page_title: Golda Meir
section_title: Minister Plenipotentiary to Moscow
hierarchical_section_title: Golda Meir / Diplomatic and ministerial career / Minister Plenipotentiary to Moscow
caption_attribution_description: English: Israeli ambassador to the Soviet Union Golda Meir surrounded by crowd of 50,000 Jews near Moscow Choral Synagogue on the first day of Rosh Hashanah in 1948.עברית: גולדה מאיר
context_page_description: Golda Meir was an Israeli teacher, kibbutznik, stateswoman, politician and the fourth Prime Minister of Israel.
  Born in Kiev, Russian Empire, she emigrated to the United States as a child with her family in 1906, and was educated there, becoming a teacher. After marrying, she and her husband emigrated to then Palestine in 1921, settling on a kibbutz. Meir was elected prime minister of Israel on March 17, 1969, after serving as Minister of Labour and Foreign Minister. The world's fourth and Israel's first and only woman to hold the office of Prime Minister, she has been described as the "Iron Lady" of Israeli politics; the term was later applied to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion used to call Meir "the best man in the government"; she was often portrayed as the "strong-willed, straight-talking, grey-bunned grandmother of the Jewish people."
  Meir resigned as prime minister in 1974, the year following the Yom Kippur War. She died in 1978 of lymphoma.
context_section_description: Carrying the first Israeli-issued passport, Meir was appointed Israel's minister plenipotentiary to the Soviet Union, with her term beginning on September 2, 1948, and ending in March 1949. At the time, good relations with the Soviet Union were important for Israel's ability to secure arms from Eastern European countries for the struggle that accompanied its independence. In turn, Joseph Stalin and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov sought to cultivate a strong relationship with Israel as a means of furthering the Soviet position in the Middle East. Soviet–Israeli relations were complicated by Soviet policies against religious institutions and nationalist movements, made manifest in actions to shut down Jewish religious institutions as well as the ban on Hebrew language study and the prohibition of promoting emigration to Israel.
  During her brief stint in the USSR, Meir attended Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services at the Moscow Choral Synagogue. She was mobbed by thousands of Russian Jews chanting her name. The Israeli 10,000-shekel banknote issued in November 1984 bore a portrait of Meir on one side and the image of the crowd that turned out to cheer her in Moscow on the other.
caption: Meir surrounded by crowd of 50,000 Jews near Moscow Choral Synagogue on the first day of Rosh Hashanah in 1948.
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