Vladimir Jabotinsky's Russian Years, 1900-1925. Brian J. Horowitz
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Masot u’mekhkarim ‘al Ze’ev Z’abotinski, ed. Avi Bareli and Pinhas Ginossar (Ber-Sheva: Universitat Ben-Guryon ba’Negev, 2004), 449–457.
37.Jabotinsky, Story of My Life, 60.
38.Abram Evgen’evich Kaufman (1855–1921), who grew up in Odessa, was a noted Jewish journalist and editor. For more about him, see Viktor Kel’ner, “Redaktsionnyi chernorabochii,” in A. E. Kaufman, Za kulisami pechati: Iz vospominanii starogo zhurnalista (St. Petersburg: Rossiiskaia Natsional’naia Biblioteka, 2011), 5–18.
39.Isaiah Berlin, Russian Thinkers (New York: Penguin Classics, 2008), 2–3.
40.Jabotinsky, Story of My Life, 60. The term “lover of Zion” refers to Hovevei Tsion, the name of the adherents of Hibbat Tsion, the proto-Zionist group organized in post-1882 Odessa. Iosif Menassievich Bickerman (1867–1942) was the author of the article, “O sionizme i po povodu sionizma,” Russkoe Bogatstvo 7 (1902): 27–69. Jabotinsky answered Bickerman in an article, “O sionizme,” Odesskie Novosti (September 8, 1902). Jabotinsky characterized him as an assimilationist.
41.Vladimir Jabotinsky, “O sionizme,” Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 2b:367–368. Original in Odesskie Novosti, (September 8, 1902).
42.Ibid.
43.Ibid., 367.
44.Ibid., 373.
45.There are many books on Russia in the period leading up to the 1905 Revolution. These include Terrence Emmons, “Russia’s Banquet Campaign,” California Slavic Studies 10 (1977), 45–86; Shmuel Galai, The Liberation Movement in Russia, 1900–1905 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973); A. Kizevetter, Narubezhe dvukh stoletii, Vospominaniia, 1881–1914 (Prague, 1929), 167–171; Gregory Freeze, “A National Liberation Movement and the Shift in Russian Liberalism, 1901–1903,” Slavic Review 28 (March 1969): 81–91.
46.Israel Trivus, “Pervye shagi,” Rassvet 42 (October 19, 1930): 17.
47.Jabotinsky, Story of My Life, 65.
48.Trivus, “Pervye shagi,” 19.
49.Quoted in Shmuel Katz, Lone Wolf: A Biography of Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, (New York: Barricade Books, 1996), 1:46.
50.Rakhel Margolina, Rakhel Pavlovna Margolina i ee perepiska s Korneem Ivanovichem Chukovskim (Jerusalem: Stav, 1978), 11. In the same letter, Chukovsky describes meeting Jabotinsky in London in 1916: “The last time I saw Vladimir was in London in 1916. He was dressed in a military uniform entirely engrossed in his ideas—completely different from the person I knew in my youth. Concentrated, despondent, but he embraced me and spent the entire evening with me.” Ibid., 14.
51.Vladimir Jabotinsky, “Vvedenie k pesniam i poemam Bialika,” Pesni i poemy Bialika (St. Petersburg: S. D. Zal’tsman, 1911), 7–55. Jabotinsky published the poem in his translation, along with an introduction, in Evreiskaia Zhizn’, November 11, 1904, 160–62. The poem was published many times thereafter, including in a collection of Bialik’s poems in Russian translation: Kh. N. Bialik, Pesni i poemy: Avtorizovannyi perevod s evreiskogo i vvedenie Vl. Zhabotinsky (St. Petersburg: S. D. Zal’tsman, 1911).
52.Jabotinsky, Story of My Life, 64.
53.Ibid.
54.Shlomo Zal’tsman, Min he-avar: Zichronot u’reshumot (Tel Aviv: Sh. Zal’tsman, 1943), 241.
