, had the fate of the so-called. "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" or "Protocols of Zion", or, as they are commonly called, simply "Protocols". From 1917 in Germany they began to be called the "Zionist Protocols", and there they themselves were associated with the Zionist movement in general and specifically with the Zionist congress of 1897 in Basel, and some of the 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 disasters”, “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 really strive 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 violent anti-Semitic pamphlet. But this, it turns out, is not original work. This is clear plagiarism. In the Protocols there are some extracts from the vast anti-Semitic literature that has been created for decades - centuries in different languages. They also cynically used some works that had nothing to do with the Jewish question.

The "Protocols" by their authors themselves, obviously, were 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 printing, 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 printed in Russia shortly after they were fabricated and pleased the Russian anti-Semitic reactionaries, they distribution in Russia at first was still relatively insignificant, and for a very long time - until 1918 - they knew nothing about them abroad.

For many years - the first twenty years - in 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 fateful 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. In translation into other languages, they began to appear 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. Numerous books about them appeared for decades, again in hundreds of thousands and millions of copies - and articles in periodicals in all countries. hundreds periodicals V different countries reprinted them in the form of feuilletons. A whole library in different languages ​​can be compiled about them. This is, at present, undoubtedly one of the most widely distributed 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 address the question: - who were these some kind of Zion wise men, or whether no Zion wise men never existed, and what passes for their "Protocols" is not the most crude forgery of vicious reactionary anti-Semites to slander the Jews?

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

But the "Protocols" are not only a document of our immediate past, but they also have an actual significance. To a large extent, the current German policy is based on them. They also play an important role in some other states.

Of course, with time, when life in the countries where the propaganda of the Protocols is now developed will take on a normal character, and the Protocols will be looked upon as a proven forgery, they will only be amazed at how they could have had such a fatal influence for decades.

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

In my long literary and political life, for various reasons, I constantly had to deal with Jewish question. I studied him in literature and followed his development in life - and asked competent persons about him - Jews and non-Jews, with whom I was brought into contact. 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 talked 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 my study of the "Protocols" long ago led me to the decision to write a book about them. I took up 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 much indebted to my friend Y. Delevsky, the author of the well-known 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 compiling and publishing 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. Bazili, 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 attracted his friends to the publication of this book of mine.

Vl. Burtsev.

2. History of forgery-plagiarism

The history of the forgery-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 strife, unbridled appetites and the power of petty interests were working the deed of insane decay, - he rose again with extraordinary energy anti-Semitism began to manifest itself. The product of barbarism and ignorance, anti-Semitism, groomed in the traditions of lies, stupidity and malice, nourished by the miasma of social and moral decay, has opened new era monstrous harassment and persecution of the Jews. The cult of anti-Semitism was looking for a new book, a new Koran. The Protocols of Zion came to his aid.

In terms of the virulence of the grandiose slander and the scope of the slander, this book surpasses everything that could hitherto be invented against the Jews in the anti-Semitic camp. The "Protocols of Zion" - in appearance, the most terrible accusatory act against the Jews, moreover, supposedly, compiled by the leaders and representatives of the Jews themselves. The Protocols of Zion expose the supposed mystery of Jewry - the mystery of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy against the rest of humanity. The organized power of Jewry is pushing the Christian world onto the path of disintegration so that, on the ruins of the kingdom of the "goyim", or Christians, a world Jewish kingdom will be erected, in which the Jewish ruler will rule over all mankind. Democracy, financial world, 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 for those who were looking for in Jewry the culprit of the World War, of all revolutions. The 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 the handbook of anti-Semitism. In the hands of Hitler and the "Nazis" they became an instrument of furious persecution against the Jews.

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" is a forgery.

At the same time they are plagiarism.

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

The Strange History of the Russian Editions of the Protocols of Zion.

The Protocols of Zion have their own history and prehistory.

For the first time, the Protocols of Zion were published by a well-known anti-Semite, who later became 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 Kishinev in the same 1903.

The Zion Protocols were published for the second time by S. Nilus in 1905 in Tsarskoye Selo in his book Great in the Small and the Antichrist as a Close Political Possibility. In the preface to this edition of the Protocols, Nilus states that the person to whom he is indebted for the French copy received the latter from a woman who allegedly stole it from a Mason of the highest Scottish 33rd degree in a French village in order to render 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 well-known reactionary G. Bootmy in a book entitled “Incriminatory Speeches. Enemies of the human race". The book was dedicated to the "Union of the Russian People".

