Selig Soskin

Summary

Zionist colonization expert who coedited the journal Altneuland (journal) with Franz Oppenheimer and Otto Warburg in 1904-1906, and was among the few Zionists considerably engaged in the German colonial service (Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, PDF p.26).

At the Sixth Zionist Congress in 1903 he was appointed with Oppenheimer and Warburg to the board of the Kommission zur Erforschung Palästinas (CEP) (PDF p.36).
Soskin’s memoir records that the first Altneuland editorial was formulated by Oppenheimer and that, despite Oppenheimer’s limited Zionist dedication, “his mastery of language was unmatched by other members of the commission”; on Samos, Soskin held its autonomy had raised its population density to 117 inhabitants per square kilometre (PDF p.134, p.142, p.148).
Soskin, born and raised in Crimea and trained in agronomy in Berlin and Rostock, travelled in Africa and South America and in 1906 worked as an agricultural advisor in German West Africa; in Altneuland he argued political sovereignty was neither requisite nor beneficial for settler colonization, a settlement core with local-government toleration being superior, and demanded “rational, forward-looking colonial policy” (PDF p.154, p.156, p.170).
Soskin repeatedly criticised non-Jewish travel accounts — Fitzner, Schwöbel, Rüegg — for ignoring or traducing Jewish settlement, holding that ignoring Jewish agricultural prowess rejected the Jewish claim to the land itself (PDF p.190).

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