ALLIANCE (MARXIST-LENINIST)
Number 30, Oct 1998
MARX, LENIN & STALIN ON ZIONISM.
Part 3:
On Birobidzhan; on the Zionists sabotage of an anti-Nazi Front;
On the Setting up of Israel;
On Revisionist Gromyko's participation in this;
On the Yalta & Potsdam conferences & the Atomic Bomb


THE FORMATION OF THE SOVIET JEWISH HOMELAND - BIROBIDZHAN

    Russian Jewry prior to the revolution had been intensely persecuted. The Russian census of 1897 had enumerated 5,215,800 Jews - of whom nearly 2 million emigrated between the years 1881 and 1914.
(Zvi Gitelman: p. 1; Introduction to Robert Weinberg: "Stalin’s Forgotten Zion-Birobidzhan & the Making of A Soviet Jewish Homeland, An Illustrated History 1928-1996." Berkeley 1998 ).
    The majority that stayed were left in the "Pale of Settlement". The majority were peasants and earned their living from agriculture. But since they were banned from owning any land, they were condemned always to be at the poorest status of peasantry. By the beginning of the First World War, about 50,000 Jews (3% of the total Jewish population of the Russian Empire) were tilling agricultural land. Most Jews were engaged in commerce, manufacturing and services - mainly in a petit bourgeois capacity. (Weinberg Ibid, p. 18.)

    Subject to the worst racism and pogroms, the Jewish leaders were split as to how to deal with this. One section argued they should readily embrace the limited reforms offered by some of the Tsars - and assimilate completely. At the extreme were those advocating conversion to Christianity. Another "moderate" section however wanted to modernise the Jewish traditions and including a dropping of the Yiddish language for Hebrew. These were known as the maskilim (enlighteners) and their movement as the Haskalah (enlightenment).

    Others in reacting to the pogroms of Tsar Alexander III (1881-94) and Nicholas II (1894-1917) argued for a completely separate Jewish state. This tradition, led by such as the physician Leon Pinsker, became known as shivat zion (Return To Zion). In the midst of this was the Jewish Bund whose positions have been already discussed above.

    After the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, the situation of the Jewish people was considered as part of the overall question of the minorities within the Soviet Union. Within a year the Bolsheviks had organised Jewish Sections within the Communist party (Evreiskie seketsii or Evsektsii or Yevsektsii). A commissariat for Jewish Affairs was set up known as Evkom. It was placed within the Commissariat of Nationalities, headed by Stalin. The language question was resolved in favour of Yiddish this being the language of the Jewish masses and not Hebrew.

    There is no doubt that the correct Soviet policy of restricting the medium of the religious Hebrew language and encouraging Yiddish was at least in part responsible for the rapid assimilation of the USSR Jews:

"The Yevsektsii also campaign against the Hebrew language. In their eyes, Hebrew is the reactionary language of the Jewish bourgeoisie, whatever its content, and has to be eliminated in favour of Yiddish, the language of the Jewish proletariat. Hebrew schools and printing are closed. At the end of the 1920's, Hebrew becomes the only language which is officially outlawed in the Soviet Union. Jewish religious education is now impossible. The only permitted expressions of Soviet-Jewish life are secular Yiddish education, literature, press and theatre... The newly established Yiddish schools are very popular at first. But as only few secondary school and no university courses are in Yiddish, their numbers decline. At the end of the 1930's, they have completely disappeared. With the almost complete elimination of organized Jewish religious and communal life, the Yevsektsii have become redundant and are dissolved in 1930. " WWW site "Beyond the Pale"; A History of Soviet Jews; 
http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/beyond-the-pale/index.html
    The same source makes the point that many of the Yevsektsii were later persecuted as "nationalists":     But the point has been repeatedly proven in the pages of Alliance, that the purges of the 1930's were not under the control of Stalin, but the hidden revisionists such as Yezhov. They were aimed at the alienation and or physical elimination of the best Bolsheviks from the party.  A policy of Korenizatsiia ("Implanting Bolshevism in the non-Russian masses") was launched. Stalin’s view at the Commissariat of Nationalities was to stimulate cultural diversity, if it was "National in form and socialist in content". (Cited Weinberg p.15)
As Gitelman puts it, the promotion of the Yiddish culture was - and remains - a unique experiment:     According to Gitelman, largely speaking, the Jews rejected this effort to build a Jewish state. But this view is countered by Weinberg - who has become the most visible historian of the Birobidzhan: "The notion of a Jewish homeland appealed to many Soviet Jews, and the Birobidzhan project was intended to undercut the Zionist focus on Palestine."
Weinberg Ibid, p.13.
    Weinberg’s book corroborates the view that a general interest was definitely present. In any case, if Gitelman’s view is accepted, Gitelman explains the lack of interest as being due to the power of the assimilation offered by the new Soviet state. For Gitelman, the main reason was an embrace of Russian language and the opportunities given by the revolution:     This confirmed the views of Lenin and Stalin - that once the Jews were allowed to play a part in society in free democratic manner - links to the past would be eroded. Gitelman draws an explicit parallel to the dying of Yiddish as a language in America.. where English was the key to assimilation. Gitelman’s states that on this basis:     But as Weinberg argues, nonetheless there were still many Soviet Jews who retained the belief in a separate entity. In May 1934 that the Jewish Autonomous region was set up. It was located as Map 2 shows, in remote and poorly populated area of the Soviet Far East. In this setting it would not displace indigenous peoples. Of course this was in contrast to the creation of the future Israel which displaced the Palestinians in a brutal manner. To this end the plan was evolved to settle 100,000 Jews in agricultural colonies.


In Hard Copy form only:
MAP 2: From page 15 Weinberg Ibid.


 By the early 1920's the number of poor Jewish unemployed in the USSR was high. Around Belarus, in the city of Gomel it was about 70%. (Cited Weinberg Ibid; p. 16).

In addition, many of the petit bourgeoisie of the Jewish population had to be brought into the socialist economy. Since the petit bourgeois nature of their work had in the majority of Jews, been continually eroded by the socialist policies of collectivisation in both manufacturing and agriculture, a question arose of the "productivization" of Jewish life. Weinberg comments:

    In the 1920's therefore two organisations were set up, OZET (Society for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land) and KOMZET (Committee for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land). OZET was controlled by KOMZET members, who examined conditions for settlement in Ukraine, Belarus, and the Crimea. After 1928, attention focused on the formation of a Jewish Autonomous Region (J.A.R). 
    Jews from the Shetls (Shetls were the villages or ghettoes where large numbers of Jews were concentrated) were moved to the area. By 1930, some 47,000 Jewish families were working in agriculture in the Soviet Union.

    The 1928 decision to make the Biro-Bidzhanskii district a JAR - took in a region the size of Belgium. It had been annexed in 1858 by Russia. The Biro and the Bidzhan were tributaries of the river Amur. The population consisted then of "several hundred" indigenous Siberians and some settlers - Russians, Cossacks, Koreans and Ukrainians over the late 19th-early 20th century. There was some early resistance from 1924, until the decision was finally taken in 1928, to have the Biro-Bidzhanskii district as the site of the JAR. This resistance, from some activists in KOMZET, argued that it was too far from the current pockets of Jewish populations. Many Jews argued that Birobidzhan was preferable to Palestine, since it was within an area they already had roots - an argument put by I.Sudarskii in 1930 in the book "Birobdizhan And Palestine". (Cited Weinberg Ibid; p. 22).

    Moreover the Ukraine Belarus and Crimea were becoming crowded and the Far East resources had not been sufficiently tapped. This meant that the Soviet Government made conditions attractive for Jews to move there:

    Official USSR sanction for the project was given by President Mikhail Kalinin:     In March 1928 a decree was published reserving the district for the settlement of Jews who would work the land:     Strong incentives were provided to move impoverished Jews to the JAR. Even those who had been declared as Anon-labourers" were allowed to have electoral rights in the JAR if they engaged in productive work. (Cited Weinberg Ibid; p. 24). But no doubt, conditions were hard, and were not helped by a serious flood in 1928 and 1932, and Soviet reporters criticised the lack of preparations for the settlers. So there was a yearly drop-out rate of about 50% in the first few years. By 1931, the territory was however decreed to become an autonomous administrative entity, and accordingly a broadening of the original agricultural focus allowed more scope for settlers to stay if they were not farmers. By 1939, only 23% (4,404 of 17,695) lived in the countryside of the JAR. (Cited Weinberg Ibid; p. 32.)

    But the JAR grew as more Jews came . By World War II it’s capital Birobidzhan, had a population numbered at 30,000, and the JAR was an important source of cement, tin, bricks, paper products, and clothing. (Cited Weinberg Ibid; p. 39). 

A number of non-Jews went also despite the original intention. In fact gentiles outnumbered Jews. By 1939 Jews were 18,000 of the 109,000 residents of the JAR. Seman Dimanshtein, a leading Jewish activist proclaimed:

    It is not surprising that foreign Jewish support was sought, including foreign emigration. Over one thousand foreign Jews moved to the JAR by the mid-1930's. From 1935, each foreign Jew who wanted to move to the JAR, had to pay KOMZET two hundred dollars. The wholly bourgeois American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) (Later often known simply as the Joint) and the Jewish Colonization Committee were: Gitelman cites one of the American leaders of the JDC, James Rosenberg saying approvingly in an international report:     By 1930 the drive towards creating a socialist state, had both unified many of the former minorities into a common struggle, and had created a higher purpose. "Accordingly the Evsektii were abolished in 1930." (Gitelman Ibid; p. 8). But still the JAR continued to attract world wide Jewish attention. Although certainly, simultaneously many Zionists bitterly attacked it. However many cites throughout the world organised committees of support that continued to donate both monies and equipment and people. Prominent Jews the world over defended the JAR. Lion Feuchtwangler, the prominent Jewish writer, wrote: In the context of the Soviet state, hidden revisionists aiming to disrupt socialism sought ways of alienating the world wide Jewish support. The secret security apparatus was controlled by hidden revisionists such as Ezhov. At this juncture correct tactics to the minorites was subverted. Thus at this juncture, an anti-Jewish attack did take place. For example the leading Jewish official Iosif Liberberg - the former head of the Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture in Kiev - was arrested and charged with:     But, since this was precisely what had been intended for the JAR, such charges themselves can be seen as provocative and anti-Soviet.
Further anti-Soviet acts ensued:
    Following the charges, both OZET and KOMZET were disbanded; and Semen Dimanshei was executed. (Weinberg Ibid; p. 68).
    By 1941, virtually all the Yiddish schools in the JAR were closed barring only two. But the institutional and legal foundations of the region were un-changed. Nonetheless by 1939, the Jews accounted for only 16 % of the population(17,695 of about 109,000 inhabitants. Weinberg Ibid; p. 69.

