It is difficult to find a document that arouses so much controversy as “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. The representatives of the scientific world, journalists and politicians have been discussing its authenticity for almost a hundred years. “The Protocols” have became a serious reading in some countries.
However, let’s start from the beginning.
“The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” have appeared in 1903, in the form known to a today’s reader in the Petersburg magazine “Russkoje Znamia” for the first time . They became particularly popular two years later, when they were published as a separate book. This publication was associated with the activity of the Black Hundreds and Okhrana, which treated the liberalization after 1905 as an attack on the integrity of Russia, shifting all the blame on the “international Jewish conspiracy”.
This document was also used after the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, when the Jewish relations with the international communist movement were directly associated with the theses included in “The Protocols...”. What is interesting, Henry Ford was one of the most well-known promoter to them, who financed the printing of 500 thousand copies in the very 1920. Despite the wide criticism, satire gained considerable popularity, yet before II World War. However, “The Protocols” gained the greatest popularity in the West but in the Islamic countries. One can find a lot on this topic in the
Menahem Milson’s article, showing that “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were published and distributed wider in the Arabic world than in any other part of the world for the last half a century. The Protocols were already published in Arabic in 1925 for the first time but this anti-Jewish satire did not play a significant role in fight between the Arabian people and Zionism for about a quarter of a century.” Of course, the uprising of the Israel country and another wars between the Jewish countries and the Arabian people had decisive influence. As a result of growing conflict and another victories of Israel, the presidents of Egypt, Sadat and Naser, the president Arif from Iraq, the king Fajsal from Saudi Arabia, as well as the Libyan leader Muammar Kaddafi officially supported and recommended reading “The Protocols”. The book was reissued many times and was the bestseller among others in Lebanon and in Iran.
What is more, “The Protocols”
were even adapted to the screen version , whose premiere took place on 6 November 2002. Then, some Arabic TV stations broadcast the first episode of the series entitled “A knight without a horse”. It consisted of 41 episodes and a lot of most significant plot elements based on the fragments of “The Protocols”. A series premiere date does not seem to be accidental because it was the evening in the first day of Ramadan, when the largest number of Muslims sit in front of TV. Despite the protests of many representatives of western countries with the USA in the lead.
What are “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”?
A lot of scholars ask this question themselves and this subject makes the atmosphere hotter in many countries. What we can certainly say is that it is a record of the alleged plans which describe the methods of taking over the power over the world by the Jewish. The plan is multifaceted and has lots of polifluence features. It consists in gradual fueling of social conflicts and wars that are supposed to finally lead to a total dominance by the Jewish, the financial factors such as an appropriate control of states budgets, as well as military factors with bomb attacks in cities are also included. Doesn't it sound familiar? Theoretically yes, however, there is a lot of doubts concerning the authenticity of this document.
First of all, the critics indicate unusual similarity of some fragments of “The Protocols” with a text from a French satire “Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavelli et Montesquieu ou la politique de Machiavelli au XIXe siecle par un contemporain” (The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu) of the French satirist Maurice Joly. Joly himself certainly was not a Jew and the thing he wrote was supposed to be an attack on Napoleon III, above all. It was not an original work because one could clearly notice that it was inspired by the Eugene’s novel “Les Mystères du peuple” (People’s secrets) and even by the earlier anonymous apocryphal work from the XVII century entitled “Jesuits’ confidential pieces of advice” that was written in Poland. As a title of the last work indicates, both it and Sue’s novel did not concern the Jews’ conspiracy but the Jesuits’ order.
The concept itself of the Jews’ world conspiracy was studied in the XIX century many times, in Russia itself among others by an Orthodox clergyman, Siergiej Aleksandrowicz Nilus, who stated that the “Protocols” come from the first Zionist Congress, which indeed took place in Basel in 1897. Nilus only with time changed his stance and attributed the authorship to “the elders of Zion”. Nilus himself was a clerical assistant of the Moscow Synod archive and his publication was originally entitled “The Great Within the Small” and “Antichrist as a Near Political Possibility”. The goal of publishing it was to deprive the Paris specialist-mason monsieur Philippe of influence and to replace him with somebody who is “closer to the Russian nation”. This person was a charismatic clergyman from Siberia - Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin.
Well then, do we deal with an absolute falsification?
“The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” were considered to be false many times by the courts in many countries. It seems that the document itself is indeed fake. However, isn’t there a grain of truth in it? According to Darius Ratajczak, who referred to the statement of Rev. Dr. Stanislaw Trzeciak, the former professor of the Saint Petersburg Roman Catholic Theological Academy, who was a highly regarded Jewish expert, stated that there can be a grain of truth in this document. Is that right?
J. Tazbir “The Protocols...-truth or falsification”
The history of the protocols:
D. Ratajczak on authenticity of the protocols (+ interesting comments):
Discussion on this issue.
The protocols in the Islamic world
article in Wiki:
article on reissues:
