E. D. PYRLIN. 100 YEARS OF CONFRONTATION: GENESIS, EVOLUTION, CURRENT STATE AND PROSPECTS OF SOLVING THE PALESTINIAN PROBLEM, MOSCOW: ROSSPEN, 2001, 480 p. (1);

E. D. PYRLIN. THE HARD AND LONG ROAD TO PEACE: VZGLYAD IZ MOSKVY NA PROBLEMU MIDEASTOCHNOGO REGULIROVANIYA [A VIEW FROM MOSCOW ON THE PROBLEM OF MIDDLE EAST SETTLEMENT]. MOSCOW: ROSSPEN, 2002, 512 p. (2)

The book of the classic Soviet historiography of the Palestinian problem E. D. Pyrlin " 100 years of confrontation..."it was published a few months before his death. It was conceived by the author as " a kind of Palestinian encyclopedia "(1, p. 8) - a chronological examination of the state of the Palestinian problem and its components in the period from 1897 (the First Zionist Congress) to the last year of the XX century. "I would sincerely wish, "he wrote," that the reader - a connoisseur of Middle Eastern problems - would perceive this book as a swan song, as a definite result of my creative search" (p.9).

The book consists of five sections. The first, " The History of the Emergence and Development of the Palestinian problem (1897-1974)", describes the events from the First Zionist Congress to the international recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) at the XXIX session of the UN General Assembly.

Chapter 1 deals with the history of the Palestinian question from 1897 to the Balfour Declaration in 1917. E. D. Pirlin pays special attention to the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries - the era of the Arab Renaissance (Nahda). The author sees the reason for the proclamation of the Balfour Declaration solely in London's intention to force the United States to enter the world War in order to influence American Zionist circles in this way. In our opinion, this explanation is doubtful, since the United States announced its entry into the war on April 6, 1917, and the declaration was published on November 2. The main reasons were London's desire to restrict access to the Suez Canal, to encircle the Hejaz in a ring of territories loyal to the British crown, to get ahead of the main competitors in the Middle East (the United States, France and Germany), as well as the religious significance of the project of D. Lloyd George and A. J. Balfour, who saw the mission of Great Britain in return to the Holy Land and thereby hasten the second coming of Christ. Speaking about the emergence of Jewish settlements in Ottoman Palestine, the author simply interprets the land issue, without stopping at the ways of land acquisition by the Zionists.

Chapter 2 covers the period from the proclamation of the Balfour Declaration to the adoption of the UN General Assembly resolution on the partition of Palestine (November 29, 1947). As an absolute advantage of this section, we note the author's characterization of the personality of Muhammad al-Hajj Amin al - Husseini, giving him data on the consequences of the Great Uprising of 1936-1939 for the Arab population of Palestine ["3,074 Palestinian Arabs were killed or executed... Only in 1939, 6,000 people were imprisoned in concentration camps "(1, p.54)], as well as a report on the activities of the organization" Help for Political Prisoners " (1922-1938), which registered the departure of Soviet citizens to Palestine in those years (1, p. 56-57). The author's statement that "in July 1922, the League of Nations recognized the WSO as a Jewish Agency, which, in accordance with the provisions of the British mandate for Palestine, was entrusted with the overall management of the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine" remains unclear (1, p.42).

Chapter 3 deals with events in and around Palestine between 1947 and 1974. Describing the history of the formation of the Palestinian Resistance Movement, the author describes the Movement of Arab Nationalists, Fatah, al-Ard, al-Jihad al-Muqaddas, the PLO, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, al-Sa'iqa and other parties, organizations and movements. A significant part of the chapter is devoted to Jordanian-Palestinian relations in 1970-1971.

Chapter 4 deals with the situation of Arabs living directly in Israel and the occupied territories. The author considers this issue according to the following criteria: citizenship, education, land issue. Unfortunately, not fully disclosed ost-

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The "rural leagues" were active in the West Bank in 1981-1983 (1, pp. 146-147).

In the second section of the book ("Some international problems that have arisen and worsened as a result of the partition of Palestine"), E. D. Pirlin shows the evolution of the issue of the return of Palestinian refugees from the first UN resolutions on providing them with assistance, which was expressed in the realization of their rights to return and receive compensation, to the consideration of the fate of refugees and the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination in the future. mid-1970s. According to the author, the problem of Palestinian refugees arose before the first Palestinian war. E. D. Pirlin says that as of May 15, 1948, about 250 thousand refugees were forced to leave their places of residence as a result of the actions of Jewish extremist organizations (1, p.162). He deliberately focused his attention on "the suffering that has befallen us... Palestinian Arabs", which, in his opinion, "are in no way comparable to the difficulties that have befallen Jews - internally displaced persons from Arab countries" (1, p.160). As a result, such coverage of the Palestinian refugee issue has taken on an emotional tone.