    After the war, while there was a temporary set-back for the hidden revisionists, there was a resurgence of Jewish immigration in the JAR. In 1948 Mikhail Kalinin continued his public support for the JAR:

    Thus, following the war there was a revived Government sponsored support. Again only Jewish immigration was allowed into the JAR. In 1946 a synagogue was approved by the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults. In early 1946 the: Again the international community of Jews rallied to the JAR. Between 1945 and 1948 some 6 million rubles worth of food and supplies were sent to the JAR from the USA alone. Albert Einstein was one of the prominent supporters.
The conventional wisdom is that:     As even Gitelman points out the ultimate failure of Birobidzhan left the reactionary alternative of a so-called "Homeland", of Israel-Palestine , as was then being heavily promoted by the Zionists - with no competition from a socialist alternative:


  • THE UNDERLYING OBJECTIVE LOGIC FOR THE ZIONIST CALLS FOR " ANTI-ASSIMILATION" - WAS AN AID TO NAZI GERMANY

        The desire to be free of oppressions from pogroms is naturally understandable. But could that desire lead to an alliance with forces of fascism that would promote the worst pogrom known to us to date?
    It is most "politically incorrect" to say that it did.
    However Lenni Brenner clearly illustrated this indeed occurred. He has described this well in the book: "Zionism in the Age of Dictators".
    The natural consequence of a Zionist 'separatist’ mentality was described by Mussolini as only being correctly understood by one of the founders of Israel - a fellow "fascist" - Vladimir Yabotinsky:

        As shown by Brenner, the Zionists across Europe were in fact, at best ambivalent to fascist regimes, and informed many of the key Zionist colonists of Palestine including the notorious Stern Gang. Brenner’s contentions inflame Zionists. But the objective reality was that Zionist Jews turned their views and thoughts towards, what was for them a "Zion", but which was in reality the Arabic Palestine. Zionists had agreed that their current place of residence was only a temporary historical stopping over.

        We will now follow Brenner, and cite Brenner at great length, to illustrate the objective logic of "Zionist separatism" versus "Assimilation" during the Second World War, up to 1945.
     
        In the First Phase the Zionist forces obstructed the anti-Nazi United Front;
        Secondly and later on, they denied that the extermination of the Jews was occurring.
        Thirdly, in yet another phase, the highest echelons of the Zionists indicated that they were   prepared to "sacrifice" a substantial part of European Jewry, as the Allies post-war would now accept the need for a seperate "Jewish Homeland".
        Fourthly: Zionist sympathies were not primarily given to the only potential forces - communism and socialism - that could stop fascism. This especially applied to German Jews:

    When Hitler appeared to be gaining ground in Germany, Jewish organisations led by their youth, did belatedly try to counter the worst fascist atrocities: "Religious Jewry turned to its traditional defence organisation, the Centralverein, the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith; now, for the first time, the department store owners, who had become a prime target for the attentions of the Nazi brown-shirts, began to contribute to the CV’s efforts...younger members of the CV pushed aside the old leadership and were able to get the CV .. to subsidise the SDP’s anti-Nazi propaganda. After the DDP’s betrayal, the SDP picked up approximately 60 per cent of the Jewish vote. Only 8 per cent went Communist."
    Brenner Chapter 3; op Cit; p.27
    Web Citation.  http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad3.html
        Elsewhere it has been pointed out by the Marxist-Leninists of the Communist League, that the effective resistance to the Nazis was sabotaged by the criminal sectarianism foisted upon the KPD by the revisionists of the KPD and the revisionist leaders of the Communist International led by Dimitrov. (Compass Issue 1996.)

        Brenner correctly points out that if both the SDP & the KPD did not organise effectively against fascism - neither did the German Zionists:

    "If the SDP and the KPD must bear their full measure of guilt for Hitler's triumph, so too must the Zionistische Vereinigung fur Deutschland (the Zionist Federation of Germany-ZVfD). Although conventional wisdom has always assumed that the Zionists, with their dire view of anti-Semitism, warned the Jews of the Nazi menace, this is in fact not true..... a diligent search of the pages of the Jeudische Rundschau, the weekly organ of the ZVfD, will not reveal.. prophecies (foretelling Hitler’s accession to power-Ed). When a Jew was killed several hundred Jewish stores looted in a November 1923 hunger riot in Berlin, Kurt Blumenfeld, the Secretary (later President) of the ZVfD, consciously played down the incident: 'There would be a very cheap and effective kind of reaction, and we ... decisively reject it. One could incite deep anxiety among German Jewry. One could use the excitement to enlist the vacillating. One could represent Palestine and Zionism as a refuge for the homeless. We do not wish to do that. We do not wish to carry off by demagoguery those who have stood apart from Jewish life out of indifference. But we wish to make clear to them through [our] sincere conviction where the basic error of Jewish galuth [exile] existence lies. We wish to awaken their national self(awareness. We wish ... through patient and earnest educational; work [to] prepare them to participate in the upbuilding of Palestine." From Brenner Ibid; Chapter 3; p. 29; also citing Stephen Poppel, Zionism in Germany' 1897-1933, p.119.     Brenner cites Stephen Poppel, author of "Zionism in Germany 1897-1933", to the effect that until 1931 "Far from warning and defending the Jews, prominent Zionists opposed anti-Nazi activity." The logic of the Zionists in Germany was to agree with the Nazis that Jew and Gentile could not in fact co-exist:     The rigorous extent to which this type of logic was taken is instructive when assessing the claims of present day Zionists proclaiming the Anecessity" of the state of Israel in its current form. Thus In 1925 the "total abstentionist" Jacob Klatzkin, a co-editor of the "Encyclopedia Judaica" stated:     After the June 1930 elections in Saxony, where Nazis obtained 14.4 per cent of the vote: "The Berlin Jewish community put pressure on the ZVfD to join a Reichstag Election Committee in conjunction with the CV and other assimilationists. But the ZVfD’s adherence was strictly nominal; the assimilationists complained that the Zionists put barely any time or money into it, and it dissolved immediately after the election... Siegfried Moses, later Blumenfeld’s successor as head of the federation, demonstrated the Zionists, indifference to the construction of a strenuous defence: "We have always believed the defence against anti-Semitism to be a task which concerns all Jews and have clearly stated the methods of which we approve and those which we consider irrelevant or ineffective. But it is true that the defence against anti-Semitism is not our main task, it does not concern us to the same extent and is not of the same importance for us as is the work for Palestine and, in a somewhat different sense, the work of the Jewish communities." "Reactions Jewish Press to Nazi Challenge", Leo Baeck Inst. Yr Bk, V (1960), p. 312; In Brenner; ibid; p. 31.     It is not the case that all Jews were so blind to the dangers. Obviously the position of the Zionists was directly contrary to that section of the Jewish population that had accepted and welcomed assimilation:     But in the face of the KPD sectarianism the best of the Jewish assimilationists had no effective United Front to go to. Moreover, to their own youth, the Zionist leadership preached fervent anti-communism, describing it in 1932 as "red assimilation" (See Donald Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany, p. 30).

        Sections of the Jewish bourgeoisie, such as Georg Kareski, a banker, disagreed with the Zionists. In 1919 he founded the "Juedische Volkspartei". But in 1930, he unsuccessfully stood for the Reichstag on a Catholic Centre platform. He then set up the "Organisation of Jewish Centre Party Voters". Even the left wing of the Jewish population was dominated by the idea of a Zion:

