Foreign News: The New Devil

Three years ago, when U.S. propagandists in the Middle East sought to distribute an Arabic translation of LIFE'S picture history of the Hungarian revolt, Arabs would not take it as a gift. Last week, on the newsstands of Cairo, the same book was a runaway bestseller. Put out by the Egyptians—without even a credit line—it sold out its first press run of 150,000 copies in a few days, was to be seen everywhere, on Cairo's streets and trams, even in the mosques.

Egypt's belated interest in the 1956 Hungarian revolution (which coincided with the Suez invasion) is no happenstance. President Gamal Abdel Nasser is currently out to make up for not having warned his people about Communism before. Cairo's controlled press now makes the Russians—instead of the Westerners —the worst of all devils. (Sample cartoon: a husband, discovering his wife in bed with a stranger, disapprovingly remarks: "You'll be drinking vodka next.") The mass-circulation Akhbar El Yom has finally got around to running Khrushchev's famed speech in the 20th Party Congress (February 1956) denouncing Stalin. So far, the Russians have not slowed up on their plans to start Nasser's Aswan High Dam for him, but they soon may if Nasser continues so embittered by Russia's support of Iraq against him.

"The enormous Soviet good will built up over three years of friendship was lost in less than three weeks," Nasser told the editor of the Indian weekly Blitz last week. "We Arab nationalists have no more allies either in the Communist or imperialist worlds now."