Russia for me has always been a magical name. As a young Egyptian bookworm, I read hundreds of the masterpieces of European literature (Russian, French, Italian, German, British, Spanish) all in beautiful classical Arabic in extremely cheap — yet quite elegant — Soviet editions by the Progress Publishing House, Moscow. The Soviet bookshop on Talaat Harb Street in Cairo was thence — throughout the 1960s — my second home and a shelter in which I discovered the fascinating worlds of Pushkin, Gogol, Turguenev, Lermontov, Tolstoi, Chekov, Mayakovsky, Gorky, Pasternak and many others. In addition, I was so lucky to be introduced to the arts of opera, ballet and classical music via the old Cairo Opera House (inaugurated in 1869) that was nearly an Egyptian/Soviet joint venture. I was 14 years old when the Aswan High Dam project (that was financially and technically overseen by the Soviet Union) was launched. A project that meant a lot to the sons and daughters of Egypt. When the Egyptian/Soviet and thereafter Egyptian/Russian relationships were significantly dwarfed, I was profoundly hurt by the shift from an alliance with a great nation with unique historical and cultural wealth to an alliance with Uncle Sam: an imperial superpower with a minimal heritage, history and culture.
As the Arab proverb says: you know who are your friends only in the difficult moments. It is a proverb that most of the sons and daughters of Egypt remembered when Russia was a great supporter to the Egyptian people who decided — on 30 June 2013 — to get rid of the power of darkness that the Muslim Brotherhood represented while ruling Egypt. Today, the overwhelming majority of Egyptians long for an era of intensive political, economic, military, scientific and cultural cooperation with Russia, and in parallel with China and India. This crucially required path is imperative to counterbalance malicious American plans that always aimed at ventures such as those that unfolded in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and sites of many other atrocities.
Furthermore, Egyptians admire and value the crucial role that Russia has been playing to enable Syria not to fall in the hands of ruthless and criminal radical Islamist movements that are backed by the US, the EU, Turkey and Qatar. Many Egyptians strongly feel that without the Russian support, the US would have succeeded to implement its criminal “Greater Middle East” plan — one that aims at segmenting and weakening the main Arab countries and enabling the atavistic/backward Muslim-Brothers to rule Middle Eastern Arabic speaking societies. The writer is a political analyst.
