Vladimir Jabotinsky's Russian Years, 1900-1925. Brian J. Horowitz

Berlin, Paris, 1922–1934. At times appeared with the title, Evreiskaia Zhizn’.

      10.Michael Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin de Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 116–149.

      11.Michael Stanislawski, Autobiographical Jews: Essays in Jewish Self-Fashioning (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004), 3.

      12.Ya’acov Vainshel, Jabo: Sirtutim le-dmuto shev Ze’ev Z’abotinski (Tel Aviv: Ha-Matmid, 1954).

      13.Ish be-sa’ar: Masot u’mekhkarim ‘al Ze’ev Z’abotinski, ed. Avi Bareli and Pinhas Ginossar (Ber-Sheva: Universitat Ben-Guryon ba’Negev, 2004); Zhabotinskii i Rossiia: sbornik trudov Mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii ‘Russian Jabotinsky: Jabotinsky and Russia,’ posveshchennoi 130-letiiu V. E. Zhabotinskogo, ed. Leonid Katsis and Elena Tolstaya (Evreiskii Universitet v Ierusalime, iiul’ 2010) (Palo Alto: Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stanford University, 2013); Dmitry Shumsky, “Tsionut ve-medinat ha-leum: Ha’araha me-hadash,” Zion 1/2 (January 2012).

      14.Dmitry Shumsky, Beyond the Nation-State: The Zionist Political Imagination from Pinsker to Ben-Gurion (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018).

      15.Svetlana Natkovich, Ben aneney zokhar: Yetsirato shel Vladimir (Ze’ev) Z’abotinski ba-heksher ha-hevrati (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2015).

      16.Amir Goldstein, Derekh rabat-panim: Tsiyonuto shel Ze’ev Z’abotinski le-nokhah ha-antishemiyut (Kiryat Sedeh-Boker: Jabotinsky Institute, 2015).

      17.Daniel Heller, Jabotinsky’s Children: Polish Jews and the Rise of Right-Wing Zionism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017).

      18.Colin Shindler, The Triumph of Military Zionism: Nationalism and the Origins of the Israeli Right (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009); Ami Pedahzur, The Triumph of Israel’s Radical Right (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Eran Kaplan, The Jewish Radical Right: Revisionist Zionism and its Ideological Legacy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005).

      19.Leonid F. Katsis, ‘Russkaia vesna’ Vladimira Zhabotinskogo (Moscow: Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Gumanitarnyi Universitet, 2019); Aleksandr Frenkel’, “Falsifikatsiia Zhabotinskogo non-stop,” Narod Knigi v Mire Knig (August 2014): 1–3.

      20.Hillel Halkin, Jabotinsky: A Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014).

      21.Dan Miron, Ilan metsak ba-gai: Ze’ev Z’botinski ve shirato (Tel Aviv: Ha-msidar’a sh. Ze’ev Z’abotinski, 2005); Marat Grinberg, “Was Jabotinsky the Zionist Nabokov?” Tablet Magazine, August 4, 2014.

      22.Heller, Jabotinsky’s Children, 18.

      23.Vladimir Jabotinsky, “The Evacuation Problem, Humanitarian Zionism,” Jewish Herald 30, no. 9 (March 11, 1936): 4.

      24.Nonetheless, Colin Shindler warns against using history to answer today’s political questions. The Rise of the Israeli Right: From Odessa to Hebron (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), ix.

      25.Benzion Netanyahu, The Founding Fathers of Zionism (Jerusalem: Balfour Books, 2012).

      26.Yechiam Weitz, Bin Ze’ev Z’abotinski le-Menachem Begin: Kovets ma’amarim al ha-tenua ha-revizionistit (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2012), 15–33. Begin portrayed Jabotinsky as the father of a Jewish paramilitary underground. In fact, Jabotinsky favored public displays of armed force that acted as a deterrent to violence.

