Soviet Decision-Making in Practice

The USSR and Israel, 1947-1954

Yaacov Ro'i

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351318983
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Soviet Union executed an apparent about-face in its traditional anti-Zionist position when the Palestine issue came before the United Nations in 1947. In addition to political support at the UN from May 1947 to May 1949, important military assistance was rendered to the Jewish Palestinian Yishuv throughout 1948 by the Eastern bloc. Toward the end of that year, however, indications of change became apparent, and the Soviet Union began criticizing Israel.

This book studies the USSR's attitude toward the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine in the immediate post-World War II period and toward Israel in the first years of its existence, and it investigates the complex of considerations that caused the initial apparent reversal of traditional Soviet anti-Zionism. The author contends that this support for Israel contributed considerably to the evoking of Soviet Jewry's enthusiastic reaction to the establishment of the State. But this very reaction resulted in turn in Moscow changing its tactics again, since it could not allow its Jewish citizens to identify with a state outside the Soviet Union and the Communist orbit.

During the few years after the Israeli War for Independence, in which the Arab-Israeli conflict was relatively low key, the USSR adopted a position of seeming neutrality between two sides—while quietly wooing the Arab nations. Ro'i examines how toward the end of the Stalin period the Jewish problem again intervened with the infamous' 'Doctor's Plot, " and how early in 1953 the Soviet Union severed diplomatic relations with Israel. One year later the USSR cast its first two pro-Arab vetoes in the UN Security Council, and from this point on Soviet-Israeli relations openly became a function of the increasingly cordial Soviet friendship with the Arab world.

PART ONE:

THE CONTEXT OF THE SOVIET DECISION IN FAVOR OF A JEWISH STATE IN PALESTINE

1

The Period of Non-Commitment February 1945-April 1947

Inter-Power Diplomacy

The early months of 1945 saw the legitimization of the Soviet position as a major world power. The Yalta Conference in February of that year, the second and last summit conference of the three great war leaders before the surrender of Nazi Germany, sealed the arrangements agreed upon between the Allied powers in the preceding months. These included USSR domination of Eastern Europe, the division of Germany and the conditions of Soviet entry into the war against Japan. Prior to the war, the Soviet Union had appeared on the international scene as an isolated, revolutionary state, the main tenet of whose foreign policy had been “socialism in one country.” Now, as a result of its diplomatic achievements, as well as of its military victories, the USSR had changed its entire image. It had become the head of a large empire that seemed to be approaching the most expansionist ambitions ever entertained by Tsarist or Soviet Russia.

The new international constellation and particularly its own newly-won position within it formed the context, inter alia, of the Soviet Union’s policies in what it termed “the Arab East.” To make good its claim to being a world power, which it understood to mean having a hand in political decisions concerning problems in which it had no immediate interests and in areas where it was unable to demonstrate its physical prowess, the Soviet leadership was ready in the first instance to cooperate with its allies. Later it could hope for a more active and independent role, perhaps taking advantage of the differences of opinion and purpose of the two “Anglo-Saxon” powers.

The Soviet stand on the issue of Palestine’s political future was a case in point. In the three and a half years since the USSR’s entry into the war on the side of the Allies in June 1941, a plethora of contacts had been maintained between leaders of the Yishuv, as the Palestine Jewish community was known, and the Zionist Organization on the one hand, and Soviet diplomats and other representatives on the other. In particular from the fall of 1943 the Soviet Union, in its preparations for a peace settlement, began seriously to probe developments in the Yishuv and to try to comprehend its socio-political trends and inclinations. Yet the resulting direct ties were probably not the decisive factor in determining the Soviet position. The Soviet ambition to secure a political standing in the Middle East through active participation in the discussions in international forums of developments in the region and in the decisions concerning it, compelled Moscow to adopt a stand identical with or close to that of its Englishspeaking allies, i.e. — in late 1944 or early 1945 — a pro-Jewish position. Thus during the war the Soviet Union moved from denying the Yishuv any recognition as an advance post of a Jewish National Home, let alone of a Jewish state, to commending the Jewish cause in Palestine and approving the strengthening of the Jewish National Home as a step toward the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish state or commonwealth.¹

However, the international constellation that had brought this about altered very soon after Yalta. On 27 February 1945, less than a month after Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill were reported to have agreed to hand over Palestine to the Jews and to continue Jewish immigration at least for the immediate future,² the British prime minister announced his government’s decision to refrain from bringing the Palestine issue before the United Nations. This meant that there would be no international discussion of Palestine’s future political status, let alone any chance of replacing Britain’s mandate for Palestine with an international trusteeship.

