Jabotinsky was deeply impressed by Herzl’s poise, control, and delivery, as well as his sentiments. He understood Herzl’s attempt to appear one among equals.
It was precisely here, where he appeared without his formal jacket, without the gavel and the stage and the whole pompous apparatus that separates him from the public, that he appeared simply as a delegate from one of the Kishinev clubs to explain himself and almost to justify himself. Precisely here, it piqued my curiosity to find out how he would behave, how he would win over his audience, whether he would lose control of his tone, whether he would stumble. Herzl spoke, as always, calmly, expressively, without any rhetorical devices, entirely in control of himself. In each word one could hear self-assurance, and standing before his opponents, he did not hesitate to speak to them sharply, and at the same time with condescension, as one in power, almost as an elder with a child. There were moments when I thought that now the protesting voices would break in, but the voices didn’t. Starting from his first words, from the expression that appeared on almost every face in this hall, in the extraordinary quiet that had now taken shape, I understood the entire meaning of Lomonosov’s historic utterance: “It would be easier to take the Academy from me than to take me from the Academy.”9
Lomonosov, the great figure of the Russian Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, represented for Jabotinsky an original thinker who gave his life to the Russian Academy that was founded by Peter I. Herzl showed the same complete identification with his institution, the Zionist movement. Of course, his readers at Odesskie Novosti would know Lomonosov and therefore could understand what Herzl meant to the Zionist movement.
Jabotinsky was convinced that, despite his apparent push for Uganda, Herzl had not changed. In contrast to others, Herzl was persuasive not because he showed goodwill or had experienced some kind of psychological transformation in recent years, as Yehiel Chlenov, the Moscow Zionist leader, maintained.10 In contrast, Jabotinsky thought that it was Herzl’s personal ambition that drove him to Palestine. “I am convinced that Zion is terribly important for this person, more important than for many, many others, precisely because the prospect of Zion’s rebirth is far more tempting and infinitely more grandiose than the simple colonization of the first secluded corner that one finds. The rebirth of Zion would not have a precedent in history: to settle East Africa would mean to repeat Baron Hirsch.”11
But Jabotinsky felt that Herzl’s East Africa gambit, even if forced, had a certain logic. Diplomacy made up his sole strength, and although diplomacy was not necessarily the best method, if one played that card, then Herzl was right to exploit every opportunity. Fate always depended on chance, but a great leader, Jabotinsky concluded, prepared for the moment when fortune might strike. Cultivating a relationship with Great Britain, the world’s greatest power, made sense. “History has its own laws, but to us, observing it from below, it will seem for a long time yet a chain of chance events. The same chance event that gave Herzl East Africa today might give him Palestine tomorrow. Politics is a game of ‘chance events’ in which the strong, smart person always has at least a fifty-percent chance, if only he wants to win.”12
It is hard to read this article without feeling surprised that the prediction came true—indeed, today, Uganda, but tomorrow, maybe, Palestine. Who knows the gifts Britain could bestow, like fate, on the leader ready to accept and exploit the moment? Lord Balfour’s letter in November 1917 was such a moment.
In his third article from Basel, Jabotinsky expressed his own views. He repeated Ahad-Ha’am’s division between “Western” and “Eastern” Jews: he disdained the Jews of Western Europe for craving comfort; but admired the Jews of Russia for retaining a strong collective identity. The Westerners, those “eminent professors,”13 thought that Jerusalem was equal or inferior to Wiesbaden, he wrote. But the East Europeans were different. They sought in Zionism spiritual goals—nothing less than the creation of a new Jewish civilization. “There is a different kind of Zionism in Russia. I consider Russia an amazing country: the best of the Slavs live here, and the best of the Jews: ‘best’ in the sense of the strongest and the least resigned to the submissiveness that Ahad-Ha’am called slavery in freedom among the Western ‘Izraelites.’ That is precisely why the Jewish masses in Russia are especially crowded together, why their desires and dreams—beneath the appearance of hopelessness—are so bold.”14
The sentiment about Russia having the “best” Jews and Slavs belongs to Vladimir Solov’ev, the Judeophile Russian thinker who belonged to the Slavophile tradition and repeated the claim that the material West was spiritually corrupt, whereas the East still embodied religious purity.15 The Eastern Europeans retained their Jewish complexion; they would not sell their Judaism or their love for Zion. That is why the Eastern Europeans stood with the Nein-Sagers, the representatives of artisans, various traders, workers, and students.16 For these people Zionism without Zion was unthinkable.
Jabotinsky adopted the position of Nein-Sager, but he based his decision on a populist premise. Instead of viewing himself as a novice who followed the more experienced and popular figures in the Russian camp, he imagined himself as a representative of the Jewish people in their steadfast unity for Zion. Jabotinsky explained, “In days of sorrow, in a foreign land, what can people dream of if not their homeland, glorified and blessed in all the holy books, endowed with miracle tales, preserving the ruins of the sacred places given to the ancestors, taken from the grandfathers and promised to the grandchildren? One has to want not to understand in order not to understand the necessity, the inevitable elemental necessity of this national dream.”17
In the months following the conference, Jabotinsky would join two seemingly contradictory positions, those of Herzl and Ahad-Ha’am, political and spiritual Zionism, politics and culture. He was attracted to Ahad-Ha’am’s view that Palestine had the potential to transform all of the Jewish people through the cultivation of a new Jewish society, economy, and culture in Palestine. At the same time, Jabotinsky wanted to spur emigration to Palestine. Other Russian Zionists—Yehiel Chlenov, Menachem Ussishkin, and Yaakov Bernstein-Kogan—supported infiltration, emigration, and land purchases in Palestine. At the same time Jabotinsky still romanticized Herzl and dreamed of attaining a legal charter through diplomacy.
Nonetheless, having come closer to the “Russian” position on Herzl, Jabotinsky revised his view of the great leader. In the first article, he affirmed that the movement had put all its money on a single bet: Herzl. At the end of the series, he took a different tack: if Herzl were to abandon the end goal of Zion, the “movement would simply walk over him” and “continue along its old path.”18 The movement superseded Herzl and would keep him only as long as he articulated its dreams.
In these articles Jabotinsky wanted his readers to view him not as a mere observer, but as someone who was involved, potentially a leader. He analyzed what it takes to be a leader and expressed respect, awe, surprise, and affection for Herzl. In this indirect way, Jabotinsky linked himself to Herzl, beginning a lifelong metonymic relationship meant to lend Jabotinsky credibility and political legitimacy.
His reportage reflected enthusiasm, but his private correspondence was more critical of the movement at that moment. A letter to his close friend Kornei Chukovsky presented a different perspective altogether, one grounded in the material reality of Basel. He complained about the wasteful expenditures for transportation, how he was harangued when he gave his short speech and almost got arrested for having sex in public. “I took the trip and it was boring and stupid and I wasted 500 rubles doing it. At the congress I got whistled at; however, I did not leave. And the next day, that is, at night, I was caught by a policeman in flagrante delicto with a Zionist lady on the cathedral grounds. I was almost given a summons!”19 Apparently Zionist congresses, like congresses everywhere, were characterized by extracurricular entertainments that often do not make it into the history books.
Jabotinsky