Memories of a military translator
1. Soviet rocket scientists at the Egyptian pyramids
1
Egypt burst into my life unexpectedly in 1962. I graduated from the Pedagogical Institute in Magnitogorsk. In winter, I was summoned to the military registration and enlistment office and offered to become a military translator. In the summer I was promoted to the rank of junior lieutenant. In September, I arrived in Moscow for a course of military translators.
On October 1, as part of a small group of graduates of Soviet universities with knowledge of English, I flew to Cairo to work as an interpreter with Soviet military specialists.
I knew almost nothing about Egypt and the Middle East. I heard that young officers made a revolution, expelled the king, nationalized the Suez Canal. A handful of British and French bankers tried to punish them and forced their subordinate governments to organize the so-called "triple aggression" against Egypt and re-occupy the Suez Canal zone, and the Sinai by Israeli troops. However, as soon as the governments of the USSR and the United States shouted, France, England and Israel were forced to leave a foreign land, gritting their teeth.
Sinking down the ladder to Egyptian soil, neither I, none of my comrades, military translators, had any idea that fate had thrown us into the Middle East not by chance, that during our lifetime this region would become the most dangerous hot spot on the planet, that it would become the main focus of the Israeli -Arab wars, initiated by a handful of international bankers and oil barons.
At the airport we were met by officers in civilian clothes. They put me on a bus and drove through the whole of Cairo to our place of service. We reached the Nile. Five bridges lay across the famous river. We enter Zamalik one by one. Before the July Revolution, Egyptian beys and foreign colonial rulers of Egypt lived on this island. This is the area of the rich and the embassies. In the early 1960s, the Soviet Embassy was located here on a quiet street right on the banks of the Nile.
We gazed openly at the Eastern exoticism: at the streets packed with cars of all brands, buses, trucks of bizarre shape, but not a single Soviet one; to the shops with pyramids of apples, orange, tangerine in baskets, standing right on the sidewalk, on the shelves. The police were dressed in black uniforms and white leggings. Everything was confused: people, cars, two-wheeled carts with donkeys; smoke, gasoline, the roar of engines, the voices of people speaking in a strange, guttural language.
Cairo amazed us with a mixture of Eastern and European architecture, arrows of minarets, many small shops, shops and crowds of people. It seemed that all the townspeople did not live in houses, but on the street.
The smell of gasoline mixed with some oriental spices. In coffee shops and on the sidewalks, bored men sat at tables, sipping coffee from tiny cups, drinking cold water and smoking shisha (a pipe in which smoke passes through water). Noise, din, hum. Cairo worked, talked, hurried, lived a life completely incomprehensible to us.
I could not believe that I came to this exotic eastern country not as a tourist, but as a foreign worker. Then I did not know that I would have to work in this country for several years and that I would leave it for good only in September 1971.
We stopped at the office of the Soviet military mission. The mission was headed by Lieutenant General Pozharsky (unfortunately, I do not remember the patronymic name of this remarkable general. Can you help?). It was located not far from the Soviet embassy, on a quiet narrow street in a multi-storey building on Zamalik. We went up to the third floor. Have handed over their "red-skinned passports" for registration. We were given an advance in Egyptian pounds. The salary of the translators, as we later found out, was equal to the salary of the Egyptian lieutenant colonel. Not bad for a lieutenant. For a year, if you wanted, you could save up money for a "Moskvich" and buy it without queuing in the USSR!
On that first day of my stay in Cairo, I still did not know that a year later, after my vacation, I would return again with my family to the United Arab Republic. We will rent an apartment near the Office on Zamalik. This island on the Nile will forever enter my life as a monument to the best years of our youth, happy years of extraordinary luck in life.
Zamalik was considered one of the old fashionable districts of Cairo. In the summer it was cooled from all sides by the muddy waters of the Nile. Most of the island was occupied in English by the well-groomed Sports Club "Gezira" with a swimming pool, tennis courts, grounds for various games. Next to the club is a 180-meter Tower, a symbol of the new independent Egypt. It has a revolving restaurant and terrace for exploring Cairo.
I did not know that in a year we would settle in one of the apartments of a house on a quiet, uncrowded street next to this club. In the evenings, we will walk along the Nile embankment, along the Andalusian garden under the evergreen palm trees, along the flower beds with bright flowers, take pictures in their background. This green oasis stretches along the Nile. Almost every evening we will walk to the villa at the Soviet Embassy along the street past the Office.
There, in the library, we will borrow new magazines and books in Russian, watch new Soviet films, meet with Soviet film stars who came at the invitation of the Arab side - Batalov, Smoktunovsky, Doronina, Fateeva and others. I remember that "Hamlet" with Smoktunovsky in the title role ran for six months simultaneously in three Cairo cinemas with full halls. Even the James Bond films did not have such phenomenal success. Smoktunovsky played the role of Hamlet brilliantly. Where is Vysotsky before him !!
As for the USSR, the authority of our homeland was immense among the working people of the West and among the peoples of Asia and Africa. He walked by leaps and bounds towards a "bright future." Soviet cosmonauts flew in space. An American reconnaissance plane was shot down in the Urals, and the pilot publicly admitted that such reconnaissance flights of the US Air Force are constantly carried out on the instructions of the CIA and not only over the territory of the USSR.
With officers at the Sphinx
We looked with curiosity at the three famous pyramids, that is, at the tourist complex with the stone Sphinx, which is seen by all tourists who come to Egypt. Then, passing by the pyramids of Giza, we did not know that in a couple of weeks we would be taken on an excursion to the pyramids. We will visit the inside of the Cheops pyramid, stand by the Sphinx, that we will constantly drive past them to the city center - to the Opera Square, to the Soviet Villa every week. Returning to Dashur, that was the name of the place where our training center was located, we will silently look at the illuminated streets of Cairo, and after passing the pyramids, we will sing our favorite songs and quietly grieve for our loved ones and relatives.
Behind the pyramids of Giza, the bus turned left somewhere - into the desert, and soon we found ourselves in front of the barrier. The driver shouted something to the soldier, the barrier rose, and we picked up speed and rushed along the narrow deserted highway into the depths of the deserted bare desert.
- A closed area begins from this checkpoint. Except for the military, no one is allowed into it, - they explained to us.
About twenty minutes later, the bus stopped at the gate of the Air Defense Training Center, fenced off from all sides of the desert by a barbed wire fence. He ran briefly along a narrow highway that disappeared into the distance. Then the fence turned to two pyramids and disappeared into the pale yellow desert. They were called Dashursky. Therefore, in the office and in the Soviet villa, our center was called Dashursky. All around, wherever the eye could reach, lay the sands heated by the sun.
Several one-story and two-story buildings stood behind the fence. On the very first day, we learned that officers, soldiers and sergeants, serving missile equipment, live in two-story barracks. In one-story buildings, in more comfortable conditions - spacious rooms, senior officers - teachers and translators - lived in twos. The catering and canteen were located in a separate building. Officers, sergeants and soldiers dined together in the same dining room. The menu is not very rich, but the dishes are plentiful. The pork chop didn't fit on a large platter.
