Write me, mom, to Egypt ... (part 3)
3. On the Suez Canal
1
After the first foreign business trip to Egypt, for more than two years I served as a translator in the Crimea at a training center located in the village of Perevalnoe. It trained fighters for the national liberation movements of Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau.
In the spring of 1967, Soviet radio almost every day told that the situation in the Middle East continued to deteriorate because of Israel’s fault, that the Zionists were rattling weaponsthat Gamal Abdel Nasser called on Arab countries to unite and give a decisive battle to the forces of international Zionism.
The colleagues, knowing that I had served in Egypt for several years, laughed at me:
- Pack a suitcase. Arabs will not do without you!
A large-scale information-psychological war against Arab countries was launched in the West. The idea that in order to protect against “aggression” from Syria, Israel could launch a military operation against this country was thrust into the consciousness of the foreign public. Egyptian President condemned the new intrigues of Israel against Syria.
Israel’s provocations against Syria continued. 4 May The Egyptian leadership introduced a large grouping of troops to Sinai. Israel did not let up. Nasser asked the UN Secretary-General U Thant to stop the peacekeeping mission of the UN troops and withdraw them from the Sinai Peninsula. 19 May, UN troops left Sinai.
We did not know that politicians in Tel Aviv and Washington were happy that on May 22, Nasser announced the blockade of the Strait of Tirana. This step was met positively in the West. Before the war, it was necessary to prove that Egypt is the aggressor, and Israel is the victim, and therefore the victim has the right to a military operation - no matter what: offensive or defensive.
Arab leaders of Algeria, Iraq, Syria, King of Jordan supported the position of the Egyptian leadership. Military psychosis swept Israel. The Zionists managed to win support for their military plans from the country's Jewish population. 1 June was created a government of national unity. Moshe Dayan, the “hero” of the Tripartite aggression against Egypt, was appointed to the post of minister of defense. He was one of the most courageous and determined Israeli generals. On the eve of the war in the Middle East, he had an internship at the Headquarters of the American occupying forces in Vietnam.
No one knew that the Israeli strategic plan included the destruction of airfields and aviation, air defense systems in Egypt, Syria and Jordan. At the same time, it was planned: the defeat of the Egyptian group in the Sinai, the regrouping of forces to strike at the Jordanian army, a new regrouping and striking at the Syrian army in the Golan Heights.
Moscow Radio reported:
The plan to defeat the three Arab armies was implemented during the Six Day War. The tasks assigned by the Zionists to the Israeli army were fully accomplished. Zionists rejoiced.
“The Arabs do not know how to fight if the Jews beat them on the left with one hand,” fellow officers teased me.
- Well, at least stopped on the Suez Canal!
- We will never teach the Arabs to fight. Not for Senka hat!
I shrugged in bewilderment: I do not know, they say, how it could have happened. I was unpleasant to hear such judgments. I also did not understand how to lose the war, having almost double superiority in numbers and armaments ?! It didn't fit in my head. I was hurt. It turned out that all the efforts of our military specialists and translators were in vain.
Later, when in the books about this war I saw in the photographs the columns of wounded Soviet tanks, the columns of Soviet trucks abandoned by the Arabs in the desert, I became ill.
Throughout June, the radio talked about diplomatic battles at the UN. Not only the Arabs were defeated. The Soviet leadership and its policies in the Middle East were also defeated. It was perplexing: billions of dollars were spent on military deliveries of weapons, ammunition, missiles, aircraft to Egypt and Syria, and suddenly a complete rout of the Arab armies.
Arab leaders gathered in Khartoum and decided to provide material assistance to Egypt, Syria and Jordan, and prepare for a new war with Israel. They reiterated that they were refusing to recognize the legality of the creation of a Jewish state in the Arab land of Palestine. The USSR and several socialist countries broke off diplomatic relations with Israel.
2
We also did not know that at the beginning of the 60-s in Israel, work was under way on the creation of the atomic bomb. President Kennedy was the first American president to be seriously concerned about the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East. So write American historians today. The proliferation of nuclear weapons threatened to undermine the monopoly of the West. While it was in the hands of Britain and France, the US government could hold back the USSR. However, the security services reported that China and Israel are close to building their atomic bombs.
Kennedy had no leverage over the Chinese leadership. However, he tried to convince the Israeli leadership to abandon the creation of its atomic bomb, which was supposed to have been built in a nuclear reactor, at the nuclear research center in the town of Dimona, located in the Negev desert. Kennedy also knew that the Arab countries also had information about the work of Israel on the atomic bomb. Violation of the military-technical equilibrium in the Middle East region - Kennedy argued - could push the Arab countries to closer cooperation with the USSR and the PRC, forcing them to ask them for protection against Israel.
Kennedy warned the leadership of Israel that if Israel acquired weapons of mass destruction, Muslim states would program the creation of their own nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the Israeli Prime Minister did not agree to suspend work in Dimona, explaining that they are purely peaceful in nature. At the same time, he asked his New York bosses to put pressure on Kennedy. We agreed that the American commission would arrive at the reactor and verify the veracity of the words of the Israeli Prime Minister. The commission came, but it was not allowed into all the workshops built in Dimona. We now know that the Israeli leadership was deceiving Kennedy.
Perhaps Kennedy’s obstinacy on a number of military issues cost him his life. About this today, some Western historians write. Having come to power, Kennedy managed to consolidate the allies around the United States; to gain a foothold in the largest and most influential developing countries; expand diplomatic dialogue with potential adversaries.
After the Kennedy assassination in accordance with the American Constitution, the President of the United States became Lyndon Johnson, vice president and former Texas senator. He removed from the agenda the question about Dimona and increased military-technical assistance to Israel. With his arrival in power, Israel did not experience a lack of modern weapons and military equipment.
At the very beginning of 2009, a book by the American journalist and historian Patrick Taylor was published in the United States: “Restless World. The White House and the Middle East from the Beginning of the Cold War to the War on International Terrorism "(Patrick Tyler. A World of Trouble. The White House and the Middle East - New York. Farrar Straus Giroux, 2009 ). In it, he describes how American presidents viewed events in the Middle East. He is ruthless with facts and tries to write the truth, even if it is unpleasant to him and some of his readers. I took a number of the facts I mention below from his book.
The focus of his attention is on American presidents, from Truman to Bush Jr., their relationship with the American Jewish community, the pro-Israel lobby, with Jewish bankers and magnates; relationship with Arab politicians. For example, he describes many cases where Israeli prime ministers refused to discuss their military and occupation plans with the American presidents. Sometimes they claimed on the sidelines that they, Israeli leaders, had more power in the United States than American presidents, because at any time, American Jews could force any of the presidents to fulfill their will, the Zionists.
P. Taylor describes in some detail the connections of L. Johnson with the Jewish oligarchic clans that determine the main directions of the US Middle East policy. He names specific names of Jews who worked with Johnson on behalf of the Zionist leadership of Israel and the American pro-Israel lobby.
In the White House and on the Texas ranch of President L. Johnson, the couple by the name of Krim appeared more often than others. To be close to the president, she bought an estate near Johnson's ranch in Texas. The president willingly shared with the Jewish couple even classified information. For example, she attended a meeting in which R. McNamara, the secretary of defense, gave a secret report on the actions and plans of the American troops in Vietnam.
The circle of L. Johnson's acquaintances among the wealthy Jewish and politicians was quite wide. Hollywood oligarchs and New York bankers prevailed among them.
As for Arthur Krim, he was a famous figure on Capitol Hill. He managed to raise large sums of money for the L. Johnson presidential election campaign. In gratitude, using his official position, the president, at his suggestion, appointed American-Jewish political figures to important government posts: Arthur Goldberg as US ambassador to the UN, Abe Fortes as a member of the Supreme Court.
Among the best friends of this president of the United States are the names of New York banker Abe Feinberg and Washington lawyer David Ginzburg. They served as a reliable link between the president and the Israeli leadership. Through them, secret information bypassing the State Department and the Pentagon arrived in Tel Aviv.
"Johnson was a maestro of intellectual and political Jewry, and this unofficial circle of advisers put everything together - strategy, politics, money and friendship, which determined his presidency and even life", - wrote P. Taylor. This “circle” consisted of ardent anti-Communists and Zionists. Johnson did not hide his admiration for Israel. He considered Israel an island of democracy and liberalism in a sea of Arab hostility, and the USSR was the main enemy of Israel and the United States in the Middle East (p. 67).
Once, a well-known rabbi came to Johnson's reception and demanded from the public to stop the US war in Vietnam. Rabbi infuriated the president. He immediately called the Israeli ambassador and in a rude tone demanded that he bring order to the pro-Israel community of America.
“I have three Cohen in the government,” he shouted at him. “Not a single American president did as much for the Jews as I did (p. 68).
P. Taylor also reports that banker Abe Feinberg provided all the presidential campaigns of the Democratic Party with Jewish money, starting with Truman, and that only Kennedy refused to follow his instructions on pro-Israel policies (p. 563).
About the beauty blonde Matilde Kreme should be told separately. She was the most influential woman in L. Johnson's entourage and managed to play an important role in the Middle East events of the 1960s.
She was born to a Calvinist family in Switzerland. When she studied at the University of Geneva, she fell in love with a Jewish student and married him. This protégé of the famous terrorist and political figure Menahem Begin (1913-1992) was a fighter of the terrorist underground group Irgun. He arrived in Geneva in 1947 to conduct Zionist propaganda in the local Jewish community.
Matilda accepted Judaism and became a member of an underground group engaged in the supply of arms to Palestine. Then she went to Israel with her husband and began to work as a researcher at the Weizmann Institute. The institute was engaged in secret development for a nuclear reactor in Dimona. In the end, 1950's divorced her husband and married Arthur Crim.
How did Americans treat President Lyndon Johnson, who blessed the Zionists for a new war with Arab countries, ordered Napalm to be poured over Vietnam and ordered not to spare the lives of American guys in Indochina’s bloody bathhouse, shedding the blood of American students protesting at American university campuses against the Vietnam War ; impudently to the American people, until they were convicted by true patriots of democratic America? In 1980, Americans called him the worst US president in the 20 century.
The survey was conducted among Americans in 1988. He showed that L. Johnson was last in the list of American presidents - after G. Ford, J. Carter and R. Nixon. Only one percent of the respondents voted for him (Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising. Lyndon Johnson and his Time. 1908-1960. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 3).
By 1969, President Nixon and Kissinger, his secretary of state, already knew that Israel had nuclear weapons. Kissinger convinced Nixon of the need to withhold information from the world. At the end of September of the same year, Nixon and Golda Meir agreed that Israel would not conduct tests of its nuclear bomb, would not threaten its neighbors with nuclear retribution. For his part, Nixon promised to stop the trips of a special commission to Dimona. As American authors A. Lschen and M. Miller write (Avner Cohen, Marvin Miller. Bringing Israel’s Bomb Jut of the Basement. In: Foreign Affairs, Sep / Oct 2010, p. 33-34), for more than half a century, American presidents have complied with this arrangements
No one in those years could not have imagined that the solution to the problem of the occupation of foreign territories by Israel would drag on for half a century. The six-day war was only one of the points of the strategic plan, the implementation of which had to drag on for a whole century. Israel needed a decisive victory over the Arabs at any cost. It was necessary, first of all, to undermine the evolving anti-imperialist unity of the Arab peoples. Secondly, it was necessary to change the consciousness of the Jewish nation. She was given not only suffering, but also victory. It is being reborn as a great nation, and is able not only to protect itself, but also to bring any other nation to its knees by armed force.
