The Curse of the Protocols

Russian cover of the book
“The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”

Besides the reaction that the Protocols provoked in the people and leaders from many countries -and whether or not they are authentic or accurately predict changes in society- there is another interesting issue surrounding the Protocols worth mentioning: the consequences to those involved in any way with them.

We will see in a later chapter what happened to Germany –which took the Protocols as a real thread- and we already saw what happened to Russia and Tsar –who also took actions based on the Protocols-, but what's more interesting is what happened to the individuals directly involved in the publishing and/or distribution of the Protocols.

According to one of the version regarding the the origin of the Protocols, Justine Glinka, the daughter of a Russian general, was the person who acquired the Protocols in France from a Jewish Freemason named Joseph Schorst. She forwarded the original documents, along with an early Russian translation, to her contact in Saint Petersburg, General Orgevskii, who handed them to his chief, General Cherevin, to be passed directly to the Tsar. However, Cherevin –allegedly on the payroll of wealthy Russian Jews- failed to transmit the Protocols to the Tsar and kept then in archive. Coincidentally, and just after forwarding the Protocols, Justine Glinka was falsely accused of authoring another book, the “Count Vassilii”, which gave out details about the Russian court life. This book displeased the Tsar, and Glinka was banished to her estate in Orel on her return to Russia. It would be later cleared that Glinka did not write the book, which was from Mme. Juliette Adam, a French feminist devoted to theosophy and the occult. [1]

Joseph Schorst was a Jew and member of the Miz-raim Lodge in Paris. He offered Justine Glinka a very important document for the Russian Empire, which Glinka bought for 2.500 francs. After Schorst sold the Protocols to Glinka he fled to Egypt, where, according to French police archives, he was murdered.

Justine Glinka passed a copy of the Protocols to the marechal de noblesse of Orel, Alexis Sukhotin. He showed the document to two friends: Stepanov and Sergei Nilus. Stepanov printed and privately circulated a few copies in 1897, but Sergei Nilus had it published for the first time in full in 1905 (the same year of the first attempt of the Russian Revolution); as the last chapter of his book “The Great within the Small and Antichrist”. [2] In 1917 (the same year of the final Russian Revolution) Nilus had prepared a second edition –revised and documented- for publication, but just before he could distribute it, Kerenskii, who had succeeded to power after the Revolution, ordered to completely destroy it. In 1924 Professor Nilus was arrested in Kiev by the “Cheka”, imprisoned, and then tortured. He was told by the president of the court (who was Jewish) that this treatment was meted out to him for "having done them incalculable harm in publishing the Protocols". He was freed afterwards, and detained again a few months later, this time in Moscow; he was confined, and later sent to exile, where he died in 1929.

The other version of the origin of the protocols claims that they originate from an anti-Semitic and counter-revolutionary Russian author and translator named Matvei Golovinski; who allegedly plagiarised it from a previous book, and passed them to Krushevan to be published in the Znamya newspaper. However, unlike Nilus, Golovinski was not prosecuted; even though he allegedly wrote the Protocols as anti-Bolshevik propaganda, and even though he was an anti-Semite and a counter-revolutionary. In fact, Golovinski was allowed to switch sides, and was even employed to work for the Bolsheviks until his death in 1920. [3]

Whether the Protocols reached Russia by the hand of Justine Glinka or were written by Golovinski, it is an irrefutable fact that they were first published by Pavel Krushevan in 1903 in the daily newspaper Znamya. After Krushevan published the Protocols he suffered a homicidal attempt. From that moment on he lived in constant fear for his life, had to carry weapons for his own protection, and was accompanied by a personal cook out of fear to be poisoned. [4]

In 1920 the Protocols reached the general public in England, by the hand of Victor E. Marsden’s first English translation; published in London as a series of articles in the Morning Post. Victor E. Marsden died the exact same year when his translation was published in London. [5]

That same year, in the United States, Putman & Son acquired and published the Protocols, which was sold as a companion to “The Cause of World Unrest”. However, Putman and Son were forced to recall all unsold copies of the book, and were threatened with bankruptcy if they continued to publish it. In fact, every other company that published the Protocols also had difficulties within a year or two of publication (i.e. Small, Maynard & Co. from Boston, and The Beckwith Co. from New York). Even Henry Ford, who sponsored 500.000 copies of the Protocols in his Dearborn Independent, was ordered by a court to retract his publication and apologize, which he did. [6] Curiously, the first American edition of the Protocols was published in 1919 by Carl W. Ackerman in the Philadelphia Public Ledger, but this edition had all references to Jews substituted with Bolsheviks. The Public Ledger did not suffer the same faith as the other publishers; at the contrary, Ackerman was later appointed to act first as the director, and later as the first dean of the Columbia University's School of Journalism. [7]


... Next chapter: The death of the Tsars and the birth of Zion


Bibliography:
Leslie Fry, “Waters Flowing Eastwards”, R.I.S.S., Paris, 1931.

References:
[1] Wikipedia: Juliette Adam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliette_Adam)
[2] Wikipedia: Serge Nilus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serge_Nilus)
[3] Wikipedia: Matvei Golovinski (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matvei_Golovinski)
[4] Wikipedia: Pavel Krushevan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Krushevan)
[5] Wikipedia: Victor E. Marsden (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_E._Marsden)
[6] Wikipedia: Carl W. Ackerman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_W._Ackerman)