Вехи биографии Теодора Герцля. Сионизм и антисемитизм в конце XIX - начале XX в.
Milestones in the Biography of Theodor Herzl. Zionism and Antisemitism in the Late XIX - Early XXI Centuries

Summary/Abstract: The article examines a range of factors and events in a number of European countries over the past decades of the XIX - early XX centuries that influenced the formation of the worldview of Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), a Hungarian Jew, a Viennese journalist brought up on German culture, very far from the Jewish tradition. The violent surge of various kinds of antisemitic ideologies and the antisemitic movement that developed on their basis, primarily in Germany, Austria-Hungary and France, had a great influence on the formation of the views of such a charismatic figure as T. Herzl was. As evidenced by the analysis of his diaries and a number of publications, he gradually abandoned his previous assimilatory sentiments characteristic of many Jews in Central and Western Europe of the 1860 - 1870s and became the creator of political Zionism, the ideology of the need for the exodus of Jews from Europe and the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. The emergence of such sentiments and ideas took place in the atmosphere of “la belle époque” - the last decades of the XIX century up to the First World War. At that time and earlier, national movements of Greeks, Italians, Slavic peoples arose and developed rapidly. The spread of nationalism in Europe gave Herzl and his followers a sense of the legitimacy of the Zionist movement. Another important factor that should be taken into account when analyzing the causes of the birth of Zionism was the process of emancipation of European Jewry, which changed its socio-economic, professional and cultural appearance. The reaction of Herzl and other Jewish figures of the time to anti-Semitism and physical violence was decidedly different from the attitude towards Judeophobia and pogroms in an earlier period. The article analyzes a number of postulates characteristic of speeches and publications of the inspirers of antisemitism. Considerable attention is paid to the very figure of Herzl. His inherent qualities: organizational abilities, great ambition, and personality magnetism played a significant role in the formation of Zionism as an ideology and global movement.

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