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العنوان
Nasser and the communist movement in Egypt (1951 AD – 1970 AD) /
المؤلف
Altairy, Hesham Ahmed Qenawy.
هيئة الاعداد
باحث / هشام أحمد قناوي الطيري
مشرف / نبيل السيد الطوخي
مشرف / هند محمد عبدالرحمن
الموضوع
Communism - Egypt - History.
تاريخ النشر
2023.
عدد الصفحات
162 p. :
اللغة
الإنجليزية
الدرجة
ماجستير
التخصص
السياحة والترفيه وإدارة الضيافة
تاريخ الإجازة
24/5/2023
مكان الإجازة
جامعة المنيا - كلية السياحة والفنادق - الإرشاد السياحي
الفهرس
Only 14 pages are availabe for public view

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Abstract

such as This study dealt with the communist movement during Nasser’s era from 1951 to 1970 and the beginning of communism in Egypt as a movement and ideology. It shed light on the beginning of the first call to promote socialist thought in 1894, that the then newspapers talked about before announcing the first and last Egyptian communist party from 1923 to 1924, but it was dissolved. The study showed the communist activists, including Egyptians such as Shuhdi Atiya, and foreigners Henry Curiel, an Italian Jew.
It also explained the beginning of communist ideology and how some Egyptian intellectuals, workers and foreigners living in Egypt adopted it. However, there was a problem facing the communists, and even the entire communist movement, which was the lack of a unified party to bring them together. As a result, the movement became more weak and subjected them to the strikes and arrests of the sovereign authorities before and after the July 1952 Revolution.
The study confirmed the difference between communism, socialism and the communist ideology that was adopted by the late President Nasser, who believed that socialism was more just in society. He distinguished each individual in society according to his effort and competence, upon which the individual deserves his appropriate position and advantages. Meanwhile, he saw that communism as a thought and application in society is unfair because it does not differentiate between those who work and strive and those who do not work or strive as it makes all equal. This is unfair and can’t build an integrated and productive society.
The study also clarified the stance of the communist parties towards the July 1952 Revolution, their support for the nationalization decisions of July 26, 1956, and their stance against President Nasser as he did not allow them to assume sovereign positions in the state. He also was fighting, arresting, and looking at them as agents financed from abroad. He opposed their ideology and policy, in addition to his arrest for many of them in 1956, 1958 and 1968 until the communist parties were dissolved. However, some of them complied with Nasser’s policy and took positions in the state, while others some retired from political work.
The study brought the era of Nasser’s rule into focus as fertile for the development of international relations after the success of the July 52 Revolution, and turning into a republican state, not the monarchy, and what was followed of the reduction of Western influence, the beginning of the real independence of the Egyptian economy and politics in the Middle East and the whole world. It dealt with the beginning of Egyptian-Soviet relations and common interests, as the Soviet Union aspired to an actual presence in the Middle East and worked to weaken the Western presence. There were also political, cultural, economic and military goals. The Egyptian-Soviet relations was evident in the Czechoslovakian arms deal in 1955, that was the strongest challenge to the West. In addition, the Soviet Union supported the decision of nationalization in June 1956, denouncing the tripartite aggression against Egypt and issue of financing the High Dam in 1960, after the International Monetary Fund refused the financing.
The study indicated that there was a period of disagreement between Egypt and the Soviet Union due to the arrest of the communists, after which there was a convergence of ideas and viewpoints in President Nasser’s fight against the West’s control of Egypt and the fight against the Western presence in the Middle East. Hence, the Soviet Union began to look at Nasser as a national hero, and awarded him the highest medal of honor in the Soviet Union, that began to set aside the cause of the communists inside Egypt as long as the goals and interests met between both countries became closer. President Nasser’s adoption of socialist thought was one of the reasons that converged with the Soviet Union and strengthened his influence in the Middle East and Arab countries, so he was considered an ally of the Soviet Union.
Both countries made use of the strategic characteristics of the Middle East region for the benefit of the national interests of each of them to varying degrees. The period under study witnessed a relentless pursuit by both countries to obtain the largest possible return from the strategic characteristics of the Middle East.
The most important goals of the American strategy in the Middle East are to reduce the Soviet influence and avoid confrontation with it, protect the security and safety of Israel, establish a series of alliances and blocs to protect American and Western interests, obtain oil and achieve other economic interests, and finally achieve stability in the region according to the American pattern.
As for the objectives of the Soviet strategy in the Middle East, they include confronting the increasing US military presence in the region, establishing Marxist regimes, supporting the forces of national liberation, and bringing about social or political changes in the countries of the Middle East. Given the objectives of both strategies in the Middle East, it becomes clear that they are contradicting. Hence, it was natural to find them conflicting more than convergence.
The study also clarified that the Egyptian-American relations began to deteriorate, since its support to Israel in the tripartite aggression against Egypt in 1956, and the Egyptian-American relations varied between tension and divergence more than rapprochement.
Nasser was an ambitious leader and in his book ”Philosophy of the Revolution”, Nasser told of “heroic and glorious roles which never found heroes to perform them” and outlined his aspiration to be the leader of the 55 million Arabs, then of the 224 million Africans, then of the 420 million followers of Islam. Although in 1958 Syria and Egypt formed the United Arab Republic, which Nasser hoped would someday include the entire Arab world. Syria withdrew in 1961, but Egypt continued to be known as the United Arab Republic until 1971. That was as close as Nasser ever came to realizing his tripartite dream.
He led a life of glorious accomplishments. For example, the Aswān High Dam, built with the help of the Soviet Union, began operating in 1968; 20th-century life was introduced into many villages; industrialization was accelerated; land reforms broke up Egypt’s large private estates; a partially successful campaign was conducted against corruption; and women were accorded more rights than they had ever had, including the right to vote. A new middle class began to occupy the political and economic positions once held in Egypt by Italians, Greeks, French, Britons, and other foreigners, whom Nasser now encouraged—sometimes not gently—to leave the country. Nasser’s outstanding accomplishment was his survival for 18 years as Egypt’s political leader, despite the strength of his opponents: communists, Muslim extremists, old political parties, rival military cliques, dispossessed landowners, supporters of Naguib, and what was left of the foreign colony.
On the negative side, Nasser made Egypt a police state, in which mail was opened, the communications media were strictly censored, the chief newspapers were nationalized, telephones were tapped, and visitors’ rooms were searched. Political democracy in the Western sense was nonexistent. One-party candidates for office were handpicked by Nasser and his close associates. Political enemies were herded into concentration camps in the desert. Life was little changed for most fellahin. The birth rate remained so high as to defeat attempts to increase the living standard.
Egyptian troops supported the Republican Army in Yemen’s civil war starting in 1962. But they were withdrawn in 1967 when war broke out again between Egypt and Israel in June after Nasser had requested that the United Nations remove its peacekeeping troops from the Gaza Strip and Sharm al-Shaykh and then closed the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping. The conflict came to be known as the Six-Day (or June) War. After the Egyptian air force was destroyed on the ground and the Egyptian army was forced to retreat across the Suez, Nasser attempted to resign, but massive street demonstrations and a vote of confidence by the National Assembly induced him to remain in office. The Soviet Union immediately began replacing all the destroyed war equipment and installed surface-to-air missiles along the Suez as a cover for Egypt’s artillery emplacements. Nasser had tentatively accepted a U.S. plan leading to peace negotiations with Israel when he died, in 1970, from a heart attack.