The Maccabæan
THE RUSSIAN UPHEAVAL.
The recent political upheaveal in Russia has led to a large amount of loose, and even nonsensical talk as to the future of the Zionist movement. In the penumbra of Russian life the torch of rebellion has flamed for a moment, and at once there arise those who believe that a constitutionalised Russia must arise and put an end to the 'reason-to-be of Zionism. So poor a thought shows how weak we Jews are in the matter of statesmanship, how unfamiliar we still are with popular policies, the politics of a people, and how little ten years of investigation of the Jewish Question have taught many of us.
Whilst our sympathies are naturally all on the side of those who seek freedom in Russia we are by no means persuaded that the word constitution is an open sesame to a new world for the Russian people. The disappearance of Czardom, and the abolition of the bureaucracy, would simply mean two violent incidents presaging an evolution which will perhaps develop in the course of half a century. It took westernised France nearly eighty years to achieve stability in a regime, and since then it has been shaken at least once. The self-struggle of the Russian people will be indefinitely greater, the internecine fight will be of longer duration, they are greater in numbers than the French, the area they inhabit larger, racially they are more divided and individually they are more illiterate. The one factor in favor of the Russians is that a large percentage of the aristocracy make common cause with the people, and adding this to the momentum which modernity gives to every movement, we might balance accounts and say that with a constitution granted to-day, the Russian nation will achieve the stability of a new condition towards the end of the present century. This is excellent reason for unrestrained
effort on the part of every Russian patriot, but it would not warrant a cessation of Zionist endeavor.
Zionism is not merely a response to suffering but even viewed in that light it would be poor statecraft that would expose the five million Jews in Russia to the whims and fancy of the mob whilst it seeks to right its wrongs by riot and tumult. Already we have seen, in Warsaw, that in the midst of the more serious business of revolution the mob found time to loot a few Jewish stores, and we may expect such incidents to multiply.
We are perfectly willing to admit that the Jews iu the Muscovite Empire will benefit from any general measure of emancipation, but whilst the benefit will be a minimum the cost will unquestionably be out of all proportion to the gains. The Jews in fact can too easily be made the scapegoats for them to avoid the part; there is no political intelligence, however "intelligent", which shall not use the Jews as a buffer between itself and the public wrath. And indeed we have still to learn that any of the emancipatory movements in Russia, though they are most ably supported by the Jews, have shown the slightest inclination to hold out to their Jewish compatriots promises of equality in the future.
On the contrary, one of the impelling forces of Zionism in Russia is that Russian constitutionalists, whilst they seek Jewish support, have not undertaken to include the Jews in the equality they will one day grant to themselves. Nor is this a matter for surprise. It would be mere affectation on the part of the Jews to assume that they are exceptionally welcome to the Russian people; why then should the Russian people do for the Jews what no other people have done for them? It is perfectly true that the Jews in France were emancipated by the Revolution, but not even then on their own merits. The Republicans were not anxious to emancipate the handful of French Jewish citizens, on the contrary they resisted the measure, but the Revolutionists were in need of a demonstration wherewith to prove the full meaning of the new thought of equality with which they wished to impress Europe, and accordingly the Jews were enfranchised in a universalistic