This seminar sheds new light on the origins of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, arguing that it was compiled over many years by an international circle of adventurers who perpetrated multiple self-serving hoaxes. Faith Hillis comes to this conclusion by taking a “biographical” approach to the notorious forgery, examining the many texts and authors whose voices and experiences were appropriated by the creator of The Protocols and asking how these divergent literary inheritances came together.
Beyond providing new answers to the enduring mystery behind the text’s authorship, her analysis suggests that the original intention behind The Protocols has been largely misunderstood. Its creators instrumentalized antisemitism in the pursuit of chaotic personal agendas, but inciting hatred toward Jews was not their primary goal per se. The seminar closes by considering how the surprising biography of The Protocols should prompt us to reconsider the inner workings of antisemitism and why the forgery possesses such troubling endurance.
Faith Hillis is Professor of Russian History and the College at the University of Chicago. She is the author of two books, the most recent of which, Utopia’s Discontents: Russian Emigres and the Quest for Freedom, 1830s-1930s (Oxford University Press, 2021), was awarded the 2022 Wayne S. Vucinich Prize by ASEEES in recognition of the year’s best book in any field of Slavic studies. She is the recipient of grants from NEH, and ACLS, among others, and is a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow.