  Recently, it has been conjectured that deconfining phase transition in
SU(N_c) pure Yang-Mills theories is continuously connected to a quantum phase
transition in softly broken N=1 super Yang-Mills on R^{1,2}*S^1. We exploit
this conjecture to study the strength of the transition and deconfining
temperature as a function of the vacuum angle theta in pure Yang-Mills. We find
that the transition temperature is a decreasing function of theta in [0, \pi),
in an excellent agreement with recent lattice simulations. We also predict that
the transition becomes stronger for the same range of theta, and comment on the
theta dependence in the large N_c limit. More lattice studies are required to
test our predictions.
