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Savely Dudakov the History of a Myth Essays on Russian Literature of XIX–XX Century

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Savely Dudakov the History of a Myth Essays on Russian Literature of XIX–XX Century SAVELY DUDAKOV THE HISTORY OF A Savely Dudakov The History of a Myth Essays on Russian Literature of XIX–XX century Edited by Nina Stavisky and Michael Golubovsky Translated from Russian by Anna Tucker Boston ◆ 2021 Savely Dudakov The History of a Myth Essays on Russian Literature of XIX–XX century Edited by Nina Stavisky and Michael Golubovsky Translated from Russian by Anna Tucker Copyright © 2021 by Estate of S. Dudakov All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the copyright holder(s), except for the brief passages quoted for review. ISBN 978-1-950319435 Library of Congress Control Number 2021935768 Book Design by M•Graphics © 2021 Cover Design by Larisa Studinskaya © 2021 Published by M•Graphics | Boston, MA h www.mgraphics-books.com m [email protected] [email protected] Printed in the U.S.A. Contents Efim Etkind: In Place of Foreword . 1 Preface Semyon Reznik: A Forgery of the Tsarist Secret Police from the Perspective of the Twenty-First Century . 3 Introduction . .15 Anti- J udaic Literature in Old Rus’ . .17 The Penetration of Freemasonry into Russia and Anti- Masonic Literature of the Eighteenth Century . .26 The Pale of Settlement . .34 Chapter 1 The War of 1812 and Denunciation “Of All Russia” Poles and Jews . .41 The Blood Libel and Ritual Accusations . 50 Russian Freemasonry and Sectarianism . 55 Chapter 2 The Great Secret of Freemasons The Jewish Question and Russian Literature . 65 F.. V Bulgarin’s Novel “Ivan Vyzhigin” . 71 The Real Vyzhigin (J. E. Przecławski) . 78 The Provocateur’s Catechism . 85 Acta Proconsularia . 92 Chapter 3 Zealots Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism . 96 I.A. Brafman’s “Kahal Book” . 104 Satan’s Elixir . 108 Gog and Magog (B. M. Markevich and V. V. Krestovsky) . 117 “The Yid is Coming” . 127 ✡ Savely Dudakov The History of a Myth Chapter 4 Enemies of the Human Race Agent Provocateur (S.K. Efron-Litvin) . 134 The Transfiguration of Satan . 141 The “Satanic Affair” (S.A. Nilus) . 149 “A Concentrated Universal Force” . 154 Apostle of Heresy . 166 Chapter 5 Twentieth-Century Satanists Spiders (E.A. Shabelskaya). 173 Between Two Wars. 186 Occultist Executioners . 194 Chapter 6 The Soviet Version of Anti-Semitism Reanimation. 200 Chronic Totalitarianism . 204 Conclusion . 230 Addendum The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (short overview) . 233 The Evil Storyteller (N.P. Wagner) . 246 Notes and Literature . 265 Bibliography. 315 Principal Works of S. Dudakov . 333 Index . 336 n the early XX century a fake document titled The Protocols of the Elders of Zion rose from the depths of the Russian se- I cret police. This falsification was spread by the White emi- gres and greatly affected Hitler’s ideas and the Nazi practices. Although European sources, which are included in the body of the fake and which date back to the XIX century, had been found, it remained unclear why The Protocols surfaced in Russia of all places. In this book an Israeli historian and culturologist Savely Dudakov (1939–2017) conducts a detailed research of this is- sue. He was the first to dig out the branches of Russian religious, anti- Judaic, and anti-M asonic literature and a wide range of pulp fiction of the mid- and late- XIX century from under the boulders of time. He brought to light the main mythologems of the fake in the form of a “Judeo- Masonic conspiracy theory.” Dudakov’s work provides a long list of publications, many of which are included into historical literature and scholarship for the first time. The propaganda ofThe Protocols ideas lives on as anti- Semitism, “fight against Zionism,” and Islamic fundamentalism. This makesThe History of a Myth a work of current interest. IN PLACE OF A FOREWORD Honorary ProfessorEfim of ParisEtkind Nanterre University (From review of the first Russian edition, Moscow 1993) avely Dudakov’s work presents a wide-ranging research dedicat- ed to the history of social thought and literature in Russia in the SXIX and XX centuries. The subject chosen by the author had nev- er been researched by historians as a whole, although separate essays on certain time periods do exist. However, there had been no general- ized picture of the development of the anti- Judaic thinking, therefore this work is a great achievement of S. Dudakov. The four volumes ofL’histoire de l’antisémitisme by Leon Poliakov is a purely historical work and as such cannot compete with the re- search of S. Dudakov. Besides, Dudakov gives brief but deep and ac- curate characterizations of a number of interesting authors. Among them are J. Przecławski — ​the pages dedicated to him are