        Even after Hitler’s accession to power, the Jewish leaders did not organise effectively. The Zionists position has been explained. However the assimilationists also were tragically short sighted. They wished to not create waves to draw attention to them. This is perhaps understandable. However the attitude of actively identifying with the Nazi concept of "Volk" was also adopted by sections of Zionism:     As far as Krojanker and many other Zionists were concerned, democracy’s day was over. Harry Sacher, a Briton, one of the leaders of the WZO in the period, explained Krojanker's theories in a review of Krojanker’s book, "Zum Problem Ausutschen Nationalismus":     Thus international Jewry was not only confused about the nature of fascism, but often its leaders took mis-guided steps to dissuade even any moderately active anti-Nazi organisation, such as goods boycotts: It is true that some were far more aware, such as the American rabbi, Abraham Jacobson, who:     However most of the leaders were drawn to the prospect of using Nazism as a vehicle for the creation of a Zionist homeland - kicking out the resident Palestinians.
        This desire, was the vehicle by which the WZO itself destroyed even the weak boycott of Nazi German goods. They supported and then took over the 1933 independent proposal of a Sam Cohen: "The owner of Ha Note’a Ltd, a Tel Aviv citrus export firm. Even under Chancellor Bruning the German government had put a flight tax on capital leaving the country and Cohen had proposed that Zionist emigres be allowed to avoid the tax by purchasing goods in Germany which would later be turned back into cash after sale in Palestine. Bruning had no interest in the idea, but in 1933 Cohen, on his own, presented the plan again. The Nazis were already worried about the effect even the spontaneous and lamentably organised boycott was having on their balance of trade, and Heinrich Wolff, the German Consul in Jerusalem, quickly grasped just how useful Cohen's proposition could be. He wrote to his ministry: "In this way it might be possible to wage a successful campaign against the Jewish boycott of Germany. It might be possible to make a breach in the wall.’ The Jews, he argued, would be put in a quandary. Further boycott would be seen as imposing problems on emigrants seeking to find new homes for themselves in Palestine or elsewhere. Because of his location, Wolff was one of the first Germans to perceive the growing importance of Palestine in the Jewish equation, and in June he wrote again to Berlin: 'Whereas in April and May the Yishuv was waiting boycott instructions from the United States, it now seems that the situation has been transformed. It is Palestine which now gives the instructions... It is important to break the boycott first and foremost in Palestine, and the effect will inevitably be felt on the main front, in the United States.’ Brenner Chapter 6; p. 61; Op Cit;
    or at Web Site.  http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html
        Accordingly contracts were soon signed that were then taken over by the WZO. Moreover the WZO now used this lever to transfer monies out of Germany ear-marked for buying land in then Palestine: "In early May 1933 the Nazis signed an agreement with Cohen for one million Reichmarks ($400,000) of Jewish wealth to be shipped to Palestine in the form of farm machinery. At this point the WZO intervened. The Depression had badly affected donations and in March 1933 they had desperately cabled to their followers in America pleading that if funds were not forthcoming immediately’ they were heading for imminent financial collapse. Now Menachem Ussischkin, head of the Jewish National Fund, got Cohen to arrange for the release of frozen JNF monies in Germany via Ha Note’a. The bait for the Nazis was that the cash was needed to buy land for the Jews whom Hitler would be pushing out. Cohen also assured Heinrich Wolff that he would operate: Behind the scenes, at a forthcoming Jewish conference in London to weaken or defeat any boycott resolution’. Dr Fritz Reichert, the Gestapo’s agent in Palestine, later wrote to his headquarters reminding them of the affair: 'The London Boycott Conference was torpedoed from Tel Aviv because the head of the Transfer in Palestine, in close contact with the consulate in Jerusalem, sent cables to London. Our main function here is to prevent, from Palestine, the unification of world Jewry on a basis hostile to Germany... It is advisable to damage the political and economic strength of Jewry by sowing dissension in its ranks.'"
    Brenner Chapter 6; p.62; Op Cit;
    or at Web Site.  http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html
        But the WZO had even grander aims than Sam Cohen. They saw an opportunity to draw enough money and immigrants into Palestine to drown by weight of numbers the indigenous and inconvenient Palestinian Arabs. The calculations involved the tacit approval of the British. This was a plan woven by a self-proclaimed "Socialist-Zionist", named Chaim Arlosoroff. Brenner describes the secret calculation as "cold":     Harry Hopkins related the events of a meeting on 27 March 1943 between President Roosevelt, Anthony Eden and others on the question of saving Bulgarian and other Jews. Eden said:     Brenner points out that according to Churchill, the Arabs were no better than a backward people who eat nothing but camel dung’. (Lenni Brenner: Chapter 24:"The Wartime Failure to Rescue"; p. 228; or at web: http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad24.html )
        As far as the British were concerned they could control the Arabs better than they might be able to control the Zionists. They temporarily therefore favoured the Arabs. Most sections of the Zionists therefore saw merit in "currying favour" with the British. They tried to consider the benefits of the war to Jewry: "Their first thought was how to turn the war to their advantage in Palestine. Yoav Gelber of the Yad Vashem Institute (Israel’s Holocaust Institute-ed) gives a good account of this view among the Labour Zionists in September 1939: 'The majority of the leaders tended to Palestine and its problems as the touchstone of their attitude towards the war. They were inclined to leave the front-line fighting as such, if unconnected to Palestine, to the Jews of the Diaspora.'" Lenni Brenner: Chapter 24:"The Wartime Failure to Rescue"; p.229; ?Ibid; or at web:   http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad24.html     In fact there was very little attention to the plight of the European Jews from the Jewish Agency Executive. Zionist leaders in the USA were also not only unhelpful, but argued not to assist even with food packages as this relieved pressure on the Nazis: "Furthermore, the American Zionist leadership campaigned against those Jews who were trying to aid the stricken. Aryeh Tartakower, who was in charge of aid work for the World Jewish Congress in America in 1940, has told some of the story:..: 'We received a call from the American Government, from the State Department and they brought to our attention that sending parcels to the Jews in Poland was not in the interests of the Allies... The first one to tell us to stop immediately was Dr Stephen Wise... He said: 'We must stop for the good of England."
    Lenni Brenner: Chapter 24:"The Wartime Failure to Rescue";  p. 229; Ibid;
    http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad24.html
    The Zionist-Nazi Pact And Trade
        In 1933, a Zionist-Nazi Pact was announced.
        This is a little known -yet extraordinary event. It's lack of reporting must be compared to the constant malignment of the USSR for the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

        That USSR-German pact was essential for the survival of the USSR against imperialist machinations' and the USSR had tried repetitively before hand, to get a united front against German fascism. The Western imperialists had refused and had sabotaged even their own weak-kneed commitments to protecting the sovereignity of several countries, that German Nazism blithely ignored with no repercussions to itself. In fact the clear and obvious strategy of the Western imperialists was to drive Germany against the USSR by so-called "appeasement". (See articles by Communist League & Alliance elsewhere).
        The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact "spiked the guns of the imperialists", buying vital time to move the industry East of the Urals and continue fevered preperation for inevitable war.
        But, the Zionist-Nazi Pact was quite different - it was simply another instance of how far Zionists were prepared to go to create a Zionist homeland in Palestine.
        The Pact allowed the Zionists to ship 3 million Reichmarks worth of Jewish wealth, in the form of German export goods, to Palestine.
        The Zionist leaders of the WZO tried to prevent any serious discussion of this manouevre of theirs:

        This news, of the "Zionist-Nazi Pact", effectively discouraged adoption of an anti-Nazi Boycott. To further facilitate and absolutely ensure this rejection further, the case for the Boycott was actually presented by the fascist Zionist Vladamir Jabotinsky, whose brown shirted troops, had thoroughly alienated the Congress: "The Zionist-Nazi pact became public the day before a boycott resolution was to be debated, and it may be speculated that the Nazis did this so as to discourage endorsement of the boycott. The leader of the right-wing .. Vladimir Jabotinsky, presented the boycott case.. Jabotinsky’s support for the boycott, and his opposition to the pact, was dismissed as the raging of a terrorist opponent of the democratically elected moderate leadership. His resolution was defeated by a vote of 240 to 48."L.Brenner; WWW; Ibid; Chapter 6: "The Jewish Anti-Nazi Boycott"; ibid; p.63;  or at http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html     However when the Nazis publicised the pact, the floor of the Congress was furious. The leaders of the WZO lied about their role: "When the Nazis announced that they had signed an agreement with the Zionists allowing German Jews to ship three million Reichmarks’ worth of Jewish wealth to Palestine in the form of German export goods.. pandemonium broke loose. The leadership.. tried to protect themselves by outright lying; the Labour leader, Berl Locker, brazenly proclaimed: the executive of the World Zionist Organisation had nothing to do with the negotiations which led to an agreement with the German government’. No one believed this crude fabrication." L.Brenner; WWW; Ibid; Chapter 6: "The Jewish Anti-Nazi Boycott"; p. 64;
    or at http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html
        The Zionist leaders pretended the blame lay solely with a bank. But since it was their bank, this shallow pretence was clearly seen through:     The financial trading associated with the Zionist-Nazi Pact was considerable, and laid at least some of the basis for the colonisation of the Arab owned Palestine. It did operate under Nazi rules, and it did have a top limit of cash transfer. This meant that the richest fractions of the Jews transferred monies (somehow) elsewhere. But the proportion sent purely for a Zionist Palestine was critical at that time: The rank and file of the Jewish workers in many countries abhorred and organised against the Pact:     But the unconcern of the leaders of the WZO with the anti-Nazi attitudes of many Jews continued even up to the 1935 Lucerne Congress. The leaders’ attitudes remained that Nazism assisted the formation of Israel: "But by far the best example of the leadership’s unwillingness to resist the Nazis was Weizmann’s statement: "The only dignified and really effective reply to all that is being inflicted upon the Jews of Germany is the edifice erected by our great and beautiful work in the Land of Israel... Something is being created that will transform the woe we all suffer into songs and legends for our grand-children.".... . . .. (This cynicism was roundly condemned by Jews in Britain and in the USA -Editor Alliance].......
    "Press criticism was immediate. London’s 'World Jewry', then the best Zionist magazine in the English language, excoriated their own World Congress: 'Dr Weizmann went as far as to state that the only dignified reply the Jews could give was a renewed effort for the upbuilding of Palestine. How terrifying the proclamation of the Congress President must have sounded in the ears of Herren Hitler, Streicher and Goebbels!" In America the opposition to the Ha’avara was particularly intense in the garment industry trade unions, with their hundreds of thousands of Jewish workers. Most of the Jewish labour leaders had always looked upon Zionism with contempt. Many of them were from Russia and knew about the fateful Herzl-Plevhe meeting and how their old enemy Zubatov had backed the Poale Zionists against the Bund. As far as they were concerned the Ha’avara was just Zionism up to its old tricks, and in December 1935 Baruch Charney Vladeck, the Chairman of the Jewish Labor Committee, and himself an ex-Bundist from Poland, debated Berl Locker, the organisational head of the Palestinian Poale Zion, before an overflow crowd in New York. Locker was compelled to take a defensive position, insisting that the agreement was purely in the interest of the German Jews." Brenner Ibid Chapter 6; p. 71; 72; 73.
    or at http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html
        But some wanted further manifestations of the 'apartheid" mentality of Herzl: "If the majority of Jews did oppose the Ha’avara as treason, there was one at least who was willing to go on record as complaining that Weizmann and his friends were not going far enough. Gustav Krojanker.. one of the leaders of the Hitachdut Olei Germania (the German Immigrants Association in Palestine) in 1936 the association published.. "The Transfer: A Vital Question of the Zionist Movement". To him Zionism was stark calculation, nothing more, and he was more than willing to draw the logical conclusions already inherent in the Zionist-Nazi pact. He claimed to see Nazism and the opportunities it opened up for Zionism in the authentic Herzlian manner: ... he perceived two political factors --an organisation of the Jewish people on the one side, and the countries concerned on the other. They were to be partners in a pact." Brenner Ibid Chapter 6; p. 74;
    http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html
        The WZO extended the agreements that busted the boycott to other countries and goods: "In March 1936, Siegfried Moses's negotiations had finally created the International Trade and Investment Agency (INTRIA) bank in London to organise sales of German products directly in Britain itself. The Nazis had to content themselves with the satisfaction of the further demoralisation of the boycott forces, as fear of Jewish and general British hostility to boycott--scabbing made it impossible for INTRIA to go so far as to allow British currency to come directly into German hands. Instead, the goods were bought in Germany for marks and their value was credited to Jewish capitalists needing the Pounds sterling 1,000 entry fee required of over-quota immigrants into Palestine. Zionist-Nazi trade relations continued to develop in other spheres as well. In 1937 200,000 crates of the 'Golden Oranges' were shipped to Germany, and 1/2 million more to the Low Countries under the swastika flag.[(50)] Even after Kristallnacht --11 November 1938.. the manager of Ha’avara Ltd, Werner Felchenfeld, continued to offer reduced rates to would-be users of Nazi boats."
    Brenner Ibid Chapter 6; p. 75
    http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html
        The consequences of this episode were to assist the Nazis. As Eduard Benes said to a later "remorseful" Nahum Goldmann at: "At a dramatic meeting he had with the Czech Foreign Minister, Eduard Benes, in 1935... had warned: 'Don’t you understand', he shouted, 'that by reacting with nothing but half-hearted gestures, by failing to arouse world public opinion and take vigorous action against the Germans, the Jews are endangering their future and their human rights all over the world?" Brenner Ibid Chapter 6;
    http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html
    Molotov Warns Jews of the Killing Squads But the Zionists Do Not.
        Amongst the fervid anti-Stalin accusations of Arkady Vaksberg, is the charge that the USSR was silent about the fate of the Jews behind the German lines.
        In reality Vaksberg has to assert this, given the shocking attempts of Western leaders and leading Western Jewish individuals to silence the real news.
        Brenner asks when it was that:     It should be remembered that the USSR was then fighting for its’ very life. Yet the Molotov Announcement explicitly analysed the work of the Einsatzgruppen (the Nazi killing squads, especially instructed to kill Jews) in January 1942: It is instructive to follow in historical time, what happens next, and the various delays introduced at the highest levels of the self-appointed leaders of the international Jewish population.

