Stalin saved Israel in 1947
April 18, 2018
Usually they say that Truman, but Stalin could easily be such a person. In fact, thanks to Zionist diplomacy, they both saved Israel; and this is the lesson for today's Jewish state.
November 29 marked the 70th anniversary of the adoption by the UN General Assembly of Resolution 181, which recommended the division of Mandatory Palestine into two separate states - Jewish and Arab. On this day in 1947, millions of listeners clung to their radios, waiting for the results of the vote. The outcome of the vote led to spontaneous demonstrations by Zionists from various countries, because this was the first formal international recognition of the Jewish state.
To commemorate this anniversary, the Israel Mission to the United Nations has restored to its 1947 appearance the hall in Flushing Meadows, which is now the main exhibition hall of the Queens Museum and was the site of the General Assembly in those years. A plan was announced to revive the voting events in the presence of the current ambassadors of the delegate countries who then voted yes.
The position expressed by the United States attracted the most attention. In general, the vote and its aftermath is usually told as an event in which America played a major role. Israeli Ambassador to the UN Dani Danon outlined the historical context of the celebration:
Since President Truman became the first world leader to recognize a Jewish state, Israel has had no better friend than the United States of America, and the United States has had no more loyal ally than the State of Israel.
For the same reason, US Vice President Mike Pence will be the keynote speaker in New York. It looks like we will hear again and again how Harry Truman went against his State Department (or gave in less heroically to the Jewish voters) and said yes in November 1947 and then immediately recognized Israel when David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the state 14 May 1948. Once again, we are told of the Jew Eddie Jacobson, with whom Truman ran dry goods in Kansas City before the Great Depression, and who used his friendship to arrange Truman's crucial meeting with Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann in March 1948.
The details of this story have been polished over the years, including by Truman himself. In 1953, when Eddie Jacobson introduced the former president to Jewish audiences as the man "who helped create the State of Israel," Truman reinforced the impression by comparing himself to the ancient Persian ruler who brought the Jews back to Jerusalem from their Babylonian exile: "How it 'helped create' ? I am Kir.
Historians do argue about Truman's motives. But they all agree on one thing: Israel owes its creation to Truman more than to any other world leader. “Without Truman,” write Ellis and Ronald Radosh in a book about Truman and Israel, “the young State of Israel would not have survived the first difficult years and would not have succeeded thereafter.” Michael J. Cohen, author of an earlier book on Truman and Israel, argues that in 1947 and 1948, "Truman did indeed play a decisive diplomatic role in the birth of the State of Israel." Michael Oren, in Power, Faith, and Fantasy, a bestseller on America's activities in the Middle East, writes that in comparing himself to Cyrus of Persia, Truman "boasted for good reason."
The problem is simple: everything that has been said about Truman's contribution can also be said about the contribution of Joseph Stalin.
Stalin - the founding father of Israel?
In a 1998 article commemorating Israel's 50th anniversary, historian Paul Johnson discussed "a paradoxical aspect of the Zionist miracle that we didn't quite grasp then and still don't quite understand." The paradox, according to Johnson, is that “Joseph Stalin was among the founding fathers of Israel.” Twenty years later, even fewer people grasp this fact. The Soviet Union collapsed long ago, and in the memories of Israel and its supporters, he remains Nasser's patron, jailer and torturer of Jews, and propagandist of anti-Semitism. No Soviet leader has ever claimed the mantle of Cyrus. On the contrary, beginning in the 1950s, the Soviet Union did its best to erase from official history and Arab memory the fact that it supported the creation of Israel.
In the meantime, in the United States and Israel, a similar reverse process has faded from memory - the fickleness of American support for the creation of Israel.
Yes, in November 1947, the United States voted for the partition of Mandatory Palestine, but in March of the following year, they declared that such a partition could not be carried out, and instead offered a “temporary” trusteeship of the UN. On the eve of Britain's official withdrawal from Israel in May, a leading American diplomat was still urging Israeli leaders not to declare independence.
Indeed, Truman immediately recognized Israel (though de facto , not de jure ). But before that, he imposed an arms embargo on the Middle East, forcing Israel to fight for survival on its own.
Stalin's Soviet Union, on the other hand, not only voted for partition, but also became the first state to recognize Israel de jure three days after independence, and came out in support of a Jewish state long before the United States. Moreover, he strictly adhered to this line both before and after the vote and indirectly guaranteed that the young state would receive the military equipment that it desperately needed for self-defense. According to Israel's first ambassador to the UN, Aba Eban, without the Soviet voice in defense of partition (along with the votes of the four satellite countries) and without the weapons provided by the Soviet bloc, "we would not have coped with this either diplomatically or militarily." .
One may ask: even if all this is true, is there probably some purpose that makes us return to these events today? Of course, one cannot speak of the "rehabilitation" of the Stalinist Soviet Union. While this kind of trend exists in contemporary Russia, few people outside the country harbor illusions about Stalin's macabre legacy. The goal cannot be to downplay the importance of American support for Israel since 1967.
My task is different - to show how on the eve, during and after the creation of the State of Israel, its leaders creatively comprehended the post-war geopolitical order. Knowing that they did not have true friends, they guessed that the Soviet Union was becoming a powerful power, and began to seek the favor of Moscow. As a reward, they secured Soviet support, which allowed them to play on the contradictions of the Cold War and gain more support from the United States. It was a masterstroke of Zionist diplomacy.
The motives for Stalin's decision are still unclear, and it is not at all necessary that the Zionist initiatives played a decisive role in the unexpected position of the Soviet Union, which had far-reaching consequences for the Jewish state. But it is quite possible. Today, as Israel finds its way in a changing world characterized by the emergence of new forces, perhaps this historical lesson will be worth paying attention to.
It all started with a forgotten speech.
The forgotten speech that amazed the world
Shortly before noon on May 14, 1947, Andrei Gromyko, Permanent Representative of the Soviet Union to the United Nations, took the podium at the UN General Assembly Hall in Flushing Meadows, Queens.
