Abstract
Apart from lack of motivation to expand its relations with Egypt prior to 1955, Soviet inactivity must equally be attributed to lack of opportunity. Despite isolated outbursts of anti-Western sentiment, such as the 1948 demonstrations in Iraq against the Portsmouth Treaty and the 1952 ‘Black Saturday’ riots in Cairo against British activities in the Canal Zone, the Arab governments and public remained generally pro-Western in outlook. Moreover, following the defeats suffered by the Arab armies in the Palestine war, the Arab-Israeli front remained fairly free from conflict in the period between 1949 and 1954, and relations between the Arab governments themselves were cordial. In Egypt, the new regime led by General Mohamed Naguib and Colonel Gamal Abd al-Nasser concentrated on domestic affairs in the two years following the 1952 overthrow of King Farouk. If the sum total of these events precluded the expansion of Soviet activity in the Arab East during the period 1949–54, a series of events in 1954–55 was to alter radically both the Soviet motivation and opportunity for a more active Middle Eastern policy.
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Notes and References
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, The Arms Trade with the Third World ( London: Paul Elek Ltd., 1971 ), p. 555.
Mohamed Heikal, Nasser: The Cairo Documents ( London: New English Library, 1972 ), p. 52;
Erskine Childers, The Road to Suez (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1962), pp. 120–21. A similar view was expressed by Nasser in his interview with Richard Crossman in The Hindu (2 February, 1954).
Robert Stephens, Nasser ( London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1971 ), P. 149.
British Broadcasting Corporation, Summary of World Broadcasts, Part IV: The Arab World, Israel, Greece, Turkey, Iran (henceforth referred to as SWB IV (24 April 1955), pp. 26–7.
Views on the date of the conclusion vary. Those sources putting the date of the agreement in October 1955 include Miles Copeland, The Game of Nations (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), pp. 130–36; Heikal, op. cit., pp. 56–60; L. Dvorzak, Mirovaya sistema sotzialisma i razvivayushchikhsffye strany (Moscow, 1965), p. 102; an editorial by Heikal in al-Ahram (25 December 1958); and Prague radio which claimed the agreement had been signed on 8 September 1955, in SWB IV (2o September 1955), p. 9.
Those sources which claim that the deal was concluded before Egyptian negotiations with the United States had broken down in May 1955 include K. Ivanov, ‘National Liberation Movement and Non-Capitalist Path of Development’, International Affairs, No. 5 (Moscow, 1965 ), p. 61;
Uri Ra’anan, The USSR Arms the Third World (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1969). For an interesting and full, if controversial, account of events surrounding Nasser’s decision to accept Soviet arms, see Humphrey Trevelyan, The Middle East in Revolution ( London: Macmillan, 1970 ).
See G. Akopyan, ‘O natsional’no-osvoboditel’nom dvizhenii narodov Blizhnevo i Srednevo Vostoka’, Voprosy ekonomiki, No. t (1953), pp. 58–75; L. Sh. Gordonov, op. cit.; L. N. Vatolina, ‘Yegipet i krizis Britanskoy kolonial’noy politiki’, op. cit., pp. 92–127.
I. Bochkarev, ‘The New Spirit in Egypt’, New Times, No. 3 (1957), p. 8.
N. Frankland and V. Kine, eds., Documents on International Affairs, 1956 ( London: Oxford University Press, 1959 ), pp. 69–70.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years, Vol II, Waging Peace ( New York: Doubleday, 1965 ), p. 197.
Tom Little, Modern Egypt ( London: Ernest Benn Ltd., 1967 ), p. 190.
Quoted in John Ericson, ‘The Dislocation of an Alliance: Sino—Soviet Relations, 1960–1961’, in D. C. Watt, ed., Survey of International Affairs, 1961 ( London: Oxford University Press, 1965 ), p. 185.
Nikita Khrushchev, ‘Za novuyu pobedu mirovovo Kommunisticheskovo dvizheniya’, Kommunist, No. t (1961), pp. 3–37.
Boris Ponomaryov, ‘O gosudarstve natsional’noy demokratii’, Kommunist, No. 8 (1961), p. 41.
Robert M. Slusser, The Berlin Crisis of 1961: Soviet—American Relations and the Struggle for Power in the Kremlin, June—November 1961 ( Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973 ), pp. 157–70.
For the different phases in Egypt’s foreign policy, see A. I. Dawisha, Egypt in the Arab World: The Elements of Foreign Policy ( London: Macmillan, 1976 ).
For articles basically hostile to the reforms, see V. Mayevskiy’s Pravda article of, 7 July 1962;
R. Avakov and G. Mirskiy, ‘O klassovoy strukture v slaborazvitykh stranakh’, Mirovaya ekonomika i mezhdunarodnyye otnoshenii (henceforth referred to as MEIMO) No. 4 (1962), pp. 68–82.
For articles which stressed the reforms’ more positive features, see G. Mirskiy, ‘The UAR Reforms’, New Times, No. 4 (1962), pp. 12–15;
Y. Rozaliyev, ‘State Capitalism in Asia and Africa’, International Affairs, Moscow, No. 2 (1963), p. 36;
Primakov’s Pravda article (9 September 1963); and Demchenko in Pravda (10 March 1964).
V. V. Lezin, ‘K voprosu o gegemonii rabochevo klassa v natsional’no-osvoboditel’noi revolyutsii’, in Akademiya Obshchestvennykh Nauk Pri Ts. K. KPSS, Voprosy mezhdunarodnovo rabochevo i natsional’no-osvoboditel’novo dvizheniya na sovremennom etape ( Moscow: Sbornik Statei, 1963 );
R. Avakov and L. Stepanov, ‘Sotsialyye problemy natsional’no-osvoboditel’noi revolyutsii’, MEIMO, No. 5 (1963), pp. 46–54;
V. Kiselev, ‘Rabochiy klass i natsional’no-osvoboditel’nyye revolyutsii’, MEIMO, No. 10 (1963); pp. 93–8; and Ponomaryov’s Pravda article of 18 November 1962.
Togliatti, the Italian Communist leader had said, in a letter written only weeks before his death, that Khrushchev’s visit to Egypt had been a major Soviet victory over the Chinese-New York Times (5 September 1964); Walter Laqueur, The Struggle for the Middle East: The Soviet Union and the Middle East, 1958–1968 ( London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969 ), p. 71.
Laqueur, The Struggle for the Middle East, p. 69; Yaacov Ro’i, From Encroachment to Involvement: A Documentary Study of Soviet Policy in the Middle East,1945–1973 ( New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1974 ) p. 385.
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© 1979 Karen Dawisha
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Dawisha, K. (1979). Soviet—Egyptian Relations under Khrushchev 1955–64. In: Soviet Foreign Policy towards Egypt. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04187-9_2
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