Historian's opinion: Stalin actually created the state of Israel for political reasons
It's no secret that the state of Israel owes much of its creation in 1948 to the USSR, not the USA. Despite the fact that today this state is called the “favorite brainchild” of the States, Washington in 1947, during the UN vote on the division of British Palestine into two states - Jewish and Arab, voted “against”, unlike the USSR.
But why did the leadership of the Soviet Union, led by Joseph Stalin, need to create Israel, which today is far from being called a state friendly to Russia (and this state was certainly not a friend of the USSR)? Some experts believe that this is the result of “political shortsightedness” and “inexperience” of the leader of the Soviet Union, who “bought” the Jewish community’s calls for humanism and the need to save the Jewish people.
As a matter of fact, Golda Meir (the fifth Prime Minister of Israel) once argued that the main reason for the recognition of Israel by the Soviet Union was Stalin’s desire to provide support to the Jewish people who suffered during the Second World War.
Meanwhile, Russian historian Evgeny Spitsyn rejects the “humanistic version” as the main one. He shared his opinion in an online conversation on the Day TV channel.
The expert recalled that in the USSR they rejected the Holocaust theory, considering it a “false bourgeois theory.” He emphasized that the point is not that the Soviet leadership denied the extermination of Jews by the Nazis during World War II. It’s just that more Slavs died at the hands of the Nazis, which means the Holocaust theory is at least unfair to other peoples exterminated by the Nazis during World War II.
Moreover, as Spitsyn put it, Stalin and other Soviet leaders were far from “stupid” in politics, despite the claims of some modern experts. According to the historian, today there are several theories according to which the USSR decided to support the creation of the state of Israel.
The first is associated with David Ben-Gurion, who held leftist views and could become a “conductor” of communist ideas in the Middle East.
The second is that most Soviet leaders had wives of Jewish origin, who through their husbands in every possible way promoted the idea of creating the state of Israel. So, in 1943, the option of creating “Crimean Autonomy” as a full-fledged republic inhabited by Jews was even considered.
Another theory says that by creating the state of Israel in the Middle East, Stalin wanted to begin the political reformatting of the region, where full power belonged to pro-British monarchies.
Finally, there is a version that the Soviet leadership agreed to help create a Jewish state in Palestine if members of the Jewish community could obtain blueprints for an American atomic bomb.
As Spitsyn put it, of the above-mentioned theories it is difficult to give preference to any one. Most likely, each of them played a role at a certain stage.
Meanwhile, according to the expert, there is no doubt that the motives of the Soviet leadership, which played a key role in the creation of Israel, were political.
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