Describe the role of the Romanov's and reactionaries such as Leo

Pinsker in the development of modern Zionism

Role of Romanov's

The events of 1881-2

By the 1800s more than five million Jews were living in Russia, the vast majority in
conditions of desperate poverty. No liberal revolution had taken place in that country,
although Tsarist autocracy was modified by liberal ideas in the reign of Alexander II (1855-
1881). In 1861 the serfs of Russia were emancipated, and during the same period the Jews
enjoyed an incomplete emancipation under which discriminatory laws were generally not
enforced.

Then in 1881, Alexander II was assassinated. His successor, Alexander III, took pride in
describing himself as an autocrat. He promulgated the 'May Laws', which placed severe
restrictions on the areas where Jews were permitted to
reside. Jewish boys were again conscripted into the army at the age of 12 for a period of 25
years. Pogroms (riots and murderous attacks on Jewish areas and villages) took place
throughout Russia with the implied support of the
authorities.

One response to the new conditions was Jewish emigration to America. Between 1882 and
1914 some two and a quarter million Jews left for the United States. Another response was
Zionism. Leo Pinsker, a physician who had previously been one of the leading advocates of
cultural assimilation, expressed the new feelings forcibly in his pamphlet "Autoemancipation"
(1882) in which he diagnosed "Judeophobia" as an incurable disease in European
society. The pamphlet reflected the new determination that only with the restoration of a
Jewish homeland would the eternal cycle of degradation and persecution ever come to an
end.

Associations for Jewish emigration to Palestine known as 'Hovevei Zion' ('Lovers of Zion')
were founded in a number of Russian cities. One group of students from Kharkhov, calling
themselves the 'BILU' (an acronym for the
Hebrew "House of Jacob, let us arise and go") immediately left to set up a collective
settlement in Palestine.

Thousands of other young Jews followed, establishing settlements in what was then a
desolate corner of the Turkish empire, consisting very largely of malarial swamp, desert and
rocky hills, and often relying on the support of
Jewish philanthropists for their survival. In 1884 a conference of the Hovevei Zion was held
at Katowitz, in German Poland, and Leo Pinsker was elected as its first president. The
organisation was not effective politically, however, and
made very little impact outside Russia.