At the end of the "Protocols" is a translator's note which reads as follows: "The protocols set forth are signed by the representatives of Zion. They are snatched from a whole book of Protocols, the entire content of which could not be rewritten due to the short time given for their reading by the translator of these Protocols. They were accompanied by a small addition and a plan for the conquest of the world by the Jews by 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 the "Protocols" by Nilus 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 receiving a French copy from a woman who stole it from the Freemasons. The next edition of the "Protocols" by Nilus 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 a 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 but a strategic plan for the conquest of the world, worked out long ago by the leaders of the Jews 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 carelessness, thanks to which the secret of the "Protocols" was exposed.

Herzl's dissatisfaction was allegedly expressed in certain 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", begin as follows:

“Signed by the representatives of Zion 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 vaults of the Zion General Chancellery, which is now in French territory.

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

“The Russian government has never succumbed 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 autumn of 1897, the Russian government, as we were informed by a person who had for many years occupied a prominent position in one of the ministries in St. Petersburg, sent secret agent. The latter bribed a Jew who enjoyed the confidence of the higher administration of the Masons and at the end of the congress was instructed to deliver the reports of the secret meetings, about which, of course, nothing penetrated the society, to Frankfurt am Main, from where the Jewish lodge founded on August 16, 1807 with with the significant name “to the engaged dawn”, for a century it kept in touch with the “Grand Orient” of France. This trip provided an excellent opportunity for the implementation of the planned enterprise. On the way, the messenger spent the night in a small town, where a Russian agent was waiting for him with a group of scribes who made copies of the documents during the night. The records of the meetings, therefore, may not be complete: the people copied what they could accomplish in a night from the original French text. Copies were handed over in Russia to reliable persons, including the scientist S. A. Nilus, who in December 1901 translated these reports into Russian.

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

As can be seen, the "Protocols" appear in Nilus's staging of melodramatic mystery.

The meetings of the “Wise Men 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.

Considerations of secrecy shroud the entire history of the transmission of documents with a cloak of anonymity. The persons whose documents were stolen or copied were not specified. Intermediaries, except for Sukhotin, are 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 not named, "The Wise Men of Zion"?

Where - 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, whence the contradictions in the more precise qualification of the "Elders of Zion"? Why does Boothmy insist on not confusing the wise men of Zion with representatives of the Zionist movement, while S. Nilus declares, in the 1917 edition of the Protocols, that they represent the plan of the Zionists?

Finally, how to explain the contradiction between Nilus's version of the abduction of the Protocols in France by one woman and the German version of the copying of the Protocols with the assistance of a Russian secret agent? Why is their inconsistency added to the fantasticness of the stories?

Fantasy, anonymity and contradiction - the natural attributes of lies - are already in the very story about the receipt of the "Protocols" by S. Nilus. But this is only for the time being the prologue of a monstrous lie.

Contradictions in forgery and plagiarism.

The logical analysis of the "Protocols" allows us to dissect the document and evaluate its authenticity.

A conspiracy of one people against all mankind, a conspiracy in all countries and throughout the world, a conspiracy that lasts for centuries, a conspiracy before and after the coup. A conspiracy carried on from generation to generation, but known only to a minority of the elect; a conspiracy of all Jewry, in which only a few "wise men of Zion" are initiated, and which remains unknown to Jewry as a mass; a conspiracy of worldwide Freemasonry, but Freemasonry as tools of only a few central lodges, which, in turn, turn out to be only a tool of Jewish conspirators ... Rocambole and the Wandering Jew, Eugène Sue and Ponçon-du-Terraille in a monstrous mixture and supernaturally grandiose scale!

The conspirators gather at congresses, read reports, and take 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 malice, hatred and contempt for the "gentiles", for the rest of humanity. And the conspirators - wise men, conspirators from conspirators, insidious of insidious, geniuses of intrigue, all the secrets of the complex, 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 frivolously criminally prepare and store documents that can fall into the hands of not only the uninitiated, but also enemies and the victims themselves doomed to the role. They create terrifying. incriminating material against oneself, a genuine indictment.

And now, they are finally exposed. But what a romantic setting. According to one version, the woman stole documents that were handed over to Nilus through Sukhotin. Why exactly Sukhotin and Nilus? According to another version, the conspirators were watched by an agent of the Russian royal guard, through whose efforts part of the "Protocols" was rewritten, and a copy again came to Nilus. Everywhere "dames voilees" - everything is so pretentious, absurd, senselessly confused.

