Russian leaders have a long history of employing bizarre and elaborate conspiracy theories, often involving Jews, to explain their country’s problems. Such theories have resurfaced with vigor of late. Walter Laqueur tries to explain the origins of this fantastical understanding of world affairs:
[N]ot all statements, ideas, and theories which are manifestly absurd are deliberately fabricated and cynically exploited as part of a wider propaganda campaign. Some, as in contemporary Russia, are genuinely believed for reasons that have been insufficiently investigated. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a product of deliberate fabrication, and the same is true of the “Doctors’ Plot” in Stalin’s final year. But both the Protocols and the story of the Jewish “killer doctors” were believed by many, and the question of why they were so widely believed is not easy to answer.
There is a widespread tendency . . . to believe in occult, hidden forces which are the real shakers and movers in world politics, whereas those about whom we read and hear in the media are merely their puppets. . . . This belief in the hidden hand and the forces of evil tends to be particularly strong in times of great upheaval. The Protocols were not really influential during the first two decades of their existence. But after World War I and the Russian Revolution, events of world-historical importance which could not easily be explained, the Protocols were widely read and often believed because they seemed to offer a key to otherwise inexplicable events.
Read more on Standpoint: http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/5889/full