2
After lunch, at five o'clock, us newcomers. collected, head of translation bureau. By age, he was suitable for us as fathers. Thin, angular. An unremarkable Russian face. In a white shirt without a tie, he looked more like a collective farm accountant than an officer.
- Let's get acquainted. Briefly tell us about yourself: what university did you graduate from and when, whether there was a military department at your university. But first, I'll tell you about myself.
During World War II, he, a sophomore at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, sailed on American ships as an English translator. They transported military equipment and weapons under Lend-Lease from America to Arkhangelsk and Murmansk. After graduating from the Institute, he worked as a translator in military intelligence, and after the closure of the Military Institute and the elimination of the positions of military translators in military units, he was transferred to work in the personnel department. Last year they were unexpectedly summoned to the General Staff. Arrived in the UAR with the missile officers.
- It is better, of course, if we were Arabists, knew the Arabic language, customs, traditions, history of the country. But alas! There are almost no Arabists left in the Soviet army. They are urgently trained at the Military Institute, which has been reopened so far at the Military Diplomatic Academy. The best professors in the country worked there before it was closed. There was an excellent library in all languages of the world, as well as its own publishing house and printing house. There was an excellent oriental faculty. While the Arabists transferred to the reserve will now be found, collected, time will pass, and you and I need to work today and teach our wards to use new weapons and help this country create its own air defense system. By the way, Israel already has such American-made surface-to-air missiles. Soviet missiles will cover the skies over Egypt. We will teach our charges to use new weapons and help Egypt create a modern air defense system.
The Arab officers you will have to work with speak English. They graduated from electrical engineering faculties, were mobilized into the army and sent to study at our training center, - he continued. - Moscow has set before us, officers of the training center, the task of teaching our Arab friends to use modern weapons. For this purpose, the S-75 Dvina mobile anti-aircraft missile system will be supplied to Egypt. It was adopted by the USSR in 1957. Soon it was declassified and sold to developing countries.
However, in Egypt, his data and our training center are classified. In a Soviet villa, say that you work on civilian sites in Hilwan or with geologists. In the summer of 1963, demonstration firing will take place by the forces of Arab missilemen trained by us. The top leadership of the country will visit the shooting. According to the results of the shooting, contracts will be signed for the supply of missile systems to this country, which has taken a course towards strengthening the ties of friendship and military cooperation with the USSR and building "Arab socialism" in its country. The situation in the Middle East is complex. You yourself understand what a great responsibility is entrusted to us. We must do everything we can to train first-class missile specialists. The situation in the Middle East is complex.
Then in the classroom, we learned that the range of target destruction by the complex was more than 30 km, and the range of target destruction altitudes was 3-22 km. The maximum speed of targets hit is up to 2300 km / h.
The head of the translation bureau explained to us the internal regulations of the training center: work in classrooms, at sites with equipment, in stations until two o'clock in the afternoon. Then lunch. Arab officers on buses leave for Cairo. We have lunch, we have a rest. Free time in the evening and preparation for tomorrow's classes. Officers are allowed to travel to Cairo three times a week; soldiers and sergeants only on Fridays. On weekends, the Arab side organizes excursion trips for us with departures to other cities.
- Since we know little of this country, the customs of the traditions of the Arab people must be studied. I recommend not to miss the excursions. They will help you get to know the host country faster. It is recommended to walk around the city in small groups to avoid small provocations. I would not call the attitude towards Soviet people very friendly. Egypt is a capitalist country. Come to the buses in advance in the evening. They leave for Dashur from the Opera Square at 21.00, from the embassy villa at 21.15. Don't be late. Our area is closed. The training center is classified. In letters to your homeland, do not mention either the host country or the work that we do.
The lieutenant colonel assigned us to study groups. I was assigned as an interpreter to a training group that studied the operation of the missile guidance station.
The technical stuffing of the training center - missiles, tankers, detection and guidance stations - were disguised. In the morning all of us - about two hundred people - were taken to the training campus by buses. Our soldiers served the equipment. Study groups worked with teachers and translators. At two o'clock, classes ended, buses brought us to the residential area. The same buses brought Arab officers from Cairo and took them back in the afternoon.
At first, we did not attach importance to the established order: foreign teachers lived and worked in the desert behind barbed wire and only two or three times were they allowed to go outside the "zone" on excursions or to Cairo. Listeners, like gentlemen, came to the zone for several hours and returned home - to the familiar world of a big city.
Looking back today in those distant 60s, I remember how we, Soviet instructors and translators, walked in the evenings in small groups along Broadway, as we named the road connecting the residential and educational complexes and surrounded by the emptiness and silence of the endless desert. The Dashur pyramids were visible from any point in the center.
While on business trips, Soviet officers changed their habits. Rarely did anyone allow themselves to drink an extra bottle of beer or wine, buy a block of cigarettes. Many saved currency. We were all warmed by the thought that we would be able to save money, buy gifts, and surprise our relatives with beautiful things, which at that time in the Soviet Union could only be found for a lot of money.
This is how our military service began at the Dashur Air Defense Training Center.
I worked with the captain. The teacher, a young stocky guy, knew his subject perfectly. He has already managed to learn a couple of dozen terms in English. For two months he had to work practically without an interpreter. He smartly explained the schemes: "signal passes", "signal does not pass" and so on. I occasionally helped him, suggesting words that he did not know. If he explained the material only according to diagrams, he would not need an interpreter at all. However, he did not understand the questions the cadets asked him. I translated the questions to him. With my appearance, the Arab officers cheered up. The productivity of the classes has increased.
The group could not do without me, when the captain explained the theoretical material, dictated the procedure for working with instruments in different situations. The day before, he brought me his notes and showed me the pages that tomorrow we will give the cadets to register. I took the only copy of the "Electrotechnical Russian-English Dictionary" (we sometimes literally fought over it in the evenings, preparing for classes), wrote out terms until late at night and crammed them.
In between classes, we could discuss with the Arab officers many issues of interest to us: the latest news, Arab socialism, rock and roll, French films, etc. These conversations were more interesting and richer in language and emotion. We asked officers about the history of Egypt, the July 1952 revolution. They were happy to tell us about the revolution, and about Arab socialism, and about Gamal Abdel Nasser, the leader of the nation respected by all Arabs.
Egyptian officers came from various sections of the middle class who supported the July Revolution and the nationalization of the Suez Canal. They all managed to get higher education. They were well versed in political issues, but at first they rarely and with great caution expressed their opinion about the essence of the events taking place in the country. As the Soviet lecturers later explained to us, in the Egyptian army every third officer was associated with the Egyptian counterintelligence, and they treated us, atheists, atheists, communists with caution.
Already in the first month, we learned that a group of young officers led by G. A. Nasser in July 1952 overthrew King Farouk, a glutton, drunkard, lecher and British henchman. We visited Farouk's summer residence in Alexandria, his hunting lodges. The king lived not badly!