In this environment of the exposed and the whistleblowers, everything is draped for the eyes of criticism. Only anonymous names, pseudonyms, unknown persons, dead men and contradictory variants appear here. The truth is blocked by disguised and fantastical characters. Truth is choked 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 be born as a product of the imagination of a frivolous counterfeiter.

The wise men of Zion, through gold, rise up against the power of gold in order to establish a new kingdom of gold. Through anarchy, they seek to achieve lasting power for themselves. By the influence of demagogy on the masses, they want to create the discipline of the masses. With destructive propaganda of unbelief, they think to prepare the triumph of their true religion.

But why can't destruction be a continuous destruction followed by no creation? The profound wise men of Zion, if they really existed, would have to, fully armed with historical experience, weigh all the chances and possibilities for the success of their conspiracy. Social and political struggle can give rise to unrest lasting decades and centuries, without the end of a stable legal order - even under the power of the Jewish king, which the wise men of Zion dream of.

Such is the class struggle between the rich and the poor in ancient Greece, which lasted for centuries (from the 7th to the 2nd century BC) and which, in the unceasing paroxysm of ancient "Bolshevism", played an essential role in the evolution that led to the death of Greece. The political anarchy that accompanied the decay of the Western Roman Empire lasted for centuries and led to the establishment of the 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 wise men of Zion - if they existed in reality, and not in the work of counterfeiters - 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 of anti-Semitism, a period of new suffering for Jewry. Is the cultivation of anti-Semitism also included in Zion's plan?

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

The Jewish ruler is an autocratic monarch, an oriental despot, a deity king, a pharaoh, or a god. The country is his property and the subjects are his slaves. Every trace of freedom in his realm is eradicated, and people become automatons, without will, without thought, without initiative, passively obeying established authorities. In his imaginary kingdom of Zion, orders were established, imbued with the spirit of the "totalitarian" Black Hundreds. The ideal of the wise men 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 praise for 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 Russian autocracy, the papacy and even the Jesuit order.

Doesn't the king of the Jews, God's helper and patriarch-pope, head of secular and ecclesiastical authority, resemble a Russian autocrat? Isn't the secret guard of the Jewish king recommended by the "Protocols" a copy of the guard of the Russian autocrat? Were arrests on the first suspicion, executions, terror, administrative exile of the unreliable, and other similar measures recommended by the "Protocols" a real practice of the tsarist regime, as well as, on the other hand, of the Third Empire in France in the era of the post-December coup, and subsequently and the Hitler regime? . Isn't the apology for espionage and denunciation reminiscent of the rehabilitation of political detective skills, Russian theorists reactions? The idea of ​​equating political crimes with criminal ones, formulated as a project to fight sedition under the king of the Jews, was long ago implemented in tsarist Russia under Durnovo, in 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 authorities, officials, the system of depersonalization of students and the change in the teaching program, all this was carried out in tsarist Russia, after the abolition of the university charter of the liberal period of the 60s. Those measures of curbing or corrupting the press, which are so zealously proposed in the Protocols, in the form of censorship, bails, fines, closing of the press, etc., were practiced in the most merciless way in autocratic Russia.

In a word, autocratic Russia and other police absolutist monarchies were a kind of promised land for the wise men of Zion, in the sense of the already accomplished embodiment of the ideal and some of the most essential aspirations expressed in the Protocols. Is it not sheer madness on the part of the wise men of Zion - if there were any - 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 plot?

The explanation for all these contradictions, oddities and paradoxes is very, very simple: The Protocols of Zion are a forgery, and a certain content of them is a function of the psychology, understanding and abilities of the counterfeiters. The authors of the forgery are reactionaries, they acted for the purposes of the reaction. The Black Hundred ideal was close, familiar and clear to them. Possessing neither knowledge nor talent, they were not in a position to endow, in the “Protocols” they fabricated, the “Wise Men of Zion” staged by them with any opposite, but integral organic ideal. The outlook of the counterfeiters was exclusively Black-Hundred. They attributed the Black Hundred program to the monsters from Zion, mechanically combining it with hatred for the "gentiles" and with the idea of ​​the "King of the Jews." It is, as it were, merely a struggle, a rivalry for dominance between two reactions. Hence all the insane awkwardness of the conspiracy and program of the Elders of Zion.

