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The Soviet Flip
the
soviet Flip
How Cold War power politics shaped the emergence of modern Palestinian identity
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01 Friendship
5
Part One · Friendship
Years That Shaped Israel
This website examines historical and political processes without assigning collective blame or promoting hatred.
The Soviet Origins and the Reversal
1947 - 1953
The Political Climate
Israel’s Pro-Soviet Left Takes Center Stage
Throughout the 1940s and into the early 1950s, significant parts of the Israeli left regarded the Soviet Union as a natural ally.
The USSR was widely credited with defeating Nazi Germany, while its socialist ideals resonated deeply with Israel’s labor movement and kibbutz culture. For many on the left, Moscow was not yet seen as a threat, but as a major power that had stood behind Israel during the country’s earliest and most vulnerable years.
This pro-Soviet sentiment found expression through Maki, the Israeli Communist Party; its newspaper, Kol Ha’am; the Israel-Soviet Friendship League; and influential circles within Mapam, Hashomer Hatzair, and the Kibbutz Artzi movement.
Members of Maki in Haifa, October 23, 1948
Source: Kobi Kasten / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
Israeli-Soviet friendship poster, late 1940s
Source: The Pevzner Collection, National Library of Israel
Adapted by The Soviet Flip
Portraits of Lenin and Stalin at a May Day parade in Tel Aviv, 1949
Source: Hans Chaim Pinn / National Photo Collection, Government Press Office / Public Domain
Emblem of the Palestine Communist Party, used until 1948
Source: MAKI-FOTOS / Flickr
Adapted by The Soviet Flip
Commemorative victory postcard, 1945
Published by Tarbut La’am
Source: MAKI-FOTOS / Flickr
Adapted by The Soviet Flip
1947 - 1948
Support Driven by Self-Interest
The Soviet Union Backed Israel’s Creation - Not Out of Sympathy for Zionism
Moscow’s goal was to push Britain out of the Middle East and weaken the old colonial order.
May 1947: Gromyko addresses the United Nations in support of Jewish statehood.
November 1947: The Soviet Union votes in favor of the UN Partition Plan.
May 1948: The Soviet Union quickly grants Israel de jure recognition.
This support was not driven by sympathy for Zionism. It served a clear Soviet objective: weakening Britain and pushing it out of the region.
Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Union’s representative to the United Nations and later its foreign minister, at the UN General Assembly in New York,
November 29, 1947.
United Nations General Assembly, New York, November 29, 1947
Source: UN Photo
Credit: Bettmann / Getty Images
1948
Support on the Ground
Weapons from Czechoslovakia: A Lifeline for Israel
In 1948, the United States and Britain feared a wider regional conflict and sought to preserve their relationships with Arab states, protect their oil interests, and maintain Western influence in the Middle East. They therefore supported an arms embargo that restricted weapons sales to the region. For the newly established State of Israel, which had no developed defense industry of its own, the need for weapons was urgent.
At this critical moment, arms supplies arrived from Czechoslovakia with Soviet approval, including rifles, machine guns, ammunition, and Avia S-199 fighter aircraft.
1948 - 1949
The Rift Begins
Golda Meir in Moscow: When Soviet Support Turned to Suspicion
September 1948: Golda Meir arrives in Moscow as Israel’s first diplomatic representative to the Soviet Union. On Rosh Hashanah, thousands of Soviet Jews gather around her outside the Moscow Choral Synagogue.
For Israel: a powerful moment of Jewish solidarity.
For Stalin: a dangerous sign that Soviet Jews might feel loyalty not only to the Soviet Union, but also to Israel.
Golda Meir, Israel’s First Envoy to the Soviet Union
Photo: Hans Pinn | Source: The Knesset Website
Golda Meir at the Moscow Choral Synagogue, September 2, 1948
Photo: David Havkin / Nativ Archive
1949 - 1950
The Rift Deepens
Immigration from the Jewish Diaspora Was Essential to Building the State of Israel
In 1950, Israel enacted the Law of Return, granting every Jew the right to immigrate to Israel.
Moscow viewed this as a threat. If Soviet Jews wanted to leave for Israel, it meant that decades of Soviet rule had failed to erase their sense of peoplehood, historical memory, and national connection.
Pravda, No. 265, September 21, 1948, p. 3 Ilya Ehrenburg, “Regarding a Letter” (По поводу одного письма)
Digital source: Библиотека коммунизма / Marxism-Leninism.info
Translated quote:
“Soviet Jews, together with the entire Soviet people, are rebuilding their socialist homeland. They do not look to the Middle East; they look to the future.”
1950
Uno Reverse Card
Ben-Gurion Recognizes That Israel’s Future Lies in the West
The Soviet Union was not a long-term partner for Israel. It was an ideological power that increasingly viewed the new state with suspicion. To build a secure future, Israel needed support from the West in three key areas:
Financial support: Israel needed funding to absorb hundreds of thousands of immigrants and invest in housing, roads, industry, and agriculture.
International support: Israel needed strong allies, especially as it moved forward with plans to build a nuclear reactor.
