ABSTRACT

Throughout 1966 and the first half of 1967, Trud was the foster child of the Soviet press. At the beginning of June, 1967, Trud joined the other press organs in printing headlines referring to the “Crisis in the Middle East.” On July 12, 1967, Aleksandr Shelepin was nominated as the Trade Union Chairman. Within a week, a tremendous change occurred in the trade union’s press organ. In spring 1970, Trud for the first time unequivocally identified itself with the Pravda faction and opposed the deepening of Soviet involvement in the UAR through the direct commitment of Soviet military men to combat. Pravda, when writing of the United Arab Republic, spoke of socialism; Trud spoke, at most, of “progressiveness” and “revolutionism.” In November 1970 a coup d’etat in Syria led to the ouster of Nur al-Din Atasi, a man considered to be a radical leftist and an avowed friend of the Soviet Union.