Communist Party of Palestine called Stalin 'defender of humanity and the Jewish people'
Propaganda poster of the Communist Party Palestine calling for support for Stalin and the Red Army ("defender of humanity and the Jewish people") in WWII
Communism, Zionism and the Jews: A Fleeting Romance
Material courtesy of Mosaic
Communist parties around the world, including those in the US and Palestine, received instructions from Moscow, which means they opposed Zionism. With one major exception.
One of the many virtues of Martin Cramer's article "Who Saved Israel in 1947?" is that it recalls decades of communism's hostility to Zionism, both before and after the moment when, to everyone's surprise, the Soviet Union came out in support of the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine and in November 1947 voted in favor of a plan to partition the UN.
As Kramer points out, the support for Zionist aspirations expressed in a speech by Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromykoat the United Nations on May 14, 1947, was an unexpected reversal of the traditional Soviet policy of denouncing Zionism as a particularly pernicious form of bourgeois nationalism. Indeed, Zionist activity was banned in the USSR from the early 1920s, the Soviet Union welcomed the Jewish pogroms perpetrated by Palestinian Arabs in 1929, and in the 1930s began to develop its own “Jewish homeland” program in Birobidzhan.
But was this surprise useful? Cramer showed that with regard to Zionism, Stalin's policy was conditioned not by internal anti-Semitism, but by a subtle calculation of the interests of the USSR. For all his antipathy towards the Jews, the Soviet dictator was quite capable of promoting their interests if it helped him achieve his own, and he could just as easily change course on the same grounds, which became obvious rather quickly.
Below I would like to discuss one of the consequences of the constant fluctuations of Soviet policy, namely its impact on communist parties around the world. Since these parties received instructions from Moscow, until 1943 from the Comintern (Communist International) and then from the international department of the CPSU(b)-CPSU, any turn in Soviet foreign policy required a corresponding turn in the position of the satellite parties of different countries.
Moscow's sudden support for the Jewish state directly affected two foreign parties, the tiny Palestinian Communist Party (PCP) and the larger Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). Jews were extremely well represented in both organizations; both had a short-term benefit from the change in Soviet policy in 1947.
PKP vegetated for many years. The Comintern constantly demanded that she recruit Arabs into her ranks, the British Mandatory authorities subjected her to constant persecution, and she herself became increasingly distant from the majority of the Jewish community in Palestine. In addition, the membership of the party was reduced due to the departure of those who were devoted to its ideology to the USSR or Western Europe in search of more promising places for the construction of communism.
In 1945, a small faction broke away from the PKP, consisting of supporters of the idea of establishing a Jewish national home in Palestine and calling itself the Jewish Communist Party. However, when the USSR called for the partition of Palestine, the PKP complied with Moscow's decision and allied itself with the Jewish Communists (and some Arabs). Thus was born a new organization, the Israeli Communist Party (MAKI), and after the declaration of the State of Israel in May 1948, four Communist deputies were elected to the first Knesset.
This was the period of its highest prosperity. By 1949, disillusioned with hopes for a Soviet now dominated by anti-Zionism, Eliezer Preminger, one of the youngest members of the Knesset, left MAKI and re-established the Jewish Communist Party. He acted as its sole representative, until he eventually joined MAPAM, the predecessor of the current Meretz party, which professed a Marxist ideology, but was not formally communist.
Much more weighty was the influence of the fluctuations of Soviet policy on the fate of the CPUSA, which had always been a hostage to Soviet dictatorship. When in 1932 Moscow, possessed by a revolutionary spirit, demanded to oppose all other radicals and socialists, the American communists called Franklin Roosevelt a fascist and condemned the New Deal, thereby abandoning a potentially useful alliance with forces that would have been ready to sympathize with them, before all in the American labor movement. In 1939, after four years of attempts to make amends and efforts to mobilize the Popular Front, which was led from Moscow, the party again jeopardized all achievements by obediently supporting the pact between Stalin and Hitler.
The relations of the CPUSA with the Jewish community were even more tense. Although Jewish representation in the party was disproportionately high (in the 1930s they made up about 40% of the membership), its activities were contrary to the interests of the vast majority of American Jews. In the 1920s, she led anti-religious demonstrations in which young communist Jews ostentatiously ate pork in front of synagogues on Yom Kippur. In 1929, the Jewish Communist newspaper Freiheit called the Jewish pogroms perpetrated by Palestinian Arabs an anti-imperialist act. In 1939, the party defended the pact between the Soviet Union and the Nazis and approved the assassination of Bund leaders Viktor Alter and Heinrich Ehrlich. Jewish organizations repeatedly opposed the CPUSA, and most Jews tried to stay away from it.
Then for a short time the wheel turned in the opposite direction. The CPUSA was resurrected after World War II, and American Jews became much more sympathetic towards it. This was explained by the fact that, firstly, the Red Army took the main blow in the fight against Hitler and saved the remnants of European Jewry, and secondly, immediately after the war, when the surviving Jews, who lost their homes and suffered heavy losses, desperately tried to break out from Europe, not the Soviet Union, but Britain, America's great ally, kept the gates to Palestine closed.
True, by the end of 1947, as the Cold War gained momentum, the attitude became more and more cool. The CPUSA was sharply criticized in Congress, where they condemned those who fell into the "black list of Hollywood", and having taken an even more militant position, the party as a result has halved. Decisively severing all ties with the Democratic Party, the Communists stepped up pressure on Henry Wallace, urging him to become a left-liberal presidential candidate. During Franklin D. Roosevelt's third term, Wallace served as vice president; after his death, he remained in the government with the rank of Minister of Commerce, and in 1946 Truman removed him from his post for disagreeing with a firm policy towards the USSR.
