The Rise and Downfall of Cassandra: World War I and Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky’s Self-Perception

In his 1912 article “A Horoscope” Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky described the hypothetical circumstances for the outbreak of the next world war, which previsioned the eruption of the actual war in 1914. The success of that prognosis incepted the formation of Jabotinsly’s self-image as a prophet, which he and his admirers maintained during his career. But his prophetic confidence often disrupted his ability to see the events around him outside of his political paradigm and created significant blind-spots in the scope of his political vision. The essay attempts to pinpoint the genealogy of the development of Jabotinsky’s self-image as a prophet and to underscore the circumstances of World War I that enabled its emergence. I am interested in the dynamics of the relationship between personal mythology and history, and more particularly in the circular dependency between the understanding of one’s past and patterns of self-perception and behaviour in the present.