ロシア帝国とシオニズム : 「参入のための退出」、その社会学的考察

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Zionism has generally been understood and explained in the context of Europe, and usually in the context of Western Europe, especially Germany. However, despite the well- known fact that a majority of the Jews who participated in the Zionist movement were from the Russian Empire, little attention has been given to the Empire as a place or context that has the ideological, not demographic, origin of Zionism. This article investigates the context of meaning (Sinnzusammenhang: M. Weber) between Zionism and the Russian Empire from a historical-sociological perspective by analyzing the Zionist discourses with special reference to the latest works on Russian (-Jewish) history. The Russian Empire was neither a nation-state nor a would-be nation-state seeking homogeneity, but was literally an empire. The significant characteristics of the Empire relating to the Jews and Zionism can be summed up in the following three points. First, the ethnic Russians (Great Russians), or the ruling people of the Empire, regarded themselves as culturally inferior especially to the peoples living in the western region of the Empire. Hence, they had little incentive to force their culture upon those peoples. Furthermore, because the Empire's ability to acquire new territories was greater than its capacity to rule them, it had to rely on the subjected peoples, especially the local elites among them. Thus, the peoples in the Empire could have autonomy to some extent. Second, there were diverse categories to which some virtual autonomy or recognition as a distinctive collectivity were granted by the Tsar. That is, the administrative unit of the Empire was not necessarily a nation, but could have been a religion, sect, or estate. Third, the level of oppression by the government differed among ethnic groups. The Jews were imposed on the severest restrictions among the peoples in the Empire, which means that there were some peoples whose political and social conditions were better than those of the Jews. Since Jews became members of the Empire after the Partitions of Poland, they were subjected to some special discrimination laws. However, both the Tsarist government and the Russian intellectual society did not view the "Jewish Question" from a racialistic or essentialistic perspective. Under such circumstances (including the aforementioned characteristics of the Empire), the most feasible option for the Jews was neither to evacuate from the Empire nor to reconcile themselves to the low position there, but to consider "the presentation of [the collective] self" (E. Goffman) thorough acculturation (not assimilation) to be recognized as "useful," or at least as "harmless" citizens in the eyes of the government and the other peoples. In the early nineteenth century, Haskalah (Jewish enlightenment) came to the Russian Jewish society, and together with the increase of distrust toward the traditional Jewish establishment came the emergence of maskilim or Jewish enlighteners, who played the role of "the presentation" by reforming and modernizing Judaism and the Jewish society as a whole. The origin of Zionism has generally been set at the time of the 1881 Pogrom and the subsequent enactment of the notorious May Law in 1882. When the arguments of Zionists leaders such as L. Pinsker, M. L. Lilienblum, and Ahad Ha'am are investigated, while keeping the characteristics of the Empire in mind, it becomes clear that their aim was along the lines of the "presentation of the collective self." Through the pursuit of recognition by the Empire as a nation, they hoped for improvements in their own status there. Zionists realized that the road to emancipation through recognition as a good citizen of the Empire had now failed, but they did not abandon their attempts to integrate into the Empire. Rather, they reinterpreted the society of the Empire and came up with ways to be integrated as an honorable nation, and considered Palestine to be the pivotal basis of "nationness." They hardly expected that most Jews would evacuate the Empire to Palestine, but they assumed that only a part of the Jews would take part in building a Jewish home there. It was through this process that Zionism was created. Also, national movements in Eastern Europe influenced the Zionists' thoughts. The pogrom was perceived as a foretaste of growing national movements of the peoples around them. Thus, they came to the conclusion that the nation was the most modern form of collective identity, which was based upon the modern idea of self-determination. Accordingly, for Zionists to be recognized as a nation was significant not only vis-à-vis the non-Jews, but also vis-à-vis the Jews and their intellectuals in particular. As has been pointed out in several works on Zionism, assimilation of the Jews had been one of the weightiest problems for the Zionists besides anti-Semitism. To counter with this tendency among the Russian Jews, especially among their intellectuals, they defined the Jews as a racial existence. Race is a notion based upon essentialism which means that those who are born into a specific race cannot become members of another. But they thought this was not enough. What they considered to be important for containing assimilation was that the Jew be an attractive idea for the Jewish people, especially for their intellectuals. For this purpose, they though it crucial that the Jew should be considered as a nation also for the Jews themselves. Hence, Zionism also had significance for the problem of the assimilation of the Jews who would have continued to live in the Empire. In this manner, Russian Zionism, especially in its early phase, despite its ambiguity and ambivalence in some respects, can be said to be an attempt of integration into the Empire with equal rights without losing their identity and collectivity. It was "Exodus for Acculturation."

著者

鶴見太郎
日本学術振興会

ロシア帝国とシオニズム : 「参入のための退出」、その社会学的考察

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