brilliant, N. Y. Danilevsky, Y. Brafman, B. M. Markevich, Vs. Krestovsky, S.. K Efron-Lit vin, S. A. Nilus et al. Every one of these authors deserves a serious study, despite the vulgarity and ridiculousness of their ideas and theories. S. Dudakov, as a rule, can present the views alien to him with surprising calm, balance, and logic. The reader shall learn that each of the above- mentioned authors is a villain, with pogroms and prison camps on his conscience as a result of a seemingly abstract discourse, the reader shall learn it from an aus- tere historical narration, because the author does not impose his emo- tions on the reader and does not allow himself either sarcasm or de- rogatory phrases. Some of these authors we barely remember, or know of them only from doubtful sources. For example, Boleslav Markevich 1 ✡ Savely Dudakov The History of a Myth has been completely forgotten as an anti- Judaic novelist. The Concise Literary Encyclopedia (1967) informs us that he had reported the ac- tivists of the liberation movement, cruelly bullied Saltykov- Shchedrin, the narodniks and Turgenev, and wrote anti-nihilistic novels with aris- tocratic monarchists as protagonists. We know that the word “Jew” was unofficially banned in Brezhnev’s time. However, the entry for Markevich seems almost comical: it means that Markevich cannot be labeled as anti- Semitist. But this was his main trait! Markevich is known in Russian literary history due to the fact that A. K. Tolstoy counted him as his closest friend and wrote many highly meaningful letters to him. S. Dudakov notes quite fairly that A. K. Tolstoy disapproved of his friend’s racism. The traditions of the XIX century, however, were such that irrec- oncilable ideological opponents could remain friends and respect and even love one another. S. Dudakov analyses the views of Russian authors very well, and even wisely, and does not agree with the common opinion of their treatment of Jews. His study of A. S. Pushkin’s poem A Black Shawl is convincing as well as his analysis of N. V. Gogol’s Taras Bulba. 2 PREFACE A Forgery of the Tsarist Secret Police from the Perspective of Twenty-First Century SemyonWashington Reznik he book “Anti- Semitic Literature of the XIX–XX centuries and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” occupies the central Tspot in the significant and very substantive literary legacy of the Israeli historian, writer, and scholar of literature Savely Dudakov (1939–2017). It is based on the material of his Grand PhD thesis that Dudakov had defended at the University of Jerusalem. The book was first published in Moscow in 1993 by the publish- ing house “Nauka.” This miracle happened mostly thanks to the ef- forts of Savely’s close friend, D. A. Chernyakhovsky. A renowned Moscow psychiatrist and a man of vast knowledge and various inter- ests, Chernyakhovsky had many friends and acquaintances, some of them leading scientists and scholars. He collected several reviews of Savely Dudakov’s manuscript from most respectable and influential scholars, among them a well-known linguist and culturologist, a cor- responding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (and later an academician) S. S. Averintsev. The reviews were such that the leading publisher of the Academy of Sciences could not reject the manuscript. The book saw light as generally edited by D. A. Chernyakhovsky, but not under the author’s title. The title wasThe History of a Myth and the subtitle was Essays on Russian Literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. A short editor’s abstract on the flipside of the title page said: “The author of the book being offered to the reader, a famous Israeli scholar Savely Dudakov, has analysed consistently and in detail the 3 ✡ Savely Dudakov The History of a Myth specifics of the development of literature and of social and political thought in Russia in the second half of the nineteenth and early twen- tieth century. He pays special attention to mass popular fiction of the time, such as the works by forgotten authors of the ‘second rank’ — ​ Vs. Krestovsky, B. Markevich, S. Efron, N. Wagner, et al.” So, what is the book about? As I was informed by a close friend of Savely Dudakov, Professor Mikhail Golubovsky, the back of the cover had another abstract that said that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a fake forged by the Tsar’s secret police. Not much of a surprise there, but before the book was published, Chernyakhovsky was ordered to replace the cover, lest the printed copies be destroyed. The situation was saved by an artist who suggested a truly Solomonic solution: to remove the abstract. This was done. “For two days the members of the historical editing team and even some of their family members were wiping the unfortunate abstract off five thousand copies with cotton balls soaked in acetone!” (S.
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