We, graduates of provincial teacher training institutes, heard something about Israel, but did not pay much attention to the Middle East region. We were more interested in the history and culture of Western countries. The East seemed to us a dark, underdeveloped massif oppressed by the colonialists. It turned out that our understanding of the Middle East was outdated.
We learned that Nasser keeps the communists and the leaders of the national chauvinist Muslim Brotherhood party in prisons, that the Egyptians treat the communists with caution and distrust. That in July 1961 the country's leadership embarked on a course of building "Arab socialism". That it decided to create a public sector in the economy and began to implement the accelerated industrialization of the country.
We learned that the Egyptian bourgeoisie and landowners are dissatisfied with the Nasser policy of rapprochement between Egypt and the socialist countries, the accelerated democratization of the country, the creation of a parliament and the choice of a non-capitalist path of development; that the Assuan Dam and a power plant are being built in the Nile, that thousands of Soviet specialists are working on their construction, and that the Egyptian fellahis will soon receive thousands of hectares of new irrigated land.
In other words, Nasser was carrying out reforms that were supposed to steer Egypt along a non-capitalist path of development.
3
Our center was headed by Major General Huseyn Jumshudovich (Jumshud oglu) Rassulbekov, an Azerbaijani by nationality, a kind-hearted man. In the army, such commanders are lovingly called "baty" by soldiers and officers, because before having lunch, they do not hesitate to go to the soldiers' cafeteria and make sure that his young soldiers will be fed tasty and satisfying. They will order the officer who has arrived at the unit to be more comfortable in a hostel until an apartment is vacated for his family. Will find insincerity in the officer's work, they will try to re-educate him.
If a subordinate stumbles, they will ensure that the guilty person realizes his wrongdoing and corrects himself. They solve all internal problems of the unit on their own and sometimes have to replace the heads of the political department, because people go with their troubles to those who understand their sorrows and sorrows. Everyone knows that it is shameful and unfair to let the "father" down: after all, he is alone for everything and for everyone, including for the miscalculations of his subordinates.
The general's broad, high-cheekbones, almost round oriental face told the Arabs without a word that he was Asian and came from a Muslim family. In his obese, short figure, they saw a brother in faith, and therefore it was easy for him to resolve all issues related to our work and leisure with the Egyptian side. He was not denied anything. The military personnel officers did a great job: they found a real "father" for our group.
Brought up in the spirit of internationalism and respect for all nationalities, we did not pay attention to the fact that he was not Russian, but an Azeri, who had been assigned to command us. Nationalism was alien and incomprehensible to us. Among the translators and teachers, Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians predominated. Among the translators were one Avar, two Georgians, and two Russified Jews. We, ethnic Russians (as I can speak Russian only on their behalf), have never paid attention to the nationality of a person, considering all nations and nationalities to be equal to us. We are used to appreciating only human qualities in people and living in peace and friendship with all peoples, and there were more than two hundred of them in the USSR.
We, Russians, are completely devoid of any sense of superiority over other ethnic groups and have never emphasized our Russianness in front of other nationalities. Ordinary Russian people - workers and peasants - did not have and do not have today the so-called "imperial (in the sense of the colonialist) spirit", which Russophobes love to write about. To talk about some kind of oppression by the Russians of some other nation on a national or racial basis in Soviet times is a most disgusting lie.
Community relations, which grew into collectivism under socialism, gave rise to a form of collectivist psychology that could not be overlooked by everyone who came to the Soviet Union from Western countries. This developed collectivist psychology was one of the striking advantages of socialist collectivism over bourgeois individualism. The psychology of individualism gives rise to disrespect for the culture of another person, for another nation. This psychology underlies any form of conscious or unconscious superiority: a leader over tribesmen, a king over vassals, a white race over blacks, the West over Russia, Arab, Asian countries, and so on.
The developed sense of collectivism and brotherhood among the Russians helped them liberate all of Europe from fascism in 1945. It was clearly manifested in his disinterested support of the struggle of colonially enslaved peoples against European and American imperialism, as well as in the military-technical assistance of the USSR to the liberated, developing countries …
In Dashur, it seemed to us, the translators, that we would not have to serve in the army for a long time, that upon returning to our homeland they would let us go to all four directions, that each of us would return to our civilian specialty, that our whole operetta life was an Egyptian exotic, a high salary; newspapers, magazines, books in foreign languages; beautiful and solid consumer goods will run out.
If for many of us, civilians, military service was a burden, then in a few years the career of a military translator in the Union will become prestigious, and every self-respecting general will dream of sending his offspring to study at the Military Institute and seek to send him to work abroad. and the whole family will receive admission to the prestigious foreign exchange shops "Berezka".
I did not consider myself a "military bone". Muscovites, returning from a business trip abroad, preferred to quit their jobs and return to their civilian profession. Many provincials remained in the army and after a trip abroad they served as translators in academies, military schools, and taught the language in the Suvorov schools.
We, the generation of Soviet people born before, during or after the Great Patriotic War, were taught from childhood that all nations - Russians, Jews, Kazakhs, Turkmens, all peoples of the world - are equal and have the full right to equality, freedom and independence from Eurocolonialism in whatever form it is imposed on them - a direct colonial yoke, a world trade society, a free market or globalism.
We were taught that not a single nation, not a single race in the world has the moral right to consider itself "chosen" and by the right of being chosen to oppress other peoples, regardless of their social and cultural development; that there are no God-chosen nations on earth that could dictate to other nations how to live and which way to develop; that all nations on earth, all indigenous peoples of America, Palestine, Europe, Asia and Africa have the right to freedom and independence from the colonial and Zionist yoke.
We, Soviet people, were taught from the first grade to be irreconcilable to national oppression, selfishness and separatism. They taught to expose the theory of national and racial superiority, to be intolerant of fascism, racism, racial segregation, Zionism. They taught to condemn cosmopolitanism, which is based on indifference, nihilistic attitude of certain groups of people in the state to their homeland, to the nations inhabiting it, to their interests and culture, to the rejection of any national traditions. We called the USSR not "this country" but "our Motherland".
Internationalism in combination with national patriotism is friendship of peoples at the interstate and interethnic level, it is friendly and respectful relations between representatives of all nations in everyday life.
Internationalism is an interest in the national cultures and languages of both the West and the East. At the institute, we studied the works of Goethe, Dickens, Whitman and Byron. The whole country read the novels of Hemingway, Dreiser, the stories of Mark Twain and Jack London. The best works of foreign classics were translated in the USSR. The translation school was the best in the world. But ask an American or an Englishman about Pushkin and Yesenin. They have no idea about these saints for a Russian person names.
Internationalism is a struggle against bourgeois nationalism, with the incitement of enmity between peoples on all continents, in all regions of the world. With the exaltation of one nation to the detriment of others. With all the forces of evil, hiding the relationship of inequality and subordination and masking their aggressive aspirations under the demagogic slogans of democracy and equal human rights.
