Arthur Cherep-Spiridovich


Arthur Cherep-Spiridovich was a Russian count who moved to the United States following the Bolshevik Revolution. He was a Tsarist general and white Russian loyalist. He was involved in Pan-Slavism, White Russian and anti-semitic activism, including various chivalric orders and cultural organisations, amongst the diaspora community in America. Spiridovich is perhaps best known for authoring a book positing a concise conspiracy consisting of 300 Jewish families, titled Secret World Government or The Hidden Hand.

Biography

Spiridovich claimed to be well versed in international affairs and claimed a number of political successes and insights. He claimed to have been a Russian Major-General, to have warned King Alexander I and Queen Draga Mašin of Serbia before their assassination in 1902 and warned Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia in 1904 before his 1905 assassination. He also claimed to have foreseen the First World War and in 1926 foresaw another international war.
Spiridovich was President of the Slavonic Society of Russia and also of the Latino-Slavic League of Paris and Rome. Politically he was a supporter of the Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and an opponent of Bolshevism. According to Lord Alfred Douglas, well-known men like Henry Ford and newspapers like the Financial Times in London took him seriously and helped him to reach a fairly wide public.
He moved to Harlem, New York in 1920 where he was detained at Ellis Island for a special inquiry by the Immigration Bureau before being admitted. In the US, he opened a branch of the Anglo-Latino-Slav League, where he advocated for unification of "white peoples of the globe against the domination of the colored peoples". He also organized the Universal Gentiles' League among Russians in the US.
Also after his arrival in the US, he became associated with anti-Semite Boris Brasol, who is associated with the text, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Spiridovich wrote numerous Anti-Semitic leaflets himself, including "The Secret World Government". He stated that in 1922 he was ready to publish a book on the subject titled "The Unknown in History", but was stopped by armed men posing as US government officers. He also claimed the support of Henry Ford for his anti-Semitic beliefs.

Death

Cherep-Spiridovich died in a Staten Island hotel on October 22, 1926. The New York Times newspaper reported his death to be from accidental asphyxiation from a gas line, which was officially ruled a suicide by police nine days later. Many Jewish sources including several newspapers from the time, also reported his death as a suicide.
At the outset of World War II, Nazi propagandist in America Victor H. Broenstrupp took the name Count Victor Cherep-Spiridovich in honor of Cherep-Spiridovich.

Works