birth_date: 1865-03-06 00:00:00
avg_rating: 3.2
name: Matvei Vasilyevich Golovinski
about: Matvei Vasilyevich Golovinski (alternatively Mathieu) (Russian: Матвей Васильевич Головинский) (6 March 1865–1920) was a Russian-French writer, journalist and political activist. Critics studying The Protocols of the Elders of Zion have argued that he was the author of the work. This claim is reinforced by the writings of modern Russian historian Mikhail Lepekhine, who in 1999 studied previously closed French archives stored in Moscow containing information supporting Golovinski's authorship. Back in the mid-1930s, Russian testimony in the Berne Trial had linked the head of Russian security service in Paris, Pyotr Rachkovsky, to the creation of The Protocols, probably inspired by the 1865 novel Barritz by Sir John Retcliffe (pen name of nov Matvei Vasilyevich Golovinski (alternatively Mathieu) (Russian: Матвей Васильевич Головинский) (6 March 1865–1920) was a Russian-French writer, journalist and political activist. Critics studying The Protocols of the Elders of Zion have argued that he was the author of the work. This claim is reinforced by the writings of modern Russian historian Mikhail Lepekhine, who in 1999 studied previously closed French archives stored in Moscow containing information supporting Golovinski's authorship. Back in the mid-1930s, Russian testimony in the Berne Trial had linked the head of Russian security service in Paris, Pyotr Rachkovsky, to the creation of The Protocols, probably inspired by the 1865 novel Barritz by Sir John Retcliffe (pen name of novelist and agent provocateur Hermann Goedsche).Matvei Golovinski was born into an aristocratic family in the village of Ivashevka (Ивашевка), in the Syzransky Uyezd of the Simbirsk Governorate of the Russian Empire. His father, Vasili Golovinski (Василий Головинский) was a friend of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Both were members of the progressive Petrashevsky Circle, sentenced to the capital punishment as conspirators and both were pardoned later. Vasili Golovinski died in 1875 and Matvei Golovinski was reared by his mother and the French nanny.While studying jurisprudence, Golovinski joined an antisemitic counter-revolutionary group Holy Brotherhood ("Святое Братство"). Upon graduation, he worked for the Okhrana, secretly arranging pro-government coverage in the press. Golovinski's career almost collapsed and he had to leave the country after his activities were publicly exposed by Maxim Gorky. In France, he wrote and published articles on assignments of the Chief of Russian secret service in Paris, Pyotr Rachkovsky. He also wrote under the pen name of Doctor Faust.After the October Revolution of 1917, Golovinsky switched sides and worked for the Bolsheviks until his death in 1920.The German writer Konrad Heiden identified him as an author of the Protocols in 1944. ...more