Did they really believe Israel would be socialist?
Why was there an ideological change away from Lenin’s anti-zionist position?
While I hesitate to speak on this topic, given that it’s already a super-contentious topic among historians (that’s saying alot) the best from what I can gather is that while Lenin agreed that Zionism is a disgusting ideology of racial supremacy, Lenin’s time had come and gone decades ago, and he more or less “served his purpose” in helping overthrow the Tsar and create the USSR.
Because of the tremendous horrors of the holocaust/WW2, my best estimation is that the USSR/Stalin felt that since many other ethnicities had their own “home country”, that opposing a home country for Jewish people would be hypocritical and wrong and lacking in empathy, and that if Jewish people didn’t deserve a secure home country, then no one did.
I think that Stalin’s support for the state of Israel was an example of what Stalin thought was pragmatic realpolitik, and would help the USSR be considered a potential ally and savior of Jews, and oppressed people across the world.
The Arab/Southwest Asian countries at the time were often repressive and reactionary dictatorships, that especially enjoyed the support of the U.S./Britain, and I can understand the genuine worry and concern that the West would inflame tensions to create a second holocaust and make Arabs into the bad guys and supremacists.
I think sympathize with Stalin’s decision, and I think that hindsight is 20/20. I’m not arab, I’m Latino. This is just my best guess.
Agree. Zionism was “sold” to the USSR as a national question, but after it was exposed for what it really was, settler-colonialism, then the USSR changed positions and took a hostile position towards Israel. They even fought a secret war against Israel in support of Nasser in Egypt in the 1960s.
I picked up somewhere that Stalin was hopeful of the communism of the early kibbutzim.
Right. And numerous Jewish people in the Southwest Asian region were supporters of socialism/the USSR, so with the west being a rival power and having evil intentions, I think Stalin assumed that Israel could exist as an independent and allied socialist state that resisted arab dictatorships and western imperialism.
And then it turned out that the Kibbutz of Israel was a result of cultural appropriation of arabic traditions.
