Ze’ev Jabotinsky

Abstract

Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky (b. 1880, Odessa–d. 1940, Hunter, NY) is one of the most influential, enigmatic, and controversial figures in the history of Zionism. A journalist, cultural critic, translator, novelist, poet, and politician, his accomplishments in every one of these fields would suffice for a distinguished career on its own. He started his career as a nonconformist journalist and aspiring Russian-language poet and playwright in a cosmopolitan fin-de-siècle Odessa, but in the course of 1902–1903 he became drawn to the Zionist movement, gradually rising to a position of one of the promising leaders of Russian Zionism. During the World War I, while working as a war correspondent of central Russian newspaper, he was among the initiators and organizers of Jewish military regiments (Legion) in the British army, and as an officer of the regiment participated in the British conquest of Palestine. In the early 1920s he was among the members of the executive committee of the World Zionist Organization, but his disagreement with Haim Weizmann’s position of compromise regarding the formulation of British policy in Palestine brought about his vocal resignation in 1923. After his resignation, a group of admirers and supporters started consolidating around him, which led to the foundation of the oppositional Revisionist Zionist Movement in the 1925. Among the core policies of the movement were the valorization of capitalist private initiative, the embrace of unapologetic nationalism, and the adoption of a more offensive political position in foreign affairs. During the 1930s, together with the growth of polarization inside Zionist politics, Jabotinsky and his movement became more and more alienated from the Zionist establishment, which led eventually to its resignation from the World Zionist Organization and the foundation of another group, the New Zionist Organization, with Jabotinsky in its head in 1935. Parallel to his political activity, Jabotinsky continued writing and publishing new stories, novels, and essays, mainly in Russian but also in English and Yiddish. Jabotinsky’s presence in the political and intellectual discourse of the Zionist movement from the beginning of the 20th century to our times, as well as his identification with one of the dominant political parties in Israel, has made his ideological and artistic legacy, as observed by his adherents, a defining factor in the reality of the country. However, precisely because of Jabotinsky’s venerated status as a leader, in many cases his figure and actions, along with his literary legacy, are perceived through the lenses of ideological struggles. This has resulted in an extremely heterogeneous body of research on Jabotinsky, when in different works diametrically opposite views on Jabotinsky’s figure and work are articulated—from his perception as a classical liberal to his framing in the context of the radical antimaterialist and even protofascist right.