The anonymous American editor of the Nilus book gives the following information about Nilus:
“Serge Nilus, in the 1905 edition of whose book was first published the Zionist Protocols, was, as he states, born in the year 1862, of Russian parents holding liberal opinions. His family was fairly well known in Moscow, for its members were educated people who were firm in their allegiance to the Tsar and the Greek Church. On one side he is said to have been connected by marriage with the nobility of the Baltic provinces. Nilus himself was graduated from the University of Moscow and early entered the civil service, obtaining a small appointment in the law courts. Later, he received a post under the Procurator of a provincial court in the Caucasus. Finally, tiring of the law, he went to the Government of Orel, where he was a landowner and a noble. His spiritual life had been tumultuous and full of trouble, and finally he entered the Troitsky-Sergevsky Monastery near Moscow. ‘In answer to his appeal for pardon, Saint Sergei, stern and angry, appeared to him twice in a vision. He left the Monastery a converted man.’
“From 1905 until the present, little is known of his activities. Articles are said to have appeared from time to time in the Russian press from his pen. A returning traveller from Siberia in August, 1919, was positive in his statement that Nilus was in Irkutsk in June of that year. Whether his final fate was that of Admiral Kolchak is not known.”
The American editor of Sergius Nilus’s book containing the “Protocols” is hiding behind anonymity. The name of the traveller from Siberia who was so positive in his statement that Nilus was in Irkutsk is also concealed. And Serge Nilus to whom Saint Sergei “appeared twice in a vision” “is said to have written articles in the Russian press” of which nobody has knowledge.
In Germany, Nilus is described as follows:
“Sergius Nilus was an employee of the Russian secret police department, of the okhrana, connected with the Church, especially relating to ‘foreign religions.’ He lived for some time at the Optina Pustina monastery. In 1901 he published a book entitled ‘The Great in the Small and the Anti-Christ.’ According to the Lutsch Sveta, Nilus claims to have received in 1901 a copy of the text of the Protocols from the secret archives of the Main Zionist organization in France, but he published the ‘protocols’ only in 1905. A second edition appeared in 1911, and finally another edition was brought out in the beginning of 1917, but all copies are said to have been destroyed.”
“The Cause of the World Unrest,” an anonymous book published in England and reprinted in this country, speaks of Nilus and the “Protocols” as follows:
“In the year 1903 a Russian, Serge Nilus, published a book entitled The Great in Little. The second edition, which was published at Tsarskoye Selo in 1905, had an additional chapter, the twelfth, under the heading ‘Anti-Christ as a Near Political Possibility.’ This chapter consisted of some twenty pages of introduction followed by the text of twenty-four ‘Protocols of Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion,’ and the book ends with some twenty pages of commentaries on these protocols by Nilus.
“Directly after the protocols, comes a statement by Nilus that they are ‘signed by representatives of Zion of the thirty-third degree.’ These protocols were secretly extracted or were stolen from a whole volume of protocols. All this was got by my correspondent out of the secret depositories of the Head Chancellery of Zion. This Chancellery is at present on French territory.”
In the edition of 1917 Sergius Nilus wrote: