Description:

The story of the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion typically focuses on their reception, showing how a text that appeared in an obscure Russian newspaper in 1903 became the backbone of the world's most successful conspiracy theory in the wake of the Russian revolution. The book from which this talk is drawn, by contrast, focuses on the pre-history of the text. Reconstructing a fuller biography of the notorious forgery, it explores the lives and work of the many authors whose writing was later incorporated into the Protocols, mostly without their knowledge. This approach, I argue, yields new insights into the enduring mystery of who created the text, how, and why. The talk will be structured around the case study of Élie de Cyon, a writer who made significant literary contributions to the text—but may also have been its victim.

Faith Hillis is Professor of History at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Utopia's Discontents: Russian Emigres and the Quest for Freedom, 1830s-1930s (2021) and Children of Rus': Right-Bank Ukraine and the Invention of a Russian Nation (2013). Her research has been funded by NEH, ACLS, and NCEEER, among others, and she has held fellowships at Harvard, Columbia, and the New York Public Library's Center for Scholars and Writers.

Co-Sponsored By: Holocaust Educational Foundation and the Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies