Who were the authors of The Protocols? The myth of the Okhrana.

“I have intended to shed light on the even more obscure aspects of [The Protocols] moving not indeed- as have been fruitlessly attempted before- among the many contradictory sources (secret archives, renegade Jews, spies, mystic writers, femme fatales, ink-stained manuscripts, anonymous translators, etc.) that have accompanied this phantasm.”

– Scholar Cesare G. De Michelis, 2004[i] 

A group photo with department heads of Okhrana in St Petersburg 1905. (I am unsure if moustache size corresponded with importance) Source: Archives of St Petersburg.

For much of the twentieth century there has been attempts to find the true authors of the text and for many decades many believed the Russian secret police the Department for the Protection of Public Safety and Order (Abbreviated to the shorter Okhrana, Russian: Охранное отделение[ii]) were responsible. This is most likely due to the reputation that Okhrana had in Europe and Russia, so it is important to understand a little context.

Predecessors to Okhrana were created following several failed attempts on the life of Tsar Alexander II from 1866 until his successful assassination in 1881 by the revolutionary group Narodnaya Volya (The People’s Will) which led to an expansion and creation of secret police headquarters in Moscow, Warsaw and later in Paris.

The late 1800s was a heady period when violent revolutionary terrorism was sweeping across Europe influenced by the Russian nihilist and anarchist movements, revolutionaries sought to commit ‘propaganda of the deed’ which they believed would be a catalyst for revolution. From 1880-1915 more than 17 assassination attempts occurred around the world against heads of state which resulted in the deaths of 3 Presidents, 2 Prime Ministers and 3 Kings. Russia at this time held the largest Jewish population of Europe due to various acquisitions and the monarchy and government were deeply antisemitic.

The man responsible for the Parisian division of Okhrana and to which many have blamed for creating The Protocols was Pyotr Rachkovsky who operated the division from 1884 until 1902. The Okhrana and Rachkovsky were ruthless in their campaigns against revolutionaries; they planted evidence to break up groups, they infiltrated and created discord, they made disinformation campaigns. (For more on look at Agents Provocateurs). Not only did Rachkovsky have a history of audacious forgeries and schemes he was a virulent antisemitic involved in far-right monarchist groups that fought revolutionaries in running street battles in the early 1900s.

So given the Okhrana’s and Rachkovsky’s reputation when they were accused of creating The Protocols it was not far from unbelievable. There are several key events that laid the groundwork for the myth of Okhrana’s involvement. The first was the 1921 expose by Philip Graves in The Times of London that revealed The Protocols were a forgery in a large part from the little-known French writer Maurice Joly and his book ‘The Dialogue in Hell’.

In the expose Graves recounted that a ‘Mr.X’ a Russian émigré and aristocrat who ‘had long been interested in the Jewish question… [and] had studied the “Protocols”’ had bought some old books from a former Okhrana officer in Constantinople[iii] who “did not remember where he had obtained it, and attached no importance to it,”[iv] among the books was Joly’s Dialogues. One day flicking through Joly’s book Mr X was struck by the similarities to The Protocols, and it is why he approached Graves as a journalist to publish the truth.

Berne trial, Protocols of the Elders of Zion: the two plaintiffs with their Berne lawyers. Plaintiffs: on the bench on the left is Marcel Bloch; to his right is Emil Bernheim. Lawyers for the plaintiffs: behind the plaintiffs on the left is Hans Matt

What sealed the myth the belief in Okhrana’s involvement was a widely publicized trial in Berne, Switzerland in 1933. The trial came from a coalition of Swiss Jewish communities who sued the right-wing National Front for distributing antisemitic forgeries in their newspapers, the trial demonstrated once more that The Protocols were a forgery but came to the wrong conclusion of who were the creators. The plaintiffs called several Russian witnesses: one was Vladimir Burtsev ‘The Sherlock Holmes of the Revolution’, known as an expert counterespionage revolutionary famed for finding infiltrators (See agent provocateurs) and several minor Russian nobles. During the trial the prosecution established that Rachkovsky ordered The Protocols to be created (and perhaps took part in their creation) around 1897 where it was then smuggled back to Russia and published in newspapers 1902 and later in Sergei Nilus’ 1905 book. Nilus was recounted as a mythical figure, a wealthy noble turned destitute and who had become a wondering mystic. Witnesses claimed the Rachkovsky and Nilus plotted together to sway the Russian court by planting Nilus as the Tsarina’s confessor (his competition being the notorious monk Gregory Rasputin), The Protocols was a gift that was to help him gain influence, ultimately the plan failed.

Two influential books used the conclusions of the court as basis for their research; Henri Rollin a French spy published ‘L'Apocalypse de notre temps’ (the Apocalypse of our times) in 1939 which was the first dissection and analysis of the text, and the second book was Norman Cohn’s Warrant for Genocide published in 1966. Both of these books have continued this narrative that the Okhrana and Rachkovsky were the creators of The Protocols. [v] Much later after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1999 when Russian historian Mikhail Lepekhine made headlines when he claimed that a minor aristocrat Matvei Golovinski who had fled Russia was the man tasked with compiling the text). According to Lepekhine, Golovinski worked at the right-wing French newspaper Le Figaro and was helped by his coworker Charles Joly, the son of Maurice Joly.[vi]

This comic, produced by cartoonist Will Eisner titled The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion leans heavily on Cohn's book as a source material. By all accounts Rachkovsky and Sergei Nilus pictured here never met nor was Nilus a bearded occult mystic that has since been claimed.