3
Late in the fall of 1967, I was called for an interview at the Ten (10-e Office of the General Staff) in Moscow and offered a new trip to Egypt. I agreed.
At the beginning of March, a telegram arrived at Perevalnoye: urgently seconded to the 1968 Office.
In the "Ten" I met Lieutenant General Pozharsky. He headed the Soviet military mission in Egypt for several years. The general recognized me, apparently, because in 1964-1965. I often ran to him in public affairs, when the Komsomol members chose me as their secretary.
- Yes, this is a hunchback! Are you going to Egypt again? The general greeted me cheerfully.
- I make out the documents, comrade general.
We respected Pozharsky, a tactful, attentive person. For us, the young officers, he was "Batey." He knew how to lead and keep everything under control without much interference in the affairs of the people he commanded; saw everything, noticed and understood; was a congenital diplomat; knew how to keep this word; asked experts and translators to study local customs and traditions and especially not to interfere in the affairs of the wards. He enjoyed a well-deserved prestige in the Soviet colony of Cairo. Both the Arab side and the Soviet military leadership were pleased with it. In the evenings, he came to the villa, watched Soviet films with us, listened to lectures of visiting journalists and lecturers of the Central Committee.
- What is the new business trip ?! I can't deal with the old one !!
- How can not? - I was embarrassed and surprised, but then I guessed that it was necessary for the general to pour out his soul to someone.
- Let's go talk.
He took my arm and we walked down the red carpet to the end of a long corridor to the window.
From the conversation, I realized that they tried to accuse him of allegedly hiding from the leadership the true state of affairs in the Egyptian armed forces, although the general, in his reports sent from Cairo to Moscow, had repeatedly reported on the weak theoretical training of Egyptian generals, their inability think in strategic and operational categories; about the nobility of Egyptian officers, about the terrible living conditions of the rank and file; about weak combat training of troops. He repeatedly offered to use diplomatic channels through which Nasser’s eyes could be opened to the true state of affairs in the Egyptian armed forces.
I remember that similar issues were discussed by our experts among themselves. Apparently, our experts reported to General Pozharsky about the true state of affairs in the troops and navy. Pozharsky summarized their reports and reported findings to the General Staff. One of the reasons for the defeat of the Egyptian army in the Six Day War, as the lieutenant general believed, was the low professionalism of the Egyptian general, and perhaps even betrayal.
Indeed, over the past 15 years after the revolution, young officers, associates of Nasser, have become generals. It was from this environment that most of the representatives of the so-called new military-bureaucratic bourgeoisie emerged. It has taken key positions in the field of finance and industry. The new and old national bourgeoisie was pleased with the defeat in the war. She hoped that defeat would sooner or later lead to the fall of the hated progressive regime of Nasser. Agents of Western influence intensified their activities in Egypt.
It seems that, unlike the Israeli generals, not one Egyptian was professionally prepared to take unconventional decisions, to lead the troops under them professionally. Terribly far they turned out to be from the soldiers and officers.
Egyptian Defense Minister Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer (1919-1967) was a vain man who had already lost military authority among the troops several years before the start of this war. There were a lot of jokes about him that Arab officers told translators. It is even inconvenient to somehow compare the corrupt Field Marshal Amer, for example, with the militant Israeli General Moshe Dayan.
Abdel Hakim Amer, who, by the way, Khrushchev also, like Nasser, awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union and awarded him the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal in May 1964, was considered a personal friend of Nasser. At various times, in addition to the post of Minister of Defense, he occupied the posts of First Vice-President, Minister of Science, Chairman of the Nuclear Energy Commission, Chairman of the Commission for the Elimination of Feudalism. Already on the third day since the beginning of the Six-Day War, this “personal friend” created an anti-presidential coalition and demanded the resignation of President Nasser, but was defeated and forced to resign. A few days later, the Egyptian generals, blocking the palace of Nasser with six armored vehicles, demanded the restoration of Amer as commander-in-chief. Nasser refused, suppressed the rebellion. He arrested the generals and began a "purge" in the army.
In late August, Amer again attempted a coup d'état. The coup broke. Nasser ordered to put a “personal friend” under house arrest and he committed suicide on September 14. 1967. Those were the generals !! It was their fault that in the six days of the war in the desert, soldiers and officers were killed and died of thirst for 11500, thousands of 15 were injured. The Israelis destroyed the 264 aircraft and 700 tanks (Dilip Hiro. Dictionary of the Middle East, New York, 1996, P. 21).
Caught in a bind, Nasser was forced to again seek help from the Soviet leadership. He asked to send military advisers, asked for new supplies of weapons and military equipment on credit. The Soviet leadership managed to insist on the mandatory retraining of the commanders of the Egyptian army.
First Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail Zakharov, then General of the Army P. Lashchenko were sent to Egypt first. They identified the needs of the armed forces of Egypt (from the battalion to the army) in Soviet military advisers, in armaments and military equipment. The General Staff urgently assembled hundreds of experienced senior officers, many of whom went through World War II, and sent them to Egypt. Army General P. Laschenko became the main military adviser.
The advisers were tasked with helping to recreate the Egyptian armed forces on a new, modern basis in the shortest time possible, to train soldiers and officers in the use of traditional weapons - from the Kalashnikov machine gun to anti-aircraft missile systems, MIG-21 aircraft, submarines of new types, unique anti-tank installations, pontoon aircraft bridges, communications.
According to various sources in 1968, more than three thousand Soviet officers - advisers and translators - arrived in Egypt and about one thousand went to Syria. Egyptian armed forces received from the USSR up to 500 new tanks, up to 400 aircraft. The Soviet naval squadron approached the shores of Egypt and the squadron TU-16 arrived to conduct naval intelligence.
4
In March, 1968, I flew to Moscow. A few days later we were sent by plane from the Chkalovsky airfield to Severomorsk. There we were given a list of expressions on three pages in English used during the commander's radio exchange with ground control services during takeoff and landing at foreign airfields. Explained the importance of the tasks assigned to our reconnaissance squadron TU-16 of the Navy. She was sent to Egypt for naval intelligence in the Mediterranean region. In the first place, she had to regularly report to Moscow the route of movement of the American Mediterranean Navy.
We departed from Severomorsk early in the morning. In Hungary at the Soviet military airfield Tekey planes refueled. We spent the night there. The next day, landed at the airport Cairo-West in Egypt. It was a suffocating spring 35-degree heat. We emerged from the hatches in fur flight jackets on the sun-heated runway.
Cairo West reminded me of the Dashur Center. The airfield on the perimeter was surrounded by barbed wire. In the distance, the rows of skeletons of MIGs burned darkly by Israeli pirates in June 1967 darkened darkly.
In December 1965 I flew home from peaceful Egypt. Now Egypt has become different - military. There was a war. The occupation forces of Israel stood in Sinai. In Cairo, many institutions were armed guards, and in front of the entrance wall, built of sandbags or bricks.
The political situation in the country has changed dramatically. The Egyptians survived the defeat in the war, an attempted coup, the arrests of generals. The army is defeated. She began to recover with the help of Soviet advisers.
Our reconnaissance squadron TU-16 was the only combat unit around which life was in full swing. Technicians served the aircraft. To the airplanes, the tankers were driving up, then the car with oxygen. Once or twice a week, pilots flew a pair of reconnaissance aircraft into the sky, headed north and circled over the US XnUMX Mediterranean fleet. Photographers showed films, printed photos. The commander and chief of staff wrote the reports and took them to the Headquarters of the Chief Military Adviser. Our squadron provided intelligence to the naval command in Moscow and the headquarters of the Chief Military Adviser in Cairo.
Our crews performed perfectly the first combat mission. The American squadron discovered our planes only when they defiled over it at low altitude and filmed all the warships and aircraft carrier. The Americans no longer allowed such carelessness. Their fighters met our TU-16 at an altitude of 800 meters at the approach, were attached in 5-7 meters under the wing, not allowing our pilots to make further descent.
In the Middle East region, the interests of two superpowers — the United States and the USSR — of two socio-political systems — capitalism and socialism — clashed. The United States defended the interests and property of its oil bars. The USSR defended the rights of Arab peoples to independence, peace and freedom from the colonial powers of the West.
I remember that on May 9 we celebrated the 23 anniversary of the Victory over Nazi Germany together with Arab officers Cairo-West. Raised toasts for the victory over Israel. Egyptian officers believed in their victory, and even offered a toast to our meeting in Tel Aviv next year.
The dream did not come true next year. Only ten years later, the new Egyptian President Anwar Sadat will fly to Israel and will be humbly asking for the return of the Sinai to Egypt. He is the first Arab leader to recognize the state of Israel, for which he will be called a traitor in all Arab countries, and for which the Egyptian nationalists will shoot him right on the podium in a solemn ceremony at a parade on the celebrations of the 19 anniversary of the July revolution (in 1981).
5
In June, 1968 was replaced by all six translators who arrived with the squadron in Egypt, cadets of the Military Institute. We were sent to serve in the troops on the Suez Canal. The channel divided the two armies - the Egyptian and the Israeli occupation forces in Sinai. It was a real front with shelling and bombing.
By this time, the Egyptian troops were already staffed with personnel, weapons, equipment, arriving urgently from the USSR. The combat training of subunits was in full swing, combat shooting was carried out, additional equipment for combat positions was conducted.
I was seconded to a group of advisers in the second infantry division of the first echelon. The division stood on the Suez Canal. The families of Soviet officers sent to the Canal were given apartments in Cairo at the Chelmia Hotel. I was given an apartment on the sixth floor. A week after my transfer, my wife and daughter flew in from Crimea. We had to live in Cairo for more than three years.
I remember the first time I saw the Canal not from the air, but from the bus during a trip on an excursion to Port Said in December 1962. We drove along the road running along the canal. And suddenly, it seemed to us, a dry-cargo ship with the Soviet flag on the mast was moving right across the desert. We asked the driver to stop, ran out of the bus. Screamed and waved their hands, trying to attract the attention of our sailors. Two sailors came to the deck, stretched, looked indifferently in our direction and left. How did they know that already at the beginning of 60, hundreds of officers worked in the Egyptian army as advisers and translators.
Now the channel was dead.
Service began in the army - on the Suez Canal. Counselors and translators walked in Arabic field uniforms without insignia and personal weapons. Our group was based in Ismailia, a city on the shore of Lake Timsah. We, like the Arab officers, were in a barracks situation and lived in houses in a protected area where British troops were stationed before 1954.
Working with advisers in the troops was much more interesting than with pilots. Here you are busy from morning to evening. Our group at the division included ten people - seven advisers and three translators.
