Twice Egypt was defeated by Israel during this time, and in the 1960s it
interfered unsuccessfully in the civil war in Yemen. These wars exhausted the
country’s meagre resources and weakened its waning economy further. After
the Soviet Union had provided the necessary capital as well as the technical
support and qualified manpower for the construction of the Aswan High
Dam, Egypt was completely dependent economically on that superpower
for years.
Egyptian agriculture experienced its greatest change in decades through
Nasser’s socialist land reform. Feudal land ownership, usually in the form of
absenteeism, was abolished and land ownership limited to 100 feddans (42 ha)
per nuclear family.