Soviet Decision-Making in Practice
Subtitle: the USSR and Israel, 1947-1954
By: Yaacov Ro'i
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2017
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 540
ISBN-13: 9781351319003
Subjects: Antisemitism; Jews; Politics and government; Foreign relations; Antisémitisme; Relations extérieures; Diplomatic relations
Description: "The Soviet Union executed an apparent about-face in its traditional anti-Zionist position when the Palestine issue came before the United Nations in 1947. In addition to political support at the UN from May 1947 to May 1949, important military assistance was rendered to the Jewish Palestinian Yishuv throughout 1948 by the Eastern bloc. Toward the end of that year, however, indications of change became apparent, and the Soviet Union began criticizing Israel. This book studies the USSR's attitude toward the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine in the immediate post-World War II period and toward Israel in the first years of its existence, and it investigates the complex of considerations that caused the initial apparent reversal of traditional Soviet anti-Zionism. The author contends that this support for Israel contributed considerably to the evoking of Soviet Jewry's enthusiastic reaction to the establishment of the State. But this very reaction resulted in turn in Moscow changing its tactics again, since it could not allow its Jewish citizens to identify with a state outside the Soviet Union and the Communist orbit. During the few years after the Israeli War for Independence, in which the Arab-Israeli conflict was relatively low key, the USSR adopted a position of seeming neutrality between two sides--while quietly wooing the Arab nations. Ro'i examines how toward the end of the Stalin period the Jewish problem again intervened with the infamous' 'Doctor's Plot," and how early in 1953 the Soviet Union severed diplomatic relations with Israel. One year later the USSR cast its first two pro-Arab vetoes in the UN Security Council, and from this point on Soviet-Israeli relations openly became a function of the increasingly cordial Soviet friendship with the Arab world."--Provided by publisher.
Table of contents: title: Part 1 Part One: The Context of the Soviet Decision in Favor of a Jewish State in Palestine  -- Rot Yaacov; title: chapter 1 The Period of Non-Commitment February 1945-April 1947  -- Rot Yaacov; title: chapter 2 The Die is Cast  -- Rot Yaacov; title: part 2 Part Two: The Coincidence Of Interests?  -- Rot Yaacov; title: chapter 3 From Resolution to Implementation: the International Arena, 30 November 1947-14 May 1948  -- Rot Yaacov; title: chapter 4 The Palestine War: Soviet Aid to the Yishuv and the State of Israel  -- Rot Yaacov; title: chapter 5 Direct Contacts, May 1948-April 1949  -- Rot Yaacov; title: chapter 6 Soviet Backing at the United Nations, May 1948-May 1949  -- Rot Yaacov; title: part 3 Part Three: Soviet-Israeli Relations and Soviet Jewry?  -- Rot Yaacov; title: chapter 7 The Offensive Against Soviet Jewry  -- Rot Yaacov; title: chapter 8 Soviet Internal Developments and the Attitude to Israel  -- Rot Yaacov; title: part 3 Part Four: The Metamorphosis in Soviet-Israeli Relations?  -- Rot Yaacov; title: chapter 9 The Soviet Global and Regional Perspective, May 1949-March 1953  -- Rot Yaacov; title: chapter 10 The Soviet Stand on the Arab-Israeli Conflet, May 1949-March 1953  -- Rot Yaacov; title: chapter 11 Soviet Criteria and Tactics Revised, 1953-54  -- Rot Yaacov; title: chapter Afterword -- Rot Yaacov.