At this moment, the Zionists of different countries were in a gloomy mood. They have not yet recovered from the shocks of the Holocaust, photographs from the Nazi death camps and the fate of hundreds of thousands of survivors who came out of the camps and forests. The vast majority of these Jews dreamed of leaving Europe, and many embarked on long journeys to Mediterranean ports in an effort to reach Palestine. A quarter of a million Jews were in displaced persons camps in Germany and Austria, hoping that their pleas would be heard and they would be allowed to leave freely for their Jewish homeland.
In Palestine, thanks to the pro-Arab policy of Great Britain, the doors to Jewish immigration were closed as tightly as during the war. The Royal Navy intercepted ships heading for Palestine with a human cargo of Jewish survivors and sent "illegals" to sinister internment camps in Cyprus. Some Palestinian Jews responded to these draconian methods by taking up arms and rebelling against the British, setting off an endless cycle of murder and punishment. Others have tried to appeal to the conscience of the world community, with very modest success. Although the Yishuv, the organized Jewish population of Palestine, was ready for independence, no great power spoke out in defense of the Jewish state.
In February 1947, Britain announced the end of the mandate and the transfer of the Palestinian problem to the UN. In May, the UN General Assembly began the creation of a special body - the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), whose task was to "establish the facts" and make recommendations for "solving the Palestinian problem."
Against this backdrop, Andrei Gromyko delivered a speech on May 14, briefly describing the activities of UNSCOP from a Soviet point of view. None of the Zionists had reason to expect much from this speech. The Soviet Union has always declared Zionism a reactionary, if not a fascist movement, an instrument of Western, primarily British, imperialism. From the end of the war, the USSR maintained the position that the "Jewish problem" could be solved not by moving Jews to Palestine, but only by "the complete eradication of all germs of fascism" in Europe itself. The communist parties in the Middle East, including in Palestine itself, denounced the idea of partition as an imperialist plot. The party line demanded a "united, democratic, independent Palestine" - where the number of Arabs would be twice the number of Jews.
Thirty-seven-year-old Gromyko was already a seasoned Soviet diplomat who had previously served as ambassador to Washington. A Briton who worked for the United Nations called him "sullen and blunt." Zionist diplomats and American Jewish leaders who knew him well had no illusions about this "Thunderer", as they called him. Eban later recalled that “both Eliyahu Epstein, who headed our office in Washington, and [Moshe] Sharett [head of the political department of the Jewish Agency] spoke Russian fluently and repeatedly had conversations with Gromyko and his deputy, Semyon Tsarapkin, and no hint of there was no Soviet support."
The American government did not make such hints either. The State Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the CIA constantly warned that if the US voted for partition, the USSR would win Arab gratitude by opposing it, and no one doubted that Moscow would oppose it. Just four days before Gromyko's speech, the American embassy in Moscow warned that at the next UN session, the Soviet Union would oppose "the formation in all or part of the territory of Palestine of a Jewish state, which the USSR will regard as a Zionist tool of the West, inevitably hostile to the Soviet Union" and insist on "Independence of Palestine with its current predominantly Arab population".
Gromyko did not say anything out of the ordinary at the beginning of his speech. The British mandate over Palestine, he explained at length, had not justified itself; as violence spread, the country turned into a "paramilitary and police state". The mandate should be abolished. No wonder: the Soviet Union was bitterly anti-British and certainly not going to insist that Britain retain the outposts of its empire.
But then, to everyone's surprise, Gromyko turned to the topic of the Holocaust. The Jewish people, he said, “suffered in the last war exceptional disasters and sufferings. These calamities and sufferings, without exaggeration, defy description.” Jews "subjected to almost complete physical extermination." And now “hundreds of thousands of Jews roam the various countries of Europe”, many of them are in camps for displaced persons, where they “continue to suffer great hardships ... It is time, not in words, but in deeds,” Gromyko said, “to help these people ... It is the duty of the United Nations."
What should be done? Previously, the position of the Soviet Union was that the solution to the fate of these hundreds of thousands of homeless Jews must be found in Europe. But now the situation has changed.
Not a single state in Western Europe, Gromyko declared, was in a position to provide proper assistance to the Jewish people in protecting their rights and their very existence from violence on the part of the Nazis and their allies. This is a hard fact. But, unfortunately, like all facts, it must be recognized ... This circumstance <...> explains the desire of the Jews to create their own state.
And then, like a bolt from the blue:
It would be unfair not to take this into account and to deny the right of the Jewish people to realize such aspiration. The denial of such a right to the Jewish people cannot be justified, especially considering all that they experienced during the Second World War.
The Soviet Union, Gromyko noted, would prefer "a single Arab-Jewish state with equal rights for Jews and Arabs." But if the UN Commission considers this option "unfeasible in view of the soured relations between Jews and Arabs", there is a "justified" alternative: "the division of Palestine into two independent independent states: Jewish and Arab."
Eban couldn't believe his ears:
Nothing foreshadowed such an unexpected success ... Moscow changed its traditional position and proposed the creation of a Jewish state. I came to the UN with a pessimistic view of the balance of power; now I have revised the forecasts... For the first time, a ray of hope has appeared in our political firmament. Now one did not have to be a romantic optimist to predict the success of Zionism. Gromyko became a Zionist hero.
The news brought the Yishuv into great excitement. “Palestine Enthusiastic about Soviet Position,” shouted the New York Times headline. The largest Hebrew Yishuv poet Nathan Alterman published the poem "Gromyko's Telegram". Here is an excerpt from it:
I have no words.
Yishuv in amazement.
Understand: for a long time
we were deprived of news
with the taste of manna ...
This is a healthy, warm, kind feeling
of a swimmer struggling with the waves, to whom
a lifeline was suddenly thrown from the shore .
David Ben-Gurion soon met with Gromyko in New York. After that, trying not to exaggerate the significance of the speech, he stated that he received from Gromyko "additional explanations" that were "positive" and "did not in the least diminish the impression" made by the speech at the UN, which had "moral and political value."
