{{Short description|Russian lawyer and literary critic (1885–1963)}} {{Fnh|Lvovich|Brasol|lang=Eastern Slavic}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2026}} {{Infobox person | name = Boris Leo Brasol | native_name = Борис Львович Бразоль | native_name_lang = ru | birth_name = Boris Lvovich Brazol | birth_date = {{Birth date|1885|03|31}} | birth_place = Poltava, Poltava Governorate, Russian Empire | death_date = {{Death date and age|1963|03|19|1885|03|31}} | death_place = New York, United States | occupation = Lawyer, literary critic }}
'''Boris Leo Brasol''', born '''Boris Lvovich Brazol''' ({{langx|ru|Борис Львович Бразоль}}; {{langx|uk|Борис Львович Бразоль|Borys Lvovych Brazol}}; March 31, 1885 - March 19, 1963), was a Russian lawyer and literary critic. After the October Revolution he settled in the United States.<ref name=":0">{{Citation | date=November 26, 2023 | title=The Virulent Antisemite Who Influenced Henry Ford and Woodrow Wilson, and Brought the Worst Anti-Jewish Document to the US | website=Politico | vauthors=((Schulman, Daniel)) |url=https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/11/26/boris-brasol-protocols-of-zion-00128223 | access-date=26 November 2023}}</ref>
==Biography== Boris Brasol was born in Poltava (today in Ukraine), in 1885. His father was the homeopath Lev Evgenevich Brasol (aka Léon Brasol or Léon Brazol)<ref>Under the name Léon Brasol, Lev was the author of a work titled ''Samuel Hahnemann: A Sketch of His Life and Career'' (London: Adland and Son, 1896) (Reprinted from ''Transactions of the International Homoeopathic Convention'', 1896)</ref> (1854 - January 1927), who was Superintendent of the Petrograd Homoeopathic Hospital in St. Petersburg, Russia. After graduation from the law department of St Petersburg University, Boris served in the Imperial Russian Ministry of Justice, where he took part in the prosecution of the Beilis blood libel case, in which Jewish factory superintendent Menahem Mendel Beilis was accused of ritual murder. In 1912, Brasol was sent to Lausanne to study forensic science. {{The Protocols}} During World War I, Brasol held the rank of Lieutenant in the Tsar's army. In 1916, he was recalled from the front and sent to the United States to work as a lawyer for an Anglo-Russian purchasing committee. After the October Revolution broke out Brasol stayed in the United States.<ref name=":0" />
During his time in the United States, Brasol was an ardent supporter of the restoration of the monarchy in Russia, and served as the official representative of Kirill Vladimirovich, Grand Duke of Russia in the United States.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Brazil|first1=Boris|title=Grand Duke Cyril's Plans|url=http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1924/12/05/101623366.html?pageNumber=20|accessdate=25 December 2015|work=New York Times|date=December 5, 1924}}</ref> He was a founding member of the Russian Imperial Union-Order in 1929.<ref name=":0" />
Brasol had an extensive publishing career in the United States. He published "Socialism vs. Civilization" (1920), "The World at the Cross Roads" (1921), "The Balance Sheet of Sovietism" (1922), "Elements of Crime" (1927), and "The Mighty Three: Poushkin, Gogol, Dostoievsky" (1934). In 1935, he founded the Pushkin Committee, and from 1937 until 1963 served as President of the Pushkin Society in America.<ref name=":0" />
Several authors link Brasol's name with the first U.S. edition of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, which was titled "The Protocols and World Revolution, including a Translation and Analysis of the 'Protocols of the Meetings of the Zionist Men of Wisdom.'"<ref>{{cite book|title=A Time for Searching: Entering the Mainstream, 1920-1945|author=Henry L. Feingold|page=8}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.adl.org/special_reports/protocols/protocols_international.asp |title=Anti-Semitic Myths: The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion: The Hoax Spreads |access-date=2010-07-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100806215609/http://www.adl.org/special_reports/protocols/protocols_international.asp |archive-date=2010-08-06 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Brasol pursued a successful career as a literary critic and criminologist and published several books in each of these fields.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.americanpushkinsociety.com/archive-1/|website=American Pushkin Society|accessdate=25 December 2015|title=Archived copy|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151225204017/http://www.americanpushkinsociety.com/archive-1/|archive-date=2015-12-25|url-status=dead}}</ref>
