Yosef Govrin has based his research on foreign policy documents, diplomatic reports, official statements and commentaries, interviews, press reports, memoirs and parliamentary debates. He presents an account of the relationship between Israel and the Soviet Union during the turbulent years between 1953-1967. The work analyzes the era - one of severance, resumption and then severance again - from the months preceding Stalin's death to the weeks following the Six Day War along two parallel processes. On the one hand, commercial, cultural and tourist links were formed but there was a gradual...

Yosef Govrin has based his research on foreign policy documents, diplomatic reports, official statements and commentaries, interviews, press reports, memoirs and parliamentary debates. He presents an account of the relationship between Israel and the Soviet Union during the turbulent years between 1953-1967. The work analyzes the era - one of severance, resumption and then severance again - from the months preceding Stalin's death to the weeks following the Six Day War along two parallel processes. On the one hand, commercial, cultural and tourist links were formed but there was a gradual...

Based on the diaries and political reports of Yosef Govrin, and written during his mission as Israel's Ambassador to Romania (1985-1989), this work exposes the fact that daily diplomatic activity was aimed at deepening Israel's political dialogue with the Romanian leadership - the only one within the communist bloc not to have broken with Israel following the Six Day War (June 1967) - on ways to settle the Madrid Conference on peace in the Middle East. At the same time, this diplomatic activity enlarged the local Jewish communities (an unheard-of phenomenon in the Communist States), combating...