The evolution of Soviet support
As it turned out, Ben-Gurion's caution was unnecessary. Over the next two years, the Soviet Union proved to be the most consistent supporter of the Jewish "state on the road" and then of Israel among the great powers. At least five major events can be identified in the evolution of Soviet support.
(1) When the UNSCOP recommended partition in September 1947, the Soviet Union immediately supported it. On November 26, during the general debate ahead of the historic vote, Gromyko immediately sided with the Zionists, calling it "unacceptable"Arab objection that partition is a "historical injustice":
…if only because the Jewish people have been associated with Palestine for a long historical period of time. In addition, we cannot lose sight of <...> the situation in which the Jewish people found themselves as a result of the last world war ... The solution of the question of Palestine on the basis of its division into two independent states will be of great historical significance, since such a solution will meet the legitimate demands of the Jewish people, hundreds of thousands of whose representatives, as you know, are still homeless, without their own homes, who have found only temporary shelter in special camps in the territories of some Western European states.
The Soviet Union voted for partition along with its satellites Belarus, Ukraine, Poland and Czechoslovakia. (Another satellite, Yugoslavia, abstained.)
(2) In March 1948, when the United States moved away from the idea of partition, the Soviet Union stood firm and strongly opposed the US alternative offer of a UN trusteeship. On April 20, as the British Mandate was in its last days, Gromyko denounced the idea of a guardianship that would put Palestine "in a position of colonial slavery". Only division into independent states "would satisfy <...> the legitimate aspirations of the Jewish people, who suffered so much during the existence of the Hitler regime." If the custody issue was put to a vote, Gromyko warned, the Soviet Union would vote against it.
(3) Also in early 1948, the Soviet Union, although not sending its own equipment, did not interfere with the conclusion of the most important arms deal for Israel from Czechoslovakia, which provided Israel with an advantage in the war with the Palestinian Arabs, and no one doubted the imminence of this war. The Czechs were guided by practical motives: they needed foreign currency. But the deal depended on the consent of the USSR (and, according to some sources, on Stalin's personal permission).
The supply of weapons made it possible to provide each Israeli recruit with their own weapons and sufficient ammunition. The weapons arrived at the very last moment, allowing the Haganah to continue their advance towards independence ("Plan Dalet").
“They saved the country, I have no doubt about that,” Ben-Gurion said two decades later. “The Czech weapons helped us a lot, they saved us, and I strongly doubt that without them we would have survived the first month.” Golda Meir, in her memoirs, also recalled that without weapons from the Eastern Bloc, “who knows if we would have stood <…> in the dark days of the beginning of the war, until the situation changed in June 1948?”
(4) In June 1948, as Israel began to gain victories, the USSR supported most of Israel's important objections to the arrangement plan promoted by the UN mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte. In response to Bernadotte's proposal to transfer the entire Negev to Transjordan, Foreign Minister V.M. e. under British control" - and must be rejected. (“Comrade Stalin agrees,” Molotov added to the document.)
(5) The USSR also supported Israel on the issue of Palestinian refugees. Contrary to Bernadotte's proposal to give these Arabs the right to return to the territory of the Jewish state, the Soviet Union believed that "the Jews should be given the opportunity to reach an agreement with the Arabs on this issue in the course of peace negotiations." At the very end of the war, in December 1948, the Soviet Union and its satellites voted against General Assembly Resolution 194, which later came to be considered the basis of the "right of return" of the Palestinian Arab refugees. (The United States voted yes.)
On the whole, Israel could hardly have hoped for more. In October 1948, Sharett reported to the Israeli Cabinet of Ministers that "the Eastern Bloc firmly supports us <...> The Russians work in the Security Council not just as our allies, but even as our emissaries". Eban noted that in these "two or three years" the Soviet Union "showed more consistency in its support of Israel than even the United States. There was no doubt, no hesitation." Moreover, the USSR constantly "sharply opposed the Arabs." According to Eban, this was due to the Soviet political style, which was fundamentally different from the American one:
Then and later, the Soviet Union was either for you or against you. If he was for you, then 100 percent; if he was against you, then 100 percent. The United States has always had diverse goals, and has tried to combine these goals into a single policy. Therefore, they have never been 100 percent for you or 100 percent against you. No one could fully trust them, and no one could completely despair of them.
Why did Stalin do this?
Why did Stalin do this? This question worried historians for 70 years. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, researchers have studied and published hundreds of Soviet documents related to the early period of Soviet-Israeli relations. These documents include political recommendations submitted to Stalin and orders from the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent to diplomats, but there is not a single document reflecting Stalin's own position.
Since the sudden change of position is distrustful, some doubted that Stalin even thought much about it. So thought the historian Walter Lacker. Ten years after the events described, Laker expressed
a certain doubt that the decision to support the formation of a Jewish state was made at the highest level; in the light of subsequent developments, one can at least assume that the actions of the Soviet Union were proposed by some advisers of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Stalin absently approved them.
Yes, it is possible - but judging by the Soviet documents, it is unlikely. In July 1947, the first secretary of the Soviet embassy in Washington claimed that "only after a thorough and exhaustive analysis of the situation in Palestine was Gromyko authorized to make a statement". During the period when the high-level analysis was being conducted, almost all of Stalin's advisers on foreign affairs were opposed to partition (as were Truman's advisers). Their general view was that supporting a Jewish state would cause "an unfavorable reaction" in the Arab world.
Only Stalin could go against the general opinion. Such a turn in official policy, argues Cold War historian Vladislav Zubok, “was unthinkable without Stalin’s personal decision <…> [It was] a risk that only Stalin himself could take.” Indeed, it would be too dangerous for everyone else to offer to support the Zionist project of a Jewish state. Molotov, then foreign minister and member of the Politburo, later recalled that when the idea of a Jewish state arose, “except us, everyone was against it. Except for me and Stalin".
