V. Jabotinsky’s Concept of the Jewish Nation-Building in the Context of Ukrainian Revival in the Late 19th - Early 20th Centuries

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to analyze the concept of Jewish nation-building by V. Jabotinsky, who is considered to be a leader of the Zionist movement in Ukraine, in terms of correlation of ideas and interactions between Jewish and Ukrainian national modern movements.Research methodology. The author uses a comprehensive culturological approach to examine nationalism and national movements as a general methodological basis of this study. The study also draws on the methodological principles of M. Feller’s Ukrainika Judaika (Ukrainian-Jewish studies) as an ethno-cultural science of Ukrainian Jewry in its deep relationship with the Ukrainians. Methods of comparative analysis, synthesis and historicism are also used.Results. Using V. Jabotinsky’s (a Zionism leader in Ukraine) intellectual heritage as an example, the author analyzes three groups of issues directly connected with the objectives of the Ukrainian national movement at that time, namely: the issue of the existential importance of national identity and factors of its development; the issue of national fringe elements, deprived of their origins; a program of interethnic understanding, coexistence on a real political basis. The analysis of texts shows the examples of the typological similarity of a large part of the statements of Jewish nationalists and Ukrainian nation-centered leaders. This fact allows us to conclude that there is an interpenetration and mutual influence in the process of the development of the Zionist and Ukrainian national movements. The common features of the historical destinies of two stateless nations represent the similarity of their national existence, the mechanisms of self-preservation and the nation-building as well as the development of the project of the nation future.Novelty. Ukrainian-Jewish studies as an understanding of the productive ways and an insight into the fundamental levels of coexistence of the Ukrainians and the Jewish people do not belong to the traditional themes of Ukrainian culturological thought that results in the scientific novelty of this study.The practical significance. The results of this study can be used to teach normative courses, special courses, electives on the history of culture, the history of Ukrainian philosophy, philosophy of the national idea, Judaism, as well as in the further study of modern national movements in Ukraine in terms of cultural dialogue and mutual enrichment.