into Russian from the French in 1901 that the Elders of Zion mentioned in the Protocols are not to be confounded with the Zionist movement.
In the 1917 edition Sergius Nilus wrote:
“In 1901 I came into possession of a manuscript, and this compatatively small book was destined to cause a deep change in my entire viewpoint as can only be caused in the heart of man by Divine Power. It was comparable with the miracle of making the blind see. ‘May Divine acts show on him.’
“This manuscript was called ‘the protocols of the Zionist Men of Wisdom,’ and it was given to me by the now deceased leader of the Tchernigov nobility, who later became vice-governor of Stavropol, Alexis Nikolayevitch Sukhotin. I had already begun to work with my pen for the glory of the Lord, and I was friendly with Sukhotin. He was a man of my opinion, that is, extremely conservative, as they are now termed.
“Sukhotin told me that he in turn had obtained the manuscript from a lady who always lived abroad. This lady was a noblewoman from Tchernigov. He mentioned her by name, but I have forgotten it. He said that she obtained it in some mysterious way, by theft, I believe.
“Sukhotin also said that one copy of the manuscript was given by this lady to Sipiagin, the Minister of the Interior, upon her return from abroad, and that Sipiagin was subsequently killed. He said other things of the same mysterious character. But when I first became acquainted with the contents of the manuscript I was convinced that its terrible, cruel and straightforward truth is witness of its true origin from the ‘Zionist Men of Wisdom,’ and that no other evidence of its origin would be needed.”
Feodor Roditchev, one of Russia’s most famous liberals, a member of the nobility, a former member of the Duma, writing recently of the Nilus protocols and of Sukhotin whom Nilus described as a man of his own opinion, says:
