| Abstract: | In seeking to stake out the most advantageous position possible for Jews in the political community of the Second Polish Republic, Zionist spokesmen set forth a conception of citizenship linked to national autonomy instead of to individual civic equality. That conception differed significantly from the prevailing understandings of citizenship at the time in Poland, Germany, Austria, and Imperial Russia. It also departed from the regnant contemporary theoretical understanding of citizenship. Zionist explorations of the dimensions of citizenship in Poland during the 1920s helped lay the groundwork for the ethnically differentiated citizenship model adopted by the State of Israel. |