The history of the problem of Jerusalem is considered in the book since 1889-from the establishment of the independent Sanjak of Jerusalem in the Ottoman Empire to the approval by the Knesset of the law of 1980, which declared the entire city the capital of Israel. The author dwells in detail on the status of the Holy Sites and the plan of internationalization of Jerusalem. He stresses the need for international legal guarantees of the" universal character of Jerusalem", which" must necessarily take into account the religious side of the issue, and not be reduced to ensuring free access to the city " (1, p.200).

Third section ("Making the Palestinian issue an important factor in modern international relations") it consists of three chapters. Chapter 7 covers the situation around Palestine from 1974 to the 1982 Lebanon War, and chapter 8 covers the period from 1982 to November 15, 1988, when the State of Palestine was proclaimed at the XIX extraordinary session of the National Council of Palestine.

Chapter 9 examines the state of the Palestinian problem prior to the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference and the progress of the Palestinian-Israeli dialogue since the signing of the Declaration of Principles for the Organization of Interim Self-Government (September 13, 1993). These issues are also relevant at the current stage of the conflict in the Middle East. The analysis of the secret channel of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Oslo that led to the signing of this Declaration is, in our opinion, the most significant point in this chapter. Contacts between Israel and the PLO via Oslo began in 1987, thanks to the assistance of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Norway T. Stoltenberg and his Deputy Ya. Egeland supervised contacts between Amnesty International, the Geneva headquarters of the Red Cross, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to bring the Israeli Labor Party and PLO representatives into dialogue. Secret negotiations outside the international conference on the Middle East began after the visit of Ya. Egeland's visit to Israel in September 1992 (1, pp. 326-327).

The fourth section ("Some international legal problems that have emerged as the Palestinian problem has developed") examines the establishment of a Palestinian State and the Islamic factor in the Palestinian movement. In chapter 10, the author dwells on the possible international legal consequences of the formation of a Palestinian State and the prospects for its development, and makes assumptions about the geographical and political design of the future state. For the first time, the book presents the question of the influence of the Islamic factor on the development of the Palestinian resistance movement, the relevance of which is confirmed by the constant terrorist attacks on the territory of Israel. E. D. Pirlin identifies four factors that determined the growth of the Islamic fundamentalist movement in the context of Arab-Israeli relations: 1) The Six-Day War of 1967 and the subsequent "occupation of the original Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem" (1, p. 383), as well as extremist actions of the Israelis, for example, the attempted arson of the al-Aqsa Mosque (August 21, 1969), the activities of the Kah and Gush Emunim organizations 2) the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1978-1979. 3) The 1982 Lebanon War; 4) the emergence and activities of the Hezbollah movement.

The fifth section ("Tsarist Russia, the Soviet Union, Post-Soviet Russia and the Palestinian problem") deals with some aspects of the activities of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission and the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society in the Holy Land before 1917. Describing the process-

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Despite the policy of pre-October Russia, the author does not substantiate his opinion that "Russia's intention to liberate the Holy Land from Muslim domination was a constant desire of the Russian emperors..." (1, p.400-401). Further, he schematically depicts the motives and mistakes of Stalin's diplomacy in the Middle East after 1945, describes in detail the policy of the USSR in the Palestinian issue after the XXIX session of the UN General Assembly, and rightly criticizes the country's foreign policy in the era of Mikhail Gorbachev after August 1991 for the amateurism of leaders, the lack of a clear concept of policy in the Middle East, U.S. policies, which together caused damage to Russia's state interests.

In conclusion, E. D. Pirlin describes the role of the Palestinian factor in inter-Arab relations, as well as the position of various Arab States on the Palestinian issue. In our opinion, the author somewhat idealized the widespread theory of Arab unity in Arab countries. The monograph contains theses on the " pan-Arab national movement "(1, p. 463) and "Arab nationalism" (1, p.449). Pointing out the observed "disunity of the Arab ranks" and "the ambition of individual leaders" (1, p. 451), E. D. Pirlin, however, does not detract from the integration capabilities of Arab countries and considers the problem of resolving the Palestinian issue as an integration factor: "It is the awareness of the need to solve the Palestinian problem that can be an important tool for strengthening the unity of the Arab ranks", - he writes (1, p. 451).

