Israel Kleiner, From Nationalism to Universalism: Vladimir Zéev Jabotinsky and the Ukrainian Question

Summary

Born in Odessa, V. Z. Jabotinsky (1880–1940) was one of the most colourful and controversial Zionist activists of the inter-war period. Fluent in half a dozen languages, he was first of all a man of letters. From a career in journalism he moved on to become a celebrated translator as well as a poet and novelist. In 1903 Jabotinsky brought his very considerable literary and rhetorical skills into the camp of Russian Zionism, and in the tumultuous period of 1903–6 he took an active leading role in that movement. He then moved onto the larger stage of Zionist politics in both Europe and the Middle East, delineating and energetically championing an activist and confrontational Zionist ideology. In 1935, after a decade of criticizing the established leadership and its policy orientations, Jabotinsky broke with the World Zionist Organization to found the New Zionist Organization in order to appeal directly to the Jewish masses and to pursue an independent Zionist agenda in international affairs.

In this monograph Israel Kleiner focuses our attention on Jabotinsky's views of Ukrainian nationalism both in the period before the First World War and in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution and the ensuing civil war. Kleiner examines Jabotinsky's writings and actions at three critical moments: in 1911–14, when Ukrainians were celebrating the life and work of the Ukrainian national poet Taras Shevchenko; in September 1921, when Jabotinsky reached an agreement with Maksym Slavinsky, a representative of Symon Petlyura's Ukrainian People's Republic, to create a Jewish police force in Ukraine to protect the community against possible assaults should there be renewed hostilities between Ukrainian and Bolshevik forces; and in 1926, when Shalom Schwartzbard was placed on trial for the assassination of Petlyura, who was widely blamed by Jews for the wave of pogroms suffered by Jewish communities in Ukraine during the civil war.

After establishing Jabotinsky's general views on nationalism and cultural identity, Kleiner examines closely what he identifies as the courageous positions adopted by Jabotinsky in these three instances. In Kleiner's view, Jabotinsky's support for Ukrainian nationalism was fully consistent with his fierce opposition to Jewish cultural assimilation. Jabotinsky not only condemned the Polish policies of active Polonization in Austrian Galicia, but also rejected tsarism's efforts to Russify the ethnic communities of the western borderlands of the empire.