Internationalism is, by and large, the cooperation and solidarity of the working people of the entire planet in the struggle for peace against imperialism, colonialism, racial discrimination and segregation, Zionism and apartheid. True internationalism is achievable only in a highly developed socialist society. Not today and not in the 21st century.
That is why none of the officers paid attention to the nationality of General Rassulbekov. He was our "father", and we loved and respected him for his high moral and business qualities.
4
One must live in the East in order to learn how to drink coffee in small sips from a scanty cup, in order to turn this sacred rite into pleasure, into a vital need, into pleasure, into meditation. That is why in Cairo coffee houses you always see quiet customers, in front of whom there is only a cup of coffee and a tall glass of ice water on the table. They sit for a long time, meditating, watching the life of the street flowing unhurriedly in front of them.
In our Dashur bar in the evenings we drank coffee and Coca-Cola, smoked and discussed information received from Egyptian officers in private conversations, watched movies, shared impressions and exchanged addresses of shops where you could buy good-quality things as a gift to relatives. We didn’t know much about politics and tried to understand why the Arabs couldn’t come to an agreement with the Israelis.
And there was much to discuss! In October, we eagerly read in the newspapers reports on the development of the so-called Cuban crisis between the USSR and the USA and naturally supported the actions of N. S. Khrushchev, General Secretary of the CPSU. The American government, by order of the ruling circles, has delivered its missiles aimed at our homeland in Turkey. Why could the Soviet government not fail to respond in a mirror-like manner by placing its missiles in Cuba or in another American country? How glad we were that common sense prevailed and the American hawks failed to start World War III.
We discussed many events that took place before our eyes in Egypt in the early 60s over a cup of coffee with comrades in our Dashur cafe, and later over a beer in a cafe in a Soviet villa. In February 1960, the Egyptian government nationalized the large banks. In May, all newspaper corporations were transferred to the National Union, the only officially recognized political organization in the country. In July 1961, all private banks and insurance companies, dozens of large transport and foreign trade companies became the property of the state; and a new agrarian law was adopted. He set the maximum land tenure to one hundred, and after a few years - to 50 feddans (one feddan is equal to 0, 42 hectares). In a few years, by 1969, 57 percent of all land will be in the hands of smallholders. The state will help them create cooperatives, give interest-free loans, fertilizers and agricultural machinery.)
In 1961-1964. the government carried out a number of major social transformations in the interests of the working people. A 42-hour work week was established. A minimum wage has been introduced. Work was carried out to reduce unemployment. Tuition fees canceled. Arbitrary dismissal of workers from work was prohibited. In the same year, the government developed a ten-year development plan for the country and began to implement it. Special attention was paid to the development of heavy industry and the improvement of the material well-being of the working masses.
In November 1961, Nasser dissolved the National Assembly and the National Union. The deputies refused to support the revolutionary democratic reforms that the Egyptian leadership put forward. In 1962, the authorities created the National People's Forces Congress. More than a third of the delegates were workers' representatives. Congress adopted the National Charter. It emphasized that Egypt would build Arab socialism (Soviet scientists would call it "the path of socialist orientation"), that at least half of those elected to all political and social organizations should be workers and peasants. (Can you imagine what would have started in Russia today if the current bourgeois government of the Russian Federation began to carry out the reforms of Nasser of those years ?!).
In October 1962, when our group of translators arrived in Cairo, Nasser issued a decree establishing a political organization, the Arab Socialist Union. Two years later, elections to the National Assembly were held. 53% of the deputies were workers and peasants. At the same time, an interim Constitutional Declaration was adopted. It stated that the UAR is "a democratic, socialist state based on an alliance of labor forces" and that the ultimate goal is to build a socialist state.
The working class and the urban middle class grew rapidly. The public sector was created. By 1965, he already gave 85 percent of all industrial production in the country.
New reforms were announced almost every month. Nasser and his associates rushed to restore social justice in the ancient land of Egypt. They swung at the millennial tradition of economic, financial, political, family slavery. They removed opponents of reforms from the government. They dictated their terms completely unprecedented before in the country conditions of cooperation with the state to the owners of land and companies. They sought to preserve class peace in the country, naively believing that they would be able to win over a growing middle class and revolutionize the minds of the Arabs.
We understood that in Egypt we were witnessing an acute class struggle. The reforms being carried out met with fierce, underground resistance from large landowners and the big bourgeoisie. All who openly opposed the reforms were isolated and imprisoned by Nasser and his associates. Mukhabarat (counterintelligence) had enormous powers and it was no coincidence that the bourgeois press called Nasser a "dictator." He kept national extremists and communists in prisons. He released the latter only in the early 1960s.
The reforms caused heated debate among the Arab officers, and translators often participated in them and defended the Arab socialist reforms, telling them how they differed from the socialist order in their homeland. It was difficult to criticize Nasser, because everyone knew that he did not get rich after the revolution, unlike some of his associates, he did not buy himself a company, a shop, or an estate. Everyone knew that he had five children and that he was a wonderful family man. He set himself a salary of 500 Egyptian pounds and passed a law according to which no one in the country could receive a monthly salary more than he was.
Even in 18 years of his reign, Nasser did not acquire a palace or land for himself. He did not accept bribes and severely punished corrupt officials. When he died, the Egyptians learned that the Nasser family did not have any property in their hands, except for the apartment, which he bought before the revolution, as a lieutenant colonel, and several thousand pounds in a single bank account. He did not have accounts in either Swiss or American banks (as it turned out, by the way, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev did not have it !!).
Nasser made frequent appearances on radio and television. Addressing ordinary people, he urged them to support the reforms carried out by his government. He explained their essence. He exposed the machinations of imperialism and Zionism. He called on all Arab peoples to unite in the fight against neo-colonialism. None of the Arab leaders in the Middle East at that time could compete with Nasser in popularity and authority.
We were convinced that the Zionists were aggressors, that the Arabs were the victims of international imperialism and Zionism. It is difficult for a sane mind to understand how the UN General Assembly could create a Jewish colonial in essence and racist in content state in Palestine against the will of the Arab peoples already in 1948 ?! Having proclaimed itself a fighter for peace and security, the UN created a special type of colony on the land, where the Jews did not have their own statehood for many centuries. Thus, many political time mines were planted in the Middle East. Some of them have already exploded. (Many politicians and political scientists of our day believe that a third world war has already been unleashed in this region in a new, unconventional form).
- Why do imperialist states want to dispose of Arab lands? - Asked the Egyptian officers when we set out with them at our leisure sailing on the stormy ocean of international politics.
Indeed, why, by what right? We discussed many issues with our Arab peers. They asked us a lot of questions. Why did the Zionists create Israel in Palestine? Why don't Jews move from other countries to their new homeland, preferring to live in Europe and America? Why, under the pretext of recreating the Hebrew state, which was conquered two thousand years ago by the Roman Empire, was a bridgehead for imperialism created next to the sources of Arab energy resources and the Suez Canal? Why are the imperialist powers of the West so worried about the Jews and not the Mongols, for example? Why can't the Mongols restore the Mongol empire of Genghis Khan, because it existed only some seven centuries ago, but the Jews can?