This monograph was the last study of the Palestinian question in Soviet historiography, so it is characterized by such features as: the dominance of the class approach in the analysis of events; unequivocal support for the "just Palestinian cause"; a view of the events from the "progressive-reactionary" point of view (1, p. 87, 227); dating the beginning of the first Palestinian war 1948 (1, p. 162, 168); assigning responsibility for the first Arab-Israeli war to the United States and Great Britain; considering the situation of the Arab minority of Israel as "second-class" people; evaluating the Camp David Agreements of 1978-1979 as "a betrayal of the Palestinian cause" (1, p. 234) the use of "newspaper cliches" and colloquial vocabulary ("political bankruptcy", "deception of world public opinion", "imperial politics", "vanguard role", "realistic line in Palestinian politics", "Humpback", "showdown", etc.). At the same time, the language and style of the book are characterized by simplicity and ease of perception.

Already after the death of E. D. Pyrlin, his book "The Long and Difficult Path to Peace..." was published, which, unfortunately, remained unfinished. We will focus only on one aspect of it, which was previously described in the monographic study "100 years of confrontation..." - the policy of the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation in relation to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Analyzing the foreign policy of the Soviet Union, the author proceeds from the fact that Soviet diplomacy always sought a "just peace", "and not another shaky truce" in the Middle East (2, p. 436).

The Soviet Union's influence on developments in the Middle East has been declining since the late 1980s, although there has been a decline in interest in Middle Eastern affairs previously, which was reflected in the lack of active opposition from Moscow to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The reasons for this were the war in Afghanistan and the "incapacity" of Leonid Brezhnev. According to E. D. Pyrlin, the non-participation of the USSR and Russia in the Middle East game in the late 1980s and early 1990s was caused by the lack of attention of the Russian ruling elite to foreign policy problems, the orientation of late Soviet (Gorbachev - Shevardnadze) and early Russian (Yeltsin-Kozyrev) foreign policy towards the United States of America, and, obviously,the lack of the most important thing is "the lack of a scientifically based, consistent in goals, reliable in methods Middle East policy" (2, p. 355).

The author also cites the collapse of the USSR, the active development of the Kremlin's relations with Israel, the lack of attention to the Palestinian issue, Moscow's actions in the UN against Iraq and Libya, the growth of the Islamic fundamentalist movement, the "strengthening of Islamic indoctrination" of the former Central Asian republics, and the growth of separatism on the outskirts of Russia as reasons that influenced Russia's relations with the change in Russian public opinion under the influence of mass media is not in favor of the development of relations between Russia and Arab countries and the Palestinian national movement (2, pp. 344-346).

The result of the USSR's foreign policy in the late 1980s-1991, according to E. D. Pyrlin, was "a noticeable deterioration in Soviet-Arab relations" and "the Soviet Union's loss of ... -

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this course, which was determined by blindly following the position of the United States" (2, p. 341).

Analyzing the state and prospects of Soviet-(Russian -) Arab relations, the author writes: "There were almost always 'negatives' in the Soviet Union's relations with Middle Eastern states, but they were not the defining moment of these relations. The development and improvement of these relations was positively influenced by the accumulated potential of our numerous proposals on the Middle East settlement issues; it was also affected by the fact that the overwhelming majority of Soviet Middle East specialists - practitioners and scientists - have always been highly professionally qualified" (2, p.449).

Let us pay attention to the apt description of the work of Middle Eastern scientists given by E. D. Pyrlin: "Unpredictability is an attractive, but at the same time alarming feature inherent in the Middle Eastern situation. Events unfolding in the Middle East sometimes cannot be calculated in advance, and too often the surprise factor confuses the cards of many experts... engaged in this region" (2, p. 336).

Analyzing the joint actions of Washington and Moscow in the Middle East, the author asks two questions: "is it possible for Russian-American cooperation in the search for a solution to the conflict situation?" and "when and for what reasons did the conditions for such cooperation arise over the past fifty years?" (2, p.418). As examples of joint actions of the USSR and the United States in the Middle East conflict, he cites: voting for UN Security Council resolution 181 / II of November 29, 1947 and for UN Security Council Resolution 242 of November 22, 1967, joint discussions and consultations on Middle East issues in 1967, co-chairing the International Conference on the Middle East (ICD) in Geneva in 1973, the Joint Soviet-American Statement on the Middle East of October 1, 1977, the Kuwait crisis of 1990-1991, and the ICSID convocation in Madrid in 1991.

