It seems like there are people who don’t know that Stalin not only supported the creation of Israel but also was key in helping the Jews win the War of Independence in 1948.
There is a long-standing myth that Stalin was an anti-Semite. He wasn’t, though. Stalin was a pragmatist. When it served his purposes to like Jews, he liked them. When it became more useful to hate them, he hated them.
After the end of World War II, Stalin was preparing to make yet another effort at “world revolution.” He needed a foothold in the Middle East, and the Palestinian Jews, who were fighting against the British Empire and who had many people interested in the ideas of socialism and communism among them, seemed to offer a perfect possibility to establish a presence in the region.
Soon, however, it became clear that the Jews of Israel were not planning to create a Communist state and were not likely to repudiate the advances of the US. Still, Israel could play a useful role for Stalin. He could now champion the Palestinians and condemn Jews for their colonialist, Zionist agenda. He needed a conflict with the US, the only existing world power that could compete with the USSR for world domination, and he was going to find a way to provoke the Americans in one manner or another.
In 1948, when Stalin still had hopes for the Soviet-friendly Israel, Golda Meir came to visit the Soviet Union. What happened was completely unexpected for Stalin. He wanted the Soviet Jews to explain to Golda that they were so happy in the internationalist Communist state that they had no need to be Jews any more.
Instead, tens of thousands of Soviet Jews came to a Moscow synagogue to meet “our Goldele.” Stalin was livid. As I explained before, the price that the Soviet Jews had paid for the complete absence of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union between 1917 and 1948 and the great advances they were allowed to achieve was renouncing their Jewishness. And now, in 1948, Stalin was seeing crowds of Jews coming out into the streets of Moscow, inspired by the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine and very conscious of their Jewish heritage.
Since his first days in the Communist Party, Stalin, an ethnic Georgian, was convinced that nationalism was the greatest danger to the Communist dream. And he was right. In the late 1980ies and early 1990ies, nationalism will destroy the USSR. This is why Stalin could not allow nationalist sentiments and ethnic allegiances to flourish among the Soviet Jews. He unleashed a campaign of vicious anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. The campaign’s goals were two-fold: on the one hand, Stalin was teaching a lesson to all those people who, in the aftermath of WWII, were recovering their nationalist feelings, and on the other hand, he was preparing to provoke the United States into starting a third world war.
Clarissa's Blog 
Thank you!
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On the topic of the Soviet Union’s double standard in dealing with nationalism see Nathan Sharansky’s Defending Identity. http://www.amazon.com/Defending-Identity-Indispensable-Protecting-Democracy/dp/B002YNS1RK/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_3. He also does a very good job of defending nationalism in the classical liberal sense of the nation state.
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This is so cool to know. Stalin: standing high and firm as steel among the most complex and nuanced of genocidal dictators.
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He was very complex. Churchill practically peed his pants in Stalin’s presence:
“Winston Churchill recalled, “Stalin made a very great impression on us… When he entered the conference room at Yalta everybody stood up as if at a word of command. And, strange to tell, for some reason stood with their hands along the seams of their trousers.” Churchill also said that on one occasion he was determined not to stand up, but when Stalin entered it was as if some extraterrestrial force lifted him from his seat. During the war President Roosevelt used to speak warmly of Stalin— ”good old Uncle Joe.” Even in 1959, when the whole world had heard of good old Uncle Joe’s crimes, Churchill, speaking in the House of Commons on the eightieth anniversary of Stalin’s birth, said, “It was Russia’s great good luck that in the years of its greatest tribulations the country had at its head a genius and an unyielding military leader like Stalin.””
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Churchill in 1959: “It was Russia’s great good luck that in the years of its greatest tribulations the country had at its head a genius and an unyielding military leader like Stalin.”
I wonder how much of that was also a self-referential statement, since by then events had conclusively proven that Churchill himself was an otherwise rather flawed unyielding military genius.
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Oh, definitely. Churchill was self-serving above all else. He had to justify Stalin to justify himself.
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Winston Churchill was a “secret Jew.” This was admitted in the Jerusalem Post, Jan.18, 1993, where editorial columnist Moshe Kohn wrote:
“Cunning, no doubt, came to Churchill in the Jewish genes transmitted by his mother Lady Randolph Churchill, née Jenny Jacobson/Jerome.” Moshe Kohn, Jerusalem Post, Jan.18, 1993.