        It emerges that it was not until November (ie let us be clear: Our simple calculation is From January to November is 8 months exclusive of the whole months of January & February - How many died in those months?) - that an alarm was publicly given to the Jewish populations of those area by organisations such as the World Jewish Congress (WJC). These facts are verified as Brenner makes clear in his text, by independent Jewish sources:

    "In February 1942 Bertrand Jacobson, the representative of the Joint Distribution Committee in Hungary, held a press conference on his return to the USA and relayed information from Hungarian officers about the massacre of 250,000 Jews in the Ukraine. In May 1942 the Bund sent a radio message to London that 700,000 Jews had already been exterminated in Poland, and on 2 July the BBC broadcast the essence of the report in Europe. The Polish government in-exile used the Bund alarm in its own English-language press propaganda. Yet on 7 July 1942, Yitzhak Gruenbaum, then leading the Jewish Agency’s Vaad Hazalah (Rescue Committee), refused to believe similar accounts of massacres in Lithuania, because the numbers of the estimated dead were larger than the pre-war Jewish population in the country. On 15 August Richard Lichtheim in Switzerland sent a report to Jerusalem, which was based on German sources, about the scope and methods of extermination. He received a reply, dated 28 September: 'Frankly I am not inclined to accept everything in it literally... Just as one has to learn by experience to accept incredible tales as indisputable facts, so one has to learn by experience to distinguish between reality --however harsh it may be-- and imagination which has become distorted by justifiable fear." Gruenbaum and his Rescue Committee acknowledged that terrible things were going on, but he kept minimising them as 'only’ pogroms. On 8 August Gerhart Riegner of the Geneva office of the WJC obtained detailed accounts of the gassing programme from reliable German sources, and he forwarded these to the WJC's London and New York offices via British and American diplomats. The WJC in London received the material, but Washington withheld the message from Rabbi Wise. On 28 August the British section of the WJC sent Wise another copy, and he called the State Department and discovered that they had kept back the information. They then asked him not to release the news to the public pending verification; he agreed and said nothing until 24 November --88 days later-- when the State Department finally confirmed the report. Only then did Wise make a public announcement of a Nazi plan to exterminate all the Jews in their grasp. On 2 December he wrote a letter to Dear Boss’, Franklin Roosevelt, asking for an emergency meeting and informing him that: 'I have had cables and underground advices for some months, telling of these things. I succeed, together with the heads of other Jewish organisations, in keeping them out of the press."
    Lenni Brenner: Chapter 24:"The Wartime Failure to Rescue";  p.230-231. or at
    http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad24.html
        The same delays were engineered by the Jewish Agency in Palestine that declared publicly that the Nazis were exterminating Jews, ONLY in November. Yet as Brenner shows, as early as April leaders of the Agency had known this to be the case: "On 17 April 1942, even before the Bund broadcast, Moshe Shertok wrote General Claude Auchinleck, the commander of the Eighth Arm in North Africa. He was concerned with what might happen to Palestine's Jews, if the Afrika Korps broke through Egypt: 'The destruction of the Jewish race is fundamental tenet of the Nazi doctrine. The authoritative reports recently published show that that policy is being carried out with a ruthlessness which defies description... An even swifter destruction, it must be feared would overtake the Jews of Palestine".
    Lenni Brenner: Chapter 24; p. 232 :"The Wartime Failure to Rescue";  http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad24.html
        Even after this the Jewish state in former Palestine remained the objective for these Zionists, and both the numbers killed and the effects of the Nazi killings were toned down: "Dov Joseph, the acting director of the Jewish Agency’s Political Department, cautioned them against: APublishing data exaggerating the number of Jewish victims, for if we announce that millions of Jews have been slaughtered by the Nazis, we will justifiably be asked where the millions of Jews are, for whom we claim that we shall need to provide a home in Eretz Israel after the war ends."
    Yoav Gelber tells us of the immediate effect of Dov Josephs’ intervention:
    ‘Vociferous protests were therefore toned down and instead, ways of responding more 'constructively, were sought."
    Lenni Brenner: p.232; Chapter 24:"The Wartime Failure to Rescue";  http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad24.html
     
    What sort of logic would impel these types of behaviour?
        These were not "wicked"people, and they knew very well, what leaving the Jews of Europe to Hitler meant. The abiding logic appears to have been that the higher goal - that of Zion in Palestine - meant hard present sacrifices.

        Indeed one Zionist leader put explicit words on the lines of "buying with blood" the right to Zionists Palestine, in reply to pleas sent to him by a Jewish volunteer agent for Aguda, in Slovakia. The story is told by the youth who later became famous for demanding of the Allies that they bomb Auschwitz; and who was later to be known as Rabbi Michael Dov-Ber Weissmandel.
        In 1942 he twice contacted the Nazi agent for Eichmann - Dieter Wisliceny, asking him:

        All this inaction on the part of empowered and rich Western Jewry had its’ reaction on both the left and the fascist right.
        On the left, sections of both the Trotskyite wing, and the Marxist-Leninists - raised their voices and tried to propagate information on the Jewish extermination.
        On the Jewish fascist right - the Irgun launched rallies in the West aiming to raise the public awareness of the need for action in the European theatre and also they promoted armed struggle inside Palestine against the British.
        As regards the British - in this they were objectively with the aims of the Zionists and would ultimately they would win them over. They were known to be positively orientated towards fascism.
        Brenner’s verdict is impossible to correct: "Zionism had come full turn: instead of Zionism being the hope of the Jews, their blood was to be the political salvation of Zionism." Lenni Brenner: p. 238; Chapter 24:"The Wartime Failure to Rescue";  http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad24.html ESTABLISHING THE PHYSICAL PRESENCE OF JEWS IN PALESTINE
    Brenner notes the increasing numbers of Jewish immigrants into Palestine were of necessity, "illegal" immigrants since the British had theoretically placed embargoes on the number of Jews entering Palestine, in order to placate the Arab Palestinian inhabitants. Nonetheless the numbers of "illegals" were high:     Brenner points out that the Zionists claim credit for "saving European Jewry from Hitler", by aiding them to Palestine.
    But he also points out that firstly they were bringing in specific, young "warriors" for a forthcoming war with the British and with the Arab possessors of the land:     As Brenner says the claims of an "unselfish rescue of all Jews irrespective of belief",  was "simply untrue": "The 1947 statement of Otto Seidmann, the former leader of the Viennese Betar, who wrote that: "We had to save the lives of Jews - be they Communists or capitalists, members of Hashomer Hatzair or General Zionists’, was simply untrue. Betarim were always preferred over any other Zionists, right Zionists over left Zionists, and any kind of Zionist over a non-Zionist."
    Ibid; p. 222; or at:
    http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad23.html
        When the WZO also again began to sponsor illegal immigration, they held to the same selection criteria for young future warriors. It is true they were more circumspect than the Ultra-Zionists, but this was as they banked on future British cooperation:     During this period, the British intention to divide and rule in the Middle East - between the Arab land owners and the minority Zionist settlers is graphically shown by Brenner, who cites the first military Governor of Jerusalam, Sir Ronald Storrs, from his memoirs as saying:     The Goals of the Zionists had been achieved by the end of the Second World War, even though they had not wanted them to be attained in such horrific circumstances. Nonetheless, some real and new objective circumstances had been created by the end of the war. As cited by Strizhov, former US Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles said:     From the first days of the war, David Ben-Gurion, one of the Zionist leaders had noted: The new objective circumstances can be summarised as: It is in this context that the relevance of the proposals put forward by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee - for an international Jewish Refuge - a socialist homeland - in the Crimea become of relevance.

