On August 18, some 19 years after the Soviet Union broke diplomatic relations with Israel, representatives of the two countries met in Helsinki to discuss the reestablishment of consular ties. Although unexpectedly brief, the meeting, which ended with no agreement on further talks, signaled a significant change in Soviet policy. Sharp differences over the issue of Soviet Jewry, in particular, underscore the gap separating the two sides and the difficulty of further negotiations. Still, the very fact of the meeting and the likelihood of additional contacts, whether direct or by proxies, are important developments in a complex and often stormy relationship that spans four decades.
In the fall of 1947, Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko offered the Kremlin's support for the United Nation's plan to partition British-held Palestine. "The representatives of the Arab states," he told the world body, "claim that the partition of Palestine would be an historic injustice. But this view of the case is unacceptable, if only because, after all, the Jewish people have been closely linked with Palestine for a considerable period of history." Indeed, the Soviet Union was the third nation, after the United States and Guatemala, to recognize the fledgling Jewish state and the first to extend full de jure recognition. With Soviet assistance, Czechoslovakian arms were sent to the Jews in Palestine even before the establishment of the state in May 1948. In 1949, the Soviet Union joined 36 other members in supporting Israel's admission to the UN (12 were opposed, including nine predominantly Muslim states, and there were nine abstentions).
At the same time, the Kremlin hardened its stance toward the Soviet Jewish population. The welcome extended by Soviet Jews to Golda Meir when she arrived in Moscow in the fall of 1948 as Israel's first ambassador to the Soviet Union alarmed the Kremlin. After all, Soviet Jews were supposed to have been either assimilated or cowed into silence, but they thronged to meet Meir when she visited the Choral Synagogue in Moscow's center. The years 1948 to 1953, known as the "black years" of Soviet Jewry, were marked by the execution of leading Jewish cultural figures, the infamous "Doctors' Plot," and Stalin's plan to deport the entire Jewish population to Siberia--a plan unrealized due to his death in 1953.
On the international level, the Soviet Union's support of Israel as a counterweight to British influence and a potential socialist bulwark in the Middle East quickly gave way to a courting of the Arab nations. Diplomatic ties, however, were maintained until 1967, although they were interrupted for several months in 1953 after a bomb was set off at the Soviet Embassy in Tel Aviv and despite a growing anti-Israel campaign in the Soviet Union. As a result of the 1967 Six-Day War, the Kremlin and its East bloc allies (except Romania) severed diplomatic ties.
Periodic contacts
Since 1967, there have been periodic contacts between Soviet and Israeli officials in a number of capitals around the world. And delegations organized by Rakah, the pro-Moscow Israeli Communist Party, have regularly visited the Soviet Union. Participants in these groups have included many noncommunist Israelis. Other Israelis have traveled to the Soviet Union for academic and cultural purposes. Soviet citizens, including Russian Orthodox clerics, delegates to Rakah congresses, and observers at ceremonies commemorating the end
...
Read Full Article
|