55.Bialik, Pesni i poemy: Avtorizovannyi perevod s evreiskogo i vvedenie Vl. Zhabotinsky.
THE SIXTH ZIONIST CONGRESS, THE FIRST JABOTINSKY ATTENDED, had a powerful effect on him. There he encountered Herzl, and the influential meeting drew him deeper into the movement. The conference, Herzl’s last, took place in Basel in 1903, and became known for the debate over the Uganda proposal.1 Although Jabotinsky insisted in his autobiography that he voted against Herzl and the Uganda proposal “just so,” because he felt like it, in fact he understood the issues very well. We can gauge the extent of his knowledge in three articles that he published in August 1903, reporting from the conference for Odesskie Novosti.2 The first article contained a general discussion of Britain’s Uganda offer and its significance for the Zionist movement; the second was devoted to the Mizrachi, religious Zionists; and the last to Herzl and the Russian opposition to Uganda. The last article also contained Jabotinsky’s own credo.
The Sixth Congress was extremely contentious. The British government’s offer of a colony for Jews in Uganda (land within the borders of present-day Kenya), split the movement into those who thought Eastern European Jews needed an asylum (these were the days following the murders in Kishinev), and those focused solely on the struggle for Palestine. Herzl defended the need for an alternative to Palestine, since it was not available for mass immigration due to Ottoman opposition, when Britain invited him to consider a Jewish center in Uganda. Max Nordau, second in the movement, argued in favor of Uganda as a “Nachtasyl,” an asylum for the Jewish people until a Palestine charter could be attained.3 Significantly, there was opposition to Uganda from those who did not want to compromise on the main precept of Zionism, settlement in Palestine. Many of the so-called Nein-Sagers came from Russia.
Two issues frame Jabotinsky’s experience of the Congress: his observations about Herzl and his own position. He began by lauding Herzl as the sole authority in the movement. “The entire administration, the entire leadership, and the entire responsibility for the movement rests with Theodor Herzl. When they talk about Zionism, they think of him.”4 Herzl’s presence stimulated Jabotinsky to give thought to leadership qualities.
I know all the good and all the bad that those around Herzl think of him, and I look at him entirely coldly and soberly, and I think that in his person there stands before us one of the most wonderful individuals of our time. It is difficult to define what constitutes his strength. He is not at all a first-class writer, but he is a fine stylist and transmits clearly and incisively what he needs to say, and precisely in the way that is needed. He is amazingly harmonious and controlled; he gives the impression of a person incapable of a falsely calculated gesture—a person who of course can lose his way, but cannot stumble. He is never sharp, but always gets his way. Many claim that he hypnotizes them. In every detail this gentleman is an average man, but on the whole he is a great figure, a great individual who needs great levers—maybe not talented, but also, maybe, a genius.5
This is a typical description of Herzl at the time.6 Many wrote about his unsuspecting genius, his amazing success in creating a movement seemingly out of nothing. Jabotinsky watched and analyzed Herzl and was astounded by the latter’s success in resolving the split in the movement. After a small majority sided with Herzl in favor of funding an investigation of East Africa, many of the Nein-Sagers burst into tears. Their emotional response, a symbolic allusion to the Jews of ancient Babylonia, who were described as weeping for the loss of Jerusalem, reflected the degree of their alienation from their own movement.7 Zionism, which once embodied all their dreams, had now betrayed them. Jabotinsky, having voted with the Nein-Sagers, was present at the meeting where the group was deciding how to proceed. Jabotinsky’s article provides a transcript of sorts of what happened at the meeting, and also presents his own perspective.
At the time when “angry Russians” were fulminating at Herzl and considering various tactics to delay the colonization of East Africa, Herzl arrived and demanded the opportunity to explain.8 He spoke about his failure with the Ottoman Sultan and the lack of support among the wealthy and powerful Jews. When everything looked grim, hope burst out in the form of an offer from Great Britain. Uganda was not a retreat from Zion, Herzl exclaimed, but a detour. In fact,