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Protocols of the Elders of Zion
An anti-Semitic text accusing Jews of secretly
plotting to rule the world. First published in 1903 in
Russkoe Znamia
[Russian, Russian Banner], which later became the organ of
the Black
Hundreds, it was published as a brochure in Petersburg in
1905 during
the revolution.
In 1921, the English journalist P. Graves showed the
Protocols to be
a fabrication. They had been written at the instigation of
P.
Rachkovskii, head of the foreign bureaus of the okhrana (the
tsarist
secret political police) in order to stir up Russian émigré
circles. Not
an original work, it is the effort of several authors: the
final
version was a compilation prepared by the Russian writer M.
Golovinskii
(associated with the okhrana). For the most part, it was a
translation
of Dialogue aux Enfers entre Montesquieu et Machiavel
(French, Dialogue
in Hell Between Montesquieu and Machiavelli), which was
critical of
Napoleon III. It was written by the Parisian lawyer M. Jolly
(1829-78)
and published in 1864 in Brussels. A copy was found in the
National
Library in Paris with notes in the margins written in
Russian in various
hands. The compilation was also comprised of a summary of
the Catechism
of a Revolutionary, by S. Nechayev (1847-82) and fragments
from The
Possessed, by F. Dostoevsky. The entire volume, brought up
to date with
the events in 1895-99 in France, was attributed to the
"Elders of Zion",
who were said to have held a secret meeting during the
Zionist Congress
in Basel in 1897.
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The Protocols became enormously popular.
Supporters of the Black Hundreds used it to justify the
pogrom in
Kishinev in 1903. Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, despite
having received
information from the okhrana about its own role, made the
Protocols
their favorite reading. They believed them to be prophecies
that were in
the process of being fulfilled.
After the Bolshevik Revolution, the Protocols were
published in
Poland in 1919; in 1920, they were published almost
simultaneously, in
Germany, France, Great Britain, the United States, Italy,
the
Scandinavian countries, Romania, Greece, Bulgaria, Lithuania
and
Hungary. Echoes of the Protocols were present in an appeal
from the
Polish Episcopate to the world's bishops during the
Polish-Soviet War.
By 1939, in Germany 33 editions had been published; after
Hitler assumed
power, the book became required reading in schools. Hitler
himself drew
on them for inspiration in writing Mein Kampf.
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In Poland, by 1939 nine editions had been
produced by the publishing houses of the clerical
Association Rozwoj
[Polish, Development] and the National-Radical Camp. Father
S. Trzeciak,
whose work was highly regarded in Nazi Germany, sought and
found
confirmation in the Bible for statements made in the
Protocols. During
the occupation in Krakow, reprints appeared in 1937 and
1938.
After the war, these editions were reprinted in 1968,
1982 and 1983 -
all at the initiative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs-as
well as
after 1989, with at least three editions to date.
(A.C./CM)
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