So why did Stalin make such a decision? The idea of any kind of philo-Semitic feelings has not been taken seriously by any historian. In Yalta in February 1945, Stalin, in a conversation with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, called the Jews "dealers, speculators and parasites." There is no evidence that he changed this opinion, except for the worse. Benny Morris went the farthest in his estimates, who believed that the Soviet Union, in addition to Realpolitik considerations, was guided by the thought "of the horrors of the Holocaust and a sense of camaraderie towards others who suffered at the hands of the Nazis." Bernard Lewissuch a position is not convincing: "It is hard to believe that a man like Stalin, who exterminated countless millions of people in his own concentration camps, was driven by sympathy for the fate of Hitler's surviving victims."
In America in those years, the prevailing opinion was that Stalin simply wanted to sow confusion. Partition will lead to a war, which, regardless of its outcome, the USSR can somehow take advantage of. Thus, the second number in the American representation at the UN was interested in whether the Russians want partition or whether they are striving for chaos in Palestine. Leading Specialist on the Soviet Union at the State Department George Kennancalled the partition "favorable to the Soviet task of sowing discord and dissension among non-communist countries."
True, it remains unclear exactly how this disagreement could serve Soviet interests. Up until Gromyko's speech in May 1947 (and in some cases later) all the US government agencies involved in the matter claimed that the USSR would oppose partition in order to win over the Arabs, and America would have to pay a high price for supporting this project, lost Arab sympathies. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Americans were confused by the Soviet move, which seemed to them extremely illogical.
Dean Rusk, head of the United Nations at the State Department, admitted that he was "baffled by [USSR's] new pro-Zionist policies." Deputy Secretary of State Robert Lovett said he was "surprised." Kennan, too, could not imagine anything like that: "It is impossible to say exactly how the USSR will try to turn the partition in its favor." (“It must be admitted, however,” he said, “that Moscow will make every effort to find a way to seize this chance.”)
Most astute specialists in the field of Soviet politics believed then and believe now that Stalin had a very specific and convincing motive. By 1947, the Cold War was already beginning to penetrate the Mediterranean and the Middle East through Greece, Turkey and Iran. Stalin might have concluded that the question of a Jewish state could be an effective lever to remove Britain from the heart of the region. The British can continue to control the Arabs of Transjordan and Iraq under their rule and hold Egypt firmly. But the Jewish state will completely push the British out of Palestine. True, such a policy comes at a price: the (few) Arab communist parties will be disappointed. But this is a small price to pay to guarantee Britain's ignominious expulsion from one of its most important bases in the Middle East.
The leading Zionist diplomat, Eliyahu Sasson, who was a specialist in Arab politics, was already clear in June 1946. From his vantage point, he watched the Soviet Union confront Britain throughout the Middle East. He came to a prophetic conclusion:
Not only should we not be afraid that the Russians will take a position hostile to us, but on the contrary, there are serious reasons to believe that the position of the USSR will turn out to be friendly, not because they sympathize with us or hate the Arabs, but based on the need to settle political scores with the British .
Anti-British considerations also appear in some Soviet political documents, and in retrospect everything seems absolutely logical. But since nothing came from the lips of Stalin personally, the mystery remains. Molotov did not clarify the situation in 1972 when he tried to give a confused explanation for his actions:
It is one thing to be against Zionism - it has remained unchanged in politics, against the bourgeois trend, and another thing - against the Jewish people ... And the Jews, they have long fought for their state, under the Zionist flag, and we, of course, were against it. But if the people are denied this, then we crush them. .
Paradox: The State of Israel emerged thanks to the most important support of the regime, which continued to consider itself "against Zionism", "of course".
Zionists are courting Russia
Another key element I noted above will help us complete the picture. The Soviet support for the idea of partition and the formation of Israel is usually considered a "windfall" (in the words of Eban), which took the Zionists by surprise. But in the years leading up to Gromyko's speech, the Zionist leaders themselves had made great efforts to win this support. Of course, in 1947 they were surprised, but some of them believed that their years of efforts were finally beginning to bear fruit.
The main characters of this saga were Weizmann and Ben-Gurion. But in the very center stands a man whose name is almost forgotten in the history of Israel - Ivan Mikhailovich Maisky.
From 1932 to 1943, Maisky was Stalin's ambassador to St. James's Court. Coming from a family of Polish Jews, he joined the revolution from a young age and spent the First World War in exile in England. Returning to Russia after the 1917 revolution, he joined the Bolshevik Party and used his charm in the diplomatic service.
Sent back to London, Maisky befriended leading members of the British political and intellectual elite, from Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill to George Bernard Shaw and Beatrice Webb.. Modern historians are grateful to Maisky for his detailed diary, which shows how he navigated the changing political waters and skillfully maintained Soviet-British relations throughout most of the war.
It was brought to the attention of Chaim Weizmann, who led the Zionist diplomacy from London. During the previous World War, Weizmann foresaw the fall of the Ottoman Empire, staked on Britain, and did much to bring about the Balfour Declaration. By 1941, the aged Zionist leader of the World Zionist Organization was suffering because Britain had broken its promise to ease the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine. Now it seemed that a new world war would crush the British Empire, opening up new opportunities for the Middle East. Who will fill the resulting vacuum? On whom can the Zionists count?
Weizmann had no illusions about Stalin. In addition to the well-known list of betrayals committed by the Soviet dictator, Weizmann had his own reasons for knowing about his cruelty. Although most of the Weizmann siblings left Russia before 1917, the younger brother Samuil returned to build a new society and perished during the Great Terror of the late 1930s.
Despite this, Weizmann believed that, under certain circumstances, Stalin might express a willingness to help the Zionist cause—and Ivan Maisky was the closest person to Stalin in London. “The other day I had an unexpected guest,” Maisky wrote in his diary in February 1941, “the famous leader of Zionism, Dr. Weizmann.” Maisky was struck by the dignity with which this “tall, middle-aged, elegantly dressed gentleman” who “speaks excellent Russian” and who has a “calm, slow speech” carried himself..
