5 - THE EASTERN EUROPEAN ARENA

Summary

With the visible hardening of the Soviet Union's official stance on aliyah from Russia and Eastern Europe in general, Israel's Foreign Ministry officials realized that Jewish emigration from those regions was impossible without the consent (in one form or another) of the Kremlin. This was especially true as an anti-Zionist line developed throughout the Eastern bloc during the winter of 1948–9, with the completion of the sovietization of those countries which the Red Army had occupied during and after the Second World War. Although the Russians did leave their satellites with some internal room for maneuver, they clearly exercised ultimate control. Accordingly, and as one Jewish Agency leader, Berl Locker, put it in June 1949: “We knew that Soviet Russia was a hard nut to crack but we looked for a way to reach her.” Six months later, Arieh Levavi's categorical assessment was that “we must reject any Soviet attempt to claim that the emigration of Jews from Rumania and Hungary is in no way a concern of the Soviet Union.”

The success of Israeli aliyah activities in Eastern Europe during the two years after late 1948 seemed to verify several assumptions: that the Soviets had not banned aliyah from those lands outright; that the leaders of those countries were perhaps less rigid regarding aliyah than was the Kremlin itself; that the Eastern bloc possessed no concerted line on the issue; and that the Israeli freedom of maneuver was therefore not as restricted as had initially been thought.