Go to the ghetto

What ideas of Zionist Vladimir Zabotinsky are relevant for today's Russia, which is in isolation

The journalism of Vladimir (aka Wolf, aka Zeev) Zhabotinsky, whose birthday on October 18 is regularly unnoticed, under the old regime we read on smuggled papigeric paper with the feeling that the headsionist exaggerates, exaggerates. Yes, really Ukraine and Belarus will ever really separate from Russia-why on earth? It’s really true that the Jews, and any other people, never have friends and will never have, that everyone should rely only on themselves, and on others only to the extent that it corresponds to their own interests? That you do not need to fall in love with someone else's culture more than in your own, and you should treat someone else's opinion with polite indifference? These were typical ideas of national exclusivity - however, which allowed, however, to create a completely democratic Jewish state, which quickly made an equal member of the open world community.

We, Jews, believed Zabotinsky, will never be truly interesting to the great powers as allies-we are too few. At most, we can be useful for a beautiful propaganda gesture-symbolic gestures, understood Zhabotinsky, almost more important than real deeds in our world, always inspired by some phantoms. Therefore, a handful of Jews taking part in the First World War on the side of England against Turkey is able to push England to adopt a declaration of some law of Jews for Turkish Palestine. Zhabotinsky formed the Jewish legion as part of the army of Great Britain, on November 2, 1917, the Balfur declaration paid with the Zionists: “The Government of His Majesty with approval considers the issue of creating a national focus for the Jewish people in Palestine and will make every effort to facilitate this goal; At the same time, it is clearly implied that no actions should be carried out that could violate the civil and religious rights of existing non -Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status that Jews enjoy in any other country. ”

“There should be no actions that could violate”-if desired, this reservation was able to cancel everything, because there are no actions that would not violate anything. Yes, and Lloyd George frankly explained that the Balfur declaration is not an act of mercy, but a transaction in exchange for "support for Jews of the whole world of the Allied matter." And subsequently, quite a few English cones even tried to cancel it: in 1939, in the “White Book” of the British government, it was printed that “support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine is not part of its foreign policy.” And then there was a list of restrictions that practically cross out the creation of the “national hearth”: it will be a single two -rational state of Jews and Arabs, at the first stage the immigration will be 25 thousand people, and in the future five years immigration of ten thousand Jews annually, a total of 75 thousand people. The further increase in immigration quotas will depend on Arab consent (which will probably not). 95% of the land of Palestine will be forbidden to sell Jews due to the natural growth of the Arab population.

In essence, this was a complete rejection of previous obligations just on the threshold of World War II, when the mass flight of Jews from Europe has already begun. And the reaction to this betrayal was possible quite natural - childish: ah, you deceived us, so we will also pack you, as much as we can. But the insidious Zionists acted in an adult way: Ah, you deceived us-so we use you. Also to the extent that we can. They managed to use Stalin, beckoning it with a carrot of Jewish socialism - therefore, an allied, based on ideology. But the Zionists put on the real balance of power, that is, on America. And until it seems to have lost.

The Soviet Jews lost, who had to pay for the “betrayal” of their fellow tribesmen, although in the adult world of a large policy of such a category as betrayal, simply does not exist: no one owes nothing to anyone there. But the Zionists seemed to have taken care of their Soviet “brothers”, it was clear that Stalin would not let them go. But the creation of its own state for the Zionists was more important.

Zhabotinsky even believed that the class struggle should be temporarily abandoned in the name of national unity, for which the left colleagues honored him Vladimir Hitler and simply “Duche”.

The left Zionists, of course, also strove to create a Jewish national state, but it seems, they believed in the possible unity of the whole human race. In the nineteenth century, many believed in this: when the Jews will leave the ghetto and enter the family of enlightened peoples, the national discord will disappear by itself. But Zhabotinsky in his novel “Samson Nazorea” depicted a completely different way of a Jew who was trying to get out of the ghetto to become his more highly cultural and powerful society: uncouth Jews in the novel came to the exquisite Philistines for a certain “decade of friendship”, nourishing the mixed feelings of midjack-stiffness, and they took place. an unkind hostility. This happened in reality, when the most energetic, gifted and ambitious part of Jewish youth tried to get out of the ghetto to a shining world: they were accepted with a hug, not as widely outstretched as they were dreaming ...

In recent years, the inhabitants of a certain ghetto on the sidelines of the “civilized world” begin to feel not Jews, but Russians. At the same time, exactly the same ways are planned to break the humiliating border, which is painfully felt even in cases where it exists exclusively in imagination. The first way is to step over the border, to become the western Westerners than the president of the American. The second is to declare the border of a non -existent one: we are all children of a single humanity, unlimitedly devoted to universal human values. The third is to proclaim your ghetto the true center of the world, to fall into exalted soilism. And the fourth, the most dangerous - try to destroy the club where you are not allowed. Therefore, the ideas of Jabotinsky for today's Russia are as relevant as possible. Not to be at enmity and not to please the Lords of the world, but to look for common interests in the struggle against general challenges, to choose the Western path of development not for the sake of political fashion, but for considerations of completely rational and even selfish - Russia could well choose this path of Zionism as the notorious “third path”.

When Zionist romantics started talking about a certain Jewish Eurasianism, the state connecting the features of the West and the East, Zhabotinsky repulsed: what other features of the East are the oppression of a woman, the lack of democracy, the formation of clericals? ..

Zhabotinsky was not a stupid nationalist. On the slope of his years, he recognized the ultimate goal of his activity not just the creation of a Jewish independent state, but "that, in the name of which, in essence, there are great nations - the creation of a national culture that will radiate its light to the whole world."

Does today's world feel this light? Was Jewry in scattering a more unique and “luminiferous” cultural phenomenon than Jewry “normalized”? This question is asked by many, but I think that the super -Russian participation of Jews in the cultural life of the West was a simultaneous movement to assimilate, and when Zhabotinsky asked why he wants to make the state -owned English in the future of Israel, but dead Hebrew, he answered: “Therefore”.

The ghetto was poor and humiliating, but it protected from assimilation, and simply from comparing itself with a more successful world. Today, we again have enough hunters to return to the Soviet ghetto, and in the West this return completely arranged for many. The insulating iron wall is already beginning to seem the best way out for many and on the other side: it is better not to go to visit each other at all, if any attempt to make friends ends with a scandal. There is only one thing bad here: every ghetto is a source of fanaticism and social searchlight.

That we have been observing in recent years.

But the iron wall cannot be removed unilaterally ...