In conversation, this man, to whom the Jews were indebted for the Balfour Declaration, expressed the opinion that the alliance between the British and the Zionists would soon end. The English, he believed, "do not like Jews" and "prefer Arabs to Jews." They are unlikely to settle in Palestine "4-5 million Jews from Poland and other countries." Weizmann put the question point-blank: "What can a British victory promise the Jews?" The answer was that when the war was over, the Zionists would announce their final divorce from Britain and be open to new relationships.
Thus began the courtship of Maisky, a joint project between Weizmann and Ben-Gurion. They consisted of initiatives and memorandums in which the Zionist leaders developed the themes that had been set: the Jews were fighting a determined fight for freedom, the Jewish state would be neutral, and the Arabs were either British agents or collaborators collaborating with Nazi Germany.
Among other things, the two leaders sought to convince Maisky that Palestine was the only solution for the desperate Jews of Europe. During the entire period of the Mandate, critics of Zionism stated that the country could not accept enough Jews to solve the European Jewish question. The Zionists were especially active in trying to convince Maisky of the opposite.
Therefore, when at their first meeting Maisky “expressed surprise that Weizmann was going to bring 5 million Jews to the territory occupied by a million Arabs,” Weizmann replied that the Arab was “the father of the desert <... >Give me land occupied by a million Arabs, and I will perfectly arrange five times the number of Jews on it. At a second meeting in September 1943, Maisky reiterated his doubts about the "small size" of Palestine, to which Weizmann responded with references to a report by prominent American irrigation engineer Walter Clay Laudermilk, who estimated that the country could accommodate another 4 million Jews. refugees from Europe. A month later, Maisky discussed the same question with Ben-Gurion: “We want to know the truth, what is the capacity of Palestine?” Ben-Gurion's answer was more modest, he spoke about 2 million Jews and a few days later provided Maisky with a corresponding memorandum.
Both Zionist leaders assured Maisky that the social and economic structure of the Yishuv was not only comparable to communism, but even resembled it. The kibbutzim, Ben-Gurion emphasized in October 1941, although close to communism ideologically, “from an economic point of view <…> are communist.” Palestine is the seat of "the only organized labor movement in the entire Middle East" and "the core of the socialist community."
In March 1943, Weizmann sent Maisky a memorandum containing this sly, flattering passage:
Three fundamental aspects of Soviet social philosophy were embodied in the national system built in Palestine by the Zionist movement: collective welfare and the absence of individual gain constitute the guiding principle and purpose of the economic structure; in society there is an equality of position between workers of manual and intellectual labor; thus ensuring maximum scope for intellectual life and labor development. There are no fundamental psychological barriers to mutual understanding, and the Zionist movement has never experienced antagonism towards Soviet social philosophy.
The war continued, and as Soviet forces began pushing the Germans back into Europe, the Zionist leaders saw their efforts begin to pay off. In September 1943, when Maisky was about to leave London for Moscow to participate in the planning of the post-war world order, Weizmann met with him for the last time. The Zionists, Weizmann said, "have friendly feelings for Russia and hope that the Soviet government will understand their goals." Maisky replied that “he cannot make commitments on behalf of his government, but he believes that the USSR will support them <...> He thinks that Russia will definitely come out on their side,” - the first hint of the dramatic explosion that Gromyko’s speech produced in UN three and a half years later (or a premonition of this explosion).
Maisky's route to Moscow lay through the Middle East, and in October he visited Palestine. Now, on his own initiative, he met with Ben-Gurion, who took him and his wife to two kibbutzim near Jerusalem. Maisky acted as if he were on an official fact-finding trip, showed great interest in the communal life of the kibbutz, and even took pictures with Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir.
Returning to Jerusalem, Maisky told Ben-Gurion that “after the war, a serious Jewish question will arise and it will have to be resolved; we will need to express our opinion, so we need to know.” Ben-Gurion found it hard to believe this turn of events. “It all came as a big surprise to me,” he told his colleagues. “It's like a revelation. It's hard for me to believe this. This imposes obligations on us – another country that is showing interest in this issue.”
Maisky drew up a memorandum on his visit to Palestine. This memorandum has not been seen by any historian, so it remains the subject of endless speculation - and although the details are unknown, its essence is quite clear. The then People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine said that the report was "full of admiration for the amazing progressive achievements of the Jews in Palestine". British Socialist leader Harold Lasky told Ben-Gurion in 1944, "I read Maisky's secret report and became a Zionist."
Did the memorandum have a similar effect in Moscow? Historian Gabriel Gorodetsky, translator and publisher of Maisky's diaries, refutes the suggestion that Zionist efforts to win Maisky's sympathy were the decisive factor. Maisky "deceived" Ben-Gurion into suggesting that he had a decisive influence on Soviet foreign policy. Although he prepared a “laudatory report” for Stalin, by that time he himself had already lost his position. Upon Maisky's return to Moscow in 1943, writes Gorodetsky, "the doors of the Kremlin were tightly shut before him." Although he continued to advise Stalin at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences, by the end of 1945 he had lost all his posts in the ministry. The Zionist leaders only imagined that their flirting with Maisky had something to do with Stalin's decision.
In a sense, this is true: Stalin made his decision more than three years after Maisky's report, in the context of the Cold War. But in themselves, the Zionist contacts with Maisky represented only one facet of a wider campaign undertaken by a number of Zionist diplomats (including Sharett, Epstein, and Nachum Goldman) in the Soviet missions from Washington to Ankara. This campaign continued until Gromyko's speech.
The Zionist statesmen who participated in it were not naive and did not suffer from a lack of information about what was happening in the Soviet Union. In particular, Ben-Gurion had deep and extensive knowledge of the situation in the USSR. While still a young active figure in the socialist movement, he spent three months there in 1923 and subsequently testified that "we [Zionists] have always expressed love for the great revolution in Russia." But in 1928, the Soviet authorities banned even the most socialist forms of Zionism, and Ben-Gurion said that everything was seen "in its true light." He was well aware that reconciliation with Moscow "would not be the result of a kibbutz movement <...> or the translation of Lenin or Stalin into Hebrew."
