Vladimir Jabotinsky - Vladimir Jabotinskys Story of My Life

VLADIMIR JABOTINSKYS

Story of My Life

EDITED BY
Brian Horowitz and Leonid Katsis

2016 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America.

20 19 18 17 16 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978-0-8143-4138-4; ISBN 978-0-8143-4139-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015934525

Designed by Bryce Schimanski

Typeset by Keata Brewer, E.T. Lowe Publishing Co.

Composed in Adobe Caslon Pro

The author gives special thanks to the Imre Kertsz College at the University of Jena and the Frankel Center at the University of Michigan.

CONTENTS

Brian Horowitz

A NOTE ON THE TEXT

This volume presents the first publication in English of Story of My Life (originally published in Hebrew as Sippur yamai [1936]), one of three major autobiographical writings by Vladimir (Zeev) Jabotinsky. The other works are Story of the Jewish Legion (originally published in Russian as Slovo o polku: Istoriia evreiskogo legiona [1928] and The Five (published in Russian as Piatero [1936]), the autobiographical novel that portrays Jabotinsky in the revolutionary year of 1905.

The present text of Story of My Life is based on the rough draft of an English translation discovered by Professor Leonid Katsis in the Vladimir Jabotinsky archive of the Jabotinsky Institute in Tel Aviv. We have been unable to identify the original translator.

It must be acknowledged at the outset that it is hard to define with full certainty the length of Story of My Life because no canonical text exists, and publications of Sippur yamai in Hebrew and Russian do not correspond exactly to one another. The major problem is that Story of My Life and Story of the Jewish Legion have been published several times in different languages, before and after Jabotinskys death. Therefore we are unable to say with absolute confidence that one or another text represents the canonical version.

We have opted to depart from two variant texts: the first version that appeared in 1936 and the version that appeared after Jabotinskys death, in 194647, and edited by Eri Jabotinsky in the volume Avtobiografiyah, in Vladimir Jabotinskys Ketavim (Collected Works). The reasons motivating our decision are connected with a desire to present the most complete book possible without repeating Story of the Jewish Legion (1928; English translation 1945).

We could have adopted the 1936 version, since it is the last text to appear in Jabotinskys lifetime, but we feel this version leaves out too much. It ends with the closing of part 1 of the 194647 edition:

Here ends the first part of the story of my life, because the thread became interrupted on its own; it was a period that had no continuation. If I wanted to live, I had to be reborn anew. But I was thirty-four, long past my youth and half into middle age, and I had wasted both. I do not know what I would have done if the whole world had not turned upside down and thrown me into unforeseen paths. Perhaps I would have gone to Eretz Yisrael, perhaps to Rome; maybe I would have created a political party, but that summer the world war broke out.

The 1936 version ends with the chapter Crossroads and does not include descriptions of events connected with the outbreak and first years of World War Ievents that are treated in short-hand in the first chapter of Story of the Jewish Legion (Birth of the Legion Idea). The four additional chapters included here (When the Volcano Erupted; Lust for a Fight?; Around the Front; The Jewish Accent) appeared in the 194647 version of Story of My Life. These chapters seem to form a coherent part of the text of Story of My Life, and we follow Eri Jabotinskys lead in publishing them in this volume.

However, it is also important to note that Eri Jabotinsky took several other chapters from Story of the Jewish Legion and placed them under the title Story of My Life. His Hebrew version of Story of the Jewish Legion in Avtobiografiyah begins with the chapter Between the Barracks and the War Office, which was published as the fifth chapter in the original Russian and English versions of Story of the Jewish Legion. We do not understand the need to lengthen Story of My Life at the expense of Story of the Jewish Legion, and therefore have rejected adding to our text entire blocks that have already appeared in print in English. It should be noted, however, that in the case of the 194647 Hebrew edition, Eri Jabotinskys editorial decision had no real consequences for the reader; because Story of the Jewish Legion followed immediately on the heels of Story of My Life, no text was lost.

In sum, in our English edition of Story of My Life, we wanted to present a text that was complete yet distinct from Story of the Jewish Legion. Therefore we included the additional materials about World War I that appear in the 194647 edition but stopped at the point where Story of the Jewish Legion begins. To that end, the text in this volume concludes with the chapter The Jewish Accent (Hadagesh hayehudi).

On a different issue, we also note that Jabotinskys language choiceHebrewis curious. The editors of the 1936 volume underscore this fact, remarking that Story of My Life was written by the authors hand in Hebrew. The essays that follow were written for the most part in Russian and translated into Hebrew by others.

To emphasize the rigor and accuracy of the Hebrew text, the editors underscored the participation of Yehoshua Ravnitzky, the well-known Hebrew writer, in preparing the 1936 volume, noting that it was Ravnitzkys fate to be Z. Jabotinskys first teacher of Hebrew, and he now helped us with useful and trustworthy advice in Hebrew in the first edition of Zeev Jabotinskys selected works.

As we have mentioned, the English text that appears here was found in the Jabotinsky archive located in the Jabotinsky Institute in Tel Aviv. It is hard for us to say when the translation was made or whether there were plans to publish this translation. Additionally, the identity of the translator is a mystery. Was it Samuel Katz, the translator of Story of the Jewish Legion and later Jabotinskys biographer? Or was it someone else whose identity is hidden? At this point we do not know. The editors here can only speculate that, although the translator had an excellent command of English, English was likely not his native language, due to certain nonidiomatic usages.

Unable to resolve these mysteries at this time, we prefer to turn to Zeev Jabotinsky, Vladimir Jabotinskys grandson, with gratitude. Mr. Jabotinsky has given us the opportunity to make this text available to the English-speaking reader.

INTRODUCTION

Muse and Muscle

Story of My Life and the Invention of Vladimir Jabotinsky

BRIAN HOROWITZ

Vladimir Jabotinskys autobiography, Story of My Life (1936), was written with a political purpose: to provide the reader with a portrait of a charismatic leader who has acquired his right to lead by virtue of his biographyhis family, spiritual origins, and practical experiences. In the book Jabotinsky describes his personal development during his childhood and early adult years in Odessa, Rome, St. Petersburg, Vienna, and Istanbul, during Russias Silver Age, a period known for individuals spiritual searching and at the same time characterized by political violence, radicalism, and pogroms. Producing a self-image radically different from those of his supporters in the 1930s, Jabotinsky offers few signs of the militarist leader, the hostile enemy of socialism, or the angry critic of Chaim Weizmann that he would become. Jabotinsky emphasizes his softer qualities and depicts himself as an easygoing youth for whom school was secondary. His true learning took place through active, real-life encounters and by way of stringent self-criticism.