An extraordinarily high percentage, perhaps a majority, of those involved in the Jewish revolutionary parties left Russia in the years 1903–14. As a result, labor parties and ideologies that had formed themselves in the Pale of Settlement now developed strong offshoots overseas. There, subject to radically alien conditions, they underwent a process of constant mutation, while nonetheless retaining much of their original group identity. Thus, where in Part Two, the revolutionary experience was a culmination, here it is a starting point.

In many important ways, the problems facing the graduates of 1905 in Palestine and in America were analogous. In both countries, the newcomers faced institutions established and dominated by the political generation of the 1880's. Thus, in Palestine the national bank, the Hebrew press, Zionist functions and influence were largely concentrated in the hands of such men as Levontin, Ben Yehuda, Dizengof, Ha-Cohen, and Khisin. In America the labor organizations were likewise controlled by veterans, by Cahan, Weinstein, and Pine.

The new arrivals brought with them a faith in the party politics that they had experienced in Russia. They believed in centralization and discipline, doctrinal unity and orthodoxy.