        This was the only possible, other "solution", (to the establishment of a Zionist state of Israel) for the displaced remnants of European Jewry.

        BUT: For the imperialists and for the Zionists, this would unacceptably strengthen the state of the USSR.

        It would require the joint efforts of the hidden revisionists within the Soviet Union and the combined imperialist forces within the newly formed United Nations to both:

    "LEGALISING" THE FORMATION OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL BY THE UNITED NATIONS PARTITION & THE USSR RECOGNITION - 1947

        At the early stages of the Comintern, the views of Lenin were still unchallenged by the later revisionist opposition, who would finally succeed in hi-jacking the Comintern, only by 1928.
    Even when Stalin took over the leadership of the CPSU(B), until 1925 his views were not easily ignored. Matters within the Comintern, were however dominated by the succeeding revisionist factions - first of Zinoviev, and then those of Bukharin, and then by that of Dimitrov-Kuussinen-Manuilsky.
    At the early stages then, policies were in general correctly Marxist-Leninist. For instance, article (11f), was passed at the Second Congress of Comintern (still attended by Lenin), that condemned the attempts of foreign imperialism to establish the divisive "Jewish" state of Israel; in Arab Palestine.

        It must be asked then, why Andrey A. Gromyko, the UN representative of the USSR, and the Soviet ambassador to the USA, voted at the United Nations, to recognise the formation of the state of Israel in 1947? While the European Communist Parties were being ideologically re-educated by the Cominform, in the weakened state of the USSR it turned out that Andrei Gromyko was appointed to the United Nations. Gromyko’s later overt revisionism was clear. But at that time, he was not revealed as a revisionist.

        The Palestine Communist Party had been agitating very publicly that there should be no division of the territory of Palestine between Jewish immigrants and the local indigenous Palestinians Arab population. However at the very first session of the UN in San Francisco, Gromyko voted for the division of Palestine and the establishment of the state of Israel. This policy went against the long history of Marxist-Leninists, who had argued that Jews should be assimilated in the country they lived, and should join the class struggle there.

    The result was a temporary victory for the revisionist faction inside the leading echelons of the CPSU(B), led by Khrushchev.

        As Walter Laquer, one of the most well known historians of the Zionist movement puts it, Gromyko was very much in the vanguard of the push for an independent Israel. Even propelling the hesitant President Truman and the USA into his wake:

    It is clear that Gromyko was also fighting a propaganda war for an independent state of Israel based in Palestine, inside the USSR. Clearly even members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (see below) such as Solomon (or Shlomo) Mikhoels were influenced by this, as related by Teller:     In order to be clear, we show this process below, citing both the primary and the secondary source.

        The tremendous refugee problem after the war, obviously consisted of a huge Jewish population. The USSR government was already aware of proposals that this should be remedied by the formation of a state inside Germany:

        As will be discussed later, proposals were also made by the progressive Soviet Jews for the resolution of the problem in the Crimean republic of the USSR. However by now, the Zionists had already made Palestine their goal.

        Initially the objective reality of a larger settler population - whether illegally arrived or not - inside Palestine was to be confronted by the remaining Marxist-Leninists within the CPSU(B), by the correct insistence that the mandate of Britain over Palestine should be lifted; and possibly replaced by a Mandate responsible to the entire UN.

        It was rightly pointed out, by the CPSU(B) Marxist-Leninists, that the British had "failed" to peacefully resolve the situation.

        This was articulated on 27 July 1945 in a memo signed by M.M.Litvinov in his post as, Chairman of the "Committee on Preparing Peace Treaties and the Postwar Order". Although Litvinov was at best a vacillating Marxist-Leninist, and at worst a concious enemy of the USSR state [as several sources can attest to] - nonetheless the key memo itself had been set up by the diplomats within the USSR People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (NKID), who:

    "Sent a memorandum entitled 'The Palestine Question'" to Stalin, Molotov and the Deputy Ministers of Foreign Affairs. Its conclusion read:
    1. No matter how hard the British may try to prove that their present policy in Palestine conforms to the Balfour Declaration, it is obvious that they have failed to live up to the mandate entrusted to them. This was admitted in the.. statements by high-ranking British statesmen. This is sufficient justification for taking the Palestine mandate away from the British.
    2.The Palestine question cannot be duly settled without impinging upon the wishes and rights of Jews or Arabs, or perhaps both. The British government is in equal measure subject to the influence of the Arab states and world Jewry. Hence its difficulties in choosing the correct means to settle the Palestine problem.
    3. The US government is subject to the same influences. While British Palestine policy is necessarily affected mainly by orientation towards Arab interests, the American government is subject in the first place to the influence of the powerful US Jewry. It should be recalled that at the latest presidential elections both the Democratic and the Republican parties felt compelled to issue declarations on their attitude to Palestine, demanding unrestricted immigration of Jews and unrestricted rights for Jews to their own land. At the same time, the US government would hardly choose to quarrel with the Arabs, in view of the fact that the oil pipeline from Saudi Arabia in which they have a stake will run through hundreds of kilometres of Arab territory. That would put the US government in as difficult a position regarding Palestine as the British government.
    4. The USSR, free from either Arab or Jewish influence, would be in a better position to tackle the Palestine issue. This at least entitles it to request a temporary trusteeship over Palestine until a more radical solution is found.
    5. The British attach to Palestine, which guards the approaches to the Suez Canal and has an outlet for Iraqi oil on its territory, too much importance for us to expect them to consent even to a temporary transfer of Palestine to the hands of another state, particularly, the USSR.
    6. In the event that the Soviet request is rejected the following solution suggests itself: transfer of Palestine to the collective trusteeship of three states - the USSR, USA and Britain. These three powers will be able to take the requisite decisions collectively, paying less tribute to the opinion of the Arab or the Jewish population than either the American or British government acting on its own would feel obliged to do.
    7.The provisions of collective trusteeship shall be bound neither by the Balfour Declaration nor by any promises Britain has earlier given as the mandatary power, so that the new collective administration could tackle the Palestine problem in all fairness, in accordance with the interests of the entire population and the new imperatives of political realities and general security." Strizhov I;:" The Soviet Position on the Establishment of the State of Israel"; Op Cit; p.304-305; Citing 5.Arkhiv vneshnei politiki MID SSSR (AVP),fond (f.) . 07,opis' (op.) 12a, papka (pk.) 42, delo (d.) 6, pp. 36-8
    This generally correct line, given the new circumstances, continued to hold until May 1946.

        By then the British and the USA imperialists had continued the general policy of divide and rule. They had established the Anglo-American Committee, which had alienated both Jews and Arabs:

        The previous line of the USSR was brought up to date, in order to acknowledge that the Anglo-American Committee had attempted to continue the British imperialist mandate "jointly".

    In the circumstances, the correct Marxist-Leninist line was taken - to use the UN to "reveal the aspirations" of the imperialists to "prevent the interference of other countries" in settling the issue.

        It was correctly stated (and consistent with previous Marxist-Leninist views) that anti-racism and anti-Semitism was a reflection of larger forces and could not be dealt with simply by creating a state - that anyway could not "house" every one subject to racism.
        Moreover it correctly noted that in the current situation unless the issue was brought up, the British and USA would succeed in enforcing their will - "our silence on the Palestine issue" .
        The correct approach however was to allow the Arabs to raise the question at the UN. This was put in an up-dated memo to Dekanozov, Molotov’s Deputy:

        After this preamble, the most likely Marxist-Leninist position advisable, was crystallised as being to reject the Anglo-American Committee’s position as "incompetent" and to insist upon abrogation of the British mandate in Palestine:     The best elements of the Jewish immigrants into the Palestine lands, were the left wing Poalei-Tsion (led by L.Levite and M.Erem) and the Hashomer-Hatsair Workers Party (led by Y.Barzilai), had participated in the Palestine-USSR Friendship League. They were already in contact with the Soviet Ambassador to Poland V.Z.Lebedev.

        As he wrote to Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister A.Ia Vyshinskii, the Hasomer-Hatsair were in agreement with the principle of a federation of an Arab-Jewish state with two national chambers. This differed from the Poalei-Tsion. (Strizhov I; Op Cit; p.306).

        The US Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles now showed the USA policy response, which was to accept the challenge of ensuring an imperialist led take-over of the United Nations.

        Accordingly the British were persuaded to agree publicly to their failure:

    "In mid-February 1947 the British government officially admitted that since it was unable to find a solution to the Palestine problem, it was going to ask the United Nations to recommend one." Strizhov Op Cit; p.307; citing Sumner Welles, We Need Not Fail (Boston:1948), p.41. Even as late as 5 March 1947, the Middle East Department of The USSR Foreign Ministry were pursuing a correct Marxist-Leninist line.
        They sent Vyshinskii a memo entitled "The Palestine Problem" (October 1946-February 1947), which based itself upon the previously cited points 2 and 3 of the May memo.

