PRAVDA AND MASKIROVKA: How the Soviet Union
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PRAVDA AND MASKIROVKA: How the Soviet Union Publicized the June 1967 Six Day War Berkeley Newhouse-Velie Undergraduate Honors Thesis Department of History University of Colorado Boulder April 6, 2020 Committee: Dr. David Shneer, Thesis Advisor, History, Jewish Studies, Religious Studies Dr. Miriam Kingsberg Kadia, History Yuliana Gunn, Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures Velie 1 Introduction Although more than fifty years have passed since the Six Day War ended in June 1967, its legacy remains highly debated. In the years immediately following the war, many Westerners and Israelis believed the Six Day War was a just war, fought between “peace-loving” Israelis and “hostile Arabs” who had Soviet backing.1 As documents on the Six Day War continue to be declassified, however, this narrative has faced increasing scrutiny. In the context of Arab-Israeli relations, peace is a relative term. In June of 1967, little more than 19 years after the creation of the state of Israel, the Israelis and the Arabs went to war for the third time, the second time in only eleven years. The Six Day War, referred to as “the setback,” and the innocuous June War, in the Arab world, radically reshaped the Middle East. Though it remains one of the shortest wars in modern history, the Six Day War laid the foundation for the current state of Israeli and Palestinian affairs. The Six Day War was hardly the last time the Arabs and Israelis would take up arms, but it cemented Israel’s place as the dominant military power of the Middle East and dealt a humiliating defeat to Egypt, and by proxy, its primary arms dealer, the Soviet Union. The Six Day War attracted global attention, but it was primarily a regional conflict, a series of crises in a hotbed region that erupted into all-out war. Like many regional conflicts of the 1960s, it could not help but be overshadowed by Cold War politics. The Six Day War may have officially been between the combined forces of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Israel, but the United States and the Soviet Union remain integral to the broader context of the war. During the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union intervened in countries where they felt 1 Guy Laron, “Historians’ War Over the Six Day War,” The Nation, June 5, 2017, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/historians-war-six-day-war/ Velie 2 their ideological or economic interests were at stake, often in covert ways.2 While the Soviet Union may not have been officially involved in the war, it provided Egypt and Syria with an ample supply of weapons prior to the war, and dramatically lobbied on their behalf in the United Nations afterward. By June 1967, both the Egyptian and Syrian militaries were composed almost entirely of state of the art Soviet weaponry, and their defeats were viewed as a reflection of the Soviet Union’s own military capabilities. As a result, the Soviet Union attempted to distance itself from Egypt and Syria’s losses in its domestic press coverage of the war. In the press, the Soviet Union focused on its efforts in the United Nations Security Council and masked Syria and Egypt’s losses by including false reports of Arab victories over Israel. As the official newspaper of the Communist Party, Pravda was tasked with relaying official party statements and policies, and in turn, the Soviet Union’s official narrative of global and domestic events. Pravda may translate to “truth,” but it was not expected to be truthful in its reporting. In the Soviet Union, the press was consistent, often repeating phrases and timelines in multiple articles. In its coverage of the Six Day War, Pravda acknowledged Israel’s role in starting the war, but it was quick to draw attention to the United States and other Western nations, repeatedly claiming they were behind Israeli actions, while accusing Israel of acting as an overseer. In this thesis, I argue that, through Pravda, the Soviet Union painted the Six Day War as an ideological struggle between socialism and Western imperialism. While there is extensive scholarship on the Six Day War, the scholarship on Pravda, specifically during the mid-twentieth century, is surprisingly limited. This thesis will examine 2 Megan Ward, Shannon Pierson, and Jessica Beyer, “Formative Battles: Cold War Disinformation Campaigns and Mitigations Strategies” The Wilson Center, 2019. Velie 3 how Pravda publicized the Six Day War, and how its coverage masked elements of the war. The Soviet Union’s level of involvement in the war is a question that continues to be debated. Many of the works on the Six Day War published after the early 1990s incorporate additional Soviet archive material, and in turn, provide a more detailed look into