Why did Stalin midwife the state of Israel?

It's a fact, he did. Most likely there was no discussion about Israel with anyone before he made the decision.

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Did Stalin believe Israel would go communist?

soviet-union cold-war israel communismstalin

In Anne Applebaum's recent bookIron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 she claims the USSR supported the new state of Israel and states "Stalin believed Israel would quickly join the communist camp".

She doesn't cite any references for this, but is it true? And if so, what grounds were there for Stalin believing Israel would align itself with the Soviet Union?

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AskedJun 5 '13 at 21:35

Tea Drinker
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1	Given the nature of much of the people around Ben Gurion, as well as Stalin's own mindset, it wouldn't surprise me in the least, but I know of no written record of Stalin ever stating so publicly. – jwenting Jun 6 '13 at 6:36
2	This excellent question is quite difficult to answer. @Drux and jwenting correctly point out that the Labor Party was a left one and had considerable respect for the USSR at the time. However, they were not quite the usual Stalinist cadre-fodder: (a) they were as Zionist as Socialist (b) they were not very radical, much more like social democrats than like communists. On the other hand there was a bona fide communist party and a more left radical party, Mapam, who looked much more amenable to communist plans. So perhaps Stalin was counting on them taking power later and becoming his stooges. – Felix Goldberg Jun 6 '13 at 12:26
1	It's hard to tell because Stalin did not really consult with anyone and left no paper trail that documents his personalistic decision-making. (notifying also @jwenting) For those who are interested in the background, some pointers can be found inhistory.stackexchange.com/a/8827/1569 – Felix Goldberg Jun 6 '13 at 12:27
2	@jwenting: Very possible! Of course, there was one crucial difference between a Kibbutz and a kolchoze - memebership in the former was voluntary, whereas in the latter it was at gunpoint. But such differences could have escaped Stalin... – Felix Goldberg Jun 6 '13 at 14:22
1	@FelixGoldberg - most of early Zionists were quite hard left, Labor was just one manifestation of that. – DVK Jun 7 '13 at 16:30

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1. It is clear that Stalin supported the creation of Israel. From the Wiki:

   For Soviet foreign policy decision-makers, pragmatism took precedence over ideology. Without changing its official anti-Zionist stance, from late 1944, until 1948 and even later, Joseph Stalin adopted a pro-Zionist foreign policy, apparently believing that the new country would be socialist and would accelerate the decline of British influence in the Middle East.[cite: Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (1987) p.527]

   On May 17, 1948, three days after Israel declared independence, the Soviet Union legally recognized it de jure, becoming the first country to grant de jure recognition to the Jewish state..In addition to the diplomatic support, arms from Czechoslovakia, part of the Soviet bloc, were crucial to Israel in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

   It's quite clear that this would NOT have happened had Stalin disagreed.
2. As far as " what grounds were there for Stalin believing Israel would align itself with the Soviet Union":
   • as the commenters noted, most of the early Zionists and founders of Israel were politically quite left and socialist-bent. I consider this fact to bee too well known and trivial to bother with sites, but if you wish I'll add them. Ex:[1].
   • Also, at the time, British and the West in general started swinging towards being more pro-Arab due to geopolitical concerns, notably oil (Lawrence of Arabia being a good example; and British resistance to the creation of Israel despite Balfour commitments being another example). As such, Israel would be a natural counterweight for Stalin to extend his influence in Near East, the same way United States was using Israel once the geopolitical alignments reversed themselves in 1970s when Arab states became Soviet clients and Israel American one.

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AnsweredJun 7 '13 at 16:39

DVK
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EditedJun 7 '13 at 16:47

	Being "left and socialist-bent" is a far cry from toeing the Moscow line and the latter was all that mattered to Stalin. – sds Apr 14 at 11:14

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Maybe Stalin misoverestimated some things: 1-Jewish gratitude for the fact that it was the Red Army that defeated Hitler thereby saving their bacon, so to speak

2-Jewish powerand influence in the United States Not that it isn't and wasn't considerable, but deliver the US to him? Not even had they wished!

I read a theory that holds that Stalin thought he had a deal with the Jews- a Jewish state in Palestine for a Communist one in North America.

.

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Answeredjust now

Eugene Weixel
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Merry Christmas from New York City especially to farmers in Australia and California

The farmer is the one who feeds them all. 

Remembering The Old Songs:

THE FARMER IS THE MAN

by Bob Waltz

(Originally published: Inside Bluegrass, August 2006)

I recently read a book on history which described what makes a "civilization." Literature, art, things like that.

It's all wrong. What makes a civilization is disposable energy. Art and such are what make a civilization interesting, but without energy, you won't get the cultural stuff.

Energy comes in all sorts of forms--electrical energy (such as comes out of your wall socket), mechanical energy (a moving car has lots of that). Plus food energy. It was food energy--as in farming--that caused the first civilizations to arise. Then, and only then, were there enough spare calories (a unit of energy, if you remember your Earth Science classes) to support the people needed to create culture. Hunter-gatherers could have songs and oral tradition, but no more. Real culture--the kind with books, for instance--requires farming.

Earlier this year, Lyle looked at the suppliers of one sort of energy: The coal miners. Who have traditionally been poor. So, too, with farmers. There were a lot of songs protesting farm conditions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (things like Seven Cent Cotton and Forty Cent Meat), but this is the only one I learned as a child. (Be it noted that I did not grow up on a farm. I must have learned it from a record, but I don't know what record.)

John Greenway argued, in American Folksongs of Protest, that this song came from the period after the Civil War. We should note that Greenway has a lot of well-researched but very strange ideas. (You've probably run across professors like that.) Most people think it comes from the populist movements of the 1890s.

Still, it is an unquestionable part of the old time tradition: Fiddlin' John Carson himself recorded it for OKeh in 1923 (and, for the fiscal conservatives out there, parodied it as Taxes on the Farmer Feeds Us Allin 1935).

In these days of factory farms, it's not all that relevant anyv more; most food doesn't come from a small farmer. But maybe that's the point.

[CLICK HERE FOR SHEET MUSIC (pdf file)] 

Complete Lyrics:
When the farmer comes to town
With his wagon broken down,
The farmer is the man who feeds them all.
If you'll only look and see,
I am sure you will agree,
The farmer is the man who feeds them all.
The farmer is the man (x2)
Lives on credit till the fall,
Then they take him by the hand,
And they lead him from the land,
And the middleman's the man who gets it all.

When the lawyer hangs around
While the butcher cuts a pound,
The farmer is the man who feeds them all.
And the preacher and the cook
Go a-strolling down the brook,
The farmer is the man who feeds them alt.
The farmer is the man (x2)
Lives on credit till the fall.
With the interest rate so high,
It's a wonder he don't die;
The banker is the man who gets it all.

When the banker says he's broke,
And the merchant's up in smoke,
The farmer is the man who feeds them all.
It would put them to the test
If the farmer took a rest.
The farmer is the man who feeds them all.
The farmer is the man (x2)
Lives on credit till the fall,
His clothes are wearing thin,
His condition is a sin;
He's forgot that he's the man who feeds them all.

---

Return to the Remembering the Old Songs page.