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.
FOOTNOTES:
[36] See vol. II, p. 381.
[37] The following extract may show that the great writer had a profound insight into the causes of the Kishinev barbarities:
"My opinion concerning the Kishinev crime is the result also of my religious convictions. Upon the receipt of the first news which was published in the papers, not yet knowing all the appalling details which were communicated subsequently, I fully realized the horror of what had taken place, and experienced simultaneously a burning feeling of pity for the innocent victims of the cruelty of the populace, amazement at the bestiality of all these so-called Christians, revulsion at all these so-called cultured people who instigated the mob and sympathized with its actions. But I felt a particular horror for the principal culprit, our Government with its clergy which fosters in the people bestial sentiments and fanaticism, with its horde of murderous officials. The crime committed at Kishinev is nothing but a direct consequence of that propaganda of falsehood and violence which is conducted by the Russian Government with such energy. The attitude adopted by the Russian Government in relation to this question may only serve as a new proof of the class egotism of this Government, which stops at no cruelty whenever it finds it necessary to check movements that are deemed dangerous by it. Like the Turkish Government at the time of the Armenian massacres, it remains entirely indifferent to the most horrible acts of cruelty, as long as these acts do not affect its interests."