Did Nasser act unfairly by nationalizing the Suez Canal,built by the hands of the Egyptians and running from Port Said on the Mediterranean to Suez on the Red Sea across Egyptian territory? Did he act unfairly, spending money received from the canal on the construction of the Assuan Dam and the implementation of deep democratic reforms in a country in which the vast majority of the population continued to vegetate in unthinkable poverty?
What heated discussions were conducted by the translators and Arab officers during the breaks between classes, when we all got to know each other and became friends!
5
Our "dad", like all of us, arrived in Egypt without a family. He provided transportation of a training missile system from Odessa to Alexandria, and then to Dashur. He went with us on all excursions. Dined in the same dining room with us. A couple of times a month, he went around the officers 'and soldiers' hostels. I talked to everyone, was interested in what relatives from home wrote about. We talked, but we were all silent about one thing, without saying a word, that we missed wives, children, parents. We missed you a lot, to tears, to a pain in your heart. Apparently, not only I, after reading letters from my wife, quietly cried at night into my pillow from my powerlessness to change anything in my fate.
On excursions
My wife was bored too. My daughter was growing up. So she said the word "mom". So she took her first steps. I couldn’t believe that that little helpless creature, which I carried in my arms with tenderness and care before leaving on a business trip abroad, was already thinking, talking, walking. I wanted to be close to my wife and daughter. I was, in fact, stripped of my paternity for a year because of contrived secrecy. How I wanted to give up everything - Egypt, the rocket center - and fly away to my wife and daughter. The wife wrote that she loves, misses, waits. We wrote letters to each other almost every day.
Was I jealous of my wife? Of course he was jealous. Especially when she went to the winter session at the institute. All the officers, not only me, were tormented by jealous thoughts. Everyone was eagerly awaiting letters from home. They came through the General Staff and the Soviet Embassy once a week. We got upset if the mail was delayed. We were glad if we received several letters at a time. You can read and re-read them as much as you like and keep them as a treasure.
When the letters arrived at the center, the officers had a holiday. We went to our rooms. We read and immediately took up the pen. Here they took up the pen and scribbled answers: they declared their love to their wives. For an hour or two, the center sank into silence. Then he gradually came to life. Cheerful voices rang out. Gathered at the bar. Over the beer, they discussed the news received from home.
Sometimes, some officers received sad "bad" news from a "well-wisher" that his wife was out on a spree at home, was dating a man. Few who survived. As is customary, he drowned grief in wine. The general summoned the poor fellow to himself. I talked to him for a long time about something and gave him time off. After a couple of days, the officer, haggard with grief, returned to duty.
We could not give our wives a reason to doubt our loyalty to them, although "madam" was offered in Cairo at every crossroads (as it is now in Russia). For us, prostitution was the beginning of the exploitation of man by man - the exploitation of the body of another. Love and respect for our friends in life, strict control over our behavior, discipline, a high moral and psychological climate, the shame of early secondment to the Union, thoughtful collective leisure organizations, lack of contact with Arab women helped us withstand the test of loneliness. None of the officers and soldiers of the training center was sent ahead of schedule for this "delicate" reason to the Union.
Family troubles could have been avoided if the Soviet side had agreed to the proposal of the Arab side to immediately open a missile training center in Alexandria. However, for the sake of secrecy, it was decided to open this center in the desert - at the Dashur pyramids.
From a human point of view, it was hardly possible to approve the decision of the Soviet side to send officers to fulfill their "military and international duty" without families for a year. This “duty” could have been fulfilled even better by coming to Egypt with his family. The Egyptian side insisted on opening a rocket training center in Alexandria and it opened it, as planned, a year later, and all the Soviet teachers arrived with their wives.
Several years later, meeting with the translators with whom I served in Dashur, I learned that, upon returning from a Dashur business trip, six of our officers had divorced their wives. How many secret betrayals and family scandals there were no one could say. One of the officers shot himself out of jealousy. Such was the pay of the officers for the secrecy of the training center, for the callousness of the authorities.
It was easier for our bachelors. They met our translators at the ambassador's villa. A year later, several couples got married.
Young officers could not help but be interested in the nightlife in Cairo. At that time, a series of American films about nightlife in the cities of America and Europe were running in Cairo cinemas. Belly dance and dances of shabby pole dancers were dancing on the screens. On the streets of Cairo, we were molested by pimps who offered "madam", and porn magazines were sold (in short, like in Russia today). Knowing our unhealthy interest in such films and in order to discourage this interest, "Daddy" asked the Arab side to invite our entire group to the most popular nightclub of the time, "Auberge de Pyramid" in Giza on New Year's Eve 1963.
We went with the whole group, including soldiers and sergeants. First a hearty dinner and wine, then a show. The first part of the concert - European girls, the second - Arab dancers. For the first time we watched a belly dance in reality, not in a movie. An impressive sight - exciting and enchanting!
We noticed: on each table there is a small pyramid with a number, we called the garcon.
- Why this pyramid with a number?
- To tell the actress at which table the gentleman is waiting for her this evening. If she likes the gentleman, she will sit next to him after the end of the performance.
But our strict "dad" didn't let us invite the dancers. As soon as the performance was over, he gave the command: "On the horses!" And we were taken to Dashur. The jokers complained while sitting on the bus: "Dad deprived us of the opportunity to ride real horses." It was already four o'clock in the morning when we returned to the training center …
We were very lucky with the "Batya". And later I had to work with generals and officers, from whom I took an example. I learned from them decency and kindness, courage and courage, determination and hard work. It is a pity that fate divorced us after returning home. Many of them could become those friends on whom one could rely in a difficult hour of life and with whom one could safely go on reconnaissance even at night.
6
Time flew by quickly. We drove to Cairo on Mondays and Thursdays after lunch. We returned at about ten in the evening. On weekends (on Fridays) in the morning we left Dashur for Cairo. We visited the pyramids, the night performance at the Sphinx. In the National Museum on Tahrir Square, they looked at the treasures of Tutankhamun and the mummies of the pharaohs. Once a month, on weekends, we made long tourist trips: either to Alexandria, then to Port Said, then to Port Fuad, or swam in the Red Sea…. Everything was interesting to us in Egypt. One could spend a lifetime exploring the sights. The travel business has been brought to perfection.
Every tourist trip provided food for thought. You sit by the window in the bus, look at the endless desert and start fantasizing, imagining what could have happened in these parts thousands of years ago, what could have happened in the village) and small towns two hundred years ago. At the pyramids it was hard to believe that 160 years ago the enlightened Napoleon fired a cannon at the Sphinx, just as the Taliban fired at Buddha statues in Afghanistan today. Both Napoleon and Churchill and many other famous and unknown political figures gazed with open mouth at the pyramids, like us, admiring the preserved wonders of the ancient Egyptian civilization.