Moreover, the counterfeiters, without any scientific baggage and without theoretical training, were not able to give a sensible, even apparently independent, justification for their worldview of the reaction. They had to copy. Forgery drew its resources from plagiarism.

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

When the authors of the "Protocols" put into the mouth of the "Wise Men of Zion" sayings such as "the right is in force", that "the end justifies the means", that "politics has nothing to do with morality", that good is motivated by evil, that in there are no immoral means of struggle in politics, 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 wise men of Zion against the principles of democracy and in favor of "absolutism by the grace of God" is a mediocre transmission of old clichés and hackneyed maxims of the theoreticians of reaction in the era of the Restoration - traditionalists and theocrats.

In some cases the counterfeiters did not disdain for their purpose the thoughts and views expressed in socialist literature as well. Such, for example, is the tirade that liberties are of no importance to the unfortunate proletarian, or that monopoly, concentration of wealth, speculation and a general economic crisis will lead to revolution. When the wise men of Zion propose to introduce, instead of the gold currency, "the currency of the value of labor power, whether paper or wood," we are reminded of the projects of the Ovenists Gray and Bray in England and Proudhon in France.

Even N.K. Pobedonostsev, this minister of retrograde and obscurantism, was plagiarized. One of his anti-democracy diatribes, from a book on New Democracy, was copied or paraphrased in Protocol No. 1.

But these are only relatively small borrowings included in the content of the forgery-plagiarism. They are relatively general. Later we will move on to more important elements of the forgery, adapted specifically for the fabrication of the "Jewish conspiracy."

The most remarkable thing about conspiracy theories is that denials reinforce it almost more than confirmations. If someone takes the trouble to refute a conspiracy theory, he thereby, as it were, admits the very possibility of a conspiracy. The next step is that the person who refutes himself is declared involved in the conspiracy. If the conspiracy theorists are ignored, they will again win: it means that the critics "have nothing to object to."

With the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, this works to the fullest. If you try to prove their falsity to a person who believes in a worldwide Jewish Masonic conspiracy, the well-wisher will almost inevitably be declared either a Jewish Freemason or a fool who unwittingly aids the Jewish Masons - regardless of any arguments. And the more convincing they are, the more monstrous the lie (or delusion) of the refuter will seem to the opponent. Conspiracy theorists usually love the aphorism: “The best of all inventions of the devil is to convince us that he does not exist”, forgetting that in the original source (the poem in the prose of Charles Baudelaire “The Magnanimous Player”) this aphorism is actually spoken by the devil.

The Protocols is a collection of speeches allegedly delivered by the participants in some secret meeting of the leaders of world Jewry, in which they outline plans for achieving world domination. When, where and by whom exactly they were uttered, it is not clear from the text, but the realities are easily guessed in it. late XIX- the beginning of the 20th century, that is, the very time when the "Protocols" were published.

The plans of the conspirators are to first destabilize the situation in the world as much as possible, undermine the economy, the political and legal system and the moral foundations of society, and then turn the poor, intimidated, disoriented goyim (non-Jews) into slaves of the “world government” and the “King of the Jews”.

For the first time, the Protocols were published in 1903 in the St. Petersburg ultra-right newspaper Znamya in an abbreviated form. A full edition followed in 1905 in the book Great in the Small and the Antichrist as a Close Political Possibility by the famous Orthodox mystic writer Sergei Nilus. The most important popularizer of the Protocols in the West was the automobile magnate and notorious anti-Semite Henry Ford. The speeches had a great influence on Hitler: during the Nazi rule in Germany, the Protocols were studied at school.

Sergei Nilus mysteriously considered himself a true Orthodox believer and an ardent anti-Semite. Photo: wikimedia

Take away, divide and blow up

The text of the "Protocols" is very "slippery": it contains neither names, nor dates, nor any details at all that would allow it to be somehow tied to specific persons and events. All information about the origin of the collection is vague, fragmentary and contradictory. Apparently, even before the publication in Znamya, at the turn of the century, this text was circulating among Russian right-wing radicals under the guise of a translation of documents stolen from one of the Jewish leaders.

A careful reading of the Protocols leads to some conjectures. First of all, attention is drawn to the program outlined in the "Protocols" for the Jews to achieve economic hegemony in the world: the internationalization of capital - the creation of monopolies - the creation of a shortage of money through the introduction of the gold standard - the debt burden of industry - the inhibition of its development - a man-made economic crisis. The introduction of the gold standard of the ruble, the support of big business and the attraction of foreign investment are the most important provisions of the economic program of Sergei Witte, the Minister of Finance of the Russian Empire since 1892.

