The idea of He-Halutz was conceived during the crisis that overtook Russian Jewry in the aftermath of the 1881 pogroms. This awakening was influenced indirectly by the Russian revolutionary movement, which called upon the intelligentsia to "go out to the people." Two of the societies that formed at this time - Bilu, which called for settlement in Erez Israel, and Am Olam, which advocated settlement in the United States - were pioneer movements that imposed the concepts of "self-fulfillment" upon their members and planned for collective or cooperative settlement. At the beginning of the 20th century, a Jewish youth movement made up of small groups gradually came into being. Menahem Ussishkin gave impetus to this development in 1904, when he called for the establishment of "a general Jewish workers' organization made up of unmarried young people of sound body and spirit. Each member would be committed to settle for a period of three years in Erez Israel, where he would render army service for the Jewish people, his weapons being not the sword and the rifle, but the spade and the plow" (in Our Program). Such movements arose under different names in various countries: in America He-Halutz, founded by Eliezer Joffe in 1905 ; in Russia, a number of societies, among them Bilu'im Hadashim (new Bilu'im) and He-Halutz. They were encouraged by the Erez Israel workers, who called for the settlement of halutzim (A. D. Gordon in 1904, Joseph Vitkin in 1905, the Ha-Po'el ha-Za'ir in 1908, etc.) and sent emissaries abroad to urge young Jews to settle in Erez Israel.