This explains his approach to Hitler.
Funny, that a Jew should never mention the holocaust in his writings or speeches.
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“This explains his approach to Hitler…”
Oh, sure, Churchill’s anti-Nazi politics were biologically determined. Biggest knee-slapper of the week so far, thanks.
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One gets distracted from blogging for a few hours and weirdness occurs.
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“This is why Stalin could not allow nationalist sentiments and ethnic allegiances to flourish among the Soviet Jews. He unleashed a campaign of vicious anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. ”
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that if you’re trying to prevent a group of people from establishing a collective identity for themselves, one of the absolute worst things that you can do is single them out for oppression.
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Or you could destroy one group to teach the others a lesson. Stalin had already effectuated a genocide of the Chechens and the Ingush people and was now preparing to transplant every Jew in the country to Siberia. He would have succeeded, too, had he not been murdered in time.
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I guess Stalin saw that Jews already had identity of 2000 years + Jews weren’t all that numerous in FSU in % out of entire population. and if you want to warn people of numerous nationalities with nationalist feelings, choosing Jews – not numerous & suffering from anti-semitism group – is great.
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Besides, Stalin couldn’t fail to see that the reawakening of nationalist sentiments among the Jews was sign of a larger trend.
During the WWII, Stalin was forced to bring the word “Motherland” back into the popular discourse to motivate people to fight against Hitler. As a result, Ukrainians fought for their Motherland, Ukraine. Georgians fought for Georgia, etc. After the war, these feelings weren’t going away very easily. Stalin needed to teach everybody that nationalism would not be tolerated.
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This is fascinating.
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Thank you! It makes me happy when people appreciate my posts on the Soviet Union.
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love your work…the Soviet Period is of particular interest…would like to see you expand on the fact that the USSR created more women physcians, engineers and teachers than any other political structure allowed.
….observer Jules…
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This is a very good question. I will blog about this later today.
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Hi! Fantastic post, I never knew this!
I’m looking for a book on the Palestinian and Israeli conflict. Do you have any recommendations? I can only have highly biased and not very informative texts.
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Anybody? Is there at least a marginally non-partisan book about the conflict?
Kiz and I will be grateful for any recommendation.
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I don’t know of anything non-partisan. Lately I’ve been reading Rubin Reports
Born in Washington, DC and living in Tel Aviv, Israel, Rubin has been a PJ Xpress blogger since April 2011, and was named PJM’s Middle East Editor the following September. He is presently a professor at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, the Director of the Global Research and International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, and a Senior Fellow at the International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism. Rubin has written and edited more than 40 books on the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy, with publishers including Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and Cambridge University Press. His next book, Israel: An Introduction, will be published in early 2012.
His book on Israel as a state:
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have should be fine*
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You can try reading Rubin Reports and see if he’s OK or not:
http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/
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When it became more useful to hate them, he hated them.(Clarissa)
Wouldnt that be true for most Sociopaths?
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He was not a sociopath. He was a very passionate true Communist. Oh, wait. . . 🙂
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Lmao…….now that was good. 🙂
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El Capitan sent me here. Thanks for the history lesson.
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Cryptic. But I take gratitude in any form. 😉
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This thread sounds more like a neo-fascist (left-anti-communist) daycare center sandbox discussion of Great Figures in Psycho-History. If you are really interested in Stalin, concerned with his legacy as it regards the Jews–which, btw, was never a ‘Nationality’ in the SU but among the founders of Bolshevism (why Hitler targeted them along with the Slavs)–Remember Stalin was the Commissar of Nationalities before becoming Party General Secretary and saw over the creation of a Soviet Jewish Homeland (Autonomous Region) in Birobidzhan in 1928: http://www.swarthmore.edu/Home/News/biro/
As much as I think it critically necessary to reevaluation the ‘anti-Stalin paradigm’–in which you seem to revel with your fatuous, passive-aggressive innuendos about Stalin’s ‘personality’ (as if you could know anything about the man listening to frauds like Khrushchev and his granddaughter)–the first step in that direction would be to separate the self-defensive Fascist drivel about genocides and get down to the real policies that were implemented under his leadership of the USSR.