Yet he and his colleagues also knew what to say to make it appear that support for the Jewish state was in line, if not with Soviet ideology and propaganda, then at least with the interests of the USSR (and knew how to say it in Russian). And at the time of the decision, it turned out to be so. In July 1947, the second secretary of the Soviet embassy in Washington told Epstein that the Soviet Union knew very well "that our experiments in creating collective farms have nothing in common with the Marxist interpretation of the principles of collectivism.". But, he added, it seems that the Yishuv is a "peace-loving, democratic and progressive society <...>which will be able to prevent the spread of anti-Soviet sentiments that so easily arise in the reactionary ruling circles in the Arab countries at the present time."
Could such a transformation of Soviet views have taken place without many years of efforts by Zionist diplomacy? And would it happen on time? Historians may argue on this subject. But the Zionists had no doubts: somehow they managed to tip the scales in their favor.
Why did the Soviet Union turn its back on Israel?
Describing the support given by the Soviet Union to the Zionist movement, Walter Lacker wrote that "without him they would not have had a chance." And yet this support never became the basis for a long-term alliance. Already by 1949, conflicts began between the Soviet Union and Israel. What happened?
If it is true that the goal of the USSR was to squeeze Britain out of the Middle East, then by 1949 this goal had already been achieved. Israel won a decisive military victory and even conquered the Negev, which Britain hoped to keep as a bridge between Egypt and Transjordan. The final withdrawal of Britain from the Middle East will take another decade, but the retreat has already begun with the creation of Israel. As for the strategic tasks of the USSR, here "the mission was completed."
But the USSR didn't just cut off support; he became openly hostile. The pendulum swung back due to a number of factors, including Stalin's increasing paranoia in all directions. There was also an internal problem in which Soviet Jews were involved.
During the war, the Zionist leaders guaranteed the Soviet authorities that the return movement they initiated would not affect the Jews of the USSR. "I don't worry about them [Soviet Jews]," Weizmann told Maisky at the first meeting.
Nothing threatens them. 20-30 years will pass, and if the current regime is preserved in your country, they will assimilate <...> Soviet Jews will gradually enter, as an integral part, into the general mainstream of Russian life. I may not like it, but I am ready to put up with it: at least the Soviet Jews are on the road, and their fate does not make me shudder.
But when Gromyko announced a turnaround in Soviet foreign policy in 1947, a wave of euphoria swept Soviet Jews. Everywhere, from synagogues to labor camps, Jews openly expressed Zionist aspirations. This fever only intensified after the passage of the partition resolution, the declaration of the state, and finally the arrival in September 1948 of Golda Meir as Israel's first ambassador. On the first Saturday of her stay in Moscow, tens of thousands of Jews filled the streets around the city's main synagogue. The same thing happened on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Meir vividly describes this scene in his memoirs:
A crowd of fifty thousand was waiting for us. At first I could not understand what was happening and even who they were. But then I realized. They came - good, brave Jews - came to be with us, came to show their sense of belonging and celebrate the establishment of the State of Israel... Someone pushed me into a taxi. But the taxi couldn’t move either – it was swallowed up by a crowd of jubilant, laughing, crying Jews… All I managed to do was mutter one phrase in Yiddish, not my own voice: “A dank aich vos ir zayt geliben iden!” ("Thank you for staying Jewish!") .
All this was very touching. But Mordechai Namir, the first secretary of the Israeli legation, recalled that the spontaneous demonstration caused "a bad feeling, because there were suspicions that such a frank behavior of the community had crossed the accepted boundaries <...> and we participated in a very tragic event."
What happened next confirmed his fears. In his speech, Gromyko pointed out that "not a single state in Western Europe" guaranteed the Jews elementary rights (emphasis mine. - & nbsp; M.K. ). It meant that the rights of Soviet Jews were not infringed in any way; now that they have blatantly demonstrated otherwise by calling on Israel as their savior, the authorities have been caught off guard. Every month they became more and more worried about the spread of Zionist sentiments inside the country.
So, Stalin had the most compelling reasons to worry about the impact of his own policies on the two and a half million Soviet Jews, who, after the Holocaust, constituted the largest Jewish population in Europe. Decades of repression were suddenly forgotten, and an ethnic and national upsurge began, which, in turn, demanded even more brutal repressive measures. By the end of 1948, a phenomenon began that one historian called a "secret pogrom" directed against prominent Jews accused of a Zionist conspiracy.
The ensuing persecution of the early 1950s, from the show trial and execution in Prague of Rudolf Slansky and other high-ranking members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakiato the Moscow “doctors' case”, they speak for themselves. Suffice it to say that in the Soviet Union and in the countries under its influence, internal anti-Semitism and hostility towards Israel became inseparable from each other.
Zionists prefer the West
Stalin was not the only one who condemned Zionism and hated the Jews. The major Zionist leaders, in turn, did not have a particularly high regard for Stalin or the Soviet Union either. Their preferences lay in the West.
This, however, does not apply to the far-left Zionist groups, which in 1948 merged into the Israeli MAPAM party. Until the Prague trials of 1952, most of its members, many of whom played important roles in the Yishuv's military structure, highly valued the Soviet Union. Portraits of Stalin adorned the canteens of some kibbutzim, and the KGB successfully recruited agents from among the leaders of MAPAM. But the pro-Soviet left, even at its peak, did not garner more than 15 percent of the vote—such was their result in the first Israeli elections in 1949—and thereafter experienced a steady decline.
It is also true that at the time of maximum Soviet support, a wave of gratitude swept through the entire Yishuv. Artur Koestler, a Hungarian writer of Jewish origin, who spent most of 1948 in Israel, left a particularly interesting testimony. A former communist agent of the Comintern during the Spanish Civil War, Koestler gained fame with his 1940 novel Blinding Darkness. The book is set in 1938, at the height of the Great Terror, and contains accusations against Stalin.