        But more public stands were shortly to be needed by the Soviet hidden revisionist representatives to the UN. By 6 March the UN Soviet delegate Boris Shtein had noted that although until then, the UN had "refrained from formulating its stand on the Palestine question", the fact that the discussion was now tabled would force a public stand by the USSR.

    This was an ideal opportunity for the Soviets take the principled Marxist-Leninist line:
    to demand the withdrawal of British troops, the full independence for Palestine, and a full democratic statute.
    But since Arab-Jewish "contradictions" would still exist, the resolution could only be exercised via a United Nations "collective trusteeship" - specifically thereby rejecting a British "trusteeship" only.
    At least this would ensure the possibility of real Soviet brakes upon the Zionist settlers and their wars against the Arabs for land.
    This line was indeed put, or outlined,  in the following internal memo to Vyshinsky:

        In Gromyko’s speech of 17 May 1947, made to the UN, he correctly pointed out, in accordance with the general USSR line, that:     He even went on to note, that no single West European state had protected the "elementary rights" of the Jewish people, and that "vast numbers" were homeless and without subsistence. Again this was consistent with the line evolved previously.

        But then he radically departed from the previously agreed line - of setting up a democratic Palestine with "full and genuine equality for all the population of Palestine as a whole".

    Instead Gromyko proposed a Partition of Palestine, seemingly as a fall-back position, if a democratic Palestine was not agreeable.

        In reality this unacceptable and revisionist line was designed to open the door on an imperialist settlement of the Palestine question :

        It is not surprising, that some Zionist observers were surprised by this line from someone claiming to be the representative of the USSR, as the line was quite in "contradiction to the explicitly anti-Zionist attitude":     On the 15 May 1947, UNSCOP (United Nations Special Committee On Palestine) was established and it reported to the General Assembly on 13 October 1947. Speaking in support of partition, the Soviet representative Tsarapkin: The final proposals were put to the General Assembly after having been agreed to by the ad hoc committee including the Soviet Ukrainian and Belorussian delegates:     When on 26 November 1947, Gromyko addressed the plenary session, he defended Partition on the grounds that it met the demands of the Jewish people, and he insisted that the Soviet delegation had been insistent and quite un-ambiguous upon this matter: On 29 November 1947 the General Assembly adopted Resolution 181(11) on the partition of Palestine into two states. This decision, endorsed the establishment of the State of Israel.

        Resolution 181(11) established in January 1948, a special UN commission to "supervise" preparations for the creation of the Arab and the Jewish states.

        While this objectively supported the long term imperialist plans for the Middle East, a certain myopia on the part of the imperialists prevented their seeing immediately that they should be pleased.
        Initially therefore, it encountered opposition from the British who obstructed its’ work. On the floor of the UN, the US supported the British and argued that it was not possible to perform the task of partition peacefully. But the USA in turn was heatedly opposed by Gromyko who insisted that there should be no such problem:

    "The work of the commission generated acrimonious debate and differences in the UN Security Council which was to ensure the implementation of the resolution. At the Security Council meeting on 19 March 1948 the United States representative Warren Austin submitted a proposal for convening the 2nd Special Session of the General Assembly 'to establish UN trustee-ship over Palestine', claiming that 'it is allegedly impossible to carry out the Palestine partition program.. .by peaceful means'. In reply, Soviet representative Gromyko declared that the US stand had nothing in common with the General Assembly resolution and that the Soviet Union could not agree with that position." Strizhov I; "Soviet Position"; Ibid; p.310; Pravda, 21 March 1948.     Because of the impasse, it was sponsored that the UN establish a trusteeship plan. This had been the original Soviet intention as shown by the above memos put to the Foreign Ministry.
        Now however, Gromyko expressly argued against these plans, and in effect, Gromyko ensured  that partition would occur with very likely, a quick Israeli take-over of the whole of Palestine: "On 30 March 1948 when two US resolutions providing for an immediate truce between the Arabs and the Jews and the convocation of a special General Assembly session to reconsider the earlier decision on partition were submitted to the Security Council, Gromyko criticized the US trusteeship plan, characterizing the partition of Palestine as a just solution and insisting that US allegations about the impossibility of effecting the partition by peaceful means were groundless. He said the Palestine Commission should continue its work in order to carry out the partition 'so long as the General Assembly decisions remained in force'. " Strizhov I; "Soviet Position"; Ibid; p.310-311; Pravda, 1 April 1948.     Now that in effect the damage had been done, the Soviet delegation promptly abstained from the decision to convene a special General Assembly. But at the General Assembly hearing on 20 April 1948, Gromyko again severely attacked the USA and Britain for refusing to accept partition: The rejection of the previously "acceptable" UN trusteeship line, was now masked in high flown language as expressed by Tsarapkin:     It is true that the certain perceptive USA diplomats probably correctly and honestly, viewed the Partition as "un-workable". Loy Henderson’s memorandum of September 22 was entitled "Certain Considerations Against Advocacy by the USA of the Majority Plan" and argued against Partition as follows: But the real reason of the higher politicians of the USA, was to enable the maximum possible land grabbing by the Zionists.

        While the filibustering at the UN was going on, the Jewish settlers were feverishly grabbing land and terrorising the Palestinians. This reality was referred to, but in a veiled manner by Gromyko who in effect - again simply justified the on-going practical "partition" as a "reality":

    "At the 1st Committee Session on 4 May 1948, Gromyko called on the General Assembly to admit that partition was in fact being implemented. This, he said, was clear from a statement made by a representative of the UN Secretariat, from reports of the Jewish Agency and publications in the US and elsewhere. 'While the General Assembly is engaged in discussions, the Jewish state will become a reality despite the efforts of some UN members to create all kinds of obstacles', he asserted."     Finally the discussions were ended by the practical establishment of the state of Israel.
    It was claimed by Pravda that the USA had "suffered a fiasco": "On 14 May 1948 the Special Session of the UN General Assembly ended, for on that day the establishment of the State of Israel was proclaimed in Tel Aviv. Pravda commented: ADevelopments at the Special Session of the General Assembly showed that the US, on whose initiative it had been convened, suffered a fiasco. The initial plans of the US were frustrated. The US delegation did not even dare to put its proposal for establishing a trusteeship regime over the whole of Palestine to the vote. The General Assembly also rejected the British proposal for a provisional regime for Palestine. This proposal, amounting to trusteeship but presented in a disguised form, was criticized by the delegation of the USSR and some other countries. In the course of the debate on the Palestine issue, the USSR pursued a consistent policy, upholding the decision on the partition of Palestine and exposing all scheming with respect to Palestine."     After the fait accompli, when "On 16 May 1948 Moshe Shertok (later Sharett), Foreign Minister of the Provisional Government of Israel, sent a cable to Molotov", asking for official recognition it was granted:     Soon after, within a month later, on 26 June 1948, the appointments were announced of P.1. Ershov, as "USSR Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary in the State of Israel"; and of Mrs. Golda Meyerson "Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the State of Israel in the USSR". (Strizhov I;:" ASoviet Position"; Ibid; p. 313). On 7 September 1948 Golda Meyerson, was received by Molotov in Moscow:     As only one of the outstanding issues (leaving aside the whole matter of the Arab peoples’ response to this "legalised theft" of their lands) was that of continued Jewish immigration, and from where this would come? Would there be immigration from the USSR?
        It was asserted by the diplomatic heads of the USSR that this would be from the "capitalist countries" if at all, and not from the Soviet countries. This was the previous Marxist-Leninist line of the Soviet Foreign Ministry until it was subverted by Gromyko:     There are as far as we know, no documents that show an approval of Gromyko’s step in the partition of Palestine - a step that allowed the formation of a singular state of Israel - by Stalin or the other minority Marxist-Leninists of the Central Committee.

        This apparent volte-face by the USSR leaders of the international communist movement, totally alienated the Palestinian communists who were left very weakened. It has certainly assisted the alienation of the best of the Arab militants from the Marxist-Leninist movement. In Gromyko’s own English version of his memoirs, there is no discussion of this episode. (Gromyko "Memoirs"; New York; 1989. )

        Nor is there any discussion of this episode in the official "History of Soviet Foreign Policy" edited by Gromyko himself, with another revisionist B.N.Ponomarev. (Gromyko A.A. & Ponomorev B.N. Ed:"Soviet Foreign Policy; 1945-1980"; Vol II; Moscow; 1980). Nonetheless, Gromyko does point out that a key member of the Soviet delegation to the UN was another arch-revisionist - Dmitri Manuilsky:

        The argument is today raised that: "Stalin sabotaged the Palestinian struggle".
        Various explanations to supposedly "explain Stalin’s support of the formation of Israel" are offered by non Marxist-Leninist sources.
        We examine these below:

     Standard Non Marxist-Leninist Explanations For "Stalin’s Support of Israel";

        Sudoplatov, amongst others, suggests it was deliberate ploy to undermine British rule:     It is also alleged by Sudoplatov that Stalin said to Vetrov, who was Molotovs’ assistant & later an Ambassador to Denmark:     This tortuous explanation, in an alleged quotation from Stalin (rather like the older school of historians who state that in 1066 on a certain date and hour, William had a vision after eating grapes and said that he dreamed of his dynasty etc...) is buttressed by a "conversation with a confidential source", who yet....... remains nameless.

    2. "Stalin wanted to justify pre-emptively an attack upon Soviet Jewry":

    We reject these "explanations" as self-evidently superficial, and again rather strained. But then what does explain these events?

    A MARXIST-LENINIST ARGUMENT TO UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENED

    We argue instead, that the only logical answer is two-fold:

    (1) Firstly, the USSR, was not under Stalin’s full un-impeded control. Even following the victory of the Great People’s Anti-Fascist War, revisionist influence within the CPSU and in the leading echelons of the so called People’s Democracies undermined Marxist-Leninist policies; Stalin and the Marxist-Leninists, were in a minority in the Central Committee of the CPSU(B).

