[alexander_busek]

“Stalin was anxious to see the British out of the Middle East and even harbored a fugitive belief that the new Jewish state would join the Soviet bloc.” It was pure realpolitik on Stalin’s part [...]

Why bother reading the whole article when the very obvious and simple answer to the question posed in the headline is right there, buried in paragraph 16?

I hate that!

Regards,

[Tallguy]

When a single man gets ultimate power then sometimes an inexplicable policy shift can simply be chalked up to “personal whim”. By 1947 Stalin had eliminated all his fellow revolutionaries and lead Russia to victory in WW2. He had no rivals for power.