Until now the USSR had had every reason to believe that an international trusteeship would be established in Palestine as a preliminary stage to evacuation by the Brtiish:³ the Dumbarton Oaks preliminary conference had laid down in September 1944 that the founding conference of the U.N. would redetermine the nature of trusteeship regimes and resolve the details of transition from the mandatory system, due to be abolished, to the new regimes. It had followed from this belief that if Moscow coordinated its policies with those of its allies, it could also hope to be represented in this transitional government. The British government’s decision of late February deprived the Soviet stand on Palestine, including the support of the Jewish cause there, of its raison d’être.

It is possible that the interpretation of the Soviet stand as agreeing to give Palestine to the Jews was somewhat exaggerated either intentionally or by implication.⁴ It seems, however, fair to assume that Stalin had been asked by Roosevelt informally — for Palestine was not officially discussed at Yalta — whether he would cooperate with the United States on this issue (as the State Department had suggested Roosevelt should do before committing the U.S. government to any Palestine settlement⁵), and that the Soviet leader had intentionally impressed the President with the concordant nature of his stand on Palestine. This reading of developments would accord with a State Department memorandum of a conversation in June 1945 with Nahum Goldmann, chairman of the Administrative Committee of the World Jewish Congress and member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine Executive, according to which Czechoslovakia’s Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk had “given assurances” to Jewish representatives at the U.N. Founding Conference in San Francisco, “based on a recent visit to Moscow, that the Soviet Union would favor a Jewish State in Palestine. This,” the memorandum went on, presumably quoting Goldmann, “was in line with what the Zionists had been told by President Roosevelt on his return from Yalta, when he had remarked that, to his surprise, Stalin had not appeared opposed to Zionism.” ⁶

David Ben Gurion at a New York press conference in June, had made a statement which, although more cautious, seemed to have identical implications — that the Soviet Union would not oppose the establishment of a Jewish state if Britain and the United States supported this.⁷ Ben Gurion had been told of Soviet support for Jewish demands by British Colonial Secretary Oliver Stanley on 7 May. Stanley had added, moreover, that Britain did not intend to quarrel with the Arab states and peoples and would therefore abandon the Mandate, yet without tipping the scales in favor of the Yishuv by cooperating with Moscow and Washington to set up a Jewish state.⁸

Whatever the USSR’s degree of sympathy or readiness to show support for the Jewish cause in Palestine in late 1944 and the early weeks of 1945, it is certain that a substantial change occurred in its public position following Churchill’s statement of late February 1945. In the subsequent period only a few non-ruling Communist parties expressed a measure of open support for the Jewish cause⁹ although Soviet officials sometimes did so privately, in the course of direct contacts with representatives of the Yishuv. The First Secretary of the Soviet Legation in Cairo, Aleksei Shvedov, actually said on one occasion that the fact that three of the USSR’s deputy foreign ministers were Jews was a guarantee that the Jewish case got a square deal.¹⁰ Viktor Kokin, Counselor at the Soviet Embassy in London, similarly told a delegation of the Yishuv’s League for Friendly Relations with the USSR in August 1945 that the USSR found itself in a very delicate position on the question of Palestine since it was in the British sphere of influence. The Soviet diplomat called on the Yishuv to understand the Soviet dilemma and refrain from asking the USSR to make any clear-cut declarations or any commitment on its intentions regarding Palestine’s political future until this basic circumstance changed.¹¹

A similar view was expressed by the Soviet Consul in Beirut, M.N. Agronov, who on a visit to Palestine in May 1946 told Jewish representatives that his government still supported the resolution taken at the founding conference of the World Federation of Trade Unions in London in February 1945 — supported by its delegation at the time — that the Jewish people must be enabled to continue in the construction of Palestine as its National Home. Yet, Agronov insisted, this did not mean that the Soviet government had “become pro-Zionist”; it would finally clarify its position when the Palestine question eventually came up at the United Nations.¹²

Meanwhile, the Soviet media — the press, periodicals, radio broadcasts, public lectures — indicated growing attention to Palestine. Yet, while wary for the most part of committing themselves on the question of that country’s political future, they occasionally demonstrated open support for the Arab stand. As early as June 1945 the director of the State Department Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, Loy Henderson, noted that Professor Evgenii Korvin of the USSR Academy of Sciences had supported the Arabs over Palestine in a public lecture he had given in Moscow.¹³

The British decision to refrain from placing Palestine on the international agenda did not, however, prevent the Soviet delegation at the United Nations Founding Conference from trying to evoke discussion on Britain’s Palestine Mandate. It even supported an Arab appeal to renew discussion on this issue,¹⁴ after previously supporting a U.S. resolution against introducing changes in the provisions of the Palestine Mandate — the adoption of which had seemed to preclude the possibility of further discussion.