For the effective reforms carried out, Sergei Witte is sometimes called the "grandfather of Russian industrialization." Photo Library of Congress, USA, 1880

The first distributors of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, Russian right-wing radicals (especially Georgy Butmi), publicly advocated, firstly, for economic isolationism, and secondly, for bimetallism (backing the currency not only with gold, but also with silver). Thus, the "Protocols" actually represented the reforms of Witte, hated by the conservatives, as part of the Jewish Masonic conspiracy.

Further. Part of the same conspiracy, according to the Protocols, was the entire so-called progressive movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: a wide range of liberal and socialist ideas and practices, including labor unions, universal suffrage, freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. Even the subway tunnels, which in this era were actively built in many major cities of Europe and America, seem to be part of the conspiracy: at the decisive moment, the conspirators will blow them all up at the same time, which will lead to the death of world capitals and general panic. Violent protests against the construction of the subway - too characteristic Russian ultra-conservatives. They assured that the branched tunnels under the city would be an exceptionally convenient target for large-scale terrorist attacks.

Suitable soil

And one more thing about the context in which the "Protocols" appeared. The border of the XIX-XX centuries is the time of unprecedented anti-Semitic hysteria in Europe. In 1894, a scandalous trial took place in France: General Staff Officer Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew by birth, was found guilty of spying for Germany and sentenced to hard labor. The fabrication of the evidence, the desire of the French military to blame Dreyfus as an officer of the "correct" origin, in general, the anti-Semitic nature of this case were so obvious that the whole of progressive Europe stood on its hind legs. Among the defenders of Dreyfus were Emile Zola and Anton Chekhov. The latter, on this basis, even quarreled with his old friend and publisher Alexei Suvorin, who turned his newspaper Novoye Vremya into a platform for attacks on the "Dreyfusards" and "Judophiles".

In 1897, the first World Zionist Congress took place in Basel, Switzerland. It was organized by the Austro-Hungarian Jew Theodor Herzl, who, by his own admission, was impressed by the Dreyfus affair: anti-Semitic demonstrations on the streets of European cities convinced him that Jews needed their own state in order to survive. The Zionist movement was rapidly gaining momentum. In 1902, a conference of Russian Zionist Jews took place in Minsk. In the eyes of anti-Semites, including Russian right-wing radicals, this served as another confirmation of the existence of the Jewish Masonic conspiracy.

Many streets and even cities in Israel, the USA and other countries are named after Theodor Herzl.

The publisher of Znamya, Pavel Krushevan, before moving to St. Petersburg, lived in Chisinau (at that time - the center of the Bessarabia province of the Russian Empire) and published the only daily newspaper there, Bessarabets. He became famous for actually provoking a Jewish pogrom in Chisinau on Easter 1903: “Bessarabets” for two months, day after day, published notes about the death of a local teenager, claiming that Jews killed him for their ritual. As a result of the riots in the city, fifty people were killed, and about six hundred more were crippled. This was one of those episodes, as a result of which the Russian word "pogrom" entered many foreign languages.

Both Krushevan and Nilus seem to have believed, or tried very hard to believe, that the Protocols were genuine. According to the original version of Nilus, they were a translation of the materials of the Basel Congress. When it was pointed out to him that this congress was a public event attended by many non-Jews, Nilus began to claim that the Protocols had been stolen from Herzl's portfolio. There was another version that they were stolen from some secret Jewish archive in France.

In the West, the "Protocols" became widely known after October revolution in Russia. In 1919, the most popular Philadelphia newspaper, the Public Ledger, published the Protocols, replacing "Jews" with "Bolsheviks" in the text. The "Red Scare" was a favorite topic of the then American media. The author of this, so to speak, forgery in the square, Karl Ackerman, did not suffer from such embarrassment in any way, either personally or professionally. Subsequently, after the full exposure of the "Minutes" of London's The Times, he became the first dean of the School of Journalism at Columbia University.

1934 American edition of The Protocols. The caption at the bottom reads: "Every patriotic American should read this."

In 1921, Henry Ford, defending the authenticity of the Protocols, declared: “They correspond to what is happening. They are 16 years old, and so far they have corresponded to the situation in the world ”(apparently, he counted the years from the first full publication). A typical example of conspiracy thinking: this is how people become stronger in faith in omens and astrology.