      27.Shindler, Rise of the Israeli Right; also Benzion Netanyahu, “Z’abotinski ki-medinai u’kemannig le-amo: Keitsad haya magiv al ba’ayot zmanenu,” in Ish be-Sa’ar: Masot ve-Mekhkarim al Ze’ev Z’abotinski (Ber-Sheva: Ben- Gurion, 2004); Eran Kaplan, “A Rebel with a Cause: Hillel Kook, Begin and Jabotinsky’s Ideological Legacy,” Israel Studies 10, no. 3 (Fall 2005): 87–103.

      28.Weitz, Bin Ze’ev Z’abotinski le-Menachem Begin, 15–33.

       1

       A ZIONIST IN ODESSA, CIRCA 1900–1903

      I found that Russia had a new face. Instead of “tedium and longing,” there was a nervous unrest, a general expectancy of something, a mood of spring. During my stay abroad, important events had taken place—the revolutionary parties had come out of the underground, and one or two ministers were killed; here and there disorders broke out among workers or farmers; and in particular there was excitement in the student milieu.

      —Vladimir Jabotinsky in Story of My Life

      THE STORY OF VLADIMIR JABOTINSKY’S TRANSFORMATION INTO A Zionist is somewhat confusing because, as we will see, claims from a later period give the impression of an early attraction to the movement. However, documents from the time show his intense desire to integrate into Russian culture. It would be wrong to concentrate on one event, such as his experiences in Italy in 1897–1900 (when he supposedly learned about Garibaldi and Italian nationalism), as motivating his attraction to Zionism or focusing only on Kishinev and the 1903 pogrom that occurred there, which radicalized an entire generation.¹ In contrast, I propose examining his commitment to Zionism as part of a personal and intellectual evolution.

      The trajectory of his development, then, was a two-stage process in which Jabotinsky struggled for recognition in a purely Russian environment, and then, having succeeded as a Russian journalist, turned his energies to Zionism. Later, in his autobiography, he revised history, making it seem like he embraced Zionism earlier than he actually did. Perhaps he wanted to make himself seem more precocious or more zealous. But the truth was that the Kishinev Pogrom, in 1903, was the precipitating event. At the time, both Jabotinsky and other authors described the pogrom as a profoundly frustrating event that compelled them to endorse and participate in Zionism. Jabotinsky’s later claims were a crafty revision, as I hope to demonstrate through a close examination of the earlier documents.

      Writing about the Kishinev Pogrom in 1936, Jabotinsky confesses: “It is a strange thing: I do not remember the impression this event made on me, the turning point in our whole life as a nation. In general, it made no impression. I was already a Zionist before it happened; I had also thought about [the possibility of a pogrom] before. Neither was the Jewish cowardice revealed in Kishinev a discovery for me, no more than for any Jew or Christian. I always had the feeling that there is nothing to learn from pogroms; they hold no surprise.” Then he adds, “I had always known that such would be the case, and it was.”²

      The assertion “I was already a Zionist” piques one’s curiosity. In his autobiography Jabotinsky testifies to a commitment to Zionism long before he joined the movement. His evidence consists of conversations he reports he had with his mother, which he sentimentalizes: “One more decisive thing I learned from her brief answers: I was about seven years old or even younger when I asked her: ‘Shall we Jews also have a kingdom in the future?’ And she replied: ‘Of course, we shall—you silly boy!’ From then until today I did not ask anymore; I already knew.”³ Although this exchange seems trivial, it is intended to show that the absence of a traditional Jewish education was not necessarily a hindrance to his choice of political loyalties. He did not know much about Judaism, Hebrew, or Yiddish, but he imbibed his Zionism with his mother’s milk; Zionism was part of his upbringing.

      In another attempt to give himself a Jewish pedigree, Jabotinsky tells the reader that at the time of his bar mitzvah, he studied Hebrew with Yehoshua Ravnitzky, one of the greatest Hebrew writers of the day and a Zionist, who happened to be a neighbor. It is hard to determine how much Hebrew he studied with Ravnitzky,