4. Doctor Herzl's Visit to Russia
The alert bureaucratic mind of Plehve was quick to make its deductions from the Dashevski case. He realized that the Kishinev massacre would inflame the national Jewish sentiment and divert the national or Zionist cause into the channel of the revolutionary movement. Accordingly, on June 24, 1903, Plehve issued a circular to the governors, which was marked "strictly confidential," and sent out through the Police Department, ordering the adoption of energetic measures against "the propaganda of the ideas of Zionism," which had departed from its original aim—the transfer of Jews to Palestine—and "had directed its activity towards strengthening the Jewish national idea," preaching "the organization of the Jews in secluded societies in the places of their present domicile." Acting upon these orders, the police began to persecute the Zionists in a number of cities, prohibiting the sale of Jewish Colonial Trust shares, collections for the Jewish National Fund, and meetings and conferences of the Zionist societies.
Shortly thereafter, on July 25, the leader of the Zionists, Dr. Herzl, arrived in St. Petersburg to induce the Russian authorities to discontinue these persecutions. Apart from this immediate object, Herzl had another more important mission in mind. He hoped to obtain a promise from the Russian Government to exert a diplomatic pressure upon Turkey in favor of permitting the settlement of Jews in Palestine on a large scale. During his four interviews with Plehve, the Zionist leader succeeded in convincing the minister that "it was in keeping with the interests of the Russian Government to assist the Zionist movement." Plehve replied—and subsequently confirmed his reply in writing—that the Russian Government was willing to help Zionism so long as its political activity would be directed towards the attainment of its aims outside of Russia, towards the creation of a Jewish center in Palestine and the emigration of the Jews from Russia, but that as soon as the movement would be turned inwards, that is, towards the propaganda of the Jewish national idea and the organization of Jewry in Russia itself, it would not be tolerated, being subversive of the Russian national policies. Herzl assured Plehve that political Zionism sans phrase had no other aim in view, except the creation of a center outside of the Diaspora.
Both Plehve and Herzl seemed to be satisfied with the results of their conversation. Herzl saw also the Minister of Finance, Witte, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lamsdorff, and left St. Petersburg in a hopeful mood. On his way to St. Petersburg, particularly during his stay in Vilna, Herzl was the object of stormy ovations by the Zionists. At the same time, he was severely criticized by the representatives of other Jewish political groups who thought that he had lowered the national dignity of the Jewish people by conducting negotiations for the salvation of Jewry with the man on whose forehead was stamped the Cain's mark of Kishinev.
It seems that the severe crisis which had set in for political Zionism, when the hope for obtaining a charter from the Sultan had receded into a distance, had impelled Herzl to catch at a straw, at negotiations with the Russian Government. He was evidently of the opinion that the Russian Pharaohs who had countenanced the methods of reducing the Jewish population in Russia, such as had been practised at Kishinev, might be willing to achieve the same object by rendering its diplomatic assistance to the Zionist plans. A pledge in this direction was actually given to Herzl. But Herzl overestimated the importance of the promises made to him by potentates who merely looked upon him as a noble-minded dreamer.
Two weeks after Herzl's visit to St. Petersburg, the acuteness of the Zionist crisis manifested itself at the sixth Congress at Basle (August 11-16, 1903). On that occasion Herzl announced his new project, the colonization of Uganda, in British East Africa, by virtue of a charter which had been offered to him by the British Government. He pointed out that this project had a definite aim in view—the amelioration of the terrible condition of Russian Jewry, for which purpose Zion at that particular moment was not available. Herzl's pronouncement rent the Congress in twain: one section seized enthusiastically upon the Uganda project, which held out the promise of at least a temporary shelter in Africa, a Nachtasyl, for a part of the agonized nation. The other section protested violently against this attempt to create a "Zionism without Zion," against the abandonment of Palestine and the higher aspirations of the movement. After many stormy and soul-stirring scenes, the majority of the Congress adopted a resolution to send an expedition to Uganda to investigate the proffered country from the point of view of its fitness for Jewish colonization. Thereupon, all the opponents of the Uganda project, the so-called Neinsager (the "Nay-sayers"), mostly Russian Zionists, left the Congress hall in a body.
The movement was now rent by a severe conflict, the result of the struggle between the two principles which had long been intermingled in the theoretic foundations of Zionism: Palestinianism and Territorialism. This internal conflict culminated in an open split between these two principles. Out of the Zionist movement was born the Territorialist Organization, which proclaimed as its object the creation of a Jewish autonomous center on any available point of the globe. For the blood of Kishinev cried out for an exodus from the new Egypt. The emigration to the United States, where the prisoners of Tzardom had in the course of twenty years, beginning with 1881, succeeded in forming a big Jewish center, had passed the million mark, and was expected to assume larger and larger dimensions. The Jewish public press insisted on the necessity "of regulating the emigration to America not only as a social-economic, but also as a national factor." It was pointed out that a considerable portion of the historic national center in Russia and Poland was, under the pressure of external events, in the process of removing to North America, and that practical Jewish politics had the direct duty of organizing this great rising center of Jewry.