THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973later, at the height of the Israeli–Soviet confrontation on the canal front.^1 Sadat, by
then president, first referred to Nasser’s request for SAM-3s with Soviet operators in
a broadcast on 30 August 1971.^2 Heikal’s detailed account of Nasser’s secret visit to
Moscow first appeared in the newspaper he edited, Al-Ahram, on 28 July 1972.^3 Te n
days earlier, Heikal had been handed another policy shift to justify: the end of
Operation Kavkaz with the supposed expulsion of the Soviet advisers by Sadat. This
will be addressed later as another egregious but successful falsification by participants
with obvious axes to grind.
Heikal’s version about both of these turning points—indeed, that they were turn-
ing points—was canonized in 1975 by his memoir The Road to Ramadan.^4 This book
established itself as the authorized version on the antecedents of the 1973 war—not
only from the Eg yptian side but (for lack of anything comparable) from the Soviet
side, too.^5 It was only in the 1990s that Heikal’s account of the January 1970 visit was
backed up by two other members of Nasser’s entourage to the alleged Moscow talks.^6
Walter Laqueur observed as early as 1974: “Heykal has been a fairly accurate barom-
eter of the political climate in Cairo. ... [But] as a historical source his ‘revelations’ have
to be read with the greatest of care.”^7 However, Laqueur himself endorsed Heikal’s
version about the genesis of Kavkaz despite the lack of any supporting evidence.
No Soviet or post-Soviet source has ever confirmed even the fact of a visit by
Nasser in January 1970, much less identified it as the starting point for direct inter-
vention.^8 A recent chronolog y of the post-1967 air war by a Soviet military analyst
does not even mention 7 January 1970 (nor any of the depth bombings) as the start
of a new phase.^9 Indeed, several statements by former Soviet officials and officers,
which were made after Heikal’s version was established, seem at pains to avoid deny-
ing it outright. The USSR’s then-deputy foreign minister and future ambassador to
Eg ypt, Vladimir Vinogradov, fudged the issue by speaking of a visit “in the winter of
1969.”^10 Other testimonies and official research publications, if they mention a visit
at all, date it in December or specifically in early December—raising the possibility
of confusion, intentional or otherwise, with another top-level Eg yptian mission to
Moscow that month.^11
The few weeks’ discrepancy with Heikal’s version about 22 January is much more
than a technical detail. If the Soviet deployment was undertaken before 7 January, it
could not be described as a response even to the first deep-penetration raid, let alone
the bloodshed caused by subsequent bombings that struck civilian targets. But as the
following analysis indicates, it must now be questioned whether Nasser was in
Moscow at all, in either month. More importantly, there is now a compelling accu-
mulation of mutually supporting testimonies that Kavkaz was not only undertaken
and prepared, but actually was set in motion, in the summer of 1969 (if not earlier,
as claimed by Novosti’s Egorin and several others).