Brasol was a virulent anti-Semite, and he said about his work on disseminating the English translation of the Protocols, that "Within the last year I have written three books, two of which have done the Jews more injury than would have been done to them by ten pogroms."<ref> {{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N6kiAQAAMAAJ&dq=%22Within+the+last+year+I+have+written+three+books,+two+of+which+have+done+the+Jews+more+injury%E2%80%9D&pg=RA6-PA14 | title=Hearst's International | date=1922 | publisher=International Publications, Incorporated }}</ref>
He also contributed to anti-Semitic writings in Henry Ford's ''The Dearborn Independent'' newspaper.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FLHRRwAACAAJ | title=The Dearborn Independent: Chronicler of the Neglected Truth | date=1926 | publisher=Dearborn Publishing Company }} </ref>
Brasol was member of Aufbau Vereinigung, which financed the Nazi Party. He received funding from American industrialist Henry Ford. In 1938, Brasol, who now had American citizenship, secretly helped organize an Anti-Comintern Congress in Germany with the support of the Gestapo. The assembly included representatives from Canada, France, England, and Switzerland.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kellogg |first=Michael |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GeOR5LbOQwsC&q=boris |title=The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945 |date=2005-02-03 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-139-44299-2 |pages=249 |language=en}}</ref> Heinrich Himmler showed interest in Brasol in August 1938, and even asked Heinrich Müller to compile a report on the previous activities of the white emigration.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Michael Kellogg |url=http://archive.org/details/RussianNazism |title=Russian Nazism |date=2008}}</ref>
He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, New York.
Some of his papers are preserved in the Library of Congress Manuscript Collection.{{Citation needed|date=May 2011}}
==Publications== * 1920: ''Socialism vs. Civilization''. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons * 1921: [https://archive.org/details/worldatcrossroad00brasrich ''The World at the Cross Roads'']. London, Hutchinson * 1922: [https://archive.org/details/balancesheetofso00bras ''The Balance Sheet of Sovietism'']. New York, Duffield * 1927: ''Elements of Crime (Psycho-Social Interpretation)''. Oxford University Press * 1934: ''The Mighty Three: Poushkin - Gogol - Dostoievsky''. New York: William Farquhar Payson * 1938: ''Oscar Wilde: the Man, the Artist, the Martyr''. New York: Scribner's Sons
===Translations=== * 1949: F. M. Dostoevsky, ''The Diary of a Writer'', trans. Boris Brasol. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons * 1954: --do.-- New York: George Braziller
===Protocols=== *Anonymous :'''The Protocols and World Revolution''' :'''including a Translation and Analysis of the''' :'''"Protocols of the Meetings of the Zionist Men of Wisdom"''' :(Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, 1920) ::A digital copy of the original 1920 text is currently available through Online Books Page: [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupid?key=olbp39069] [https://books.google.com/books?id=_wYNAAAAIAAJ].
== References == <references/>
==External links== *[https://archive.org/details/BorisBrasol FBI file on Boris Brasol] at the Internet Archive *[https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/11/26/boris-brasol-protocols-of-zion-00128223 The Virulent Antisemite Who Influenced Henry Ford and Woodrow Wilson, and Brought the Worst Anti-Jewish Document to the US]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Brasol, Boris}} Category:1885 births Category:1963 deaths Category:Saint Petersburg State University alumni Category:Lawyers from the Russian Empire Category:Russian criminologists Category:20th-century American biographers Category:20th-century American lawyers Category:20th-century Russian translators Category:American collaborators with Nazi Germany Category:American male biographers Category:American Nazis Category:Antisemitism in the Russian Empire Category:People from Poltava Category:People from Poltava Governorate Category:Protocols of the Elders of Zion Category:Russian–English translators Category:Russian military personnel of World War I Category:Russian fascists Category:Russian monarchists Category:White Russian collaborators with Nazi Germany Category:White Russian emigrants to the United States Category:Burials at Woodlawn Cemetery (Bronx, New York)