It’s generally forgotten today that the Soviet uniоn played a key role in the birth of the state of Israel, by supporting the partition of Palestine and lending the Jewish state military and political support during the War of Independence. This policy represented a startling reversal of the Soviet uniоn’s previous hardline stand against Zionism (which had been based on the notion that Zionism was a form of Western imperialism), and, not unlike the Hitler-Stalin pact, caused considerable upheaval within the Communist world. Why did Stalin so dramatically change course? As explained in this fascinating excerpt from an article by an anti-Zionist Marxist, it had nothing to do with any belief in the Zionist cause, but with the Soviets’ geopolitical aim to push Britain out of the Mideast while preventing the United States from replacing Britain as the dominant power there:
Probably the essential aim of Soviet foreign policy was to support Israel’s struggle against British imperialism. Moscow hoped to boot the United Kingdom out of Palestine by backing the partition plan while seeking to prevent the USA from actively entering the area at Attlee’s request. It was probably hoped that the small Jewish state would choose to be neutral and perhaps even afford a foothold in the Middle East to the USSR – the Kremlin may have cherished some illusions about the “progressive” inclinations of the Israeli leaders. I
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