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Abstract
This article shows that anti-essentialism was a pivotal ideological feature of Russian Zionism – the idiom of Zionism that lay behind Russian Zionist periodicals such as Rassvet in Late Imperial Russia. For Russian Zionists, the Jewish nation was the social field that existed as a social fact. While Russian Zionists' concept of the Jewish nation was inevitably influenced by their political context, nonetheless, it was primarily a result of the convergence of the following two ideological movements. First, there emerged a sense that a socioeconomic foundation was crucial in forming a nation. The transformation of Jewish socioeconomic positions in Eastern Europe and Russia was the background of this consciousness. The second is the ideological claim that any collective entity or social field should be respected regardless of its merit and utility vis-à-vis others. More specifically, for Russian Zionists, the Jewish raison d'être was the simple existence of their own social field; they believed that no further definition was required. The emergence of this viewpoint can be understood as a reaction to the Zionists' perception of Jewish history where Jews pursued the recognition and validation of their place among non-Jews by virtue of their merit or utility vis-à-vis non-Jews.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the two anonymous readers of the earlier version of this article for their comments, which were very helpful in elaborating theoretical terms and clarifying points especially concerning the Jewish culturists and the political context. The author would also like to acknowledge that this study was conducted with the support of Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
Notes
For example, Almog entitled his chapter “The Significance of Culture” in his book on Zionist thought.
For Zionist participation in Russian politics during the 1905 Revolution, see Frankel, Prophecy and Politics (ch. 3) and Orbach (7–23) (for the period 1905–1907), and Levin (147–65) (for the period 1907–1914). For Russian Jewish Liberal politics including some Zionists, see Gassenschmidt.
Besides, many Zionist leaders including main figures in this article – e.g. Pasmanik from the early ages and Idel'son from the stage of higher education – received secular Russian education and in some instances, outside the Empire.
Moreover, their choice of language may have reflected the affinity they felt to the Russian-speaking world (cf. Horowitz 89–90).
After the political setback of Russian Zionism, the resurgent Rassvet (Berlin, 1922–1924; Paris, 1924–1934) became the mouthpiece of the right-wing Revisionist Movement led by Jabotinsky.
Of course, the distinction between articles discussing what is specific to Jewry and those that are not is occasionally vague; I categorize articles into the former if the main point of an article elucidates positively anything that defines Jewishness and into the latter if Jewishness is at most defined negatively (e.g. the denial or contempt of “past” features of Jews such as religion, without showing its alternative). Therefore, for example, I categorize Saminskii's article on Jewish music in no. 12–13, 1912 (see note 9) into the former because it shows the features of Jewish music, while claiming that present-day Jewish music is mostly devoid of originality because of assimilation, which still alludes to the continuous existence of some essences of Jewish music.
L. Ia., “Bund i subbotnii otdykh” in no. 5; Ia. K – v, “O subbotnem otdykhe” in no. 6; Sionistskoe Tsentral'noe biuro dlia Pol'shi, “K voprosu o subbotnem otdykhe” in no. 8; S. Gepshtein, “O subbotnem otdykhe” and V. Ia., “Bund i subbotnii otdekh” in no. 9; and “Zapiska o subbotnem otdykhe” in no. 15.
For example, “O natsional'nom vospitanii v Palestine” (a lecture of Sh. Levin at the Eighth Zionist Congress; no. 34–35: 18–22) does not refer to anything specific to Jews in education in Palestine. A. Gartglias, “Kul'turno-natsional'nye tsennosti” (no. 43: 12–15), without defining Jewish culture, argued how to develop national culture.
These nine articles are: D.S. “Paskha” in no. 11; L. Saminskii, “Obshchie cherty istorii evreiskoi muzyki” in no. 12–13; “Voskresnyi otdykh” in no. 24; M.I. Gintsburg, “O nashei religioznoi missii” in nos. 26 and 27; D.P. [Pasmanik], “Rosh Gashana” in no. 35; N. Syrkin, “Evreiskoe mnogoiazychie i evreiskii iazyk” in nos. 36–37, 38 and 39.
Slutsky indicated that, until 1913, educational matters were seldom covered and that, mainly because of the lack of space, the articles on literal-artistic issues were limited (247–50).
We can find approximately five articles in each year on these topics: e.g. A.Z. [Zaidenman], “Avtonomiia Pol'shi i evrei” in no. 16, 1907; Ia. Leshchinskii, “Evrei i ukrainskoe dvizhenie” in no. 12–13, 1912.
For Herzl's attitude toward rabbis and Judaism, see Luz (ch. 5).
This formula resembles Haim Grinberg's (also a main contributor to Rassvet) definition of Zionism in 1917: “a struggle for Jewish individuality – a struggle not for the preservation and fruitless conservation of this or that fixed trait of this individuality, but for the establishment of a free background for its unceasing re-formation, for its free […] development” (qtd. in Moss 139).
Its main contributors were Hans Kohn, Martin Buber, Hugo Bergmann, and Robert Weltsch.
This booklet was originally published in 1912 as it was referred to in the 1912 issue of Rassvet (no. 22: 31), but unfortunately I have not found the original copy.
This tendency somewhat changed in the period after 1914; because the government prohibited Hebrew publication during the war, Hebrew culturists such as Joseph Klausner also contributed to Rassvet and its succeeding weekly Evreiskaia zhizn' (cf. Horowitz).
For Zionist Nietzscheanism, see Golomb.
Idel'son's description of a nation, which we will see below, evidently contradicts racial determinism. Pasmanik's criticism of racial determinism is also evident, for example, in his attack on Werner Sombart's definition of the historically immutable Jewish racial essence as a capitalist spirit in Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben (1911) – Pasmanik asserted that a race was historically and environmentally formed and changed (“Evrei i ekonomicheskoe razvitie”).
Although “narod” was, in many examples, interchangeable with “natsiia” (nation), as was the case of the narodnik movement, “narod” connoted the “common people,” in contrast to the intelligentsias and governments.
For Ahad Ha'am and Ha-Omer, see Zipperstein (226–33).
Pasmanik was skeptical of such a straightforwardly utilitarian viewpoint; nonetheless, he also asserted that the Jewish culture was doomed to decline in the Diaspora unless it was encouraged by vital Zionism (“O natsional'nykh tsennostiakh I–II”; “O natsional'nykh tsennostiakh III–IV”).
Broadly speaking, such a mode of thinking can be found in Jewish social sciences in early twentieth-century Germany, where Jewish social scientists – many of whom were Zionists – were anxious about Jewish assimilation and “degeneration” in the contemporaneous conditions of the Diaspora (Hart).
For the distinction between “ethnocide” and “genocide,” see Pearson (9). “Ethnocide” means annihilation of ethnicity whereas “genocide” is annihilation or expulsion of the people themselves.
For the initial period of such a policy, see also Klier.