Our group was led by Colonel Hero of the Soviet Union Pavel Alexandrovich Afanasyev. Star Hero received for crossing the Dnieper. Before the war was a civilian. He headed the club in the district center after graduating from the Technical College of Culture. The war began. He graduated from the short-term officer courses. Passed the whole war. He participated in the battle for Berlin. He was appointed head of one of the district commandant's offices in Berlin. In a white military tunic with a gold star on his chest, he loved to perform at concerts of amateur performances. Read poems Tvardovsky and Simonov. Women, of course, could not help falling in love with such a slender major with aristocratic features.
Then Afanasyev graduated from the Academy. Frunze. He passed all posts to the deputy division commander. From this position he arrived in Egypt. Found a common language with the ward of the division commander - the general. He knew how to work with subordinates. There was a "Batey". Intelligent, intelligent, wise, tactful professional. Next to him, I felt protected in any alterations into which we had more than once fell. In war, as in war!
- Do not believe if the officer claims that he was never afraid in battle. Lying Everyone is afraid. Everyone wants to live. You can not climb on the rampage, - he taught us.
- And you were afraid?
- Of course, there were all sorts of dangerous situations. I wanted to dig my head into the ground. So man is made.
There was a lot of work: training exercises, control of combat training conducted by Egyptian officers. Meetings, meetings with "wards" heads, with the divisional division. (we called "wards" the Arab officers and generals with whom we worked). In the morning we sat in Gaziki, called in division headquarters, coordinated work plans and went either to units, or to exercise, or to shootings, or to a meeting at the headquarters of the second army located in Tel Kibir. Interviewed with commanders, controlled the preparation for shooting, field exercises. We met with advisers who worked in brigades, divisions and units of the reserve of the High Command located in our area. Only for the weekend we went by bus to families in Cairo. The roads in Egypt are wonderful. Most of them are asphalted, not like in Russia.
Wives and children waited for us, missed. They went out and met our buses. We had dinner, got on buses and drove to a military Soviet villa in Heliopolis. They watched Soviet films, took books and magazines in the library.
Wives were worried if our buses were suddenly delayed. Has anything happened to us? They began to call the duty officer at the office of the chief military adviser. He reassured them: "Wait, they are coming up".
Tensions intensified when, in 1969, Israeli aircraft began bombing military and civilian targets in Egypt, and advisers with translators were forced to take part in the fighting of the Egyptian armed forces. There were killed and wounded. Who is next? The widows were taken home by our wives.
Once I returned home from Ismailia. My wife said that in the week her attention was attracted by the rumble of cars. She went to the balcony. On the street was an endless column of Soviet trucks, painted yellow.
“About an hour later, I went out onto the balcony again.” Soviet cars continued on the street. I was surprised. How many cars have passed during this time. And they all went and went. I was horrified and suddenly burst into tears. What is this done? On the eve of the newspapers I learned that the collective farm fields are sorely lacking in cars. There is nothing to take out the harvest. And he lies under the open sky, spoils, and here ... I was crying. I felt so sorry for the Russian people. Why are these thousands of cars here, and not in Russia? Why do we drive equipment abroad, when it is not enough at home ... Do not tell me about this international duty and so on. I want our people to be good first of all!
I calmed my wife. She would see how many cars, tanks, armored personnel carriers, military equipment had already been delivered to the troops. And how many Soviet vehicles did the Arabs abandon in Sinai, in a hurry, retreating in early June 1967 from the Israeli army !!
“And you remember,” the wife did not let up, “as Khrushchev came to Egypt, and we met him at the station.” Every day receptions. They drank, walked from the heart.
The golden stars of the Hero of the Soviet Union Nikita scattered right and left. Why did he give two and a half billion dollars to Nasser, writing off debts for the Assuan dam? A lot of money. Now Moskvich costs less than five thousand rubles. How much with this money could the “Muscovites” do for the Soviet people, or distribute them for free, for example, to the heroes and veterans of the Great Patriotic War !! I was not lazy and counted. It turned out 600 thousands of passenger cars. Who gave Nikita the right to scatter people's money?
I do not have an answer to this question today.
6
Once during an exchange of fire with the Israelis, we settled on the third floor of an unfinished hospital. The building stood on the banks of the Suez Canal. We lay on the floor at the window opening. After a while Afanasyev got worried.
- Come on, brothers, let's move higher and to the other side of the building. See where the shells go.
We ran into the fourth floor and lay down near the window. The review was good. Notice the new battery. When the firefight ended, we began to descend the stairs. Passing by the window on the third floor, from which we left some 15-20 minutes ago, the lower right corner was torn apart by a projectile.
- Israelis spotted us. Do not leave us - we were no longer in this world. Let's take a shard for memory. Such luck is rarely in life.
We took a piece of twisted metal. In the car I spent a long time looking at it. Could we really get death from such a fragment ?!
We have repeatedly come under the shelling of the Israeli divisions. One day, Israeli artillery began massive shelling in the late evening. We rested.
- Anxiety. On horses, comrade officers, ”Afanasyev commanded, and addressed me. - Get in touch with the divisional commander and tell him that we are going to the command post and will work with the division's artillery chief - check our data on the location of the Israeli batteries in the band of our division.
I hardly got through to the division headquarters and handed the request to Afanasyev to the general.
In the afternoon, the path to the command post of the division did not take more than 15 minutes. At night, traffic on the roads was extremely slow. The cars came with camouflage sidelights, and they were almost not visible. The Arab driver shook hands. The roar of volleys of dozens of heavy guns on both sides was accompanied by lines of tracing lines. It was really scary. The earth trembled. We felt shocks in the car.
Suddenly Afanasyev ordered to stop immediately. The driver pulled over. We went to a Muslim cemetery.
- Here is the command post of one of the companies. It is urgent to call the army headquarters again. Our long-range artillery army reserve can transfer fire to their own or have already transferred. She submits to the army headquarters. We need to know whether the Israeli forces have begun to force the canal.
How many times we passed by and I did not know that among the graves there was a communications center. We entered the cramped dugout. I explained to the Egyptian officers that we urgently need to call the army headquarters. With great difficulty we managed to do it. Finally, I heard the voice of Yura Shevtsov, an Arabist and floormate at the Chelmia Hotel in Cairo. He served as a translator for the Major General, an adviser to the commander of the Second Army.
“Colonel Afanasyev wants to urgently speak with the general,” I told him, and Afanasyev, closing one ear with his palm, began a conversation.
When he finished, he told us that the Israelis are only firing, the channel is not forced. Soon we arrived at the concrete command post of the division, went up to the observation deck with the division's artillery chief. The advisers and their charges worked for a long time, putting on the map of the enemy's batteries illuminated by a flashlight and firing at the Egyptian troops.
Only once on the Suez Canal, in the troops of the first echelon - on the front line, could one understand the difference in the work of translators with specialists and advisers. During my first business trip in Dashur and Cairo, translators worked with military specialists. Specialists were sent abroad for several months, up to a year. They taught the Egyptians the possession or repair of Soviet weapons and military equipment supplied under the contract to the Egyptian state. Having completed their task, they returned to their homeland.
The specialists did not interfere in the work of the Egyptian General Staff, but were under its directorates. They did not teach Egyptian generals strategy and operational art. They shared their knowledge with the wards and that was the end of their mission. In the troops under the commanders of the parts of the Soviet specialists were not. In Dashur, we prepared Egyptian missilemen, and a group of specialists flew to the Union. Major Yakunin and I taught us to use Soviet heavy flamethrowers at the test site, and he returned to his homeland. Then, about a year with a major from Kiev, we taught a group of Egyptian engineers to repair the SON-9, and the major sailed by steamer to Ukraine.
Advisor differs from specialist higher level of responsibility. He gives advice, recommendations to his wards and assumes part of their responsibility for the task. It is located both in the army and in the central control bodies. He makes a decision, offers it to the Arab commander, and they together participate in his execution. He, along with the ward rides on reconnaissance, conducts shooting and command and staff exercises. He teaches practical building on the pontoon bridges on the ground until the Egyptian units master the practical skills of crossing the Suez Canal in the event of the start of hostilities. He detects the enemy's batteries during the shootings, reports the coordinates to the division's artillery chief, and he orders the Egyptian artillery divisions to open fire on the enemy's batteries.
From conversations of Soviet advisers, from personal observations of the behavior of Arab officers and soldiers, I gradually began to understand that Soviet advisers, who arrived in Egypt in the fall of 1967, were confronted with the defeatism of Egyptian officers. Many of them did not believe in the ability of the Egyptian army to resist the Israeli armed forces, because the United States is behind the backs of Israel. Not all Egyptian officers and generals believed that among the illiterate fellahs who had been killed, it was possible to train fighters who were able to master modern weapons and equipment perfectly well.
The difficulty was that most Egyptian officers were from upper and middle classes. They were not accustomed to the daily routine work with subordinates, the conduct of educational work and combat training of personnel. Most of the time soldiers were engaged in non-commissioned officers.
The chief military adviser insisted that Arab officers and generals be transferred to a barracks position in the troops stationed in the Suez Canal zone. The insistent demands of Soviet advisers to Egyptian officers to be constantly in subunits and take personal part in combat training, in shooting, in field exercises were often ignored, perceived as a desire to undermine their prestige in front of the soldiers. This could not but cause discontent with a certain part of Egyptian senior officers. Some of them observed with disdain how the Soviet colonels and lieutenant colonels demonstrated to Egyptian soldiers with their personal example how to crawl, shoot, throw grenades, how to repair a car or a tank if necessary. Such an attitude to the performance of their duties was unthinkable for many Arab officers. However, Soviet advisers persistently broke the psychology of "belorushek".
Caste, the demonstration of their service and class superiority over the "soldier" hit us. Often, we watched an Egyptian lord officer go to the toilet, and the orderly carries a jug of water, soap and a towel behind him, and waits for his lord to handle his soap, lock the officer’s locker room. The soldiers themselves went to relieve themselves in the desert.
With all their might, the Soviet advisers tried to break the sharp alienation that had taken root in the officers, people from the privileged strata of Egyptian society, from the soldiers' masses. They believed that such alienation leads to a low level of morale and morale of the Egyptian army personnel. It is not hard to guess that this alienation was one of the reasons for the defeat of the Arab armies in the wars with Israel.
The task of restoring the Egyptian armed forces was carried out very successfully and efficiently in an unusually short time. The advisers were able to teach the Egyptian military commanders a lot. They inspired the officers that it was impossible to win over a strong adversary without believing in an obligatory victory, in justice of the war for the liberation of Sinai from the Israeli invaders, that victory is impossible to achieve without close cooperation of all arms of service.
As time has shown, the advisers were able to teach a lot to the Egyptian commanders and officers. However, they could not break the caste and class traditions and prejudices of the army, especially in Egyptian society. They could not influence the part of the Egyptian generals, who ruled the country and not so much thought about the victorious war with Israel, but about conducting secret diplomatic negotiations with the ruling circles of the West.
7
One morning we got into the Gazik, and Colonel Afanasyev ordered the chauffeur to go to the El Ferdan railway bridge, in 20 km north of Ismailia on the Canal. By the way, it is the world's longest turning bridge. Its swiveling sections are 340 meters long.
- There, a poster of the Jews installed. The adviser to the commander of the Second Army asked to see and report the result to him.
We drove to the bridge. Got out of the car. On the opposite bank of the Suez Canal, a huge poster with an appeal, written in large letters in Russian, stood near the pillar of the bridge: “Isn't it time for you to go home, comrades!”
