Cesare G. De Michelis

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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.

Cesare Giuseppe De Michelis (born April 20, 1944) is an Italian philologist, historian and man of letters.

Biography

Cesare De Michelis was born in Rome, the son of Eurialo De Michelis, cousin of publisher Cesare De Michelis and politician Gianni De Michelis. He is professor emeritus at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. He completed all his studies at the Sapienza University of Rome, completed a year at Moscow's Lomonosov University, graduating with Angelo Maria Ripellino and Tullio De Mauro.

De Michaelis was a member of the Christian Peace Conference and a participant in the Second All-Christian Peace Assembly, which took place in Prague in 1964.

In 1968 he began working at the Sapienza University as a scholarship holder; in 1971 he was appointed as a lecturer in Russian Language at the University of Camerino, from 1972 in Russian Language and Literature at the University of Bari, where he won the competition for a professorship in 1977; in 1981 he was transferred to Tor Vergata. In 1977 he coordinated the literary section of the Venice Biennale on dissent and was the Coordinator of the PhD programme in Slavistics for a decade. He has held conferences and seminars in various foreign cities and universities: Moscow, Petersburg, Paris, Geneva, Basel, Prague, Jerusalem, Yale and Stanford University. His main research works (on the history of the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and on the 15th century Judaizers in Novgorod and later in Moscow) have appeared in English and Russian; his other essays in French and German.

Alongside his academic activity, he has taken part in the editorial staff of scientific journals (Angelus Novus, Russica Romana and Protestantism) and has been active in publishing (collaborating with the cultural page of la Repubblica) and publishing (directing the 'Le betulle' series of the publishing house Marsilio in Venice). He is a corresponding member of the Pushkin Society in Moscow; in 1997 he was awarded the Calabria Prize for Foreign Literature.

Work

In the first phase of his research activity, he devoted himself essentially to Russian literature of the Silver Age, from Symbolism to Futurism, culminating in the reconstruction of the relationship between Italian Futurism and Russian Futurism. Subsequently, he turned his attention to 18th-century studies, and later on to religious history, which resulted in essays on the history of the pope as Antichrist in Russia, and on the Judaizing heresy of Novgorod, understood as the Russian manifestation of the Waldensian-Husite diaspora (15th century).

Finally, he devoted himself to the issue of Russian anti-Semitism, proceeding to a philological analysis of the main text that arose from it, the 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.

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, which may be reduced to three redactions.

  1. K: original; an apparent work in progress.
  2. X: second redaction.
  3. Y: third redaction.

The full list of printings and editions are as follows.

  • Q: hypothetical source proposed by Michelis, providing the basis for K and Y.
    • M: Mikhail Osipovich Menshikov (1902) - The first textual reference to the Protocols, in a far-right newspaper article; claims that they were stolen by a "French journalist" in Nice, and quotes a line.
    • K: Krusevan, P. (1903) - Michelis demonstrates that this is the earliest version, but it was published in a tiny, poor-quality paper, vanished from historical record until the 1934 Berne Trial, and has never been translated. Untitled, in 22 unnumbered chapters. Many marks of Ukrainian origin.
      • L: Hippolytus Lutostansky (1904) - A direct quote of K; no revision, but useful chronological evidence. (p. 9)
    • Z: hypothetical redaction after K but before X or Y.
      • X: 27 Protocols, arising out of Z.
        • A1: Anonymous (1905) - Published anonymously by a White Russian government press, and based on K.
        • B: Butmi (1906a) - Based on A1, but cross-contaminated with Y.
      • Y: 24 Protocols, re-edited, but not derived directly from Z -- implying the existence of a Q.
        • A2 Anonymous (1905) - Resembles A1, but with some new material.
        • N Nilus (1905) - Significant re-editing, seemingly using A2 as a basis, but introducing a large amount of material taken from Maurice Joly. Basis of most translations.
          • I: Anonymous [1917]/[1996] - A concise abridgment on N. Attributes the text to Theodor Herzl.
        • B3 Butmi (1906a) - Butmi revises his own text to include material from Y.
        • D Demcenko (1906)
    • R: A much shorter document, sharing a source with K and X but not Y.
      • R1: G. Skalon; Unknown original date [1996] - Published in 1996 by Yuri Begunov, who demonstrated the existence of the R branch through philology, claiming that it dated to the 19th century and proved a "Jewish" origin.
      • R2: N. Mordvinov (1905) - Abridgment using similar sources as R1.
      • R3: Anonymous (1906) - Close copy of R2.
      • R4: Anonymous (1906) - Copy of R2 with additional material.

Michelis was able to get his hands on a rare 1903 edition of the daily newspaper Znamya (Banner). He does not explain where he found this newspaper which does not appear in Russian library catalogs. He writes that the paper published the forgery as an authentic reproduction of a document, under the 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'".

Michelis' 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. Michelis shows that the "French original" is an extremely shadowy and mysterious document; its existence is supposed by almost everyone, and some claim it is still extant, but very few claim to have actually seen it. Carlo Ginzburg, while acknowledging this, points to extensive circumstantial evidence that there were individuals in France who may have wished to produce such a document and had Joly's source text.[1]

Major publications

See also

References

  1. ↑ Carlo Ginzburg. "Representing the Enemy". In Evidence. Cambridge University Press, 2008. p. 43

External links

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