Soviet decision making during the weeks preceding the war and through its end. Of the works concerning the Six Day War, Michael Oren’s Six Days of War, Yaakov Ro’i and Boris Morozov’s The Soviet Union and the June 1967 Six Day War, and Tom Segev’s 1967 offer the most comprehensive analyses of the war.3 Published in 2002, Oren’s Six Days of War gives a broad account of the war, including a detailed analysis on each day of war on the battlefield, as well as what was taking place in the United Nations Security Council, the primary diplomatic arena of the war. Six Days of War traces the transformation of the Arab-Israeli conflict from the days of British Palestine to the aftermath of the Six Day War. Oren refrains from discussing the role of the Soviet Union in depth, but he provides extensive information on many other aspects of the conflict, though at times is more sympathetic towards Israel. Tom Segev’s 1967 provides a detailed analysis of the war as well, though it is not as detailed as Six Days of War. 1967, however, provides a more objective analysis of Israeli, Syrian, and Egyptian actions during the second half of the war. The Soviet Union and the June War of 1967 provides the most thorough analysis of the Soviet Union’s role in the conflict but features a limited account on the events of the war. Published in 2008, The Soviet Union and the June 1967 Six Day War is a compilation of essays that analyze the decisions of Soviet leadership during different phases of the war. Ro’i and 3 Michael Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Yaacov Ro’i and Boris Morozov, The Soviet Union and the June 1967 Six Day War (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Сenter Press, 2008); Tom Segev, 1967, trans. Jessica Cohen (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005). Velie 4 Morozov argue that the Soviet Union gravely miscalculated the situation in the Middle East, but tried in vain to placate its allies and prevent the outbreak of a full-scale war.4 Before the War: The Soviet Union and the Middle East The end of World War II led to the departure of Britain and France from the Middle East, the two countries that colonized the region after the first World War. In the wake of the collapse of the British and French empires, newly independent Arab governments emerged. The departure of Western empires from the Middle East presented an opportunity that had eluded the Soviet Union for decades: a foothold in the Middle East. The Soviet Union had recognized the geopolitical importance of the Middle East since the 1930s, but as Cold-War tensions intensified, the need for a presence in the Middle East became especially important.5 Since its earliest days, the Soviet Union had made the denouncement of “colonialist systems” a hallmark of its foreign policy, and advocating for its own military bases on foreign soil dramatically contradicted its own principles.6 The Soviet Union had consistently been against Zionism, regarding the British Mandate of Palestine as “an agent of imperialism,” but it believed Israel could be its golden opportunity in the Middle East. In the recently chartered United Nations, the Soviet Union became a tireless advocate for the creation of the Jewish state.7 Though the Soviet Union’s pro-Zionist stance seemed out of line with its previous policies, it was in line with a far more 4 Ro’i and Morozov, June 1967 War, 23. 5 Alexey Vasiliev, Russia’s Foreign Policy from Lenin to Putin, (London: Routledge, 2017) 13. 6 Vasiliev, Russia’s Foreign Policy, 13,77. 7 Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, Foxbats Over Dimona: The Soviets’ Nuclear Gamble in the Six Day War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 17. Velie 5 important aspect of Soviet policy, which was the policy of doing “whatever is best for the Soviet Union.”8 In addition to the belief that an independent Jewish state would hasten the departure of the British from the Middle East, the Soviet Union felt Israel would be the perfect satellite state, under the leadership of “socialist-oriented” Russian-speaking Jews.9 In the United Nations, Soviet delegate Semen Tsarpkin and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko crafted an argument that was both pro-Israel and anti-Western, which claimed that the Jewish people should no longer be dependent on the “goodwill and mercy” of other nations. Gromyko believed the creation of Israel could be beneficial for the Arabs as well, arguing that Palestine had become a “police state” under British leadership. Gromyko concluded the argument with a statement that foreshadowed the Soviet’s relationship with the Arabs, predicting that Arab states would be “looking towards Moscow” to help them in their “struggle” in the future.10 On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the partition of Israel, Resolution 181.