On 3 January 1991, Aryeh Levin raised the flag over the Israeli consulate in Moscow for the first time in 24 years. Mr. Levin's sojourn in a hostile Russian capital from 1988 to the presentation of his credentials in 1991 takes place against a background of earthshaking events. His four-year tenure is a struggle to establish Soviet-Israeli relations on a solid footing and to facilitate the immigration of almost half a million Russian Jews.

It is also a battle against misconceptions and narrow-mindedness on both sides. Mr. Levin's story is inextricably entwined with the process of reform and eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.

1. An intimate knowledge of Russian and Middle Eastern politics gained from years of service in military intelligence and in the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and his fluent command of Russian, make Mr. Levin an acute observer of the workings of the Soviet system and the Russian character. His memoir provides candid portraits of leading public figures, both Russian and Israeli, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, Eduard Shevardnadze, Shimon Peres, David Levy and Yitzhak Shamir.