We were returning from Cairo, from excursions on dark winter evenings to Dashur, having said goodbye to the bright advertisements of Giza, when our bus dived under the barrier, we began to quietly and sadly sing Soviet songs. They sang "Moscow Nights", "Dark Night", "The girl saw off the soldier to the position." We sang Soviet songs about war, friendship and love, remembering our parents who survived the terrible war against Euro-fascism, loved ones and relatives. And melancholy hurt my heart, and powerlessness disturbed my soul, and I wanted to give up everything, find fabulous wings or sit on a flying carpet and fly straight from the bus to the Far East to my wife and daughter!
During the excursion trips, I always looked out of the bus window at the mighty Nile, at the palm groves in oases, surrounded by endless desert sands, at the green fields that belonged to the Egyptian feudal lords. Beggar illiterate fellahs bent their backs on the landowners. And the thought always crossed my mind about how few changes in the lives of people have taken place in this country in hundreds of years. Likewise, their ancestors, the slaves bent their backs on the pharaohs and his entourage. Here, to the Nile, nomadic Jewish tribes fled in the years of famine.
During the excursions, we became tourists. How sweet it is to be a carefree and cheerful tourist at least once a week! Everywhere - at the pyramids, in mosques and museums, at the Gold Bazaar, in King Farouk's hunting lodges - we merged with the multilingual stream of tourists from Europe, America, Japan, who flew like flies to honey to the ancient Egyptian sights. It was unusual for us, the Soviet people, but we liked to play the role of tourists - such rich, carefree Buratino. I don’t know how other translators felt, but I started to play this role of a tourist in my life for the first time in Egypt.
At the meetings, the head of the translation bureau constantly urged us to study the host country, Arab customs and customs, culture, history of the Arab countries, Egypt, as well as the Arabic language. Before leaving for the UAR, I managed to buy an Arabic textbook and a dictionary. I sat down to the textbook. I learned to write and speak. After a year, I understood something and even spoke a little Arabic.
I bought books about Egypt, as well as paperback novels and short stories by the English classic Somerset Maugham. My new friend, a translator from Voronezh, was fond of it. It was comparatively inexpensive for my pocket.
At Cairo airport
It seemed to us that the service of military translators would not last long - a year or two or three. Then they will let us go home - to civilian life. Muscovites dreamed of leaving the army as soon as possible. None of us was going to enter military academies. I wanted to earn some money for life in the Union.
Immediately after their arrival, Muscovites found old acquaintances and fellow students among the civil translators, and they more often went to the Soviet villa on Zamalik. Some of them took part in amateur performances, performed at concerts organized during the days of Soviet revolutionary holidays. The entire Soviet colony gathered at them.
7
Abroad is a life on a visit, in other people's apartments in a literal and literal sense. This is learning, this is a long series of discoveries in a new culture, within which we are trying to establish our new life. We do not give up our national habits and traditions. At the same time, we are obliged to adapt to the new life and live, coexist with a society alien to us.
In the first period, the new country seems to us an ordinary theatrical stage. Our eye is looking for beautiful scenery, and we begin to live in an illusory world that we have not yet understood. We still do not know the backstage life and see only the front facade, exoticism, something unusual and unusual that does not fit into our established concepts of life.
The study of a new culture is the ability to bring the alien and the alien closer to oneself, to admire the unknown and the unexpected; it is the art of breaking through illusions and decorations to the truth of life. Gradually, our gaze moves into the depths of the stage, and we strive to learn the rules of life behind the scenes. The new life manifests itself gradually, showing us its contradictions that objectively exist in society.
The process of approaching a new life is complex and diverse. Keys to the locked doors to the history, culture, politics of a foreign country are required. Tourist curiosity alone is not enough. Serious systematic work on yourself is necessary. Mastering the method of working with keys is required. Only systematic work on oneself will help open the doors and get behind the scenes into the thick of someone else's life in a foreign country.
Coming to work in Egypt, we, translators of the English language, graduates of the faculties of Romance and Germanic philology, found ourselves in an extremely difficult situation. We did not know any Arabic language, or Arab history and culture, or Muslim customs and mores. The Middle East was the new planid on which a Soviet spaceship landed us. We had to study the country literally from scratch.
Idealist translators bravely threw themselves into the river of new knowledge and tried to overcome their ignorance. But there were fewer such people than pragmatists. The latter said: “In a couple of years we will leave the army and will work with those European languages that we studied at the institute. Why do we need Arabic? You can't learn Arabic well enough to work with it."
We could make our life easier by allowing us to attend evening Arabic courses. In a year, we could use the knowledge gained for the good of the case. However, the embassy forbade us not only to study, but even to contact the local population. From childhood we were taught that we live in the most progressive society on the planet - socialist, that all other countries belong to the decaying world of capitalism. We were sincerely proud of our formation. And how not proud if in Egypt we saw with our own eyes tens of millions of beggars, destitute, humiliated, illiterate.
We were "terribly far" from the Egyptian people, from the bourgeoisie, from the middle class, from the Egyptian intelligentsia, even from the officers. For the Egyptians, we were foreigners, atheists, infidels. The local authorities feared the Soviet people no less than we feared them. If employees of foreign companies working in Egypt communicated with the local population, taught them English, married Arab women, then all this was strictly forbidden to the Soviet people.
The Soviet military translators-Arabists were hardly closer to the Egyptians. There were few of them. I remember the arrival of two Arabists in 1964. They graduated from the Military Institute before it closed. They were demobilized under Khrushchev. They were forced to work as English teachers at the school. The military registration and enlistment office found them, returned them to the army and sent them to work in Arab countries. In Cairo, they were given a couple of months to adapt to the Egyptian dialect. To study military terminology. Then they worked with their superiors in the directorates of the armed forces of the UAR.
In 1965, the first group of Arabists arrived from the Soviet Asian republics. After 1967, young graduates and cadets of the Military Institute began to stay in Egypt. However, there were far more English-speaking translators than Arabists.
8
It would be foolish not to study its history while living in Cairo, not to wander around the places of revolutionary glory.
This is the fame this magnificent and controversial city gained back in the Middle Ages: “Travelers say that there is no city on earth more beautiful than Cairo with its Nile … Those who have not seen Cairo have not seen the world. His land is gold and his Nile is a miracle, his women are the houris and the houses in it are palaces, and the air there is even, and the fragrance surpasses and confuses aloe. And how could Cairo not be like that when Cairo is the whole world … And if you saw its gardens in the evenings, when the shadow bends over them. You would truly see a miracle and bow to it in delight."
I also thank fate for giving me the opportunity not only to see this miracle, but also to live in it. Decades have passed since I left this wonderful city, but I recall with delight the days that I spent in this city on the Nile.
If trips around the country from Dashur pushed me to study Egypt, then later, having moved to Cairo, I had the opportunity to improve my knowledge of the Arabic language, to study the sights of the thousand-year-old city on my own.
Cairo is a museum city that has grown along the high-flowing Nile for millennia. With pleasure and curiosity, my comrades and I wandered through its streets and parks. We admired the Nile, bridges over it, embankments, floating hotels and restaurants under weeping willows.
