Two Israels, one in Europe

Let's continue the discussion from this thread.

So let's say that Stalin (or whoever's in charge at the time) gets the bright idea to instead of persecuting Jews in the Soviet Union blindly, ship them to a place where they can serve in the reconstruction and become grateful to the USSR. (And also piss off the Germans). Many refugees from the war also go there as well, but when they realize that they're subject to the emigration laws of the USSR, most as in OTL Jews head for the Middle East Israel.

The European Soviet Israel, let's call it Zion, is a Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact type state. Are communists in charge? I don't know. Could they pull off a Finalnd-type thing instead? I don't know either. But in any case, there are now two Israels in the world, one a Soviet satellite.

Having looked up Birobidzhan, it does seem that Stalin genuinely did consider creating a Jewish homeland under his control. The problem is, would he or any other Soviet give them one in former German territory or elsewhere in Europe? Stalin did consider creating one in the Crimea, but that would have disturbed the native non-Jewish population there greatly. Perhaps he would be less caring about the desires of the native East Prussians, many he would deport anyways?

Could this work?
 
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Hmm, a good place for that is Königsberg. It was going to be depopulated anyway as Stalin deported the native Germans living there, but in OTL he repopulated it with Russians... what if he had instead used Jews?
 
Well, duh, that's what we're basing it on. However, we're stipulating in this that Stalin decides to create an alternate (or maybe just another) Soviet Jewish homeland to displace all the Hebrews to, and this one would be in East Germany, somewhere, perhaps Konigsberg.
 
I did a thread on this a while back somewhere. But what Stalin could do is use a proltarian(sp) Yiddish ideology while painting the Hebrews as capitalists traitors or something I think maybe using the entirety of East Germany as revenge against the Germans (for the dead Russians mind you).
 
East Prussia would offer enough lands for 2-3 millions Jews. Could be enough.

After all, Stalin seemed not to be very pro-Jewish himself, I once read only due to his death 1953 there was no anti-Jewish showcourts and stuff against the Jewish Kreml-doctors.

East Germany would not be depopulated, since the Western allies would be against it. Throwing all Germans out of the later GDR would add 10 million fugitives to the western zones who the western allies would have to feed. And all the industry of eastern Germany would stay unused. And then, what about all those exiled German communists?
There might be a Jewish state in Mecklenburg or Pommerania, that are sparsely populated regions. But Stalin wouldn't throw out all the Germans from Saxony or Thuringia, the industrious heartland of the later GDR and the second most important industrial region of the Reich after the Ruhr. Who should work in all those factories?
 
As per the conclusions reached in the previous thread, what'd you have is a state of Zion located in former Germany- probably in East Prussia, with a capital in rebuilt Koenigsberg/Kalingrad. It becomes the relocation point for the Warsaw Pact's Jewish population, though its culture is mainly Yiddish. It becomes the Soviet Bloc's answer to Israel.

Israel, as in OTL, is seen by most Jews in the West to be the actual homeland, and Zion is no more than a forced relocation point run by the oppressive Soviets. However, a minority with strong enough ties to their European homeland, and many Jews with socialist leanings, emigrate to Zion, boosting the population. Ultimately, Stalin is less friendly with Israel in this ATL, and Israel is more openly pro-West. It may even become a NATO member.

This all leads me to wonder if anti-Semitism will rise in this ATL, because the bigots will claim that the Jews are throwing off their true red leanings. Even though Zion is a mass relocation state.
 
I wonder whether Zion would try a different kind of socialism. More like the kibbutzim in Israel perhaps.

And Israel might sooner get a right-wing government, instead of being governed by Mapai (Labour) for decades before.
 
Yeah. The OTL Jewish Autonomous Oblast was actually quite catering to Jewish culture.

The Jewish administrative division was founded with the help of Komzet in 1928 as the Jewish National District. It was the result of Stalin's nationality policy, by which each of the national groups that formed the Soviet Union would receive a territory in which to pursue cultural autonomy in a socialist framework. In that sense, it was also a response to two supposed threats to the Soviet state: Judaism, which ran counter to official state policy of atheism; and Zionism, and the creation of the modern State of Israel, which countered Soviet views of nationalism. The idea was to create a new "Soviet Zion", where a proletarian Jewish culture could be developed. Yiddish, rather than Hebrew, would be the national language, and a new socialist literature and arts would replace religion as the primary expression of culture.

Stalin's theory on the National Question held that a group could only be a nation if they had a territory, and since there was no Jewish territory, per se, the Jews were not a nation and did not have national rights. Jewish Communists argued that the way to solve this ideological dilemma was by creating a Jewish territory, hence the ideological motivation for the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. Politically, it was also considered desirable to create a Soviet Jewish homeland as an ideological alternative to Zionism and the theory put forward by Socialist Zionists such as Ber Borochov that the Jewish Question could be resolved by creating a Jewish territory in Palestine. Thus Birobidzhan was important for propaganda purposes as an argument against Zionism which was a rival ideology to Marxism among left-wing Jews.
 

ninebucks

Banned
I don't think the Soviets would call anything 'Zion', that word is very steeped in biblical prophesy and would not/isn't very popular with socialists.

I think a better, more likely name is Yidska.