Myth and Countermyth

Two experts on The Protocols, Italian scholar Cesare G. De Michelis who has done extensive research on early editions of The Protocols, and German historian and Slavist Michael Hagemeister challenged the widespread belief the Okhrana were the creators. For Hagemeister, both the propagators of ‘The Protocols’ and the opponents have created ‘myth and countermyth’[vii]. He attacks Rollin and Cohn’s historical research as well have called into question the reliability of the witnesses of the Berne Trial: one a Polish-Russian princess who had been arrested multiple times for fraud and forgery was labelled by a contemporary as a ‘mythomaniac’.[viii] The second key witness a French count who had spurred antisemitic rumours decades before, first extracted a large sum from the Jewish plaintiffs for his testimony and gave an account riddled with inconsistencies.

Umberto Eco has also been fascinated by the story of The Protocols and has written several books with the supposed writers.

According to Hagemeister Cohn’s book coloured the research and investigation of the origin of The Protocols further blurring the distinction of historical event and fiction.

For example, there are several countermyths that Hagemeister says are all inventions:

· Claim 1# When first published it was claimed The Protocols were read out in all 368 Moscow churches. There is no evidence this happened.[ix]

·Claim 2# Henri Rollin’s book is extremely rare because the Nazis destroyed all copies. There were several editions published following WWII.

·Claim 3# Sergie Nilus was neither a monk nor professor. He was not a wandering mystic and had never been to the imperial court. He was not an occultist and did not have three wives.

 This all amounts to elaborate stories that take precedence over historical truth, as Hagemeister writes: “what we hear is a narrative- to be precise, a conspiracy narrative. The actors this time are not Jews, but cunning secret agents, fanatical anti-Semites, and sinister reactionaries”.[x]

So, what is the true story? De Michelis’ detailed study of various early editions of The Protocols led him to conclude several things:

·The Protocols were likely written in 1902 or 1903.

·The growing Zionist movement in early 1900s sparked the creation of The Protocols.

·The translator/author used various Ukranianisms in their translation from French to Russian.

De Michelis locates the date of the text to around 1902 or 1903 from multiple references in The Protocols to early 20th century events such as one passage in the 5th Protocols which he says alludes to the regicide of King Jumbert I of Italy on the 29th of July 1900. A translator’s note to the 2nd protocol, the assassination attempt on the American President McKinley is mentioned which occurred September 14,1901. Other events such as the founding of the Jewish National Fund in 1901 which had begun purchasing land in Palestine and a 1902 Zionist conference in Minsk all were used by The Protocols as context. [xi]

If we accept all this as evidence that the date of creation was 1902 or 1903 this eliminates Rachkovsky as the creator since he is recalled from Paris back to Russian in 1902 and could not have directed Golovinski to compile The Protocols. The use of Ukrainian words, spelling, and grammar are another piece of evidence that point to someone other than Golovinski as the translator.

De Michelis identifies Pavel Krushevan and Georgy Butmi as the creators, Krushevan was a right-wing news editor who first published part of The Protocols in a local Ukranian newspaper and both men were from Ukrainian regions with large populations of Jews (that being Bessarabia- which is now partly modern day Moldova and Ukraine).

Victims of the pogrom in Kishniev- over 50 Jews died and hundreds injured. Thousands of homes were also torched- the event gained significant press coverage and sparked more interest in Zionism by Jews.

Krushevan and Butmi were active in the ultranationalist movement (Butmi was a member of the Union of Russian People that Rachkovsky helped found) and had written publications that stoked violent antisemitism. In 1903 large pogroms rocked their home region of Bessarabia[xii] and Krushevan is alleged to have started this with an antisemitic rumour in his newspaper.

This version answers a hundred-year-old mystery and absolves a dedicated forger of one of many crimes: though steeped in antisemitic schemes and counterrevolutionary plots the Okhrana did not commit this crime.

[i] Cesare G De Michelis & Richard Newhouse[trans]. The non-existent manuscript: a study of the Protocols of the sages of Zion. (University of Nebraska Press, 2004.) P.2

[ii] Which translates to ‘Shield’ or ‘Guard’.

[iii] As by this time the Bolshevik’s had won the Civil War and pro-Monarchists had fled the country en masse.

[iv] Philip Graves. The Truth About 'The Protocols': A Literary Forgery (The Times of London, 1921) p5-6.

[v] Cohn. Warrant for genocide. P.77-78

[vi] Eric Conan. The Origin of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion: The Secrets of an Anti-Semitic Manipulation. (NOT BORED! Trans) L'Express, (2007). (Original work published 1999) https://www.notbored.org/protocols-history.html 

[vii] Michael Hagemeister The Perennial Conspiracy Theory. (Routledge, 2021).

[viii] Ibid

[ix] Michael Hagemeister The Perennial Conspiracy Theory. (Routledge, 2021). P. 7

[x] Michael Hagemeister. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Between History and Fiction.  2008 New German Critique 35 (1): 83–95.P.94,

[xi] De Michelis The non-existent manuscript: a study of the Protocols of the sages of Zion. P. 63.

[xii] Butmi was from Podolia which borders the region.