Vladimir Jabotinsky's Russian Years, 1900-1925. Brian J. Horowitz
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VLADIMIR JABOTINSKY’S
RUSSIAN YEARS, 1900–1925
JEWS IN EASTERN EUROPE
Jeffrey Veidlinger
Mikhail Krutikov
Geneviève Zubrzycki, editors
VLADIMIR
JABOTINSKY’S
RUSSIAN YEARS,
1900–1925
Brian J. Horowitz
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
© 2020 by Brian Horowitz
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-04767-0 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-253-04768-7 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-04771-7 (web PDF)
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CONTENTS
1A Zionist in Odessa, circa 1900–1903
3In Revolution and Counterrevolution, 1905–1906
4The Decade between the Revolution of 1905 and World War I, 1907–1914
5Political Alliances Break; Jabotinsky Goes His Own Way, 1907–1914
6The Jewish Legion’s Russian Inspiration, 1915–1917
7Postwar Disappointments, Palestine 1918–1922
8Russian-Jewish Emigration and the Path to Zionist Revisionism, 1923–1925
9Russia in the Life and Work of Jabotinsky after 1925
I WANT TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE HELP OF MANY people who deserve thanks for financial and intellectual aid. I want to thank Tulane University and its Provost’s Office, the Lavin-Bernick family, and the Dean’s Office at Tulane University. I also want to thank the Frankel Center at the University of Michigan and the Kertész Institute at the University of Jena, as well as the Hebrew University and the Israeli National Library. A special thank you to the Vladimir Jabotinsky Institute for access to archives.
I want especially to thank Dee Mortensen of Indiana University Press for shepherding this book through the hoops of publication and through the process of improving it. I also thank Ashante Thomas of Indiana University Press, who is the consummate professional.
Several individuals have given generously of their time and talent; these include William Craft Brumfield, Scott Ury, Alex Orbach, Inna Shtakser, Jesse Tisch, Susan Johnson, and Vladimir Levin, and the editors of the series, Professors Jeffrey Veidlinger, Mikhail Krutikov, and Geneviève Zubrzycki. Additionally, I acknowledge the help of Michael Ralph Cohen, Shaul Stampfer, Zvi Gitelman, Andrew Sloin, Heinz Dietrich-Loewe, Israel Bartal, Mikhail Beizer, Yigit Akin, Michael Cohen, Ari Ofengenden, Maxim Shrayer, Zoya Kopelman, Dmitry Shumsky, Moshe Naor, Sarah Cramsey, Joachim Puttkamer, Ronna Burger, Ilan Fuchs, Antony Polonsky, and Colin Shindler, as well as a number of individuals who were involved with the project but did not live to see its publication: Avram Greenbaum, Jonathan Frankel, Ezra Mendelsohn, Hugh McLean, and John Klier, z.l.
VLADIMIR JABOTINSKY’S
RUSSIAN YEARS, 1900–1925
THIS STUDY OF VLADIMIR JABOTINSKY IN RUSSIA, AND the Russian theme in Jabotinsky’s life and works, offers a portrait of the development of the Zionist leader from his beginnings as a young journalist in 1900 to the establishment of HaTzoHar (Brit Ha-Tsionim Ha-Revizionistim), the Revisionist party, in 1925. The name Jabotinsky has been mythologized in the Israeli political sphere—lionized on the right, demonized on the left—but here he is shown not as something finished and polished, but in development, changing, and becoming. My goal has been to sketch the contexts that shaped him, to show readers the discourses in which he participated and the politics in Russia that helped shape his views.
This story tracks Jabotinsky as a young man, an apprentice to Menachem Ussishkin and Avram Idel’son, and shows how he gradually gained confidence to chart his own path. The research collides with the myths of Jabotinsky as a born leader who emerged prepared and ready from the first moment to battle with the ossified Zionist leadership. Instead I found that Jabotinsky’s vaunted uniqueness and independence are relative, he weaved between cooperation with and rejection of his elder colleagues. The reader will discover that he learned from many people who left their stamp on his thoughts in ways large and small. Most of all, this book recovers the Russian Jabotinsky, who came of age in a specific time and place and, despite the physical disappearance of that original world (tsarist Russia), harkened back to it with unexpected frequency.
My choice of Jabotinsky was not random. In today’s Israel, followers of Jabotinsky cart his image around to legitimize a political and social platform—settlements in the West Bank, inequality of income, and an aggressive struggle with the Palestinians. The question of what Jabotinsky really stood for and how he came to be associated with the political right wing of Zionism—these are questions that still await an answer.
In my research I discovered a contradictory