Author(s): Hillel Halkin

Judaica

Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880-1940) was a man of huge paradoxes and contradictions and is one of the most misunderstood Zionist political leaders - a first-rate novelist, a celebrated Russian journalist, and founder of the branch of Zionism now headed by Benjamin Netanyahu. This biography, the first in English in more than two decades, undertakes to answer central questions about Jabotinsky as a man, a political thinker, and a leader. Hillel Halkin sets aside the stereotypes Jabotinsky has been reduced to, and reveals the public figure and private man who inspired both deep devotion and furious protest. Halkin explores Jabotinsky's great writing talent, relationship with his hometown, Odessa, and the personal sacrifices he made as leader in the 1920s and 1930s of the Revisionist Party, the main right-wing force of the Zionist movement. Halkin also addresses Jabotinsky's position, unique among the great figures of Zionist history, as both a territorial maximalist and a passionate believer in democracy.
The author inquires why Jabotinsky was often accused of fascist tendencies even though he abhorred authoritarian and totalitarian politics, and how he could argue fervently in favour of free enterprise while also supporting an extensive welfare state. Few figures in twentieth-century Jewish life were quite so admired and loathed, and Halkin's splendid, subtle book explores him with empathy and lucidity.