And against the backdrop of these events, the Soviet Union suddenly expressed its intention to support the UN partition plan and the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. The CPUSA immediately followed suit, followed by Wallace, who sincerely praised the USSR for this move and took the chance to denounce America's alliance with "imperialist" Britain.
The Truman administration also supported partition in November 1947, over strong objections from Secretary of State George Marshall and other senior officials. However, just a month later, Washington began to express concern: Marshall announced that the United States was joining the UN call for an arms embargo on the Middle East, that is, not to supply weapons to the nascent Jewish state. At the same time, Britain continued to arm the Arab countries, which threatened to destroy Israel as soon as it was born.
Against the background of these unrest, the communists and non-communist left movements saw that new opportunities were opening up before them. New York held local elections for a vacant congressional seat, and the party had a chance to evaluate its electoral strength by including the support of the Jewish state in the candidate's program. The Democratic deputy who represented the predominantly Jewish Bronx in Congress resigned, and a special election was scheduled for February 17, 1948.
In New York, the American Labor Party (ARP) prepared to support Wallace in the 1948 presidential race. This party was created mainly by Jewish textile workers' unions to allow those who gravitated towards the socialists to support Roosevelt without voting for the Democrats Tammany Hall, but by the time described, many communists had penetrated the party, and the CP USA actually took over it. Despite its name, the ARP operated almost exclusively in New York State. Now the ARP has nominated Leo Isaacson, a young lawyer who for one term represented the party in the state legislature and unsuccessfully ran for city council chairman, to fill the vacant congressional seat.
Isaacson was close to, but not a member of, the CPUSA. He was an ardent Zionist, and at the same time he was sharply critical of the Marshall Plan to rebuild war-torn Europe, saying that the Truman administration was "trying to push fascism through the back door." During the current campaign, Isaacson constantly said that the administration had betrayed the Jews. He accused Truman of currying favor with Arab dictators and the oil lobby, demanded that the arms embargo be lifted, that he fully support partition and the creation of a Jewish state.
A year earlier, before Gromyko's speech, American communists would have been embarrassed to endorse Zionism so openly. But now they have vociferously supported both the Jewish state and Isaacson. Party activists went door to door, organized campaign events and handed out campaign literature. Wallace, who took part in Isaacson's campaign (the fact that he himself voted for the arms embargo, was modestly silent), claimed that Truman "talks for the Jews, but in reality - for the Arabs." The party's allies—singer Paul Robeson, popular politician and ARP member Vito Marcantonio, and labor leader Michael "Red Mike" Quill—were calling for Isaacson to be voted over the Democratic candidate who, in turn, was being campaigned for by Eleanor Roosevelt and the mayor of New York. York William O'Dwyer.
The results were amazing. Isaacson won a resounding victory with 22,700 votes compared to 12,500 for the Democratic nominee. They were followed by a representative of the Liberal Party, which consisted of trade union leaders who were dissatisfied with the role of the Communists in the ARP, and, of course, a Republican. Bewildered Democrats began to worry about Truman's prospects in November of that year, and an emboldened Henry Wallace, who was to run for the Progressive Party in that election, predicted that his "Gideon Army" would shake up the political establishment.
The CP USA was delighted. Hoping that Isaacson's victory would promise widespread support for Wallace, she ignored the warnings of her own Labor supporters, who believed that Wallace's support would not stop or weaken the growing anti-communist sentiment in the country, but rather strengthen it. They turned out to be right. In May, against the advice of Secretary Marshall, President Truman quickly recognized the fledgling State of Israel as the de facto State, shattering the CPUSA's hopes that American Jews would turn their backs on the Democratic Party en masse and vote for Wallace.
Of course, Truman's decision to recognize Israel was hardly the single, or even the most important factor in Wallace's failure in November. This candidate's own incompetence, the obvious signs that the Communists were holding the Progressive Party under their control, and the development of the Cold War also played a role. Wallace received only 1.1 million votes, that is, 2.37% of the ballots cast, far behind the DixiecratStroma Thurmond. As for Isaacson, his tenure in Congress was short-lived: Republicans, Democrats, and Liberals united and fielded a common candidate who beat him in the 1948 general election with 74,000 votes to Isaacson's 44,000.
The Progressive Party of 1948 was the last attempt by the CPUSA and its allies to make headway in American political life. Shortly after the election, the congress of industrial trade unions began active operations to oust the communist trade unions from its ranks, thereby destroying one of the last bastions of party influence. Even Isaacson and Wallace soon abandoned the Communists, both because of the CPUSA's pro-Soviet stance on the Korean War.
Support for Zionism by the Soviet Union also did not last very long. As Martin Kramer points out, Stalin was apparently frightened by the sheer number of Soviet Jews who, in September 1948, came out to greet Golda Meir, Israel's first ambassador to the USSR, in a Moscow synagogue. The persecution of Yiddish culture, the arrests of prominent Jewish intellectuals associated with the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee active during World War II, and the fight against the "rootless cosmopolitans" of 1949 were the prelude to an aggressive and full-scale anti-Semitic campaign that ended only after Stalin's death in 1953 .
Both MAKI and the CPUSA continued to lose Jewish supporters. None of these parties ever became a significant political force.