The leading triumvirate of the Ahdut ha-Avodah Party (and afterward of Maipai) – Berl Katznelson, David Ben-Gurion and Vitzhak Tabenkin – exemplify the ways in which the mainstream sought to cope with the revolution. All three came from the Jewish Pale of Tsarist Russia. They never knew Western democracy. Their ideal remained the Russian Revolution and their implementation of that ideal in Palestine was modeled on the Soviet Union with the state substituted for the party. Somewhat shaken by the events of the USSR under Stalin, the three remained to the end admirers of the way in which the Soviets had cast off the old order and built anew. The state of Israel adopted that pattern.
