By: Charlie Buckreis
The Protocols were first published in a Russian newspaper in 1903 and again in the back of a religious piece by Sergei Nilus in 1905. Those dates are incredibly important because between 1903 and 1906 there were a number of riots and other antisemitic events in Russia alongside the already destructive reign of Tsar Nicholas II. These feelings were likely heightened by the worsening socioeconomic and living conditions for Russian peasants. As a result of the antisemitic atmosphere, my theory is that the Russian people began blaming the Jewish people for their problems and that the Russian people’s anger and unhappiness ultimately culminated in the distribution of the Protocols in an attempt to create an excuse to get rid of the Jews.
The First Zionist Congress was held in 1897. The Protocols were first published in 1903, and are supposedly the minutes from the meeting of a secret Jewish group. The Protocols supposedly detail the group’s plans to take over the world. With the widespread antisemitic sentiment at the time, a combination of the Zionist Congresses and the mass influx of Jews to Palestine may have made people nervous or suspicious. I think it may even have lent support to conspiracy theories about the global Jewish world domination plot, especially since the idea of a Jewish state is central to Zionism. It would explain why the piece has the name it does. All delegates were adults, and most were likely senior members of their communities, or “elders.” The Congresses were Zionist meetings, hence the “of Zion” part.