Joint actions of the USSR and the United States in relation to the Arab-Israeli conflict became possible, according to E. D. Pyrlin, due to the desire of the United States to move away from "contradictions [of foreign policy] with the realities of the political situation in the region" and thus avoid "weakening American positions there." In this case, Washington listened to Moscow's opinion, based on the principle of "justice for all." After the Kuwait crisis of 1990-1991, the rapprochement between the Soviet Union and the United States testified to the weakening of Russia's position in the Middle East and to the "adjustment" of Russia to the position of the United States (2, p.431, 432).

As a new milestone, when " Russian-American cooperation... It will be built on the basis of full equality and respect for each other's opinions "(2, p. 433), one can consider the agreement between the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation I. S. Ivanov and the US Secretary of State K. V. Abramovich. Powell on "coordination of the policies of both states in the issue of Palestinian-Israeli relations" on August 15, 2001 (2, p. 430) ¹ .

E. D. Pyrlin knew the Middle East firsthand. In the book "100 Years of Confrontation..." he tells only about two of his many interesting meetings: in May 1962 with Muhammad al-Hajj Amin al - Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem since 1921 and chairman of the Supreme Muslim Council since 1922, and in 1976 with A. Atterton, at that time assistant to the Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Muslim Council. Secretary of State of the United States (1, p. 223). In his work "The Difficult and Long Road to peace..." E. D. Pyrlin recalls many professionals in his field, experts in the East: N. T. Fedorenko, who was in 1967 the permanent representative of the USSR to the UN; N. A. Mukhitdinov, in 1968-1977 the USSR Ambassador to Syria; S. A. Vinogradov (1907-1970) - the Soviet ambassador to France, then to Egypt, about whom, in particular, writes: "S. A. Vinogradov... I quickly established contacts with the country's leadership, personally with Nasser, providing Moscow with high-quality and complete information. The unexpected death of Sergei Alexandrovich in August 1970 was received with great bitterness in Egypt; it is interesting to note that the Egyptians, who were very prone to mysticism, then said in all seriousness that after his death, S. A. was killed. Vinogradov "dragged to the next world" people close to him and sincerely disposed to him - Nasser and de Gaulle, who died soon after, in the same 1970 " (2, p. 88).

Comparing both monographs with the previous works of E. D. Pyrlin, we note a certain similarity in their structure: the history of the Palestinian problem is covered in chronological order, but the historical narrative alternates with the presentation of the material according to the problem principle. In peer-reviewed books, the analysis of problems is interspersed with memories and personal assessment of the events described. The author's absolute merit was the introduction of new archival materials into scientific circulation-documents from the Foreign Policy Archive of the USSR and the Foreign Office.

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The works of E. D. Pyrlin are distinguished by the constant views of the author, who did not hide this: "At my age... it is a shame to "repaint" and renounce your own beliefs. After all, delusions also have a right to exist, especially if they are sincere and dictated by well-established political beliefs " (1, p. 10).

E. D. Pirlin, who devoted his life not only to the study of the Palestinian conflict, but also to hard work related to the Middle East, died with the hope that Israelis and Palestinians will finally find peace. "My book, the book of a person finishing his life's journey, is directed to the future, which-I am deeply convinced of this! - it can only be peaceful "(1, p. 11)." The hope for peace in the Middle East region, for replacing the long-standing Palestinian-Israeli confrontation with relations of good neighborliness and cooperation, must finally be justified " (1, p. 464). At the end of his last book, which, "being terminally ill, Evgeny Dmitrievich printed... on a typewriter with two fingers of one hand, " ² he wrote: "After all, hope dies last..."

notes

¹ It is not entirely clear what the author means. The publication of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation "Diplomatic Bulletin" (2001. N 9) does not report on the joint statement dated August 15, 2001. I. S. Ivanov's speech at a joint press conference with K. Powell on July 18, 2001 is well known: "We are concerned about the development of events in the Middle East, and we have agreed to continue to closely coordinate our efforts in the interests of a comprehensive Middle East settlement" (Diplomatic Bulletin. 2001. N 8. P. 37).

^{Primakov E. M.} 2 Preface / / Pyrlin E. D. The Long and difficult path to peace ... p. 12.

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