Cesare G. De Michelis

This article is about the professor of Russian literature at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. For his cousin, professor of Italian literature at the University of Padua, see Cesare De Michelis.

The Non-Existent Manuscript by Cesare G. De Michelis

Cesare G. De Michelis (born 1944, Rome) is a scholar and professor of Russian literature at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy.

Biography

He is also an authority on the notorious plagiarism, hoax, and literary forgery known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. According to de Michelis, "twenty-odd editions had appeared in Russia between 1903 and 1912". He gives the text the acronymous name, "PSM", from its Russian title (romanized) Protocoly sionskikh mudretsov (Cyrillic: Протоколы сионских мудрецов). He also informs us that in 1919 PSM entered the "world at large" in "German, Swedish, Polish, English, Hungarian, and French editions." The first edition in Italian appeared in 1921. Arguably this is the most important English language work on the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion since the publication of Norman Cohn's Warrant for Genocide in 1967/1970.

Work

Pages 183-395 are a reconstruction of the original Russian manuscript as it hypothetically existed. The transliterated three-word title of the tract is Protocols [of the] Zionist Elders (the source of the acronym "PSM"). The rest of the book (pages 1–182 and 396-419) is the scholarly textual, philological, and bibliographical study of the antisemitic text. The author claims that he has identified and authenticated nine distinct printings of five editions of this single text—nine tokens of the same five type, so to speak, of a single text or title, and he proceeds to give each of the nine monary or binary alphanumeric labels as follows:

1: K Krusevan, P. (1903)
2: L Ljutostanskij, I./Lutostanski, I. (1904)
3: A1 Anonymous 1 (1905)
4: A2 Anonymous 2 (1905)
5: N Nilus (1905)
6: B Butmi (1906a)
7: B3 Butmi (1906a)
8: D Demcenko (1906)
9: R1 Begunov [1996]
10: R2  ??? (1905)
11: R3  ??? (1906)
12: R4  ??? (1906)
13: I Begunov [1917]/[1996]

De Michelis was able to get his hands on a rare 1903 edition of the daily newspaper Znamya (Banner). He writes that the paper, on specific successive days, published the forgery as an authentic reproduction of a document, under the newspaper headline "Programa zavoevanija mira evrejami", which he translates into English as "The Jewish Programme for the Conquest of the World". According to de Michelis, the actual title of the purported authentic document is given to it by the translator. In Russian, the title of the document published by the newspaper is as follows: Protokoly zasedanij "vsemirnogo sojuza franmasonov i sionskix mudrecov." This de Michelis translates into English as "The protocols of the sessions of the 'World Alliance of Freemasons and of the Sages of Zion'". According to his research, this forgery first saw the light of day in St. Petersburg, Russia, on nine almost successive days—on September 5–6, 1903 [= September 18–19, 1903] (for unknown reasons, the paper took a break from its publication for two days). The specific issues which are here under discussion are the following:

No. 190 (28 August [10 September]): 2; 2,
No. 191 (29 August [11 September]): 2; 3,
No. 192 (30 August [12 September]): 2; 4,
No. 193 (31 August [13 September]): 1-2; 5,
No. 194 (1 [14] September): 1-2; 6,
No. 195 (2 [15] September): 1-2; 7,
No. 196 (3 [16] September): 2; 8,
No. 197 (4 [17] September): 2; 9,
No. 200 (7 [20] September): 2.

His work also may be said to present us with the definitive Russian language edition of the complete restored text. The question remains as to whether or not the alleged original French language edition of the late nineteenth century ever existed, or whether it is worthwhile to translate this new restored "complete" edition into English for further scholarly purposes.

Publications

• L'avanguardia trasversale - Il futurismo tra Italia e Russia, Marsilio ed., Venezia 2009 ISBN 978-88-317-9713-9
• The Non-Existent Manuscript: a Study of the Protocols of the Sages of Zion, Studies in Antisemitism Series. University of Nebraska Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8032-1727-7.
• Cesare G. De Michelis (1944–2004). I giorni e le opere. Lineamenti biografici e scientifici 1944/2004, Voland ed., Roma 2004
• Pasternak, La Nuova Italia, ed. Firenze 1968
• Le illusioni e i simboli (K.M. Fofanov), Marsilio ed., Venezia 1973
• Il futurismo italiano in Russia, De Donato ed., Bari 1973
• Il tredicesimo apostolo, Claudiana ed., Torino 1975
• I nomi dell'Avversario, Meynier ed., Torino 1989
• La Valdesia di Novgorod. «Giudaizzanti» e prima riforma (sec. XV), Claudiana ed., Torino, 1993
• Il manoscritto inesistente. "I Protocolli dei savi di Sion: un apocrifo del XX secolo", Marsilio ed., Venezia 1998 (2ª ed. 2004)
• trad. rus. «Protokoly sionskich mudrecov» nesušestvujuščij manuskript, ili podlog veka,Met-Kovčeg, Minsk-Moscow 2006
• La giudeofobia in Russia, Bollati Boringhieri ed., Torino 2001

See also

• Hadassa Ben-Itto
• Michael Hagemeister
• Protocols of the Elders of Zion
• Velikoe v malom

External links

• Works by or about Cesare G. De Michelis in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Persondata
Name	De Michelis, Cesare G.
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1944
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death