We loved to sit on a bench near the 180-meter round Cairo Tower. It can be seen from every corner of Cairo. From a distance, she seems to be an openwork and delicate creation of the Arab spirit. Close up, when you sit in a cafe under the tower, it seems like a huge and majestic building. All around the giant trees give shade and long-awaited coolness. The staircase was built of red Assuan granite. A high-speed elevator takes you to the top floor. And from the tower, from a bird's eye view, below on all four sides stretches a majestic, many-sided, eastern city with its ancient gardens and minaret peaks piercing the ever-blue sky.
From the tower you can see how feluccas with white triangular sails float along the blue road of the Nile, fenced by date palms along the banks. A tiny boat, straining, pulls several long barges on the same binding. One is filled with clay pots, the other is filled with pressed straw, and the third is filled with fruit in boxes. White pleasure boats with tourists glide overtaking them.
From the tower, you can gaze at the pyramids of Giza and the Citadel, hovering over the city. We loved going on the excursion to the Citadel. After the July Revolution, it became one of the main attractions of Cairo, a must-see site visited by the absolute majority of tourists. In the 1960s, in the evenings in the Citadel and on the pyramids, there were nightly performances "Sound and Light".
Cairo is a wonderful country. She bathes in the sun. Fertile green fields in the suburbs bring landowners several harvests a year. The chimneys of a nascent heavy industry are smoking in Helwan. It seemed to us that the country lived a peaceful, calm life, and we forgot that, since 1948, over Cairo, over Egypt, over the entire Arab East, there is a constant and frightening threat from Israel and the "world behind the scenes" behind it.
9
The work of a translator abroad has its own characteristics. If at home a military translator works in a foreign language only during working hours, then abroad he communicates with foreigners constantly. As a translator he works part of the time, the rest of the time he speaks with foreigners as a private person. He has the opportunity to express to them his own opinion on issues of interest to him and his interlocutors, to talk about himself, about his interests, about his country and the culture of his people. He can joke, tell jokes, criticize the government, ask questions that interest him. He has his own circle of acquaintances and friends among foreigners.
In addition, while working abroad, the translator received the opportunity to read literature and the press in foreign languages, prohibited or not supplied to the USSR, watch foreign films and television programs, listen to "voices of the enemy", while experiencing the pressure of bourgeois ideology.
On the one hand, he could freely acquire new knowledge, expanding his horizons. He could compare the parameters of the life of Soviet people with the life of the local population in a foreign country, the methods of conducting and the content of the informational, ideological war of the opposing sides.
On the other hand, the generals of the Cold War forced him to think about many issues of life, reconsider his political views, change his beliefs, or strengthen himself in the correctness of Soviet ideology. The abundance of information, however, did not prevent Soviet translators from remaining loyal to the ideals they had absorbed since childhood.
We could not help but feel the pressure of the Soviet ideological machine, which educates us in the spirit of "loyalty to the Communist Party and the Soviet government", "the ideas of Marxism-Leninism." This pressure strengthened our patriotic sympathies and pride in the Soviet system. I do not remember a single case when any of the translators, my colleagues, betrayed their homeland and fled to the West or stayed in Egypt. By the way, I don’t remember a case when some Egyptian officer stayed in the USSR for ideological reasons.
Excessive political information makes the translator constantly work on himself. He is obliged to know almost professionally international relations, international law, history, culture of the host country, that is, what is not studied at the pedagogical institute, which I graduated from. At the institute, we were given lectures on the history, culture, and literature of England. In Egypt, we also needed knowledge of Arabic culture and language.
To become a professional translator, it was necessary to study the political life in the host country, freely navigate the international relations that were developing in the Middle East. We were obliged to know, at least in general terms, the history of Israel and the Israeli-Arab wars, the history of Zionism and the Jewish question. All this helped us to work with Arab officers.
Working abroad exposes and makes transparent those secret relations between citizens of different countries of the world that exist and are supported by any government in one form or another. We knew for sure that we were under the hood of two counterintelligence services - Soviet and Egyptian. Our letters to the homeland were revised. Many Soviet officers had "bugs" from the Egyptian special services in the hotel, which our superiors constantly reminded us of. The Nasser regime limited the activities of the Egyptian Communist Party. Until 1964, he kept the leaders of the Communist Party in prisons. They were released before the arrival of Khrushchev, the general secretary of the CPSU, to the UAR.
Dashur Left Sasha Kvasov Yura Gorbunov Dushkin
For conspiracy purposes, we were ordered to call the Komsomol organization "sports", the party - "trade union". We were allowed to hold Komsomol and party meetings only in Pozharsky's Office. In Dashur, we took chairs with us and went into the desert and held outdoor meetings. The Arab side knew that all Soviet officers, as a rule, were members of the CPSU, the youth were members of the Komsomol, but they had to close their eyes to our naive conspiracy.
Of course, we, the translators, preferred to stay as far away from the "special officers" as possible. We were all tiny cogs of a huge government machinery. We were all pawns in the great political game of the two superpowers. We understood that the main thing in life abroad is not to get into the silently and furiously spinning gears of this mechanism. Therefore, the main concern of the "screw" is to see and understand how the gears turn in a life-threatening zone, but stay away from this zone.
The long-term habit of living under the "hood" of the special services abroad, and therefore in the Soviet Union, has developed in the translator, I would call it, a special style of "enlightened" thinking. This style helps him to guess the real reasons for any international political or military actions, as well as possible secret, carefully hidden from the public mechanisms for the implementation of these actions by the special services. Not only Soviet, but also Western, Israeli, Arab.
This style of thinking helps researchers of the history of international relations to see the real goals of the ruling classes in any country in the world behind the loud official statements of politicians and the propaganda tricks of the corrupt media, to distinguish red from white, genuine people's socialist democracy from "money", bourgeois, democracy. This style makes a person a skeptic, a cynic, but it is difficult to cheat on the chaff or deceive with the cheap political rhetoric of the yellow press.
The habit of living “under the hood” developed a special style of behavior among translators - with an eye on their own and other people's special services. You not only don’t get used to the “cap”, but you also look with apprehension at any comrade, suspecting in him a “snitch”. The bosses instructed the translators to look after the specialists and not translate their ill-conceived statements or greasy anecdotes to the Arab "wards". It encouraged advisors to report to him any suspicious behavior by translators.
Surveillance of employees abroad is a common thing for all counterintelligence services in the world. Counterintelligence officers are interested in who their fellow citizens spend time with, what they read, what they are interested in, what they write to friends and relatives. You don't have to go far for proof these days. Everyone knows what a scandal was caused by the publication of secret WikiLeaks documents and the message of the tsareushnik Stone that the special services are listening and recording the negotiations of all Americans, government, public, and international organizations.
In the USSR in the 1960s, the entire White Guard literature of Russian nationalists was considered anti-Soviet, in which they truthfully described the bloody events of the October coup and civil war, the executions of "white" officers and soldiers, millions of Cossacks on the orders of Lenin, Trotsky and other non-Russian commissars.