In a report written in Israel in June 1948, Koestler noted that "it is difficult to suspect your correspondent of Stalinism" (and this is putting it mildly):
And yet if he had endured what the people here had endured over the past six months, when one leading Western democracy [Great Britain] was waging an almost naked war against them and another [the United States] was watching, the psychological pressure of circumstances might even to sympathize with [communist Russia] <…> The almost weekly fluctuations of American policy, the paradoxical continuation of the arms embargo, depriving Israel of the opportunity to defend itself, despite the fact that America recognized the existence of Israel, increase the general feeling of bitterness and disappointment with the West.
Koestler witnessed a "spontaneous outburst of sympathy and gratitude" towards the Soviet Union among Israelis. Nevertheless, he believed that this "emotional imbalance" would soon pass. Most of the Jews of Palestine, including those in the Workers' Party, to which Ben-Gurion belonged,
realized that Russia's gesture served exclusively its own political goals. They well remembered that in Russia Zionism was persecuted for 30 years, declaring it a fascist movement. The sudden and radical reversal of Soviet policy <…> is too obvious a maneuver to deceive them.
It was quite obvious to Koestler that the bulk of the Zionists preferred the West; the sudden sympathy for the USSR arose only because of the contradictory behavior of the West.
However, this sympathy reinforced the suspicions of American opponents of Zionism, sitting in the State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon, who argued that the Jewish state would become a satellite of the USSR and Soviet agents would flood it under the guise of Jewish refugees. Zionist leaders have consistently denied this accusation. The first of these was Weizmann, who on the eve of the partition vote sent a letter to Truman. Weizmann urged the president not to believe those who predict "that our project in Palestine could somehow be used as a conduit for the infiltration of communist ideas into the Middle East":
Nothing could be further from the truth. Our Eastern European immigrants are precisely those who leave the communist countries with which they want nothing to do. Otherwise, they would not have left them. Had the Soviet Union seriously attempted to spread communist influence through immigrants, it could easily have done so in the preceding decades. Every election and every survey that has taken place in Palestine testifies to the futility of support for communism in our community.
In addition, the Yishuv increasingly gravitated towards the United States, whose Jewish community was now the largest in the world. After taking over as President of Israel, Chaim Weizmann assured the first US Ambassador, James MacDonald, that "our people are democratic and understand that only through cooperation with and support from the United States will we be able to gain strength and maintain freedom." He was echoed by Ben-Gurion, who told MacDonald that "Rome will be communist before Jerusalem."
McDonald agreed. “When the moment came and Israel had to make a choice,” he later wrote, “the choice was always pro-Western.” Soviet ambassador Pavel Yershov agreed, complaining that Israel was "increasingly moving towards the American position" and "might completely capitulate to the Americans, becoming a tool for their expansionist plans."
Formally, however, Israel declared its "neutrality" in relations between East and West - this was important for the ongoing attempts to rescue hundreds of thousands of Jews who remained in the satellite countries of the Soviet Union. The first leaders of Israel, with all their desire to enlist the support of the United States, did not hesitate to strengthen relations with the Soviet Union, hinting that they might swing towards Moscow. Weizmann himself warned that if the West "humiliates and abandons Israel in the UN and other international organizations", the people of Israel will "withdraw" and (presumably) turn to the Soviet Union. Koestler believed that this was impossible, but he was concerned that Ben-Gurion and Sharett were "too timid" about it, giving Washington reason to suspect that Israel "might switch sides."
In retrospect, such a scenario seems incredible. But his allowance and willingness to provide for it may indeed have played a role in what is now considered the birth of the Israeli-American relationship. At a key meeting in which Truman decided to immediately recognize Israel, White House adviser Clark Clifford suggested that by recognizing Israel first, the US could "get ahead of the USSR." One observer noted the prevalence of the "very justified suspicion that the rapid recognition of the United States was due mainly to the fear that the Soviet Union might be the first to do so." Among the motives that guided Truman, the desire to bypass the USSR could play an important role.
As Israel grew stronger, so did the Cold War. In July 1948, Philip Jessup, the second man in the US mission to the UN, was already describing Israel as "a more than worthy adversary" for any combination of Arab forces. Jessup also reported that Israel "recognizes the disadvantages of being too closely associated with the Soviet Union" and "recognizes that it can gain great benefits from closer association with the United States and other Western powers." Warning that if Israel "throws itself into the arms of the Soviet Union, it could become a force at great expense to the United States, Britain and other Western in our favor."
The path from "fair treatment" to Israel to a post-1967 strategic alliance with the United States has been a long and tortuous one. But his goal was to take Israel out of the orbit of the USSR—and that was the American reaction to an extremely unlikely scenario that seemed real only because of Stalin's strange but determined efforts to support the Jewish state at the time of his birth. In this case, perhaps Israel has another reason to thank Stalin: against his own will, he helped Israel establish its first contacts with the United States.
Lessons for Today
In 1961, the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a collection of key documents on Soviet-Arab relations. Although Gromyko himself headed the editorial board, this book does not include any of his speeches to the UN in support of Israel. Gromyko's memoirs published in Russian in 1988 also never mentioned that the Soviet Union supported Israel in 1947 and 1948 and what role it played in the proclamation of Israel. The USSR wanted to erase this entire episode from memory and force the Arab satellites to do the same. “Now this [Israel] has turned into a bad thing,” Molotov reasoned in his old age, answering a question about Soviet support for the formation of Israel, “but God, my God! .. And what is American imperialism is a good thing? »
Fortunately, over the past two decades, several talented historians have done a great job to open the archives and tell this story in full detail. In collecting the data for this essay, I relied mainly on their publications. These historians include, above all, Yaakov Roi, Arnold Krammer and Uri Bialer, whose impressive writings predated the collapse of the Soviet Union; and Gabriel Gorodetsky, Benjamin Pincus, and Laurent Rucker, whose work in the archives that subsequently opened led to numerous new discoveries. There are many important scientific articles by other authors that answer various questions related to this story, but much has not yet been clarified.
