Sergei Nilus
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Sergei Alexandrovich Nilus (Sergiei, Sergyei, Sergius, Serge; Russian language: Сергей Александрович Нилус; 1862-1929) was a Russian religious writer, self-described mystic, and agent of the Imperial Russian secret police, the Okhranka. He was responsible for publishing for the first time in full The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Russia in 1905 as "Chapter XII" (the last chapter) to an edition of his book about the coming of the anti-Christ.
Nilus gained fame by promulgating that the Protocols were the minutes of a meeting of Jewish leaders at the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897, in which Jews allegedly plotted to take over the world. He may have been one of the authors of the Protocols. [1]He claimed the Protocols were the work of the meetings of the "Elders of Zion" in 1902–1903, despite the conflict with his claim of having received a copy previous to that date.
The son of Swiss immigrants, Nilus was a landowner in the government of Orel. He studied law and graduated from the University of Moscow, and was a magistrate in Transcaucasia. He later moved to Biarritz, living there with his mistress, Natalya Komarovskaya, until his estates were bankrupt. After his bankruptcy he converted to Orthodox Christianity and returned to Russia where, in 1901 or 1902, he published a booklet The Great in the Small: The Coming of the Anti-Christ and the Rule of Satan on Earth. The text of the Protocols appeared as chapter 12 of the edition of this book which was published in [1905]]. [2] It impressed the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fyodorovna enough for her to introduce Nilus into Tsar Nicholas II's court. [3]
A secret investigation ordered by the newly appointed chairman of the Council of Ministers Pyotr Stolypin soon determined that the Protocols were authored by operatives of the Okhranka in Paris. The details were not made public to avoid compromising the chief of secret service Pyotr Rachkovsky and his agents, but when Nicholas II learned of the results, he requested: "The Protocols should be confiscated, a good cause cannot be defended by dirty means". Despite of the order, or because of the "good cause", numerous reprints proliferated.
Nilus circulated several editions of the Protocols in Russia as part of an antisemitic campaign. Though the early prints were in Russia, the Protocols quickly spread to the rest of Europe by Russian expatriates after the 1917 revolution. Some of them claimed that it provided proof that the Jews were behind the Russian Revolution. Another expatriate Russian, Boris Brasol, brought it to the United States around 1920 where it became the core of Henry Ford's anti-Semitic program. By the time Nilus died, Europe had been saturated by millions of copies of the Protocols.
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[edit] Works
- Velikoe v malom i antikhrist, kak blizkaia politicheskaia vozmozhnost.
- Zapiski pravoslavnago. [Russian title romanized]
- (TSarskoe Selo, Tip. TSarskoselskago Komiteta Krasnago Kresta, 1905) [imprint]
- 2. izd. ispr. i dop. [edition]
- 417 p. [description]
- Prophecies [subject]
- Protocoly sobran??ii S?ionskikh mudretsov: str. [chapter XII title romanized]
- Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion [chpter XII title transliterated into English]
- [325]-417'(= 92 pages)' [chapter XII pages]
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- Note: This is the title for which Nilus is most famous — but only for chapter XII (chapter 12)- which he allegedly did not write.
[edit] References
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
- by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln
- (London: Jonathan Cape, 1982)
- ISBN 951-9107-41-X