- Russian Jews wrote. They did not forget to even put a comma where necessary, we laughed.
By order of the division commander, the poster was shot. It was destroyed, but in my memory this poster remained for the rest of my life.
How and why are we, Soviet people, Russian and Russian-speaking Jews here in the Middle East, found themselves on different banks of the Channel? For fifty years, we have been taught internationalism, both Russians and Jews. Who divided us, separated them, set one nation against another, because both nations lived side by side? Who was it profitable for? How could the Jews who left for Israel from the USSR support the Tel Aviv Zionist policy and shoot at the Soviet guys on the other side of the Suez Canal, with whom they had recently sat together at the same school desk in the Soviet school?
What is that poster? Nonsense. Trifle. But he did not appear by chance. The poster testified that in Soviet society even then there were some serious changes that neither the authorities, nor we, ordinary people, wanted to see. Who spread us, who and why we quarreled?
There are situations in life when the consequences of some important events that have already occurred are not noticed yet, although they begin to manifest themselves. People do not notice them and therefore are not able to prevent the impending catastrophe.
Afanasyev had a favorite question, which he often asked himself and his subordinates: “How to understand this?” But then, when we stood under the bridge, he did not ask it.
When we got into the car, I asked him:
- Do you like to ask: how to understand this? Just yesterday, Soviet Jewish boys and girls studied with the Russians in all institutions, and today they are fighting on the side of the Jewish Zionists against the Arabs, against us. I do not think that they wrote and put up a poster without the permission of the authorities. They were ordered to do this, and yesterday’s Odessa residents executed the order.
- I do not understand too.
Then we did not understand the rules of a big and dangerous political game, which was conducted in the Middle East. They did not understand how some American, French or British corporations or banks could use state armies to occupy foreign territories, as was the case in 1956 during the "Threefold aggression" against Egypt. Or use the Israeli army for the occupation of foreign territories of Arab states, the same sovereign states and members of the UN, like Israel?
We then did not even realize that here, in the Middle East, not only the fate of the Jews and Arabs was decided, but also the fate of our Motherland - Russia. Having played the Jewish card, the West managed to split the Soviet people into Jews and non-Jews. The West did not hide its goals: to sow the seeds of discord and separatism, to destroy the World system of socialism, the Soviet Union, to destroy public property, to restore capitalism, to turn the former socialist republics into their colonies.
Then we did not know that this small victory of Israel in the Six-Day War would be an episode of the Great Jewish War, which the Zionists of the West and Israel would wage at different times, either in Lebanon, then in Jordan, then in Iraq and Afghanistan, then in Gaza, Syria and Libya. The six-day war raised questions for many nations that have not yet been fully answered by either Russian, or Western, or Jewish historians.
When did that short war end - 1967 in June, or does it continue to the present? Indeed, until today, Israel continues to occupy part of the territory of Syria - the Golan Heights. The construction of Jewish settlements in Arab lands continues. Already in our days, the current US administration is still trying to solve pressing and painful issues in Israeli-Arab relations through peaceful negotiations.
Today it is clear that by planning and provoking the Six-Day War, the Zionists set for Israel not only military tasks. They were terribly afraid that the Jews would assimilate with the peoples of the USSR. If the creation of Israel was the spark that ignited the Jewish self-consciousness of the Jewish diaspora, then the Six-Day War rallied the diaspora, reviving faith in the Jewish nation in the possibility of victory for the Zionist elite in the struggle for global power. The victory in that war helped the Zionists force Jews around the world to shell out more generously to help Israel, helped strengthen the position of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States and other Western countries, and expand the movement for moving Jews from socialist countries to Israel. Helped the Zionists to rally the Jews around the nationalist circles of the diaspora.
If in the triple aggression the emigrants fought on the side of Israel, forced to flee from post-fascist Europe to Palestine, then the Six Day War was fought by young people who grew up in a Jewish state, for which Hebrew became their native language, and which was brought up in the spirit of loyalty to the ideals of Judaism and Zionism.
Then, with Colonel Afanasyev, we could not have known that under the government of Israel, at the beginning of 1950, a special unit had been created, subordinated directly to the Prime Minister, to conduct subversive activities in socialist countries. His agents conducted propaganda and propaganda work among Soviet Jews, created dissident groups, deployed Jewish human rights activities, and provided material assistance to dissident families arrested for anti-Soviet activities.
We had no idea that young Soviet Jews who left the USSR for Israel were morally ready to participate in the Zionist wars with Arab countries and against the Palestinian liberation movement. For them, these recently still Soviet guys, we, the Soviet civil and military experts - Russian, Ukrainian, Armenian, Uzbek, etc. - became their enemies only because we hindered the implementation of aggressive plans developed by NATO against the USSR and progressive regimes that emerged on all continents after the collapse of the colonial system of imperialism.
The victory of the Jewish diaspora and the West in the 1967 war helped the Zionists to force the Jews of Israel to live in constant fear, strengthen the system of racism and apartheid in the Jewish state, inflate the military fire in the Middle East, turn it into a powder keg for many decades to come, prepare a base for wars Western pro-Zionist regimes with Muslim states.
8
Everything was interesting to me on the Suez Canal. With great interest, I watched the work of advisers and their wards. I have seen how the results of military intelligence are discussed and new or displaced enemy fire weapons are plotted on their cards. They go on reconnaissance and sit for a long time in shelters on the bank of the canal, watching with binoculars behind the line of defense in the form of a high hill, erected by bulldozers on the opposite bank, fortified by strong points on the directions of possible crossing by Egyptian troops. As trained sapper units to install boats on freshwater canals day and night. How are the exercises of units with live firing on the ground and command-staff exercises with officers in the boxes with sand.
I was proud to have worked with Colonel Afanasyev, the only Hero of the Soviet Union among advisers. Afanasyev was pleased that I, apart from English, speak conversational Arabic and never complain about service. What questions we did not discuss during our trips - about the personal qualities of our advisers and our wards, about the insufficient work of the wards to increase the morale and morale of the troops, about the international situation, about the advantages of Soviet socialism over the Arab.
Often he shared with me memories of his colleagues, comrades, some of the highlights of his military life, the kindness of the people with whom he had to face his life. He treated me like a father. He knew how to see good in people, and beautiful in nature. He sees miserable green bushes in the desert and will be delighted.
- Look, even the desert adorns itself. But this is food for camels. And where do these spines find water?
Together with Colonel Afanasyev and other officers, for the first time in my life I was in a shootout, in which we could fold our heads more than once. My comrades taught me to respect the brotherhood of the army, not to be afraid of difficulties, to endure hardships in cold blood, not to panic in a difficult military situation, to carry out the orders of the commander and senior officers.
Once we went to a meeting in Tal Kebir to an adviser to the Second Army. When the meeting ended, and we returned to Ismailia, Afanasyev sat for a long time in silence and, halfway through, said that he had received an order to transfer me to Cairo.
- You will work at the Academy named after GA. Nasser. I feel sorry for parting with you. But the order is an order.
So ended my service in the front line. I am already accustomed to risk, shelling, bombing. Next to Afanasyev, I was not afraid of anything. I frankly admit that I was delighted by the prospect of a new job in Cairo. Live with your family. Do not ride the channel. Do not wear a military uniform.
The year spent on the Suez Canal was intense, dynamic, and dangerous. The group of Colonel Afanasyev did an extremely great job of raising the level of combat training of the personnel of the second division. She forced the Arab officers to engage in combat training, to work out the interaction in field exercises. Even I, a civilian in general, saw that during the year of our work in the division there were big changes. She became efficient. She could not only keep the defense, but, having forced the Channel, to participate in the interaction with other parts in the liberation of Sinai from the Zionist occupation.
Afanasyev was a demanding person both to himself and to others. Gradually, the Arab officers were accustomed to his demands, perseverance, perseverance. He showed more than once remarkable diplomatic skills in difficult situations.
After a business trip abroad Afanasyev was awarded the rank of Major General. He was appointed to the post of head of the Western Faculty of the Military Institute of Foreign Languages.
A year later, he came to rest in the Crimea with his wife, whom we knew as a wonderful, kind Russian woman. He called me and invited me to visit him in a military sanatorium. My wife and children went. The sanatorium was located next to the Swallow's Nest, a famous landmark of the Crimea.
In 1974, I was sent to Moscow to study at the Higher Academic Courses at the Military-Political Academy named after V.I. Lenin. I phoned Pavel Alexandrovich to the service, and we agreed to meet at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages (VIIA). I went to Tank Passage, 4 the same way that 12 came back from Magnitogorsk years ago to study military interpreters.
For the first time I saw Afanasyev in the Soviet general's uniform. We hugged. We remembered our comrades. He maintained companionship with many of them.
- Can you come to us on Sunday? Write down the address.
I came. His wife set the table.
- Sasha, just a little bit. Yura, his heart is naughty.
We sat until late evening. He took me to the bus stop. Hugged and said goodbye.
This was our last meeting with him, but the memory of friendship with this wonderful Soviet man lives in me today. Service relations have long ceased, but something united us. What? I think this energy attraction is explained by our natural Russianness. It was Russianness that made our souls harmoniously sound.
For me, Major General Afanasyev, the Hero of the Soviet Union, became a symbol of the valor of the Russian army, the epic Ilya of Murom. Being a hero of the Russian Land was written to him. And everyone felt and understood this - and we, members of the small Russian team during the Second Division on the Channel, and Arab officers and generals, and even personnel officers in Moscow. Of the 15 thousands of advisers who returned from the UAR to their homeland in June 1972, they chose Afanasyev, PA, to the position of dean of the Western Faculty of the VIIA And he became the commander and mentor of a new generation of Soviet military translators.
9
Many years have passed since my service in the Second Division of the first echelon on the Suez Canal, and the memories of the poster "Isn't It Time You Go Home, Comrades!", Displayed at El Ferdan Bridge, does not go out of my head.
Long past no Nasser. There is no Soviet Union for a long time. The UN Security Council resolution 3379 (1975), which qualified Zionism as “a form of racism and racial discrimination, has been repealed. Friendly relations between the Russian Federation and Israel have been restored.
Meanwhile, the wars and the Orange Revolutions in the Middle East continue to the present.
Who is their creator?
Who else needs to leave the Middle East so that a lasting and lasting peace is finally established in the region?
1
After the first foreign business trip to Egypt, for more than two years I served as a translator in the Crimea at a training center located in the village of Perevalnoe. It trained fighters for the national liberation movements of Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau.
In the spring of 1967, Soviet radio almost every day told that the situation in the Middle East continued to deteriorate because of Israel’s fault, that the Zionists were rattling weaponsthat Gamal Abdel Nasser called on Arab countries to unite and give a decisive battle to the forces of international Zionism.
The colleagues, knowing that I had served in Egypt for several years, laughed at me:
- Pack a suitcase. Arabs will not do without you!
A large-scale information-psychological war against Arab countries was launched in the West. The idea that in order to protect against “aggression” from Syria, Israel could launch a military operation against this country was thrust into the consciousness of the foreign public. Egyptian President condemned the new intrigues of Israel against Syria.
