ZIONISM IN THE AGE OF THE DICTATORS

BRENNER : ZIONISM IN THE AGE OF THE DICTATORS
of a chartered company under German protection. A sphere of influence in
Palestine had attractions enough, but Herzl had grasped that he had another bait
that he could dangle before potential right-wing patrons: 'I explained that we were
taking the Jews away from the revolutionary parties.’ 11
In spite of the Kaiser's deep interest in getting rid of the Jews, nothing could
be done through Berlin. His diplomats always knew the Sultan would never agree to
the scheme. In addition, the German Foreign Minister was not as foolish as his
master. He knew Germany's Jews would never voluntarily leave their homeland.
Herzl looked elsewhere, even turning to the tsarist regime for support. In
Russia Zionism had first been tolerated; emigration was what was wanted. For a time
Sergei Zubatov, chief of the Moscow detective bureau, had developed a strategy of
secretly dividing the Tsar's opponents Because of their double oppression, the
Jewish workers had produced Russia's first mass socialist organisation, the General
Jewish Workers League, the Bund. Zubatov instructed his Jewish agents to mobilise
groups of the new Poale Zion (Workers of Zion) to oppose the revolutionaries 12
(Zionism is not a monolithic movement, and almost from the beginning the WZO
has been divided into officially recognised
[6] factions. For a list of the Zionist and Jewish organisations found herein, see pp.
ix-xii). But when elements within the Zionist ranks responded to the pressures of the
repressive regime and the rising discontent, and began to concern themselves about
Jewish rights in Russia, the Zionist bank—the Jewish Colonial Trust—was banned.
This brought Herzl to St Petersburg for meetings with Count Sergei Witte, the
Finance Minister, and Vyacheslav von Plevhe, the Minister of the Interior. It was
von Plevhe who had organised the first pogrom in twenty years, at Kishenev in
Bessarabia on Easter 1903. Forty-five people died and over a thousand were
injured; Kishenev produced dread and rage among Jews.
Herzl's parley with the murderous von Plevhe was opposed even by most
Zionists. He went to Petersburg to get the Colonial Trust reopened, to ask that
Jewish taxes be used to subsidise emigration and for intercession with the Turks. As
a sweetener for his Jewish critics, he pleaded, not for the abolition of the Pale of
Settlement, the western provinces where the Jews were confined, but for its
enlargement 'to demonstrate clearly the humane character of these steps', he
suggested. 13 'This would,, he urged, 'put an end to certain agitation.’1 14 Von Plevhe
met him on 8 August and again on 13 August. The events are known from Herzl’s
Diary. Von Plevhe explained his concern about the new direction he saw Zionism
taking:
Lately the situation has grown even worse because the Jews have been joining
the revolutionary parties. We used to be sympathetic to your Zionist movement, as
long as it worked toward emigration. You do not have to justify the movement to
me. Vous prêchez a un converti [You are preaching to a convert] . But ever since the
11 . Patai, Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, vol. III, p. 729.
12 George Gapon, The Story of My Life, p. 94.
13 Patai, Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, vol. IV, p. 15 21.
14 Ibid.
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