well-intentioned, could effect any meaningful change. When a serious po-
grom occurred that very same month in Bialystok, doubts about the suc-
cess of the meeting began to multiply. The Baltimore Jewish Comment,
which on August 18 had hailed the conference as “the most important Jew-
ish demand for rights in Russia ever made to a responsible representative
of the Russian Government,” admitted four weeks later that “so far as the
Jews are concerned, the visit of M. Witte was largely thrown away.”
The episode reflected the state of communal disarray. Some Jews wor-
ried about the image of Jewish power projected by the press, others warned
of harmful consequences to Russian Jewry, and still others feared that
Witte’s real achievement was a turn in American public sympathy toward
Russia. Jewish radicals in particular condemned the conference, arguing, as
did Abraham Cahan of the Socialist Yiddish Forward, that only a revolution
in Russia would bring about Jewish liberation. A good number of critics
denounced the hofjudische diplomatic approach that assumed the right of a
few powerful men to speak for the community. Some Russian Jews inter-
rupted a synagogue meeting in Chicago, tossing around handbills that de-
rided the stewards as scheming politicians. The Zionist Maccabaean ranted
about the unrepresentative character of the Jewish delegation. Had the
Jewish people been consulted—and that should have included Jews in Rus-
sia as well as America—they most likely would have shunned an interview
with Witte. Feeding the growing indictment of elitist leadership, the jour-
nal stated: “We should be only too glad to see Mr. Schiff and Mr. Oscar
Straus elected to carry out a Jewish policy—but it must be a policy that has
the sanction of the people who elect them to bear their messages to the na-
tions.” Even the loyal American Hebrew saw the persistence of “mediaeval
practices” in the absence of a modern representative body. One Jewish
newspaper concluded that Jewish complaints about the meeting had vi-
tiated the chance to make a strong impression on Witte. If the Russian sur-
veyed the gamut of reactions, “he will probably come to the conclusion
that the Jews do not know what they want themselves; how, then, can Rus-
sia be expected to give it to them.”
Criticism failed to goad Schiff into a public debate. Only to Paul Na-
than, who also complained that the Americans should have linked the Jew-
ish question with the larger issue of radical changes in the Russian govern-
ment, did he defend the strategy of asking solely for Jewish equality. “If the
Russian population is not satisfied with its Government... it is obviously
for the whole Russian people to take such steps as may bring about a
change.” Financial support of societies like Kennan’s Friends of Russian
Freedom was rather harmless, but Schiff probably reasoned that it would
have been highly irresponsible for the stewards to behave as if international
Jewry was fomenting a revolution against the czar. On the issue of demo-
cratic versus elitist leadership he had no comment at all.^39
Captivity and Redemption 139