The Soviet Union played a significant role in the Arab–Israeli conflict as the conflict was a major part of the Cold War. For related developments after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, see Russia and the Arab–Israeli conflict. Marxism–Leninism and Zionism The official Soviet ideological position on Zionism condemned the movement as akin to "bourgeois nationalism". Vladimir Lenin, claiming to be deeply committed to egalitarian ideals and universality of all humanity, rejected Zionism as a reactionary movement, "bourgeois nationalism", "socially retrogressive", and a backward force that deprecates class divisions among Jews. Soviets believed that the main objective of the Zionist movement was to bring about a mass immigration of Jews into Israel from countries where they had been scattered among the general population, with a special emphasis placed on the Soviet Union. Under Joseph Stalin's rule, he initially accepted a limited emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union into Israel in order to invest in what he hoped for would be a socialist Israel. Establishment of the State of Israel For Soviet foreign policy decision-makers, pragmatism took precedence over ideology. Without changing its official anti-Zionist stance, from late 1944, until 1948 and even later, Joseph Stalin adopted a pro-Zionist foreign policy, apparently believing that the new country would be socialist and would accelerate the decline of British influence in the Middle East. The USSR began to support Zionism at the UN during the 1947 UN Partition Plan debate. It preferred a Jewish–Arab binational state. But if this proved impossible it indicated that it would support partition and a Jewish state. On 14 May 1947, the Soviet ambassador Andrei Gromyko announced: Shortly after this speech, the Soviet media temporarily stopped publishing anti-Zionist material. It followed this policy and gave support to the UN plan to partition the British Mandate of Palestine, which led to the founding of the State of Israel. On May 17, 1948, three days after Israel declared independence, the Soviet Union legally recognized it de jure, becoming the first country to grant de jure recognition to the Jewish state. In addition to the diplomatic support, arms from Czechoslovakia, part of the Soviet bloc, were crucial to Israel in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Effects of the Cold War The USSR soon switched sides in the Arab–Israeli conflict. After it tried to maintain a policy of friendship with Israel at first, abstaining from and allowing the passage of