Israel’s provocations against Syria continued. 4 May The Egyptian leadership introduced a large grouping of troops to Sinai. Israel did not let up. Nasser asked the UN Secretary-General U Thant to stop the peacekeeping mission of the UN troops and withdraw them from the Sinai Peninsula. 19 May, UN troops left Sinai.
We did not know that politicians in Tel Aviv and Washington were happy that on May 22, Nasser announced the blockade of the Strait of Tirana. This step was met positively in the West. Before the war, it was necessary to prove that Egypt is the aggressor, and Israel is the victim, and therefore the victim has the right to a military operation - no matter what: offensive or defensive.
Arab leaders of Algeria, Iraq, Syria, King of Jordan supported the position of the Egyptian leadership. Military psychosis swept Israel. The Zionists managed to win support for their military plans from the country's Jewish population. 1 June was created a government of national unity. Moshe Dayan, the “hero” of the Tripartite aggression against Egypt, was appointed to the post of minister of defense. He was one of the most courageous and determined Israeli generals. On the eve of the war in the Middle East, he had an internship at the Headquarters of the American occupying forces in Vietnam.
No one knew that the Israeli strategic plan included the destruction of airfields and aviation, air defense systems in Egypt, Syria and Jordan. At the same time, it was planned: the defeat of the Egyptian group in the Sinai, the regrouping of forces to strike at the Jordanian army, a new regrouping and striking at the Syrian army in the Golan Heights.
Moscow Radio reported:
16 May Egypt demanded that the UN withdraw UN security forces patrolling the ceasefire line 1948 — 1956. only on Egyptian territory. Israel did not allow the deployment of UN troops on its own territory.
22 May Nasser closed the Israeli port of Eilat.
5 June Israeli troops invaded Egyptian territory. Israel launched a war against Egypt. In the sky over Egypt were air battles, in Sinai - ground heavy battles.
On June 8, Israeli forces broke through the defenses and tank the brigade went to the Suez Canal. Israel began to bomb Syria and then Jordan.
10 June Israel single-handedly defeated the armies of the three Arab states and occupied the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights near Damascus. The UN Security Council has achieved a cease-fire.
22 May Nasser closed the Israeli port of Eilat.
5 June Israeli troops invaded Egyptian territory. Israel launched a war against Egypt. In the sky over Egypt were air battles, in Sinai - ground heavy battles.
On June 8, Israeli forces broke through the defenses and tank the brigade went to the Suez Canal. Israel began to bomb Syria and then Jordan.
10 June Israel single-handedly defeated the armies of the three Arab states and occupied the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights near Damascus. The UN Security Council has achieved a cease-fire.
The plan to defeat the three Arab armies was implemented during the Six Day War. The tasks assigned by the Zionists to the Israeli army were fully accomplished. Zionists rejoiced.
“The Arabs do not know how to fight if the Jews beat them on the left with one hand,” fellow officers teased me.
- Well, at least stopped on the Suez Canal!
- We will never teach the Arabs to fight. Not for Senka hat!
I shrugged in bewilderment: I do not know, they say, how it could have happened. I was unpleasant to hear such judgments. I also did not understand how to lose the war, having almost double superiority in numbers and armaments ?! It didn't fit in my head. I was hurt. It turned out that all the efforts of our military specialists and translators were in vain.
Later, when in the books about this war I saw in the photographs the columns of wounded Soviet tanks, the columns of Soviet trucks abandoned by the Arabs in the desert, I became ill.
Throughout June, the radio talked about diplomatic battles at the UN. Not only the Arabs were defeated. The Soviet leadership and its policies in the Middle East were also defeated. It was perplexing: billions of dollars were spent on military deliveries of weapons, ammunition, missiles, aircraft to Egypt and Syria, and suddenly a complete rout of the Arab armies.
Arab leaders gathered in Khartoum and decided to provide material assistance to Egypt, Syria and Jordan, and prepare for a new war with Israel. They reiterated that they were refusing to recognize the legality of the creation of a Jewish state in the Arab land of Palestine. The USSR and several socialist countries broke off diplomatic relations with Israel.
2
We also did not know that at the beginning of the 60-s in Israel, work was under way on the creation of the atomic bomb. President Kennedy was the first American president to be seriously concerned about the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East. So write American historians today. The proliferation of nuclear weapons threatened to undermine the monopoly of the West. While it was in the hands of Britain and France, the US government could hold back the USSR. However, the security services reported that China and Israel are close to building their atomic bombs.
Kennedy had no leverage over the Chinese leadership. However, he tried to convince the Israeli leadership to abandon the creation of its atomic bomb, which was supposed to have been built in a nuclear reactor, at the nuclear research center in the town of Dimona, located in the Negev desert. Kennedy also knew that the Arab countries also had information about the work of Israel on the atomic bomb. Violation of the military-technical equilibrium in the Middle East region - Kennedy argued - could push the Arab countries to closer cooperation with the USSR and the PRC, forcing them to ask them for protection against Israel.
Kennedy warned the leadership of Israel that if Israel acquired weapons of mass destruction, Muslim states would program the creation of their own nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the Israeli Prime Minister did not agree to suspend work in Dimona, explaining that they are purely peaceful in nature. At the same time, he asked his New York bosses to put pressure on Kennedy. We agreed that the American commission would arrive at the reactor and verify the veracity of the words of the Israeli Prime Minister. The commission came, but it was not allowed into all the workshops built in Dimona. We now know that the Israeli leadership was deceiving Kennedy.
Perhaps Kennedy’s obstinacy on a number of military issues cost him his life. About this today, some Western historians write. Having come to power, Kennedy managed to consolidate the allies around the United States; to gain a foothold in the largest and most influential developing countries; expand diplomatic dialogue with potential adversaries.
After the Kennedy assassination in accordance with the American Constitution, the President of the United States became Lyndon Johnson, vice president and former Texas senator. He removed from the agenda the question about Dimona and increased military-technical assistance to Israel. With his arrival in power, Israel did not experience a lack of modern weapons and military equipment.
At the very beginning of 2009, a book by the American journalist and historian Patrick Taylor was published in the United States: “Restless World. The White House and the Middle East from the Beginning of the Cold War to the War on International Terrorism "(Patrick Tyler. A World of Trouble. The White House and the Middle East - New York. Farrar Straus Giroux, 2009 ). In it, he describes how American presidents viewed events in the Middle East. He is ruthless with facts and tries to write the truth, even if it is unpleasant to him and some of his readers. I took a number of the facts I mention below from his book.
The focus of his attention is on American presidents, from Truman to Bush Jr., their relationship with the American Jewish community, the pro-Israel lobby, with Jewish bankers and magnates; relationship with Arab politicians. For example, he describes many cases where Israeli prime ministers refused to discuss their military and occupation plans with the American presidents. Sometimes they claimed on the sidelines that they, Israeli leaders, had more power in the United States than American presidents, because at any time, American Jews could force any of the presidents to fulfill their will, the Zionists.
P. Taylor describes in some detail the connections of L. Johnson with the Jewish oligarchic clans that determine the main directions of the US Middle East policy. He names specific names of Jews who worked with Johnson on behalf of the Zionist leadership of Israel and the American pro-Israel lobby.
In the White House and on the Texas ranch of President L. Johnson, the couple by the name of Krim appeared more often than others. To be close to the president, she bought an estate near Johnson's ranch in Texas. The president willingly shared with the Jewish couple even classified information. For example, she attended a meeting in which R. McNamara, the secretary of defense, gave a secret report on the actions and plans of the American troops in Vietnam.
The circle of L. Johnson's acquaintances among the wealthy Jewish and politicians was quite wide. Hollywood oligarchs and New York bankers prevailed among them.
As for Arthur Krim, he was a famous figure on Capitol Hill. He managed to raise large sums of money for the L. Johnson presidential election campaign. In gratitude, using his official position, the president, at his suggestion, appointed American-Jewish political figures to important government posts: Arthur Goldberg as US ambassador to the UN, Abe Fortes as a member of the Supreme Court.
Among the best friends of this president of the United States are the names of New York banker Abe Feinberg and Washington lawyer David Ginzburg. They served as a reliable link between the president and the Israeli leadership. Through them, secret information bypassing the State Department and the Pentagon arrived in Tel Aviv.
"Johnson was a maestro of intellectual and political Jewry, and this unofficial circle of advisers put everything together - strategy, politics, money and friendship, which determined his presidency and even life", - wrote P. Taylor. This “circle” consisted of ardent anti-Communists and Zionists. Johnson did not hide his admiration for Israel. He considered Israel an island of democracy and liberalism in a sea of Arab hostility, and the USSR was the main enemy of Israel and the United States in the Middle East (p. 67).
Once, a well-known rabbi came to Johnson's reception and demanded from the public to stop the US war in Vietnam. Rabbi infuriated the president. He immediately called the Israeli ambassador and in a rude tone demanded that he bring order to the pro-Israel community of America.
“I have three Cohen in the government,” he shouted at him. “Not a single American president did as much for the Jews as I did (p. 68).
P. Taylor also reports that banker Abe Feinberg provided all the presidential campaigns of the Democratic Party with Jewish money, starting with Truman, and that only Kennedy refused to follow his instructions on pro-Israel policies (p. 563).
About the beauty blonde Matilde Kreme should be told separately. She was the most influential woman in L. Johnson's entourage and managed to play an important role in the Middle East events of the 1960s.
She was born to a Calvinist family in Switzerland. When she studied at the University of Geneva, she fell in love with a Jewish student and married him. This protégé of the famous terrorist and political figure Menahem Begin (1913-1992) was a fighter of the terrorist underground group Irgun. He arrived in Geneva in 1947 to conduct Zionist propaganda in the local Jewish community.
Matilda accepted Judaism and became a member of an underground group engaged in the supply of arms to Palestine. Then she went to Israel with her husband and began to work as a researcher at the Weizmann Institute. The institute was engaged in secret development for a nuclear reactor in Dimona. In the end, 1950's divorced her husband and married Arthur Crim.
How did Americans treat President Lyndon Johnson, who blessed the Zionists for a new war with Arab countries, ordered Napalm to be poured over Vietnam and ordered not to spare the lives of American guys in Indochina’s bloody bathhouse, shedding the blood of American students protesting at American university campuses against the Vietnam War ; impudently to the American people, until they were convicted by true patriots of democratic America? In 1980, Americans called him the worst US president in the 20 century.
The survey was conducted among Americans in 1988. He showed that L. Johnson was last in the list of American presidents - after G. Ford, J. Carter and R. Nixon. Only one percent of the respondents voted for him (Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising. Lyndon Johnson and his Time. 1908-1960. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 3).