So what are we talking about here? Stalin carving up part of Soviet-occupied Germany into a sovereign Warsaw-pact nation? Well, I guess he could do that, to the victor the spoils and so on. But I don't see why he would, Stalin was an occidentalist, he tended to think of the events and actors to the west of Russia as being more important than the east or the south (thus why he arranged all of the satellites on the western border, and exiled everyone that troubled him to the far east). If he viewed the Jews as a problem, then it makes sense for him to send them off to Birodibzhan, where they are out of sight and out of mind, but it does not make sense for him to place them right on the front lines of the Cold War, unless we butterflied him a masochistic personality that enjoyed being constantly reminded of his failures and inadequacies.

Yidska would of course be a planned economy ruled from Moscow, but due to its make-up of peoples who had been forcably relocated it would likely be a constant cause of dissent within the Warsaw Pact. The Western media would have to report on the 'Yidski Spring' practically ever other year, with each subsequent crushing being less effective, in effect the Brezhnev Doctrine would have been disproven before Brezhnev even took the office!!!

I think such a blatant strategic era on Stalin's part would speed up the decay of the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe, which in turn would speed up the collapse of the USSR itself.
 
I don't think the Soviets would call anything 'Zion', that word is very steeped in biblical prophesy and would not/isn't very popular with socialists.

I think a better, more likely name is Yidska.

So what are we talking about here? Stalin carving up part of Soviet-occupied Germany into a sovereign Warsaw-pact nation? Well, I guess he could do that, to the victor the spoils and so on. But I don't see why he would, Stalin was an occidentalist, he tended to think of the events and actors to the west of Russia as being more important than the east or the south (thus why he arranged all of the satellites on the western border, and exiled everyone that troubled him to the far east). If he viewed the Jews as a problem, then it makes sense for him to send them off to Birodibzhan, where they are out of sight and out of mind, but it does not make sense for him to place them right on the front lines of the Cold War, unless we butterflied him a masochistic personality that enjoyed being constantly reminded of his failures and inadequacies.

Yidska would of course be a planned economy ruled from Moscow, but due to its make-up of peoples who had been forcably relocated it would likely be a constant cause of dissent within the Warsaw Pact. The Western media would have to report on the 'Yidski Spring' practically ever other year, with each subsequent crushing being less effective, in effect the Brezhnev Doctrine would have been disproven before Brezhnev even took the office!!!

I think such a blatant strategic era on Stalin's part would speed up the decay of the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe, which in turn would speed up the collapse of the USSR itself.

I don't think the idea here is to forcibly relocate anybody. I see this mainly as a Soviet attempt to create a rival to Israel, in order to attract Jews to them and away from the West. It could be beneficial as a way to keep Russian Jews out of the sight and mind of the Russian population as well as to create a new Warsaw Pact nation. I don't think the idea was to kick anybody out of their homes, just to attract them to a new home. Remember, this is just after the Holocaust. The Jews are in a position of considerable power in the international stage (they did manage to get Israel and arm it like crazy), and any attempt at relocation could be seen as a genocide.

However, I do agree that Zion might not be, on second thought, such a great name.
 

ninebucks

Banned
I don't think the idea here is to forcibly relocate anybody. I see this mainly as a Soviet attempt to create a rival to Israel, in order to attract Jews to them and away from the West. It could be beneficial as a way to keep Russian Jews out of the sight and mind of the Russian population as well as to create a new Warsaw Pact nation. I don't think the idea was to kick anybody out of their homes, just to attract them to a new home. Remember, this is just after the Holocaust. The Jews are in a position of considerable power in the international stage (they did manage to get Israel and arm it like crazy), and any attempt at relocation could be seen as a genocide.

However, I do agree that Zion might not be, on second thought, such a great name.

Good points, but really, when did Stalin ever use the carrot when he could have used the stick?

Forcing the Jews into Yidska would have had the same propaganda value as them going there of their own free will as long as people didn't know they were being forceably relocated. And doubtless Stalin would think that he would be able to keep that quiet.

Although, I admit my initial characterisation of simply moving all of the Jews may have been exagerated, but there was a thin line between free and forced migration in the Soviet Union. If it was made clear that the local Party bigwigs wouldn't allow you to advance in your career but the Party bigwigs somewhere else would, then although that's not forcing them, its only really giving them one choice.
 
As for using the carrot, well, he did create the Jewish Autonomous Zone in OTL, as the link above shows.
And yes, giving them their European home back may seem too nice, but it's also to displace and have revenge on the Germans who lived in East Prussia. So everyone loses a bit due to Stalin's wrath.
 
Yeah, but at least it wasn't a giant gulag or a concentration camp. I suspect that bombed-out East Prussia wouldn't be a much nicer environment, either.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
If you want to add another potential motive, it could

be "orientalist" instead of "occidentalist" (he did have periods of eastward directed enthusiasm in his career).

Part of the orientalist case for a Yiddish state in Europe could be to contrast the Soviet Union favorably with the US in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, but emphasizing that other powers, typically of imperialism, want to export their problems and contradictions into the underdeveloped world. The "socialist system, messrs muhammad, hussein & hassan," so the propaganda would go,"resolves its own contradictions within its own space without requiring imperial solutions...you should look into it."
 
Yeah, but at least it wasn't a giant gulag or a concentration camp. I suspect that bombed-out East Prussia wouldn't be a much nicer environment, either.

Maybe not, but at least bombed out East Prussia is close enough to the Eastern European Jewish homeland that moving them there wouldn't be seen in a negative light.
 
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