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Concept
Soviet anti-Zionism
Summary
Soviet anti-Zionism is an Anti Zionist and pro-Arab doctrine promulgated in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. While the Soviet Union initially pursued a pro-Zionist policy after World War II due to its perception that the Jewish state would be socialist and pro-Soviet, its outlook on the Arab–Israeli conflict changed as Israel began to develop a close relationship with the United States and aligned itself with the Western Bloc. Anti-Israel Soviet propaganda intensified after Israel's sweeping victory in the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, and it was officially sponsored by the agitation and propaganda media of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as well as by the KGB. Among other charges, it alleged that Zionism was a form of racism. The Soviets framed their anti-Zionist propaganda in the guise of a study of modern Zionism, dubbed Zionology. The Soviet anti-Israel policy included the regulated denial of permission for Jews in the Soviet Union to emigrate, primarily to Israel, but also to any other country.
The official Soviet ideological position on Zionism condemned the movement as akin to bourgeois nationalism. Vladimir Lenin rejected Zionism as a reactionary movement, "bourgeois nationalism", "socially retrogressive", and a backward force that deprecates class divisions among Jews. From late 1944, however, Joseph Stalin adopted a pro-Zionist foreign policy, apparently believing that a Jewish state would emerge socialist and pro-Soviet, and thus would speed the decline of British influence in the Middle East. Accordingly, in November 1947, the Soviet Union, together with the other countries of the Eastern Bloc, voted in favour of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, which would pave the way for the establishment of the State of Israel. On 17 May 1948, three days after the Israeli Declaration of Independence, the Soviet Union granted de jure recognition to Israel, becoming the second country to recognize Israel overall (preceded by the United States' granting of de facto recognition) and the first country to grant it de jure recognition.
Official source
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