By 1969, President Nixon and Kissinger, his secretary of state, already knew that Israel had nuclear weapons. Kissinger convinced Nixon of the need to withhold information from the world. At the end of September of the same year, Nixon and Golda Meir agreed that Israel would not conduct tests of its nuclear bomb, would not threaten its neighbors with nuclear retribution. For his part, Nixon promised to stop the trips of a special commission to Dimona. As American authors A. Lschen and M. Miller write (Avner Cohen, Marvin Miller. Bringing Israel’s Bomb Jut of the Basement. In: Foreign Affairs, Sep / Oct 2010, p. 33-34), for more than half a century, American presidents have complied with this arrangements
No one in those years could not have imagined that the solution to the problem of the occupation of foreign territories by Israel would drag on for half a century. The six-day war was only one of the points of the strategic plan, the implementation of which had to drag on for a whole century. Israel needed a decisive victory over the Arabs at any cost. It was necessary, first of all, to undermine the evolving anti-imperialist unity of the Arab peoples. Secondly, it was necessary to change the consciousness of the Jewish nation. She was given not only suffering, but also victory. It is being reborn as a great nation, and is able not only to protect itself, but also to bring any other nation to its knees by armed force.
3
Late in the fall of 1967, I was called for an interview at the Ten (10-e Office of the General Staff) in Moscow and offered a new trip to Egypt. I agreed.
At the beginning of March, a telegram arrived at Perevalnoye: urgently seconded to the 1968 Office.
In the "Ten" I met Lieutenant General Pozharsky. He headed the Soviet military mission in Egypt for several years. The general recognized me, apparently, because in 1964-1965. I often ran to him in public affairs, when the Komsomol members chose me as their secretary.
- Yes, this is a hunchback! Are you going to Egypt again? The general greeted me cheerfully.
- I make out the documents, comrade general.
We respected Pozharsky, a tactful, attentive person. For us, the young officers, he was "Batey." He knew how to lead and keep everything under control without much interference in the affairs of the people he commanded; saw everything, noticed and understood; was a congenital diplomat; knew how to keep this word; asked experts and translators to study local customs and traditions and especially not to interfere in the affairs of the wards. He enjoyed a well-deserved prestige in the Soviet colony of Cairo. Both the Arab side and the Soviet military leadership were pleased with it. In the evenings, he came to the villa, watched Soviet films with us, listened to lectures of visiting journalists and lecturers of the Central Committee.
- What is the new business trip ?! I can't deal with the old one !!
- How can not? - I was embarrassed and surprised, but then I guessed that it was necessary for the general to pour out his soul to someone.
- Let's go talk.
He took my arm and we walked down the red carpet to the end of a long corridor to the window.
From the conversation, I realized that they tried to accuse him of allegedly hiding from the leadership the true state of affairs in the Egyptian armed forces, although the general, in his reports sent from Cairo to Moscow, had repeatedly reported on the weak theoretical training of Egyptian generals, their inability think in strategic and operational categories; about the nobility of Egyptian officers, about the terrible living conditions of the rank and file; about weak combat training of troops. He repeatedly offered to use diplomatic channels through which Nasser’s eyes could be opened to the true state of affairs in the Egyptian armed forces.
I remember that similar issues were discussed by our experts among themselves. Apparently, our experts reported to General Pozharsky about the true state of affairs in the troops and navy. Pozharsky summarized their reports and reported findings to the General Staff. One of the reasons for the defeat of the Egyptian army in the Six Day War, as the lieutenant general believed, was the low professionalism of the Egyptian general, and perhaps even betrayal.
Indeed, over the past 15 years after the revolution, young officers, associates of Nasser, have become generals. It was from this environment that most of the representatives of the so-called new military-bureaucratic bourgeoisie emerged. It has taken key positions in the field of finance and industry. The new and old national bourgeoisie was pleased with the defeat in the war. She hoped that defeat would sooner or later lead to the fall of the hated progressive regime of Nasser. Agents of Western influence intensified their activities in Egypt.
It seems that, unlike the Israeli generals, not one Egyptian was professionally prepared to take unconventional decisions, to lead the troops under them professionally. Terribly far they turned out to be from the soldiers and officers.
Egyptian Defense Minister Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer (1919-1967) was a vain man who had already lost military authority among the troops several years before the start of this war. There were a lot of jokes about him that Arab officers told translators. It is even inconvenient to somehow compare the corrupt Field Marshal Amer, for example, with the militant Israeli General Moshe Dayan.
Abdel Hakim Amer, who, by the way, Khrushchev also, like Nasser, awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union and awarded him the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal in May 1964, was considered a personal friend of Nasser. At various times, in addition to the post of Minister of Defense, he occupied the posts of First Vice-President, Minister of Science, Chairman of the Nuclear Energy Commission, Chairman of the Commission for the Elimination of Feudalism. Already on the third day since the beginning of the Six-Day War, this “personal friend” created an anti-presidential coalition and demanded the resignation of President Nasser, but was defeated and forced to resign. A few days later, the Egyptian generals, blocking the palace of Nasser with six armored vehicles, demanded the restoration of Amer as commander-in-chief. Nasser refused, suppressed the rebellion. He arrested the generals and began a "purge" in the army.
In late August, Amer again attempted a coup d'état. The coup broke. Nasser ordered to put a “personal friend” under house arrest and he committed suicide on September 14. 1967. Those were the generals !! It was their fault that in the six days of the war in the desert, soldiers and officers were killed and died of thirst for 11500, thousands of 15 were injured. The Israelis destroyed the 264 aircraft and 700 tanks (Dilip Hiro. Dictionary of the Middle East, New York, 1996, P. 21).
Caught in a bind, Nasser was forced to again seek help from the Soviet leadership. He asked to send military advisers, asked for new supplies of weapons and military equipment on credit. The Soviet leadership managed to insist on the mandatory retraining of the commanders of the Egyptian army.
First Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail Zakharov, then General of the Army P. Lashchenko were sent to Egypt first. They identified the needs of the armed forces of Egypt (from the battalion to the army) in Soviet military advisers, in armaments and military equipment. The General Staff urgently assembled hundreds of experienced senior officers, many of whom went through World War II, and sent them to Egypt. Army General P. Laschenko became the main military adviser.
The advisers were tasked with helping to recreate the Egyptian armed forces on a new, modern basis in the shortest time possible, to train soldiers and officers in the use of traditional weapons - from the Kalashnikov machine gun to anti-aircraft missile systems, MIG-21 aircraft, submarines of new types, unique anti-tank installations, pontoon aircraft bridges, communications.
According to various sources in 1968, more than three thousand Soviet officers - advisers and translators - arrived in Egypt and about one thousand went to Syria. Egyptian armed forces received from the USSR up to 500 new tanks, up to 400 aircraft. The Soviet naval squadron approached the shores of Egypt and the squadron TU-16 arrived to conduct naval intelligence.
Tu-16 and American fighter over the Mediterranean. Xnumx
4
In March, 1968, I flew to Moscow. A few days later we were sent by plane from the Chkalovsky airfield to Severomorsk. There we were given a list of expressions on three pages in English used during the commander's radio exchange with ground control services during takeoff and landing at foreign airfields. Explained the importance of the tasks assigned to our reconnaissance squadron TU-16 of the Navy. She was sent to Egypt for naval intelligence in the Mediterranean region. In the first place, she had to regularly report to Moscow the route of movement of the American Mediterranean Navy.
We departed from Severomorsk early in the morning. In Hungary at the Soviet military airfield Tekey planes refueled. We spent the night there. The next day, landed at the airport Cairo-West in Egypt. It was a suffocating spring 35-degree heat. We emerged from the hatches in fur flight jackets on the sun-heated runway.
Cairo West reminded me of the Dashur Center. The airfield on the perimeter was surrounded by barbed wire. In the distance, the rows of skeletons of MIGs burned darkly by Israeli pirates in June 1967 darkened darkly.
In December 1965 I flew home from peaceful Egypt. Now Egypt has become different - military. There was a war. The occupation forces of Israel stood in Sinai. In Cairo, many institutions were armed guards, and in front of the entrance wall, built of sandbags or bricks.
The political situation in the country has changed dramatically. The Egyptians survived the defeat in the war, an attempted coup, the arrests of generals. The army is defeated. She began to recover with the help of Soviet advisers.
Our reconnaissance squadron TU-16 was the only combat unit around which life was in full swing. Technicians served the aircraft. To the airplanes, the tankers were driving up, then the car with oxygen. Once or twice a week, pilots flew a pair of reconnaissance aircraft into the sky, headed north and circled over the US XnUMX Mediterranean fleet. Photographers showed films, printed photos. The commander and chief of staff wrote the reports and took them to the Headquarters of the Chief Military Adviser. Our squadron provided intelligence to the naval command in Moscow and the headquarters of the Chief Military Adviser in Cairo.
Onboard translators for TU-16. Cairo West. Xnumx
Our crews performed perfectly the first combat mission. The American squadron discovered our planes only when they defiled over it at low altitude and filmed all the warships and aircraft carrier. The Americans no longer allowed such carelessness. Their fighters met our TU-16 at an altitude of 800 meters at the approach, were attached in 5-7 meters under the wing, not allowing our pilots to make further descent.
In the Middle East region, the interests of two superpowers — the United States and the USSR — of two socio-political systems — capitalism and socialism — clashed. The United States defended the interests and property of its oil bars. The USSR defended the rights of Arab peoples to independence, peace and freedom from the colonial powers of the West.
I remember that on May 9 we celebrated the 23 anniversary of the Victory over Nazi Germany together with Arab officers Cairo-West. Raised toasts for the victory over Israel. Egyptian officers believed in their victory, and even offered a toast to our meeting in Tel Aviv next year.
The dream did not come true next year. Only ten years later, the new Egyptian President Anwar Sadat will fly to Israel and will be humbly asking for the return of the Sinai to Egypt. He is the first Arab leader to recognize the state of Israel, for which he will be called a traitor in all Arab countries, and for which the Egyptian nationalists will shoot him right on the podium in a solemn ceremony at a parade on the celebrations of the 19 anniversary of the July revolution (in 1981).
Before the combat flight
5
In June, 1968 was replaced by all six translators who arrived with the squadron in Egypt, cadets of the Military Institute. We were sent to serve in the troops on the Suez Canal. The channel divided the two armies - the Egyptian and the Israeli occupation forces in Sinai. It was a real front with shelling and bombing.
By this time, the Egyptian troops were already staffed with personnel, weapons, equipment, arriving urgently from the USSR. The combat training of subunits was in full swing, combat shooting was carried out, additional equipment for combat positions was conducted.
I was seconded to a group of advisers in the second infantry division of the first echelon. The division stood on the Suez Canal. The families of Soviet officers sent to the Canal were given apartments in Cairo at the Chelmia Hotel. I was given an apartment on the sixth floor. A week after my transfer, my wife and daughter flew in from Crimea. We had to live in Cairo for more than three years.
I remember the first time I saw the Canal not from the air, but from the bus during a trip on an excursion to Port Said in December 1962. We drove along the road running along the canal. And suddenly, it seemed to us, a dry-cargo ship with the Soviet flag on the mast was moving right across the desert. We asked the driver to stop, ran out of the bus. Screamed and waved their hands, trying to attract the attention of our sailors. Two sailors came to the deck, stretched, looked indifferently in our direction and left. How did they know that already at the beginning of 60, hundreds of officers worked in the Egyptian army as advisers and translators.
Now the channel was dead.
Service began in the army - on the Suez Canal. Counselors and translators walked in Arabic field uniforms without insignia and personal weapons. Our group was based in Ismailia, a city on the shore of Lake Timsah. We, like the Arab officers, were in a barracks situation and lived in houses in a protected area where British troops were stationed before 1954.
