This study is an original attempt to trace the messianic and literary development of anti-Semitic ideas in Russia which culminate in Sergei Nilus' The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Previous scholars have focused on Western sources for this work. However, the elucidation of the specifically Russian nature and sources of The Protocols has been neglected.

In fact it is not European works like those of Radcliffe, but rather Russian ones (such as the memoirs of Przhetslavskii and the novels of Krestovsky) which are the real sources for Nilus. Ideological sources, as well as literary ones can be found in the Russian context. Pan-Slavism, derived from Pan-Germanism, juxtaposed Russia and its values first to France and then to Germany. Toward the end of the 19th century this ideology developed into opposition of Orthodox Russia with its messianic destiny to a supposedly Jesuitical-Catholic-Republican-Masonic AND Jewish capitalistic Europe.

In the early 20th century The Protocols were concocted by the tsarist police as a tool to combat growing revolutionary activity in Russia. This forgery is revealed to be the culmination of many trends in Russian socio-political thought

In Europe Nazi Germany took the lead in setting itself up as the leader of the opposition to the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy, now viewed as including the Bolshevik enemy. Echoes of The Protocols are shown to be frequent in recent Soviet anti-Semitic (anti-Zionist) literature.

The present investigation of the sources and ramifications of this conspiracy is based on an analysis of a very broad range of historical and literary materials hardly known even to specialists.

The influence and continuity of anti-Semitic myths within Russian culture is presented in a chronological framework including: 1) an introduction dealing with anti-Jewish literature of the Uth-15th centuries; 2) social and political ideas from the late 17th to the early 19th century; 3) the ideological and literary expression of anti-Semitism in Russian belles-lettres of the 2nd half of the 19th century; 4) conservative-reactionary literature in late tsarist Russia as a reaction to the threat of revolution; and 5) The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in 20th century totalitarian societies, Soviet, Nazi, and Arab.