Our Notes & References

Rare production of the Far East Russian Fascist Party, a minor Russian émigré movement based in Manchukuo during the 1930s and 1940s.: we couldn’t trace any example at auction nor passing through the trade in or outside Russia.

As stated at the end of the booklet, the work is meant to be based on two articles from the magazine Priamoi Put published in 1914 in Saint Petersburg with the same title (No. 1 and 5). However, the real author remains uncertain, and researchers have put forth various possibilities.

One of them, together with the publishers, suggests that the book was written by Nadezhda Butmi, “a great and authentic Russian patriot” (p. 52). She was related to Georgii Butmi (wife or sister), a political activist, economist, publicist, and a board member of The Union of the Russian People, a loyalist far-right nationalist political party. Nadezhda and Georgii would have translated a French manuscript, which later emerged as “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” – one of the most famous anti-semitic hoaxes. In 1914, two anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic books were published under her name: “Kabbalah, Heresies, and Secret Societies” and “The Dogma of Blood”. However, Sigmund Livingston, in his book “Must Men Hate?” (1944), mentioned that Butmi’s wife’s name was Nadezhda Vasilievna and not N.A. as initials of this book.

Another version proposes that these books were actually authored by Mikhail Skariatin (1883-1963), a colonel in the imperial army, Kabbalah researcher, occultist, and Egyptologist. Skariatin held the belief that the execution of the royal family was a ritual murder.

Another name is sometimes suggested as the author: the journalist and ethographer Nikolai Reikhelt (1864-after 1913).

The lower cover shows ads from the same publisher, especially the ‘February book’ in the same series, on the Beilis affair (also present in Nizoff’s collection, our item numb. 2430).

Provenance

Avenir Alexandrovich Nizoff (a pianist who lived in Edmonton, Canada, in the second half of the 20th century, and gathered a large, wide-ranging library of Russian works, especially covering art, history and literature, with a strong representation of émigré works).