Working with advisers in the troops was much more interesting than with pilots. Here you are busy from morning to evening. Our group at the division included ten people - seven advisers and three translators.
Our group was led by Colonel Hero of the Soviet Union Pavel Alexandrovich Afanasyev. Star Hero received for crossing the Dnieper. Before the war was a civilian. He headed the club in the district center after graduating from the Technical College of Culture. The war began. He graduated from the short-term officer courses. Passed the whole war. He participated in the battle for Berlin. He was appointed head of one of the district commandant's offices in Berlin. In a white military tunic with a gold star on his chest, he loved to perform at concerts of amateur performances. Read poems Tvardovsky and Simonov. Women, of course, could not help falling in love with such a slender major with aristocratic features.
Then Afanasyev graduated from the Academy. Frunze. He passed all posts to the deputy division commander. From this position he arrived in Egypt. Found a common language with the ward of the division commander - the general. He knew how to work with subordinates. There was a "Batey". Intelligent, intelligent, wise, tactful professional. Next to him, I felt protected in any alterations into which we had more than once fell. In war, as in war!
- Do not believe if the officer claims that he was never afraid in battle. Lying Everyone is afraid. Everyone wants to live. You can not climb on the rampage, - he taught us.
- And you were afraid?
- Of course, there were all sorts of dangerous situations. I wanted to dig my head into the ground. So man is made.
There was a lot of work: training exercises, control of combat training conducted by Egyptian officers. Meetings, meetings with "wards" heads, with the divisional division. (we called "wards" the Arab officers and generals with whom we worked). In the morning we sat in Gaziki, called in division headquarters, coordinated work plans and went either to units, or to exercise, or to shootings, or to a meeting at the headquarters of the second army located in Tel Kibir. Interviewed with commanders, controlled the preparation for shooting, field exercises. We met with advisers who worked in brigades, divisions and units of the reserve of the High Command located in our area. Only for the weekend we went by bus to families in Cairo. The roads in Egypt are wonderful. Most of them are asphalted, not like in Russia.
Wives and children waited for us, missed. They went out and met our buses. We had dinner, got on buses and drove to a military Soviet villa in Heliopolis. They watched Soviet films, took books and magazines in the library.
Wives were worried if our buses were suddenly delayed. Has anything happened to us? They began to call the duty officer at the office of the chief military adviser. He reassured them: "Wait, they are coming up".
Tensions intensified when, in 1969, Israeli aircraft began bombing military and civilian targets in Egypt, and advisers with translators were forced to take part in the fighting of the Egyptian armed forces. There were killed and wounded. Who is next? The widows were taken home by our wives.
Once I returned home from Ismailia. My wife said that in the week her attention was attracted by the rumble of cars. She went to the balcony. On the street was an endless column of Soviet trucks, painted yellow.
“About an hour later, I went out onto the balcony again.” Soviet cars continued on the street. I was surprised. How many cars have passed during this time. And they all went and went. I was horrified and suddenly burst into tears. What is this done? On the eve of the newspapers I learned that the collective farm fields are sorely lacking in cars. There is nothing to take out the harvest. And he lies under the open sky, spoils, and here ... I was crying. I felt so sorry for the Russian people. Why are these thousands of cars here, and not in Russia? Why do we drive equipment abroad, when it is not enough at home ... Do not tell me about this international duty and so on. I want our people to be good first of all!
I calmed my wife. She would see how many cars, tanks, armored personnel carriers, military equipment had already been delivered to the troops. And how many Soviet vehicles did the Arabs abandon in Sinai, in a hurry, retreating in early June 1967 from the Israeli army !!
“And you remember,” the wife did not let up, “as Khrushchev came to Egypt, and we met him at the station.” Every day receptions. They drank, walked from the heart.
The golden stars of the Hero of the Soviet Union Nikita scattered right and left. Why did he give two and a half billion dollars to Nasser, writing off debts for the Assuan dam? A lot of money. Now Moskvich costs less than five thousand rubles. How much with this money could the “Muscovites” do for the Soviet people, or distribute them for free, for example, to the heroes and veterans of the Great Patriotic War !! I was not lazy and counted. It turned out 600 thousands of passenger cars. Who gave Nikita the right to scatter people's money?
I do not have an answer to this question today.
In the Arab military uniform without insignia
6
Once during an exchange of fire with the Israelis, we settled on the third floor of an unfinished hospital. The building stood on the banks of the Suez Canal. We lay on the floor at the window opening. After a while Afanasyev got worried.
- Come on, brothers, let's move higher and to the other side of the building. See where the shells go.
We ran into the fourth floor and lay down near the window. The review was good. Notice the new battery. When the firefight ended, we began to descend the stairs. Passing by the window on the third floor, from which we left some 15-20 minutes ago, the lower right corner was torn apart by a projectile.
- Israelis spotted us. Do not leave us - we were no longer in this world. Let's take a shard for memory. Such luck is rarely in life.
We took a piece of twisted metal. In the car I spent a long time looking at it. Could we really get death from such a fragment ?!
We have repeatedly come under the shelling of the Israeli divisions. One day, Israeli artillery began massive shelling in the late evening. We rested.
- Anxiety. On horses, comrade officers, ”Afanasyev commanded, and addressed me. - Get in touch with the divisional commander and tell him that we are going to the command post and will work with the division's artillery chief - check our data on the location of the Israeli batteries in the band of our division.
I hardly got through to the division headquarters and handed the request to Afanasyev to the general.
In the afternoon, the path to the command post of the division did not take more than 15 minutes. At night, traffic on the roads was extremely slow. The cars came with camouflage sidelights, and they were almost not visible. The Arab driver shook hands. The roar of volleys of dozens of heavy guns on both sides was accompanied by lines of tracing lines. It was really scary. The earth trembled. We felt shocks in the car.
Suddenly Afanasyev ordered to stop immediately. The driver pulled over. We went to a Muslim cemetery.
- Here is the command post of one of the companies. It is urgent to call the army headquarters again. Our long-range artillery army reserve can transfer fire to their own or have already transferred. She submits to the army headquarters. We need to know whether the Israeli forces have begun to force the canal.
How many times we passed by and I did not know that among the graves there was a communications center. We entered the cramped dugout. I explained to the Egyptian officers that we urgently need to call the army headquarters. With great difficulty we managed to do it. Finally, I heard the voice of Yura Shevtsov, an Arabist and floormate at the Chelmia Hotel in Cairo. He served as a translator for the Major General, an adviser to the commander of the Second Army.
“Colonel Afanasyev wants to urgently speak with the general,” I told him, and Afanasyev, closing one ear with his palm, began a conversation.
When he finished, he told us that the Israelis are only firing, the channel is not forced. Soon we arrived at the concrete command post of the division, went up to the observation deck with the division's artillery chief. The advisers and their charges worked for a long time, putting on the map of the enemy's batteries illuminated by a flashlight and firing at the Egyptian troops.
Only once on the Suez Canal, in the troops of the first echelon - on the front line, could one understand the difference in the work of translators with specialists and advisers. During my first business trip in Dashur and Cairo, translators worked with military specialists. Specialists were sent abroad for several months, up to a year. They taught the Egyptians the possession or repair of Soviet weapons and military equipment supplied under the contract to the Egyptian state. Having completed their task, they returned to their homeland.
The specialists did not interfere in the work of the Egyptian General Staff, but were under its directorates. They did not teach Egyptian generals strategy and operational art. They shared their knowledge with the wards and that was the end of their mission. In the troops under the commanders of the parts of the Soviet specialists were not. In Dashur, we prepared Egyptian missilemen, and a group of specialists flew to the Union. Major Yakunin and I taught us to use Soviet heavy flamethrowers at the test site, and he returned to his homeland. Then, about a year with a major from Kiev, we taught a group of Egyptian engineers to repair the SON-9, and the major sailed by steamer to Ukraine.
Advisor differs from specialist higher level of responsibility. He gives advice, recommendations to his wards and assumes part of their responsibility for the task. It is located both in the army and in the central control bodies. He makes a decision, offers it to the Arab commander, and they together participate in his execution. He, along with the ward rides on reconnaissance, conducts shooting and command and staff exercises. He teaches practical building on the pontoon bridges on the ground until the Egyptian units master the practical skills of crossing the Suez Canal in the event of the start of hostilities. He detects the enemy's batteries during the shootings, reports the coordinates to the division's artillery chief, and he orders the Egyptian artillery divisions to open fire on the enemy's batteries.
From conversations of Soviet advisers, from personal observations of the behavior of Arab officers and soldiers, I gradually began to understand that Soviet advisers, who arrived in Egypt in the fall of 1967, were confronted with the defeatism of Egyptian officers. Many of them did not believe in the ability of the Egyptian army to resist the Israeli armed forces, because the United States is behind the backs of Israel. Not all Egyptian officers and generals believed that among the illiterate fellahs who had been killed, it was possible to train fighters who were able to master modern weapons and equipment perfectly well.
The difficulty was that most Egyptian officers were from upper and middle classes. They were not accustomed to the daily routine work with subordinates, the conduct of educational work and combat training of personnel. Most of the time soldiers were engaged in non-commissioned officers.
The chief military adviser insisted that Arab officers and generals be transferred to a barracks position in the troops stationed in the Suez Canal zone. The insistent demands of Soviet advisers to Egyptian officers to be constantly in subunits and take personal part in combat training, in shooting, in field exercises were often ignored, perceived as a desire to undermine their prestige in front of the soldiers. This could not but cause discontent with a certain part of Egyptian senior officers. Some of them observed with disdain how the Soviet colonels and lieutenant colonels demonstrated to Egyptian soldiers with their personal example how to crawl, shoot, throw grenades, how to repair a car or a tank if necessary. Such an attitude to the performance of their duties was unthinkable for many Arab officers. However, Soviet advisers persistently broke the psychology of "belorushek".
Caste, the demonstration of their service and class superiority over the "soldier" hit us. Often, we watched an Egyptian lord officer go to the toilet, and the orderly carries a jug of water, soap and a towel behind him, and waits for his lord to handle his soap, lock the officer’s locker room. The soldiers themselves went to relieve themselves in the desert.
With all their might, the Soviet advisers tried to break the sharp alienation that had taken root in the officers, people from the privileged strata of Egyptian society, from the soldiers' masses. They believed that such alienation leads to a low level of morale and morale of the Egyptian army personnel. It is not hard to guess that this alienation was one of the reasons for the defeat of the Arab armies in the wars with Israel.
The task of restoring the Egyptian armed forces was carried out very successfully and efficiently in an unusually short time. The advisers were able to teach the Egyptian military commanders a lot. They inspired the officers that it was impossible to win over a strong adversary without believing in an obligatory victory, in justice of the war for the liberation of Sinai from the Israeli invaders, that victory is impossible to achieve without close cooperation of all arms of service.
As time has shown, the advisers were able to teach a lot to the Egyptian commanders and officers. However, they could not break the caste and class traditions and prejudices of the army, especially in Egyptian society. They could not influence the part of the Egyptian generals, who ruled the country and not so much thought about the victorious war with Israel, but about conducting secret diplomatic negotiations with the ruling circles of the West.