    (2) Secondly, that post Second World War, Stalin and the USSR were in a position of a temporary objective weakness with respect to the foreign imperialism of the USA. Although epitomised by the "Atomic Gap", closing that gap still left the USSR in an objectively weaker position than the USA.

    PREMISE 1: Stalin And Marxists-Leninists Were In A Minority

        Many lines of evidence make clear that revisionists had gone underground in order to continue subverting the Soviet Union, and outnumbered the honest Marxist-Leninists. Even astute observers of the USSR like President Harry S. Truman of the USA, who was a deadly foe of Communism, observed that:

        Previous issues of Alliance have discussed the general analysis underpinning this premise. In order to erect a facade behind which the revisionists could operate, a cult of Stalin was built. As time goes by, more evidence supporting this view emerges. We cite a participant in the Second World War:     It is true that the victory of the USSR in the Second World War gave the Marxist-Leninists strength. This victory was gained, in spite of the enormous sabotage performed from within the party and the army, both penetrated by traitors to the Soviet Union. This is confirmed by interviews with several of Stalin’s generals. For instance with General Shavrov: "Author: General what puzzles me is why would Stalin undercut himself, I mean weaken the army with the pre-war purges? (Von Rauch says that of 6,000 of Stalin’s highest ranking officers who were arrested on charge of treason, 1500 were executed."
    Shavrov: "The T-34 tank was delivered to the army in 1939.. The weak points (were identified).. In two months time after the tanks was sent back to the factory, the whole research team on the T-34 was arrested.. Who gave the order? We don’t think it was Stalin. Nobody knows for certain who was responsible. Was it treason? Of course Hitler was interested in this.. I know another case.. The Lake Khasan Battle against the Japanese army in 1938. When the Japanese struck were about 200 miles away... That night and for a few more days, our regimental commanders, divisional commandeers, and senior commanders were arrested. At the very moment of the Japanese attack!.. Who did it? This question is still un-answered." A.Axell Ibid; p.20.
    General Sergeyev has a similar view of the degree of sabotage: Similar is the testimony of the Czech President Eduard Benes:     Stalin’s general response to this sabotage, within the Marxist-Leninist movement, both internally and externally of the USSR, was to weld together a small group of solidly Marxist-Leninist elements around him; to continue to pursue a correct line both outside and within the USSR.     Stalin attempted to place strategically important branches of the foreign department directly under his own control:     Even then the revisionists were too numerous to be kept entirely out of influential positions. For example, Nikolai Voznosensky - who was a revisionist already under suspicion but only later unmasked by Stalin, was added to the small "sextet" group. It is extremely doubtful that this was "on Stalin’s suggestion" as suggested by Dallin. As detailed elsewhere, Stalin had already realised the nature of Voznosensky’s revisionism. (See For instance Issues Number 12 and 14 of Alliance.)

        But in fact it was only later, in 1949 in fact to effect Voznosensky’s arrest and execution. But wherever possible, Stalin ensured that the more steadfast and resolute Marxist-Leninists took the leading and responsible roles. Zhdanov was in the highest and most trusted category:

    "In the early 1940's the Foreign department of the CC was headed by Georgi Malenkov. Malenkov was succeeded by Andrei Zhdanov, whose role was enhanced when the leadership of the dissolved Comintern was incorporated into one of the departments of the CC.".. In 1944-45 under Zhdanov’s direction the Foreign Section of the CC carried out the remarkable operation of dispatching to the respective countries the leaders of the future governments of the satellites selected among emigres in the Soviet Union. The foreign Ministry acquired growing importance in the postwar era as the channel for relations with the communist parties of the satellites." Resis; Ibid; p. 4.     Again attempting to ensure Marxist-Leninist control, Stalin removed Ivan Maisky and Maxim Litvinov from diplomatic functions in London and Washington. But since all posts could not possibly be filled without recourse to skills that the revisionists undoubtedly still retained, they were given a post in heading two commissions - respectively the commission for state reparations and the commission for postwar peace treaties. (Vladislav Zubok & Pleshakov, Constantine "Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War-From Stalin to Khrushchev"; Cambridge Mass; 1996; p.28).
        The two key ambassador posts in the USA and England were filled initially by Molotov. Litvinov in particular was suspected of secret contacts with the Western ruling classes. This was confirmed when he met with the CBS correspondent Richard C. Hottelet, and warned him to alert the West that "they had to beware of Soviet ambitions for territory", saying:     It was fully intended by Litvinov, that President Truman would be informed of this conversation, and "in secret" he was so informed. However Soviet Security was also aware of what had transpired. Within a month Litvinov was relieved of his position. One year later Litvinov told Alexander Werth a Western journalist in Moscow: "That Russia could have cashed in on the goodwill that it had accumulated during the war, but that Stalin & Molotov did not believe that goodwill provided a lasting basis for policy; they had therefore grabbed all they could while the going was good." D.Holloway; Op Cit; p.167 In Summary, even though the Bolshevik party, was penetrated by revisionists, Stalin tried to ensure a personal control of the Ministry of Foreign affairs. However, given the paucity of Marxist-Leninists in the leading echelons of the CPSU, revisionists like Gromyko and Manuilsky, and Vosnoskensky were able to slip into key positions like that at the UN.

    PREMISE 2: The Objectively Weak Post-war Soviet Union

        How can it be legitimately argued that the Soviet state was objectively weak - even if only temporarily - over 1945-1948? After all the Soviet Union had just in effect, been the decisive factor in liberating the world from German and Japanese fascism. The heroic self-sacrifice of the USSR and its peoples in the war had gained many admirers in the working classes of the world. However, the Soviet people had been through an enormously costly war, moreover one on its own land, and a new frightening technology of the atomic bomb had been used.

    (i) Human and Material Losses of the USSR in the Second World War

        Neither the USA nor even the British had suffered the degree of destruction of either the industry, or the human resources that the USSR had. Professor John Erikson estimated in 1994, that the German invasion had led to 49 million solider and civilian deaths in Russia, far more than the previous conservative estimate of 20-25 million. In addition there was a drastic decline in Russian’ birth rate. (Cited by Axell A, Ibid; p. 177). The material damage was huge also :

        Stalin pointed out to US Senator Claude Pepper on September 15th 1945, that (Cited Resis p. 3 Ibid. From:FRUS 1945, Vol V 881-893; dated Sep 15th 1945) :     It is apparent that a certain degree of war weariness was bound to affect decision making. This affected the manner in which re-building the Soviet Union was approached.

    (ii) The Post-Hiroshima Reality

    As early as March 1942, the highest echelons of Soviet government were aware of the activities in the West towards the bomb. The secret British Maud Report of July 1941 had concluded that:

        Details of this were obtained by Anatolii Gorskii (codename Vadim) the NKVD London resident, and John Cairncross and Klaus Fuchs and transmitted to Beria. (D.Holloway:"Stalin and the Bomb"; New Haven, 1994; p82). Beria sent a memorandum to Stalin and the State Defence Committee urging evaluation of this information. (D.Holloway:"Stalin and the Bomb"; New Haven, 1994; p.84). Although a USSR nuclear programme was undertaken soon, the reality was that the decision itself was taken during the siege of Stalingrad. Consequently initial progress was understandably slow.

        The scientific advances made under the Manhattan Project in the USA were also well known to the USSR. As the war proceeded, the imminent defeat of the Germans raised the question of joint Allied intervention against Japan. At Yalta, the meeting took place between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, at which plans for the post war period were drawn up. In the section entitled "Agreement Regarding Japan", it was made clear that after Germany’s surrender ("in two or three months time"), the USSR would enter into war against Japan on condition that the USSR regained its rights in the border zones with Japan, and was granted the Kurile Islands. In full these conditions were that:

        It was explicitly noted that reference to Outer Mongolia would require the "concurrence of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek." But this was to be pursued by the USA President Roosevelt, and these claims of the USSR were to Abe unquestionably fulfilled after Japan has been defeated." But then, by the next meeting of the Allied leaders, at the Potsdam Conference of July 1945, the USA had successfully exploded a test device at Alamogordo on July 16th. In the interim Roosevelt had died.
        Marshall Zhukov relates how Stalin and Molotov discussed the seemingly "casual" probing statement of the new USA President- Harry Truman, to Stalin that the USA had a "new weapon of unusual destructive force":     Obviously both Stalin and Molotov understood the implications of Truman’s remark.
    The USA exploded the first nuclear devices used in warfare - at Hiroshima on August 6th 1945 and Nagasaki on August 9th 1945. At this stage, the USSR programme was still incomplete.

        So the USA possession of the atomic bomb was a potent threat, as both the American and the Soviet state leaders understood. As Yuli Khariton, a scientist who became one of the Soviet creators of the bomb said (Zubok & Pleshakov; Ibid; p.43):

        This assessment accords with that of the British Ambassador to the USSR, Sir Archibald Clark Kerr who wrote to then Foreign Secretary Eden: "The victory over Germany had made the Soviet leaders confident that national security was at last within their reach.
    "Then plumb came the Atomic bomb.. At a blow the balance which had seemed set and steady was rudely shaken. Russia was baulked by the West when everything seemed to be within her grasp. The three hundred divisions were shorn of much of their value." Cited in D.Holloway:"Stalin and the Bomb"; New Haven, 1994; p.154.
        This atomic possession, grounded a new threatening approach of the USA. This was manifested when Truman demanded the "right" of safe entry to any world port they "needed for security". This threat, was specified in Truman’s Navy Day Address when he announced the so called 12 Principles of operating for the USA state:     The Hiroshima bombing called into question the diplomatic gains won first at Yalta and Potsdam by the USSR. The Japanese had been on the verge of surrendering, and had posed by the time of Hiroshima no significant military threat. Moreover the entry of the Soviets into the Far Eastern theater of war, had been previously agreed at Yalta, between the Allies.