The reason for the Soviet volte-face was almost certainly tactical, and not any desire to damage Jewish interests.The Trusteeship Council Chairman (the New Zealand prime minister) told Jewish Agency representative Eliahu Epstein (later Elath) that the Soviet move should not be seen as directed against the Yishuv. In his view, the Soviet delegation knew full well that there was no chance of changing the resolution already adopted; yet it considered it important that the Arab League record in its books that when the British opposed the Arab stand on so central an issue for them, the Soviet Union was the only great power that supported them.¹⁵

On 31 May Epstein was received by the secretary of the Soviet delegation, Kiril Novikov, on whose desk lay the memoranda disseminated by the Jewish Agency and the other Jewish delegations at San Francisco. The Jewish Agency memorandum, given at the beginning of the month to the Soviet, Ukrainian and Belorussian delegations, had outlined the history of Britain’s Palestine Mandate, including the British government’s violations of the conditions laid down in the Mandate, and had expounded the Yishuv’s demands of the United Nations Conference. Epstein explained to Novikov that Soviet efforts to change the terms of the Mandate meant undermining the legal basis on which Jewish rights in Palestine depended. The Yishuv did not consider the Mandatory regime in any way satisfactory and aimed at achieving political independence and total emancipation from all forms of British custodianship. Yet until the attainment of its ultimate aim, Epstein pointed out, the Yishuv had to retain the rights afforded it by the Mandate. Any change in Palestine’s juridical status would thus discriminate against the Jews and harm their struggle for the independence of Palestine from British rule and the establishment there of a Jewish state.

The Jewish Agency representative further stressed that Arab opposition to the Yishuv was supported by the Arab League, which relied on Britain. The latter sought to freeze the position existing in the Near East through Arab reactionary forces, which, for their part, feared the Jewish National Home as a carrier of social and economic progress in the region.¹⁶

While Novikov refused to commit himself on this issue, Soviet sources stated explicitly that the USSR had had no intention of doing injury to the Zionist position but had sought to prevent a freezing of rights recognized under existing mandates that would make their future alteration impossible. After protracted discussion and contacts, the Soviet Union agreed to an amended formulation, in which the Jewish Agency representatives actually saw an improvement of their position.¹⁷

In a statement made on 9 June 1945, on the eve of his departure from San Francisco, Nahum Goldmann expressed his satisfaction that the Zionists had achieved their immediate purpose, namely the maintenance of the status quo. The “real fight for our demands,” he said, “begins now ... in London, Washington, Moscow and every political center in the world.”¹⁸

The San Francisco Conference put an end to Soviet hopes of achieving influence in the Arab East by participating in solving the Palestine question through cooperation with Britain and the United States within the framework of a post-war settlement. Yet although the USSR realized that an official British move was necessary to have Palestine’s future discussed in the international arena, it made one last effort in the fall of 1945 to set the ball rolling. At the three-power Foreign Ministers’ Conference held in London from 11 September to 2 October 1945, Molotov proposed to British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin that the Soviet Union withdraw its troops from Iran in return for a British withdrawal from Egypt and Palestine. The Soviet thesis was that the USSR had more right to maintain a military presence in northern Iran than had Britain in Egypt and Palestine, in view of the fact that the former bordered on Soviet territory, whereas Cairo and Jerusalem were far removed from London.¹⁹

It was not mere wishful thinking that had led the Soviet government to conclude that it would have a part in deciding Palestine’s political future. A similar assumption had prevailed in Washington (see p. 17) and even after the San Francisco Conference State Department officials argued that Britain could not continue administering Palestine in accordance wit...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgments
• Part I: The Context of The Soviet Decision In Favor of A Jewish State In Palestine
• Part II: The Coincidence of Interests
• Part III: Soviet-Israeli Relations and Soviet Jewry
• Part IV: The Metamorphosis in Soviet-Israeli Relations
• Afterword
• Bibliography
• Index