7
One morning we got into the Gazik, and Colonel Afanasyev ordered the chauffeur to go to the El Ferdan railway bridge, in 20 km north of Ismailia on the Canal. By the way, it is the world's longest turning bridge. Its swiveling sections are 340 meters long.
- There, a poster of the Jews installed. The adviser to the commander of the Second Army asked to see and report the result to him.
We drove to the bridge. Got out of the car. On the opposite bank of the Suez Canal, a huge poster with an appeal, written in large letters in Russian, stood near the pillar of the bridge: “Isn't it time for you to go home, comrades!”
- Russian Jews wrote. They did not forget to even put a comma where necessary, we laughed.
By order of the division commander, the poster was shot. It was destroyed, but in my memory this poster remained for the rest of my life.
How and why are we, Soviet people, Russian and Russian-speaking Jews here in the Middle East, found themselves on different banks of the Channel? For fifty years, we have been taught internationalism, both Russians and Jews. Who divided us, separated them, set one nation against another, because both nations lived side by side? Who was it profitable for? How could the Jews who left for Israel from the USSR support the Tel Aviv Zionist policy and shoot at the Soviet guys on the other side of the Suez Canal, with whom they had recently sat together at the same school desk in the Soviet school?
What is that poster? Nonsense. Trifle. But he did not appear by chance. The poster testified that in Soviet society even then there were some serious changes that neither the authorities, nor we, ordinary people, wanted to see. Who spread us, who and why we quarreled?
There are situations in life when the consequences of some important events that have already occurred are not noticed yet, although they begin to manifest themselves. People do not notice them and therefore are not able to prevent the impending catastrophe.
Afanasyev had a favorite question, which he often asked himself and his subordinates: “How to understand this?” But then, when we stood under the bridge, he did not ask it.
When we got into the car, I asked him:
- Do you like to ask: how to understand this? Just yesterday, Soviet Jewish boys and girls studied with the Russians in all institutions, and today they are fighting on the side of the Jewish Zionists against the Arabs, against us. I do not think that they wrote and put up a poster without the permission of the authorities. They were ordered to do this, and yesterday’s Odessa residents executed the order.
- I do not understand too.
Then we did not understand the rules of a big and dangerous political game, which was conducted in the Middle East. They did not understand how some American, French or British corporations or banks could use state armies to occupy foreign territories, as was the case in 1956 during the "Threefold aggression" against Egypt. Or use the Israeli army for the occupation of foreign territories of Arab states, the same sovereign states and members of the UN, like Israel?
We then did not even realize that here, in the Middle East, not only the fate of the Jews and Arabs was decided, but also the fate of our Motherland - Russia. Having played the Jewish card, the West managed to split the Soviet people into Jews and non-Jews. The West did not hide its goals: to sow the seeds of discord and separatism, to destroy the World system of socialism, the Soviet Union, to destroy public property, to restore capitalism, to turn the former socialist republics into their colonies.
Then we did not know that this small victory of Israel in the Six-Day War would be an episode of the Great Jewish War, which the Zionists of the West and Israel would wage at different times, either in Lebanon, then in Jordan, then in Iraq and Afghanistan, then in Gaza, Syria and Libya. The six-day war raised questions for many nations that have not yet been fully answered by either Russian, or Western, or Jewish historians.
When did that short war end - 1967 in June, or does it continue to the present? Indeed, until today, Israel continues to occupy part of the territory of Syria - the Golan Heights. The construction of Jewish settlements in Arab lands continues. Already in our days, the current US administration is still trying to solve pressing and painful issues in Israeli-Arab relations through peaceful negotiations.
Today it is clear that by planning and provoking the Six-Day War, the Zionists set for Israel not only military tasks. They were terribly afraid that the Jews would assimilate with the peoples of the USSR. If the creation of Israel was the spark that ignited the Jewish self-consciousness of the Jewish diaspora, then the Six-Day War rallied the diaspora, reviving faith in the Jewish nation in the possibility of victory for the Zionist elite in the struggle for global power. The victory in that war helped the Zionists force Jews around the world to shell out more generously to help Israel, helped strengthen the position of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States and other Western countries, and expand the movement for moving Jews from socialist countries to Israel. Helped the Zionists to rally the Jews around the nationalist circles of the diaspora.
If in the triple aggression the emigrants fought on the side of Israel, forced to flee from post-fascist Europe to Palestine, then the Six Day War was fought by young people who grew up in a Jewish state, for which Hebrew became their native language, and which was brought up in the spirit of loyalty to the ideals of Judaism and Zionism.
Then, with Colonel Afanasyev, we could not have known that under the government of Israel, at the beginning of 1950, a special unit had been created, subordinated directly to the Prime Minister, to conduct subversive activities in socialist countries. His agents conducted propaganda and propaganda work among Soviet Jews, created dissident groups, deployed Jewish human rights activities, and provided material assistance to dissident families arrested for anti-Soviet activities.
We had no idea that young Soviet Jews who left the USSR for Israel were morally ready to participate in the Zionist wars with Arab countries and against the Palestinian liberation movement. For them, these recently still Soviet guys, we, the Soviet civil and military experts - Russian, Ukrainian, Armenian, Uzbek, etc. - became their enemies only because we hindered the implementation of aggressive plans developed by NATO against the USSR and progressive regimes that emerged on all continents after the collapse of the colonial system of imperialism.
The victory of the Jewish diaspora and the West in the 1967 war helped the Zionists to force the Jews of Israel to live in constant fear, strengthen the system of racism and apartheid in the Jewish state, inflate the military fire in the Middle East, turn it into a powder keg for many decades to come, prepare a base for wars Western pro-Zionist regimes with Muslim states.
8
Everything was interesting to me on the Suez Canal. With great interest, I watched the work of advisers and their wards. I have seen how the results of military intelligence are discussed and new or displaced enemy fire weapons are plotted on their cards. They go on reconnaissance and sit for a long time in shelters on the bank of the canal, watching with binoculars behind the line of defense in the form of a high hill, erected by bulldozers on the opposite bank, fortified by strong points on the directions of possible crossing by Egyptian troops. As trained sapper units to install boats on freshwater canals day and night. How are the exercises of units with live firing on the ground and command-staff exercises with officers in the boxes with sand.
I was proud to have worked with Colonel Afanasyev, the only Hero of the Soviet Union among advisers. Afanasyev was pleased that I, apart from English, speak conversational Arabic and never complain about service. What questions we did not discuss during our trips - about the personal qualities of our advisers and our wards, about the insufficient work of the wards to increase the morale and morale of the troops, about the international situation, about the advantages of Soviet socialism over the Arab.
Often he shared with me memories of his colleagues, comrades, some of the highlights of his military life, the kindness of the people with whom he had to face his life. He treated me like a father. He knew how to see good in people, and beautiful in nature. He sees miserable green bushes in the desert and will be delighted.
- Look, even the desert adorns itself. But this is food for camels. And where do these spines find water?
Together with Colonel Afanasyev and other officers, for the first time in my life I was in a shootout, in which we could fold our heads more than once. My comrades taught me to respect the brotherhood of the army, not to be afraid of difficulties, to endure hardships in cold blood, not to panic in a difficult military situation, to carry out the orders of the commander and senior officers.
Once we went to a meeting in Tal Kebir to an adviser to the Second Army. When the meeting ended, and we returned to Ismailia, Afanasyev sat for a long time in silence and, halfway through, said that he had received an order to transfer me to Cairo.
- You will work at the Academy named after GA. Nasser. I feel sorry for parting with you. But the order is an order.
So ended my service in the front line. I am already accustomed to risk, shelling, bombing. Next to Afanasyev, I was not afraid of anything. I frankly admit that I was delighted by the prospect of a new job in Cairo. Live with your family. Do not ride the channel. Do not wear a military uniform.
The year spent on the Suez Canal was intense, dynamic, and dangerous. The group of Colonel Afanasyev did an extremely great job of raising the level of combat training of the personnel of the second division. She forced the Arab officers to engage in combat training, to work out the interaction in field exercises. Even I, a civilian in general, saw that during the year of our work in the division there were big changes. She became efficient. She could not only keep the defense, but, having forced the Channel, to participate in the interaction with other parts in the liberation of Sinai from the Zionist occupation.
Afanasyev was a demanding person both to himself and to others. Gradually, the Arab officers were accustomed to his demands, perseverance, perseverance. He showed more than once remarkable diplomatic skills in difficult situations.
After a business trip abroad Afanasyev was awarded the rank of Major General. He was appointed to the post of head of the Western Faculty of the Military Institute of Foreign Languages.
A year later, he came to rest in the Crimea with his wife, whom we knew as a wonderful, kind Russian woman. He called me and invited me to visit him in a military sanatorium. My wife and children went. The sanatorium was located next to the Swallow's Nest, a famous landmark of the Crimea.
In 1974, I was sent to Moscow to study at the Higher Academic Courses at the Military-Political Academy named after V.I. Lenin. I phoned Pavel Alexandrovich to the service, and we agreed to meet at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages (VIIA). I went to Tank Passage, 4 the same way that 12 came back from Magnitogorsk years ago to study military interpreters.
In Crimea, with Major General Afanasyev Alexander Pavlovich
For the first time I saw Afanasyev in the Soviet general's uniform. We hugged. We remembered our comrades. He maintained companionship with many of them.
- Can you come to us on Sunday? Write down the address.
I came. His wife set the table.
- Sasha, just a little bit. Yura, his heart is naughty.
We sat until late evening. He took me to the bus stop. Hugged and said goodbye.
This was our last meeting with him, but the memory of friendship with this wonderful Soviet man lives in me today. Service relations have long ceased, but something united us. What? I think this energy attraction is explained by our natural Russianness. It was Russianness that made our souls harmoniously sound.
For me, Major General Afanasyev, the Hero of the Soviet Union, became a symbol of the valor of the Russian army, the epic Ilya of Murom. Being a hero of the Russian Land was written to him. And everyone felt and understood this - and we, members of the small Russian team during the Second Division on the Channel, and Arab officers and generals, and even personnel officers in Moscow. Of the 15 thousands of advisers who returned from the UAR to their homeland in June 1972, they chose Afanasyev, PA, to the position of dean of the Western Faculty of the VIIA And he became the commander and mentor of a new generation of Soviet military translators.
9 May 1968. Victory Day over Nazi Germany
9
Many years have passed since my service in the Second Division of the first echelon on the Suez Canal, and the memories of the poster "Isn't It Time You Go Home, Comrades!", Displayed at El Ferdan Bridge, does not go out of my head.
Long past no Nasser. There is no Soviet Union for a long time. The UN Security Council resolution 3379 (1975), which qualified Zionism as “a form of racism and racial discrimination, has been repealed. Friendly relations between the Russian Federation and Israel have been restored.
Meanwhile, the wars and the Orange Revolutions in the Middle East continue to the present.
Who is their creator?
Who else needs to leave the Middle East so that a lasting and lasting peace is finally established in the region?
- Gorbunov Yu.I., combatant, reserve major, candidate of historical sciences.
- Write me, mom, to Egypt...
Write me, mom, to Egypt ... (part 2)
Write me, mom, to Egypt ... (part 3)
Write me, mom, to Egypt ... (part 4)
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