        But if the USSR entered the theater, the USA was worried that concessions would have to be made to it. Hiroshima was therefore both a pre-emptive strike against the USSR presence in the Japanese-Pacific arena, and a threat for the future post-war realpolitik’.
        Nonetheless the Soviets entered the Far Eastern war there as they had promised, and as they had been asked to by the USA previously. From August 9th at 00.10 am the Red Army attacked the Japanese in Manchuria. Thus the USA had not fully achieved their goal of preventing the USSR entry into the Far eastern war.
    (See Holloway; Ibid p. 128.).
        As Resis comments, the Navy Day speech of Truman (see above) was an assertive speech that

        For the Soviet Government, Molotov replied 10 days later in a speech to commemorate the 28th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. He stated that the imperialists were "exploiting the atomic bomb in international affairs", and predicted the USSR would have atomic energy also.(Resis Ibid, p. 6).

        He pointed out the continuing attempt to isolate the USSR in a renewed anti-Soviet bloc. Kaganovich warned in a speech in Tashkent, that:

        Molotov warned of the need to return to the task of "overtaking and surpassing the economically most developed countries of Europe and the USA," in per-capita industrial production in the near future. This required a strategic decision regarding heavy or light industry. There was a division in the ranks of even the Marxist-Leninists on this question. Malenkov and Voroshilov explicitly pumped for heavy industry. Voroshilov in a speech in 1946, arguing that anyone who called for a priority to light industry was a latter-day "servitor of fascism". (Resis Ibid, p. 11).  Yet Zhdanov, only the previous day on Feb 6th had called for light industry priority. He said:     Clearly this difference of viewpoint, reflected a genuine debate about the merits of the case, in which legitimate differences were being though over.

        Later Stalin pointed out in a key speech in February 9th 1946, preceding the elections to the USSR Supreme Soviet, that although there had been an alliance of "freedom loving states", including the USSR, UK, USA, the process of uneven capitalist developments had continued unabated. Inevitably there would be another war, although this would be some time off - some 15-20 years. This could allow "special attention" to be "focused to expand the production of consumer goods." (Resis Ibid, p. 16, Pravda February 10th, 1946).
        Stalin also predicted that the next world war would be a war started between the imperialists in order to re-divide the world.

        That the rulers of the USA were indeed in a bellicose and belligerent mood, is shown by the manner in which Stalin’s speech was interpreted. The USA Charge d’affaires, George Kennan in Moscow was requested to analyze Stalin’s speech. Kennan wrote the infamous "long telegram", in which he insisted that the USSR was preparing to go to war for expansion. But this interpretation did not fit with either the speech of Stalin, or the message being sent out consistently by the Soviets, as noted by later independent historians such as Albert Resis.
        Other interpreters of Moscow included the British Charge d’affaires in Moscow, Frank Roberts. He cabled to both London and Washington, that Moscow really did want peace at this juncture. (Resis Ibid, p. 19. ). And Stalin’s actions fully corroborated this.
    Resis points out the "conciliatory deeds" of Stalin made in order to convey peaceful intent:

    The Breaking of the Atomic Monopoly

        However all signals from the USSR assuring the imperialists of the USSR peaceful intentions were in vain. The USSR was again being isolated. Therefore, on August 20th, ten days after the bombing of Nagasaki, the State Defence Committee correctly decreed that a special committee would:

        As previously noted, the Special Committee on the Atomic Bomb was headed by Lavrenti Beria. It was set up by a special decree with extraordinary powers, and reported directly to Stalin himself. This special body was only dissolved by the Khrushchev revisionist controlled Politburo meeting after Stalin’s death, in fact the same one that arrested Beria. Yet it was this same Special Committee, that had succeeded in developing the bomb for the USSR and closing the USA military superiority: "Focusing all the country’s forces on the solution of this complex problem called above all for the establishment of a new state management body endowed with appropriate power. Such a body, which was entrusted with practically unlimited authority, was the Special Committee, headed by L. P. Beria (a member of State Defense Committee and Vice Chairman of the USSR Council of People’s Commissars) and was founded by the USSR State Defense Committee’s Resolution No. GOKO-9887 of 20 August 1945. The Committee was founded under the State Defense Committee, but after the State Defense Committee was abolished in September 1945, the Special Committee functioned as a body of USSR Council of People’s Commissars (and after March 1946 as a body of the USSR Council of Ministers). In reality, the Special Committee was an independent state control body directly subordinate to Soviet leader J.V.Stalin. It functioned for almost eight years until it was abolished in accordance with a CC CPSU Presidium Resolution of 26 June 1953 at the same tumultuous meeting at which Beria was arrested. Thus, the Special Committee’s activities covered a most important, formative period of the Soviet atomic project, that is, the establishment and growth of the USSR atomic-energy industry, the development and testing of the first Soviet atomic bomb (in 1949) and early improved atomic bomb designs, and the development and virtual completion of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb (RDS-6), which was first tested in August 1953." Cold War International History Project; WWW: "Research Notes: the Russian Nuclear Project..the A-bomb Effort, 1946" by G. A. Goncharov, N. I. Komov, A. S. Stepanov  http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/CWIHP/BULLETINS/b8-9a38.htm     But again it was not possible to exclude fully the evident and known revisionists, such as Nikolia Vosnosensky, still the head of Gosplan, let alone political waverers like Malenkov. (Holloway D; Ibid; p. 134). Gosplan had apparently already expressed disapproval of the Plan, at an earlier stage of the Soviet plans. (Holloway, reference 78 note to p.86) . The industrial managers on the committee were Vannikov, Zaveniagin and Pervukhin. Two scientists on the committee were Khurchatov and Peter Kaptisa. In addition the NKVD representative was General V.A.Mekhnev. Beria reported to Stalin weekly on the progress. The mandate of the Committee of necessity had to be broad, and encompassed special dispensations for all matters related to the production of uranium:     The USSR atomic bomb followed the design of the USA bombs, and they were termed the RDS systems. By August 1949, RDS-1 was successfully exploded: "RDS-1 meant the analog of the first U.S. plutonium-239 implosion type atomic bomb tested on 16 July 1945 in New Mexico (and of the U.S. atomic bomb exploded over Nagasaki on 9 August 1945). This bomb was successfully tested in the USSR on 29 August 1949. RDS-2 signified the analog of the uranium-235 gun type bomb exploded over Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. This bomb passed a design verification in the USSR, but was not tested. Later the abbreviation RDS-2 was used to denote the improved plutonium-239 implosion type atomic bomb tested in 1951. During the period through 1954 the USSR verified and tested three more types of improved atomic bombs: RDS-3, RDS-4, and RDS-5." http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/CWIHP/BULLETINS/b8-9a38.htm     The speed of the USSR catch-up of the technological gap, surprised the USA imperialists. The speed was no doubt, owed in part to successful Soviet espionage. However, even authors hostile to Marxism-Leninism recognise the achievements of Soviet science, and industry which had to overcome the appalling devastation of Nazi invasion: "The short duration and arrangement of the parallel works became possible thanks to... intelligence materials about the designs of the U.S. atomic bombs Fat Man and Little Boy, prototypes of RDS-1 and RDS-2, Soviet atomic bombs, which the leaders of the USSR atomic project decided in 1946 should be copied as closely as possible from the American designs. It should be emphasized that the availability of the intelligence materials could not substitute for independent experimental, theoretical, and design verification of the Soviet atomic bombs which were being prepared for testing. Owing to the extraordinary responsibility of the leaders of and participants in the Soviet atomic project, RDS-1 was tested only after thorough confirmation of the available information and a full cycle of experimental, theoretical, and design studies whose level corresponded to the maximum capabilities of that time." http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/CWIHP/BULLETINS/b8-9a38.htm     Since on December 25th 1946 the first Soviet nuclear reactor started a controlled chain reaction, the imminent likelihood of a tangible USSR atomic weapon had become clear. This began to tilt the balance of power back into the hands of the USSR.

        It was at this juncture that the Szalarsa Poremba, First Cominform meeting was held in September 1947.
        This exposed the French and Italian parties for revisionist tendencies, and laid the planks for exposing Titoite revisionism (See Alliance 18). Previous leaders of the ECCI such as Dimitrov, were deliberately excluded by Stalin. There is only one rational explanation - that Stalin had become convinced of their inability and sabotage, during the life of the previous Third International:

    The Continuing USSR Weakness Following the Acquisition of the Bomb

        As we saw, the temporary military and political weakness of the USSR in being able to counter the atomic intimidation of the USA, had partially ended with the successful completion in August 1949, of the USSR atomic bomb. But even then the sharpest imperialist observers of the USSR noted military weaknesses. On just the atomic front the USA had already stockpiled over a hundred atomic bombs by the time the USSR was successful in building and exploding one. In fact, the Western imperialists remained confident that the German Nazi invasion had left the USSR significantly weakened. As the USA ambassador to the USSR, Admiral Alan G. Kirk, commented at a meeting of U.S. ambassadors at Rome, March 22-24, 1950:

        This was certainly not an isolated view, despite the public shrill fear-mongering of the USSR, that the Western Imperialists actively fanned. Colonel Robert B. Landry, Air Aide to President Truman in 1948, reported the weakness of the Russian mobilisation capability when directed at the West:     As a recent commentator has pointed out, the highest levels of the US officialdom knew very clearly how affected the USSR had been by the war: That Stalin tried hard to remain at peace with the Western imperialists was even accepted by A High Priest of The Cold War Warrior Western Academics, John Lewis Gaddis:     Oher academic Cold War historians, already cited above, have agreed with Gaddis’ view, such as V. Mastny; and Zubok and Pleshakov.
        It is now necessary to detail the changing roles and leadership of the Soviet Security apparatus, in order to then correctly interpret the events of the so called Zionist Plot and the Doctors Plot. This forms the next section of this article.


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