However, very little is being done about this issue. Both Israeli diplomats and American Zionists prefer to tell the same simple tale, reflected in Ambassador Danon's statement: "Since President Truman became the first world leader to recognize the Jewish state, Israel has had no better friend than the United States of America." . Everyone loves the 70-year love story between militant little Israel and the world's greatest superpower and democracy. But as we have seen, this statement, quite accurate in recent years, was not true in those years when the Soviet Union, in the words of the first Israeli ambassador to the UN, Aba Eban, "supported Israel even more actively than even the United States."
Unfortunately, there is a price to pay for distorting history. First, the true meaning of the international recognition that Israel received during the partition vote is not being illuminated. Yes, it took the heroic efforts of partitionists, including the United States, to secure the required two-thirds of the votes in the General Assembly. But the successful outcome was due to the fundamental fact that both the victorious powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, supported the partition and creation of a Jewish state. This convergence created an updraft and attracted other countries.
Aba Eban considered partition "the first Soviet-American agreement of the post-war era." The fact that such an agreement was the creation of a Jewish state shows how deeply the foundations of international recognition of Israel are laid. Many Arab apologists are still trying to show that this or that vote in the General Assembly was due to bribery or a deal, and indeed, in November 1947, the partitioners used every possible method. But both superpowers united, and one had to harbor a particular hostility towards Zionism in order to vote against it. With a few exceptions, these were only countries populated predominantly by Muslims.
Second, the false idea that the United States was Israel's "best friend" in 1948 detracts from the early Israelis themselves. It would be much easier to defeat the Palestinian Arabs and even the allied Arab armies with the support of the world's greatest power. But Israel did not have such support. In a meeting with Secretary of State George Marshall, Sharett was rather blunt (according to the notes of Israel's first secretary of the Council of Ministers, Zeev Sharaf):
The United States, continued [Sharet] , did not help found Israel; [they] contributed only by voting in the UN, and we will not forget that. But we, the Jewish people, he said, were fighting in Palestine on our own, without any help. We asked for weapons, but they didn't give us any; we asked for military directives, but they were delayed; finally, we asked for bus armor, and even that was refused. Everything that we have achieved, we have achieved solely on our own.
Sharett was too diplomatic to remind Marshall of what the Soviet Union had done for Israel.
In May 1949, Truman sent a threatening letter to Ben-Gurion, criticizing Israel's post-war stance on borders and refugees. Truman mentioned that the American government (and people) "provided generous support for the formation of Israel." In his diary, an angry Ben-Gurion refutes this insinuation, downplaying even US support for partition:
The State of Israel did not come about as a result of a UN resolution. Neither America nor any other country promoted the implementation of this resolution and did not prevent the Arab countries (and the British Mandatory government) from declaring all-out war on us in violation of UN resolutions. America did not lift a finger to save us, on the contrary, it imposed an arms embargo, and if we were defeated, it would not resurrect us.
The founders of Israel doubted that the United States stood firmly on the side of the young state at the time of its creation. Israel owed its existence, they believed, only to its own courage and resilience - as well as boxes of weapons sent on Stalin's orders and bought with millions of dollars that American Jews collected.
Third, by telling the story of partition as the story of "America's savior," we miss out on important lessons. The genius of Zionist diplomacy in 1947, as in 1917, was to determine exactly which forces were rising and which were falling, and to be able to play on the confrontations. The Zionists were too experienced politicians to rely on the friendship of only one power. Of course, one could say that Zionism had no true "best friends" at all. World wars, revolutions, the collapse of empires - the Zionist leaders did not see constants in international politics and tirelessly followed the first signs of changes in politics and the balance of power. The Zionists practiced diversification in diplomacy, never said never, and never accepted rejection.
No Zionist today would even think of celebrating the anniversary of the partition vote by glorifying Comrade Stalin's wise foresight. But to glorify only Truman as the new Cyrus is a rejection of the idea of multiple possibilities (and a mishandling of history). On that day, the world welcomed the birth of a Jewish state in Palestine. This was possible because shrewd and persistent Jewish statesmen and diplomats convinced the leaders of the great powers, whose antagonism was steadily growing, that the Jewish state would serve the interests of each of them.
“In terms of Soviet and American politics,” Paul Johnson wrote in the 1998 article I quoted at the very beginning, “Israel came into the world through a window that was barely open and suddenly closed.” Zionist politicians - in strict accordance with the Zionist military - were able to open this window wide enough and long enough for Israel to slip through it. It is this achievement that deserves to be remembered and celebrated at Flushing Meadows 70 years later. The partition vote saga is not only a part of American history, it is a reminder that Israel must always be incredibly dexterous in maneuvering among various forces, and never rely on just one. It was critical at the birth of Israel and may be critical again.
Finally, there is another reason for reflection as Israel approaches its 70th anniversary. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Zionist revolution and the revolution in Russia took place simultaneously. They both arose from similar grievances, in roughly the same geographic space. Not surprisingly, both of them competed for the recognition and energy of the Jews. The Soviet Union lasted almost 69 years, from 1922 to 1991. Starting this year, the State of Israel is getting older and continues to prosper. Israel won the war for the Jews, just as the United States won the Cold War.
The Soviet legacy deserves every kind of censure in relation to Israel as well. Later, the Soviet Union armed the Arabs and provoked them to unleash bloody wars with Israel, which brought much suffering. But Israel owes this brutal regime of the 20th century two things. First, the Founding Fathers of Israel, as can be seen from this essay, enlisted the vital support of the Soviet Union from the very beginning. And secondly, he saved millions of Jews from extermination by the Nazis - those Jews whose descendants would dramatically increase the population of Israel after the collapse of the USSR.
All this does not detract from the crimes committed by Stalin, who is not inferior to Hitler in cruelty. The whole story is a reminder that while Israel should always prioritize good company, everyone else should not be neglected either.