Science and technology: Israel needed Western expertise and infrastructure to develop modern industry, maritime and aviation capabilities, and advanced defense systems.
Discussion of the Science Corps unit that conducted mineral research in the Negev, and whether it should be placed under a geological institute, the Ministry of Industry, or the Weizmann Institute.
Excerpt from David Ben-Gurion’s diary, July 21, 1950
Source: The David Ben-Gurion Archives
Ernst David Bergmann arrives in Israel with Chaim and Vera Weizmann, September 1948
Source: Weizmann Institute of Science
Ernst David Bergmann was a chemist and a close associate of Chaim Weizmann. He later became a central figure in the development of Israel’s scientific and defense infrastructure and served as the first chairman of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission.
1950 - 1951
The Crisis Deepens
Israel Begins to Align with the West
In 1950, Israel supported the UN condemnation of North Korea’s invasion of South Korea. Moscow increasingly viewed Israel as part of the American-led bloc.
David Ben-Gurion and Shimon Peres advanced Israel’s nuclear program, believing that the country needed an independent security capability and allies more reliable than the Soviet Union.
As early as 1949, Israeli scientists were invited to the French nuclear research center at Saclay by Francis Perrin, a senior figure in the French Atomic Energy Commission.
Israel launches a $500 million bond drive, March 28, 1951
Source: Israel Lobby Archive / IRmep, “Israel Bonds: The FBI File”
President Harry S. Truman with David Ben-Gurion at the White House, May 9, 1951
Source: Harry S. Truman Presidential Library / U.S. Government, via Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
1951 - 1953
From Crisis to Persecution
Soviet Suspicion of Israel Becomes State Policy
The Prague Trials
“Zionism” Becomes Part of the Indictment
In 1952, a show trial was held in Prague against Rudolf Slánský and thirteen other senior Communist officials. Most of the defendants were Jewish. They were accused of taking part in a “Trotskyite–Titoist–Zionist conspiracy” against the state and the Communist Party.
All fourteen defendants were convicted. Eleven were sentenced to death and executed, while three received life sentences.
The show trial of Rudolf Slánský, November 1952
Source: National Archives of the Czech Republic (Národní archiv), Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), 1945–1989, Audiovisual Documentation Collections, Prague. File No. 1-1/1: film record titled Trial of the Leadership of the Anti-State Conspiracy Center.
1952
The Night of the Murdered Poets
In 1952, 13 Soviet Jewish writers and cultural figures were secretly executed at Lubyanka Prison in Moscow on Stalin’s orders.
Lina Stern and members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
Credit: Jewish Women’s Archive,
courtesy of Ben-Zion Goldberg, New York
Arrest warrant for Solomon Lozovsky, January 26, 1949
Source: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
Lina Stern, Soviet Investigation File
Source: Joshua Rubenstein and Vladimir P. Naumov, eds., Stalin’s Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee; photograph from Lina Stern’s investigation file, 1949–1952.
Boris Shimeliovich, 1949–1952
Source: Joshua Rubenstein, 2002 / Boris Shimeliovich’s investigation file
1953
January
The Doctors’ Plot
In January 1953, the Soviet government announced the arrest of a group of prominent Moscow doctors, most of them Jewish. They were accused of plotting to murder Soviet leaders and were portrayed as “doctor-killers,” Western agents, and members of a conspiracy linked to international Jewry and Zionism.
On April 4, 1953, about a month after Stalin’s death, the doctors were released and officially cleared of all charges.
The authorities admitted that their confessions had been obtained under coercion and later claimed that those responsible for fabricating the case had been arrested and punished.
February 9
The Retaliation
BOOM!
The Bombing of the Soviet Legation in Tel Aviv
On February 9, 1953, at 10:30 p.m., a bomb exploded in the courtyard of the Soviet legation at 46 Rothschild Boulevard. Three people were injured, including the wife of the Soviet envoy.
The attack was attributed to Malchut Yisrael, an extremist Jewish underground founded by former members of Lehi and also known as the Tzrifin Underground. The group targeted Soviet interests in Israel in protest against the anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist policies of the Communist bloc.
Photo: Hans Pinn / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
The Soviet legation building immediately after the bombing, February 9, 1953
A police officer guards furniture from the Soviet legation awaiting removal on the sidewalk along Rothschild Boulevard, following the departure of the diplomatic staff.
Photo: Hans Pinn / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
February 13
The Turning Point
The Soviet Union Severs Ties with Israel
Following the bombing of the Soviet legation in Tel Aviv, the Soviet Union severed diplomatic relations with Israel, and its diplomatic staff left the country.
In Kol Ha’am, the break in relations was not presented as an act of Soviet hostility. Instead, it was blamed on the Ben-Gurion government’s “anti-Soviet incitement.”
In Kol Ha’am, the newspaper of the Israeli Communist Party (Maki), the break in relations was not portrayed as an act of Soviet hostility, but as the result of “anti-Soviet incitement” by the Ben-Gurion government.
February 13, 1953
This is where the chapter of “friendship” ends and the Soviet Flip begins
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