I was not interested in this literature. We were taught in childhood that the entire White Guard is a complete lie, a libel against the "power of workers and peasants." By the way, no one offered us such literature in Cairo. I remember that in 1964 we rented an apartment in a house where a Russian (White Guard) family lived on the floor below, which had settled in this city back in the 1920s. Its head once surprised me by speaking to me in Russian in the elevator:
- Which floor?
- Fourth. Do you live in this house?
- For a long time.
In accordance with the instructions, I was obliged to immediately report the meeting with the White Guard to the head of the political department. Which I did. A few days later, he called me and told me that this family was politically inactive and advised me not to make friends with her. That's exactly what I did. Only it somehow turned out strangely: Russians were forbidden to communicate with Russians abroad. Then I still did not understand why we were forbidden to get acquainted and communicate with our Russian compatriots.
It was said that a relatively large colony of Russian nationalists lived in Cairo before the war. They built two Orthodox churches and an orphanage. Gradually, they and their children left for Europe or America. In the 1960s, a few old people remained in the orphanage. I regret that there was neither the time nor the desire to go to our Orthodox Church and talk to Russian old people. Now I would definitely go. Then I was afraid.
Until now, I regret that I did not get to know the family of the Russian emigrant better. They had a large library of Russian authors in their living room and I could read books from my Russian compatriots. In them I would find that part of the Russian truth that the non-Russian rulers of the USSR concealed during all the years of Soviet power, which would awaken in us Russians the Russian national consciousness and help us defend the Russian socialist civilization. We have been building it since the adoption of the "Stalinist" Constitution in 1936.
10
What did I understand during my first year as a military translator? That the work of a military translator is creative. He is obliged to constantly increase his special knowledge: to study the military-strategic doctrines of the leading powers of the world, the experience of conducting modern wars, to accumulate tactical and technical data on the latest military equipment.
He should be an interesting interlocutor: be able to masterfully build a conversation, master simultaneous translation, listen carefully and catch all shades of thoughts and feelings of the interlocutors, guess the meaning of expressed and hidden ideas, not quite correctly formed thoughts.
He should be a storehouse of a wide variety of information and be able to use it in the work environment and outside it, when he himself has to come into contact with both his compatriots and foreigners.
The work of a translator can become creative if he is inclined to difficult and persistent work on expanding his own regional geography, political, cultural, philological, literary horizons, if he does not confine himself to the narrow framework of military-technical problems. Expansion of horizons will sooner or later lead the translator to the next stage - the application of new knowledge in practice, in life and work.
A military translator is a peaceful, humane profession. He must be a comprehensively developed personality, understand literature, love opera, classical music, and know art. This knowledge can come in handy when the specialists, whose conversation he is translating, unexpectedly move on to topics that are far from military affairs.
If I were asked what the requirements were for a Soviet military translator, I would name the following:
1. Be a patriot of your homeland.
2. Love your people, their language and culture.
3. Serve faithfully to your people and government.
4. Remain faithful to the military oath.
5. Be an exemplary officer, worthily represent your homeland abroad.
6. Be loyal to the humane ideals of your system.
7. Treat the foreign military personnel with whom you have to work with sincere respect.
8. Be friendly to the local population in the host country.
9. To be interested in, to study, to love the culture, history, literature, religion, sources of the spiritual culture of the nation, the language of which he studies or knows.
10. Study the morals and customs of the people in the host country.
11. Regularly read the local press, watch local television, constantly be interested in news about events in the world.
12. Exercise vigilance and caution in relations with the local population, so as not to become the object of foreign special services.
13. Closely monitor the change in the attitude of officers of a friendly army towards Soviet, Russian citizens.
11
For almost half a year, the West did not know about the existence of our training center. At the end of January 1963, the Voice of America transmitted a message that in Egypt Soviet specialists were training Arab missilemen and creating a modern air defense system, that the surface-to-air missile had already entered service with the UAR army.
Arriving in Cairo on weekends, buses stopped at the white-stone building of the Opera House, built at the time of the opening of the Suez Canal specifically for the production of Verdi's opera Aida. (We, officers, sergeants and soldiers, together with "Batya", watched this opera at the same Opera House in the winter of 1963)
The ubiquitous journalists could not help but pay attention to the fact that on Fridays three or four buses come to the Opera Square in the center of Cairo, from which about a hundred young foreign men in white shirts and dark trousers leave. From their military bearing, it is easy to guess that these are service people. In the evening, they leave for a closed area in the desert. A rocket training center operates near the Dashur pyramids. It trains about 200 Arab officers.
In the spring of 1963, a government crisis erupted in England over the Porfumeo affair. British newspapers wrote that the tipsy Minister of War blurted out secret information to a young dancer from a nightclub. She was allegedly recruited by the Soviet intelligence officer Yevgeny Ivanov, captain of the second rank, assistant to the naval attaché. We read with interest the first revelations of the dancer. She really liked the Soviet officer. Of course, after a few weeks, the British "Democrats" banned the publication of the revelations. This is what the hobby for nightclubs drove to! This was revenge of Soviet intelligence for the "case of the Penkovsky spy." On May 11, 1963, O. V. Penkovsky was found guilty of treason. The military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced him to be shot. On May 16, the sentence was carried out.
In the summer of 1963, Soviet S-75 missiles were launched at the range. The generals headed by President G. A. Nasser arrived to watch the shooting at real air targets. All the rockets launched by the Arab missilemen hit the air targets. We have fulfilled the task set for us by the Party and the government. The rocket fire was widely reported in the Arab press. Newspapers published laudatory articles about the high accuracy of Soviet missiles and the high combat skill of Egyptian missilemen. Soviet surface-to-air missiles were deployed on alert in Egypt.
Further events in the Middle East showed how correct and timely was the decision of the Nasser government to create air defense forces in the UAR. It is a pity that the young republic did not have enough time to complete the social and cultural revolution that had begun in the country. The army needed a competent soldier and officer. It is a pity that she did not have enough funds to create a reliable air defense over the entire territory of the country.
Nasser put forward ambitious goals: to create a modern army, equip it with the latest weapons, and teach all personnel of the armed forces to use them. However, the Egyptian leadership did not have time to fully implement these plans by 1967. This circumstance became one of the main reasons for Egypt's defeat in the "six-day war" with Israel. The world behind the scenes was in a hurry to deal with Nasser, to stop and reverse the ongoing revolutionary democratic transformations in the Arab countries, inside the Middle East, which is rich in energy resources.
It has been 50 years since I started my career as a military translator in Egypt. Much water has flowed under the bridge since that wonderful time. However, there are still questions to which I am looking for answers and have not yet found.
Was Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970) correct in assessing the situation in the region in the 60s, if the war unleashed by the West in June 1967 was lost by the Arab United Republic? Did the Soviet leadership, party and government understand the situation in the Middle East correctly, if in 1972 more than ten thousand Soviet military advisers and translators, including an air defense division, were expelled from Egypt by President Anwar Sadat (1918-1981), a close associate Nasser. I think that these and other questions require an answer from military historians-orientalists and political scientists-internationalists.
