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 increase in the number of areas of confrontation, most notably the Soviet policy in the Middle East aimed at forming a united Arab anti-western front in the face of Israel's fight for the cause of Soviet Jews fostered by the Jewish national awakening in the Soviet Union itself - which was seen by the Soviet Union as a campaign to blacken its image internationally.

Yosef Govrin was formerly Israeli ambassador to Romania (1985-89) and ambassador to Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia and to the UN in Vienna (1993-95). Since retirement in 1996 he has been a research fellow at the L. Davies Institute of International Relations at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Govrin has based his research on a comprehensive selection of foreign policy documents, diplomatic reports, official statements and commentaries, interviews, press reports, memoirs and parliamentary debates. He presents a detailed account of the fascinating relationship between Israel and the Soviet Union. His work analyses the era from the month preceding Stalin's death to the weeks following the Six Day War - one of severance, resumption and then severance again- along two parallel processes. On the one hand, commercial, cultural and tourist links were formed and there was a gradual increase in the number of exit permits granted to Jews to emigrate to Israel. On the other hand, there emerged a number of areas of confrontation, most notably the Soviet policy in the Middle East aimed at forming a united Arab anti-western front in the face of Israel's wish to entrench its security and independence with western assistance, and Israel's fight for the cause of Soviet Jews. This book won the Israel's Prime Minister's Prize in 1991 when first published in Hebrew.

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 anti-Semitic manifestations and Romania's historian's denial of the Holocaust of Jews under Romania's facist regime (1941-1944).
This book also makes public for the first time the political assessments made at the time by the author concerning the main events that lead gradually to Ceausescu's internal and external policies, to his execution and, finally, to the collapse of his regime at the end of 1989.
The inter-connection's exposed here constitute a first-hand documentary source for all those interested in getting to know this period - probably the most dramatic chapter in Romania's history in its relations with Israel, the USA, the USSR and Hungary.