On Israel/Palestine (really just another war against the SU/Russia), you might read Chomsky’s ‘The Fateful Triangle’; for a true history of Stalin (i.e., a scientific, evidence-based, Marxist history, rather than a melodramatic, sentimental, superficially psychological history) you should start with Grover Furr’s two books on (1) The Assassination of Sergei Kirov and (2) Krushchev Lied–then look at comrade Ludo Martens’ Another View of Stalin. But, all due respect, lose all the ‘blood-thirsty, genocidal, white-dwarf, authoritarian dictator’ bullshit. It may amuse the kids in your dorm, but it keeps you locked into that Fascist (anti-communist) mind-set that neuralizes you as an effective comrade.
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It isn’t even autumn yet but the crazies are already flocking to the blog.
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‘Crazies’? That your usual response to critics? People who tell you stuff you don’t know? Shoulda figured.
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You are probably not aware of this, but your writing makes no sense semantically or grammatically. You are not very healthy, you need help. What you published is a meaningless jumble of words. Are you at all aware of that?
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It’s ok, Clarissa. ‘Crazies’ expressed your capacity for discernment just fine. If you declare someone apriori ‘crazy’, you have no need to try to understand what is being said. That’s why ‘terrorist’ or ‘suicide bomber’ are such expedient invalidations–like ‘Commie’ used to be. The implied irrationality removes all possibility of critical understanding or any negotiation of outcomes. But I do hope you understood those titles I recommended to you. Increasing one’s knowledge, no matter the subject, I have found to be most salubrious. Clinging to flabby and shabby ‘expertise’, however, just makes one foolish.
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“‘Crazies’ expressed your capacity for discernment just fine.”
– Are you aware that this sentence doesn’t make sense? A simple “yes” or “no” will suffice.
“Increasing one’s knowledge, no matter the subject, I have found to be most salubrious.”
– Have you tried writing in a less pompous way? Try to concentrate and transmit the point you are trying to make in one clear, precise sentence. This blog has a huge readership, and you will be able to reach a big audience. But you need to learn to express yourself clearly to do that.
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“He needed a conflict with the US…” If this is an example of your scholarship then you have little grounds for criticising Mick Collins! Stalin’s opposition to anti-Semitism was a matter of principle, as spelt out clearly in his 1931 response to queries from Jews in the US. What other world leader was as uncompromising in denouncing anti-Semitism as was Stalin? (See https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1931/01/12.htm ). Stalin authorised republication of this statement in Pravda in 1936 as anti-Semitism in Germany and elsewhere reached fever-pitch. This clearly indicated that there was no place for anti-Semitism in the USSR. After WW2, people of goodwill everywhere sought to find a refuge for Jews from the horrors of Europe and the Holocaust, and the idea of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East found support. However, the religious exclusivity and injustice of the Zionist state created through the occupation of Palestine and the theft of Palestinian lands, and the creation of Israel as a beachhead for imperialism in the Middle East, was rightly condemned. Opposition to Zionism is not inconsistent with opposition to anti-Semitism. Opposing Israel does not make one anti-Semitic.
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“If this is an example of your scholarship then you have little grounds for criticising Mick Collins”
– What scholarship??? Are you deranged? This is a blog, not a scholarly publication. And who in fuck’s name is Mick Collins?
Suddenly, a whole bunch of weirdos has alighted on the blog.
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Wow, Clarissa. I’m sorry. I seem to have stumbled into the wrong room. I can see you know how to put words down on this cyber paper, but I think some attention should now be paid to your ability to read. That’s why I recommended those titles.
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This was an interesting take on Stalin and his actions regarding those of jewish faith, and I learned something from it.
“There is a long-standing myth that Stalin was an anti-Semite. He wasn’t, though. Stalin was a pragmatist. When it served his purposes to like Jews, he liked them. When it became more useful to hate them, he hated them.”
This is one of the few things you have written that I completely agree with – And I don’t agree with it because it is a like opinion, I think the above is historical fact. This reality is rarely presented by more “main stream” writers and historians.
“Since his first days in the Communist Party, Stalin, an ethnic Georgian, was convinced that nationalism was the greatest danger to the Communist dream. And he was right.”
I also believe this to be a correct evaluation of Stalin’s thoughts on nationalism. I agree with Stalin – It was and is.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
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