8 - The Soviet Union

Summary

Since the end of the June 1967 War, scholars have offered a variety of explanations as to the origins of that conflict. These interpretations were often based on conspiracy theories, circumstantial evidence, speeches made by Gamal Abdel Nasser and other Arab and Israeli policy makers at the time; including the memoirs of Soviet, Western, and Arab leaders and military high commanders. The recently declassified Eastern European archival material does not provide us with a definitive explanation of the war's origins because some of the most relevant official documents related to the crisis – those of the Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU – Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye), the KGB (Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti, or Committee for State Security), and the Politburo – remain inaccessible.

The June 1967 War has been the subject of a considerable number of studies. In brief, one may divide the studies into three categories. The first includes works written shortly after the war; that is to say, contemporary works with a narrow historical perspective, which were based on Western, Eastern, Arab, and Israeli sources comprising newspapers, interviews, official declarations, and memoirs of politicians and other figures who were involved in the conflict. The second consists of works written following the declassification of Western and Israeli archival material some three decades after the war. These works were more informative and insightful but still could not solve the missing parts of the riddle; particularly, the Soviet conduct in the weeks that preceded the war. The third category consists of works published in the recent years, based on selective declassified official Soviet documents that have attempted to clarify the hitherto obscure aspects of Soviet policy throughout the crisis.