The Jewish conspirators in the Protocols appear as downright caricatured villains and state their cunning plans with silly frankness. Many (in particular, the philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev) noted that this smacks of some kind of tabloid novel. And so it turned out.

Perhaps the portrait of Henry Ford hung in Hitler's office not only because the American invented the assembly line.

mosaic art

In 1921, the 28-year-old Allen Dulles, the future legendary director of the CIA, worked at the American embassy in Istanbul. He established contacts with new political forces that emerged in Turkey after the collapse of Ottoman Empire, as well as with numerous Russian emigrants who fled here after the occupation of the Crimea by the Red Army. One of Dulles' acquaintances in Istanbul was Mikhail Mikhailov-Raslovlev, a former officer of the White Army, later a famous translator of Russian poetry into French. He readily recognized himself as a right-wing conservative and anti-Semite. Like many Russian emigrants in Istanbul, Mikhailov-Raslovlev was in dire need of money and offered Dulles to buy from him information about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. American intelligence was not interested in this information, but Dulles brought Mikhailov-Raslovlev to the Istanbul correspondent of the same The Times newspaper, Philip Graves, and he, with the consent of the editors, paid.

Another conspiracy theory is associated with the name of Allen Dulles: the so-called "Dulles plan"

Mikhailov-Raslovlev informed Graves that the Protocols were largely plagiarism, and indicated its source - a little-known satirical pamphlet by the Frenchman Maurice Joly "Dialogue in hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu", written in 1864 and directed against the French Emperor Napoleon III. There is not a word about the Jews in this work, but it is Machiavelli's cynical judgments from Joly's pamphlet that are transferred in whole paragraphs with minor changes to the "Protocols" as instructions for achieving world domination.

Another author of The Times, British journalist of Jewish origin Lucien Wolf, in the same 1921 found borrowings in the Protocols from another source - the novel Biarritz (1868) by the German writer Hermann Goedsche. One of the chapters of this novel describes a secret meeting of representatives of the Twelve tribes of Israel with the devil at the Jewish cemetery in Prague.

Soon the name of the person who may have compiled the Protocols from such bizarre sources also surfaced - Matvey Golovinsky, a Russian journalist who once worked in Paris and was associated with Russian special services. In 2001, the Ukrainian philologist Vadim Skuratovsky, having carefully studied the biography of Golovinsky and made a linguistic comparison of his texts with the text of the Protocols, came to the conclusion that his authorship is quite likely.

Umberto Eco, in his Six Walks in Literary Forests (1994), traced, so to speak, the sources of the sources of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He discovered that Maurice Joly's pamphlet contained extensive borrowings from Eugene Sue's novels The Eternal Jew, Parisian Secrets, and Secrets of a People. Xu, one of the pioneers of so-called mass literature, was a French liberal and anti-clerical of the first half of XIX century, and in his works, the Jesuits act as carriers of world evil, cynical manipulators of the fate of mankind and secret rulers of the world. Joly transferred their characteristics to his Machiavelli, and from Joly's pamphlet they ended up in the Protocols.

The scene in the Prague cemetery in Gedsche's novel also turned out to be unoriginal: it was copied from Alexandre Dumas père's novel Joseph Balsamo (1849). His main character(better known under the pseudonym Cagliostro) appears as the Grand Master of the Masonic order. The episode borrowed by Gedsche is a meeting of Cagliostro with his henchmen, where they plan to steal the diamond necklace of Queen Marie Antoinette (by the way, such a scam did take place shortly before French Revolution). Subsequently, the scene from Gedsche's novel was repeatedly retold by French and Russian publicists of an anti-Semitic persuasion, passing it off as a reliable message about real event. From this journalism, the statements of the Gedshev Jewish conspirators migrated to the "Protocols".

So it turns out that one of the most sinister texts of the twentieth century turned out to be a plagiarism from pulp fiction of the nineteenth century. And by the way, this is not the only example. For example, the story of the discovery of the Book of Veles, the “great forgery” that we will talk about next week, is suspiciously similar to the story of the discovery of the Mayan nodular script in Jack London's novel Hearts of Three. Well, a hodgepodge of Jesuits, secret orders, Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Templars and God knows who else still exists in popular literature - just remember Dan Brown. However, from what conspiracy sources this author drew inspiration, we will also tell some other time.

Artem Efimov