DECEPTION-ON-NILE, JULY 1972Nualov, who had been suspected of distributing Soviet literature in the same brigade
in June 1972; he was, then, relieved before the “expulsion” but reassigned to the same
unit afterward.^36 Continuous service before and after 18 July 1972 is also confirmed
by Viktor Yakushev, an interpreter, who lists his tour of duty in Eg ypt from 1971
through 1973.^37 Another linguist, Mikhail Ryabov, was sent to Eg ypt in 1971 for a
second hitch and “returned home” only in August 1973.^38
The domestic advantage of the withdrawal from Eg ypt, when presented as a Soviet
initiative, is illustrated by a note in Chernyaev’s diary from 11 August: with the
drought worsening, food shortages growing and Moscow choking on smoke from
forest fires, he consoled himself that at least “it’s a good thing that we freed ourselves
politically from the Middle East, which was dangerous for us!”^39 But the actual con-
tinuity in the Soviets’ presence is reflected in an annual work plan (December 1972–
November 1973) for the advisers of yet another Eg yptian brigade.^40 This plan focuses,
among other objectives, on “offensive action against a well-fortified enemy”—illus-
trating that the advisers remained committed to implementing the offensive, for
which Moscow had supposedly withdrawn its support. Previous such plans had
tasked the advisers with training Eg yptian battalions for “crossing water obstacles and
securing a bridgehead.”
Israeli military historian Dani Asher, who first published this work plan, describes
it as representing a “reduction of [the advisers’] activity to a minimum,” because the
training exercises they supervised were now “only from the individual soldier up to
company level.” However, it was precisely the advisers’ penetration of the Eg yptian
army down to this level that had previously been seen as a measure of their increased
influence. Asher stresses that the Eg yptian plan for a cross-canal offensive, even after
the change of strategic concept that was attributed to Sadat in October, was modeled
on Soviet military doctrine and made possible by the advisers’ efforts.^41 An IDF study
of captured Eg yptian documents found that the operational orders were drawn up
precisely according to Soviet procedures—detailed plans for the initial phases and
only general outlines for the following ones, to permit battleground flexibility.^42
What definitely was lowered after 17 July was the Soviets’ visible profile. Culling the
“unessentials” and minimizing the oboz (camp follower and baggage) problem, which
had increasingly clouded Eg yptian–Soviet relations at least since the ceasefire, was
clearly both a purpose and a result of the “expulsion.” Likewise the issue of off-duty
behavior by the advisers themselves, as the GRU station chief in Cairo, Ivliev, admitted
when Urwick “suggested to him that whatever he thought about the decision officially,
privately he was probably quite glad to be relieved of ... sorting out the problem of
advisers who got drunk or who had car accidents. He laughed and nodded.”^43
“Smirnov” now noticed that “no toddlers played any longer in the sand under the
eyes of their mothers, officers’ wives; no off-duty men sat in the shade smoking their
favorite Nefertiti cigarettes and turning the pages of week-old Soviet newspapers.”^44
But however dramatic this outward change may have seemed, enough dependents