Vladimir Jabotinsky's Russian Years, 1900-1925. Brian J. Horowitz
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is,
—All the laws of historical development are known to us and whatever we have not yet seen or predicted, should therefore not happen.
I do not think that this could be scientific.41
Jabotinsky contrasted pseudoscience with “real” science. He pointed to millions of people who had traveled across the sea to new lands on ships with motors—that phenomenon would have seemed utopian a few decades earlier. Jabotinsky remarked that Zionism contained two main elements: “The first is mass emigration, which is hardly an innovation. The second is the guarantee of self-rule, also hardly an innovation.”42 About history, he writes,
Much that seemed utopian a hundred years ago has now become established fact—and it marches and attacks and conquers.
History does not know of utopias.
History is made not by the will of man, but by the force of events.
And when a mass of people is gripped, all in unison, by a single ideal, it means that it wasn’t the feuilleton writers who were whispering it to them.
It was the force of things that whispered to them.
Those ideals that are whispered by the force of things are not utopia. They are real necessity.
They are future reality.43
At the end of his article, Jabotinsky waxes poetic about Zionism.
One can argue against Zionism, think it unattainable or undesirable.
But to speak about its reactionary nature, to see in its statesmen the traitors of the ideals of humanity’s well-being, this means not to argue against it, but to sully it, roughly and carelessly to sully a dream that was born from all the sobs, from all the sufferings of the Jewish people; this means to lure people into your gang by hook or by crook; this means to respond with curses to the tearful prayer of long-suffering Agaspher and blacken with torment and blasphemy his centuries-long protected ideal.
Curse it! Ideals stand above torment and do not fear blasphemy.44
It is hard not to feel like Ravnitzky: What is this novice doing? Why of all people is he rallying to Zionism’s cause? What motivates him, someone who has never shown previous interest? Is it just the desire to mock specious arguments? Although one can hear an echo of Herzl’s faith in progress, one senses sincerity in his article. However, the question remained: was his interest in Zionism a one-off, or was it the start of something new?
Although Jewish issues had not bothered him earlier, something changed. Others gave it a sociological definition: a different Russia.45 Jews and other minorities were no longer prepared to tolerate their low status but sought ways to show their discontent. Opposition groups were forming throughout the country. In the Northwest, the Bund gained popularity; in the Southwest, Zionism attracted support. Israel Trivus, a Zionist from Odessa, writes, “The beginning of the ’90s in Russia was a time of public awakening. Underground student groups, worker strikes, intellectual circles of diverse varieties, plays with ‘Aesopian language,’ tea-parties with endless political conversations, the unexpected ‘tsarism be gone!’ in the theater or at a concert. . . . The press came alive, despite strict censorship, and the tone of the protests became ever more decisive and sharp.” Trivus continues, “The average Jew caught the bug of the public mood of optimism and belief in a better future. But in the Jewish milieu still other factors were at work that transformed the average Jew into a citizen: the development of Zionism, and a bit later, the Bund.”46
Jabotinsky too faced new questions about ethnic and political affiliation. By 1903, acculturated Jews were confronted with urgent questions: Who are you? Are you a Russian or a Jew? The disarming confidence that “the Russian people” included everyone, even those who felt oppressed, had disappeared; the age of cosmopolitanism was over. Although there was much hand-wringing and complaining, one had to choose. If you were Russian, that meant Russian language, Russian society, and perhaps even conversion to Russian Orthodox Christianity. If one answered “Jewish,” then other consequences followed: even if one had no religious affiliation to Judaism and cared little about identity, a Jew was the object of social and governmental discrimination. Some russified Jews reacted by taking an interest in Jewish life and culture: Alexander Goldstein, Yuly Brutskus, Israel Trivus, Boris Goldberg, and others went in this direction. A russified intellectual and an atheist, Jabotinsky set his sights on politics.
Jabotinsky became actively involved with Zionists in early 1903. Rumors were circulating in Odessa that a pogrom would occur, and in response to the threat, Jabotinsky apparently sent letters to Odessa’s wealthiest Jews, requesting a secret meeting to decide how to meet the crisis. No one answered. His friend Israel Trivus explained to him that those to whom he wrote would never act, and besides, a self-defense organization was already in operation.47 Trivus invited him to join the group, and Jabotinsky quickly became “indispensable.” Trivus describes Jabotinsky’s activities during the weeks before the Kishinev pogrom:
For entire days at a time, V[ladimir] E[vgenievich] Jabotinsky, together with M[eir] Ia. Dizengoff, drove around the city to collect money for the unusual task. Then came the worries about how to acquire arms and the like. V. E. took on all this work like a devoted soldier: he showed up, he asked what was needed and he fulfilled the task he was given without questions. . . . He studied intensively Hebrew language, history, literature, the history of various national movements, and the colonial systems of different peoples—everything that, directly or indirectly, might pave the way to overcoming exile. Few are aware what an enormous task he set for himself. He did not rely on his own natural talent, did not engage in irresponsible improvisations. Impossibly demanding of himself, he did not stop studying and it would not be an exaggeration to assert that there was no one in the Zionist ranks as prepared as he was for the role of leader of the people.48
Although it is difficult to separate hagiography from biography, the memoir literature provides details about an early period where few other sources exist. In contrast to his belittling of Kishinev in his autobiography, others acknowledge the intense feelings elicited by the pogrom.
According to Kornei Chukovsky, “That savage event which horrified the civilized world marked the turning point in his life.” “Jabotinsky,” Chukovsky recalls, “stormed into the Odesskie Novosti offices late one spring afternoon and angrily upbraided us, the non-Jewish members of the staff, accusing us of indifference to that terrible crime. He blamed the whole Christian world for the Kishinev pogrom. After his bitter outburst he left, slamming the door behind him.”49 Chukovsky gives more information to the poet Rakhel’ Margolina in 1965. “Volodya Zhabotinsky had completely changed. He started to study Hebrew, broke with his former environment, stopped his involvement in the Russian press. Previously I looked at him from the ground up: he was the most educated, most talented of my acquaintances, but now I grew even more attached to him. Earlier he tried to impress with his knowledge of English, and he brilliantly translated Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Raven,’ but now he devoted himself to Hebrew literature and began to translate Bialik.”50
The Kishinev pogrom had multiple echoes in Jabotinsky’s life and work. It became very important for Jabotinsky later, in 1911, with the appearance of the volume of his Russian translations of Bialik’s poetry, including “In the City of Slaughter.”51 The translations and the famous preface did a great deal to cement a connection in the public perception between Jabotinsky and Zionism.
Perhaps the entire point of diminishing the significance of Kishinev is to remove the suggestion, promoted by Chukovsky, that the pogrom “changed his life forever.” In this case, rather than acknowledging antisemitism as the stimulus for his Zionism, Jabotinsky prefers to emphasize other influences. For example, he attributes his initial acquaintance with Zionism to Shlomo Zal’tsman, a fellow Odessan Jew.
Zal’tsman is first described in the autobiography as an “elegant gentleman with a black moustache and Western manners.”52 The two were introduced by Lebedintsev at an Italian opera that Zal’tsman attended as “the special correspondent for a Milanese review of music and opera.”