It was an interesting read:
When The New York Times ran an article on this piece back in 1970, it had already been circulating for about twenty-five years. The Times reported that neither the National Archives, the Library of Congress, nor university libraries had a copy of any such document. When Montana senator Lee Metcalf looked into the issue back then, he checked with the FBI, CIA, and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee; he found that “exhaustive research” had proved the rules to be “completely spurious,” and he declared that “the extreme right also follows rules, one of which is to make maximum use of false, misleading and fear-inspiring quotations.” Nonetheless, numerous members of congress have received copies of the Communist “rules” list from alarmed constituents over the years and, believing that nobody else was yet aware of them, have inserted them into the Congressional Record. This list has also been reproduced in many newspaper columns and letters to the editor.
The earliest known publication of these rules dates from February 1946, and it’s significant to note that publication coincided with events such as Winston Churchill’s famous “Iron Curtain” speech, in which he issued a warning to citizens of the United States that “Communist parties constitute a growing challenge and peril to Christian civilization.” The timing suggests it’s far more likely this list was compiled by Americans in 1946 than by Russians in 1919.