Just a few days before he died, the American President warned
Stalin not to take too many liberties with Poland. But the Americans were the first to realize that renegotiating the agreements
Yalta: Almost immediately
Roosevelt regretted it
HISTORY
by Fernando Orlandi
would not be possible without risking a new war. The story then
quickly became merciless... So today, when Bush raises his voice
Putin replies that...
he controversy during the lavish
Soviet-Putin celebrations of the
sixtieth anniversary of the victory in
World War II are just the most recent in a
long series of disagreements that began even
before the ink had dried on the signatures of
the Yalta Agreement.
Less than two months after the conference
and eleven days before his death on 1 April
1945, Roosevelt, increasingly suspicious of
Soviet behaviour in Poland, wrote to Stalin:
“Any solution involving a change in the
current Warsaw government will be
unacceptable and will lead the American
people to consider the Yalta Agreement an
absolute failure”.
These words came from the same President
who seemed – at least to the members of his
delegation – particularly satisfied, and even
enthusiastic, at the end of the conference.
An enthusiasm that was relayed almost
without exception by the American press.
“Time Magazine” spoke for them all: “All
the lingering doubts over the possibility of
the three great powers being able to
cooperate in peacetime as they had during
the war were swept away forever”.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt had for some
time been in failing health, and eleven days
T
162
HISTORY
Olycom
_Putin’s celebration of the 60th anniversary of the victory
in the Second World War (photo on the left) reopened the
polemics on the Yalta Conference (in the photo below,
the main participants)
leaving them prey to the Soviet yoke.
Later, Yalta gave rise to yet other
controversies. General de Gaulle who had
hoped to attend the conference with the
great powers but was not invited, became a
critic and coined the phrase: “Europe from
the Atlantic to the Urals” which was picked
up by Gorbachev during the years of
perestroika. His long-standing rival,
François Mitterrand, after rising to the
presidency of the republic, stated the need to
“go beyond Yalta”. And Ronald Reagan also
brought up the issue, not questioning the
agreements themselves but rather the
interpretation given them by Moscow.
The content of the agreements
What exactly happened at Yalta? When
the conference was held in February 1945,
the great Russian counter-offensive,
Operation Vistula-Oder, was nearing the end
of its first month. It had been sought by the
allies who were in trouble, even though the
Contrasto_Corbis
later he was dead. Within a very short time
Central and Eastern Europe – which had
already been occupied by soldiers of the Red
Army – would be sovietized. The American
Right quickly rose up against the late
President, now guilty of the “Yalta disaster”.
Desecrating and biased books were
published, such as The Roosevelt Myth by
John T. Flynn and The Yalta Betrayal by
Felix Wittmer. In the midst of the Cold War,
a war that had become hot in the Far East –
on the Korean Peninsula – and after China
had been “lost”, Roosevelt was accused of
having cynically violated the principles of
the “Atlantic Charter” and of having
betrayed the Poles and the peoples of other
Eastern and Central European countries,
163
YALTA: ALMOST IMMEDIATELY ROOSSEVELT REGRETTED IT
worst was in fact over (despite the success
of Operation Overlord, the Rhine had not
yet been crossed). At the beginning of the
month the troops of the Red Army had
penetrated deep into territory controlled
by Nazi Germany. The strategy was quite
clear; reach Berlin and advance as far as
possible to the West, and not stop to
eliminate every pocket of resistance.
There were four main questions on the
agenda at the conference: the United
Nations Organization upon which
Roosevelt was counting for the post-war
international order; the occupation of
Germany and establishing the occupation
zones; Soviet intervention against Japan
(until then the two nations were non
belligerents); and Poland (over which the
Second World War had started, thanks to
the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; it had also
been attacked by the Soviet Union in 1939).
Several things happened at Yalta, some
even quite bizarre. To obtain Stalin’s
agreement to the future United Nations,
Moscow would have not one, as would
seem normal, but three seats: in addition to
the rightful one for the Soviet Union,
Stalin would have one each for Belarus and
Ukraine.
France obtained its own occupation zone in
Germany (following repeated entreaties by
Winston Churchill), but it was carved out
by taking territory away from the
American zone.
Stalin “agreed” to declare war against
Japan two or three months after the end of
the conflict in Europe, an intervention that
he in fact secretly wanted because it would
allow Moscow to once again exercise
influence in areas of Eastern Asia where it
had been shut out. In return he regained
the so-called pre-Russo-Japanese War
“rights” dating back to the beginning of
the century and added the Kurile Islands
(later to become a poison pill in Moscow’s
relations with Tokyo to the point that even
today relations between the two have not
been normalized). Stalin also obtained
control of Manchuria and Outer Mongolia
– both at China’s expense.
Finally Poland. After the Soviet invasion of
1939, the eastern territories of that
country were annexed to the Soviet Union.
Stalin had no intention of giving up this
conquest and thus rejected every Western
164
Moscow disregarded the
commitments made at
Yalta even before
Roosevelt died
The Soviets installed a
friendly government in
Romania and
Washington’s protests of a
violation of the
“Declaration of Liberated
Europe” were in vain
proposal regarding the borders. He would
not listen to reason and instead succeeded
in pushing Poland westward on the
geographic map of Europe. The annexed
territories would be “compensated” by
others to be acquired in the north and the
west, land from which the entire
indigenous German population would be
expelled. This expulsion became a full scale
ethnic cleansing and would constitute one
of the darkest chapters in the history of
post-war Europe. Only 54% of pre-war
Polish territory would remain to make up
the People’s Republic, and the new Poland
will be one fifth smaller than the previous
one.
On the more strictly political level, Stalin
would not accept a replacement for the
Lublin government, which was faithful to
him, but instead made “concessions”, that
allowed a few representatives of the exiled
government in London (recognized by the
other allies) to enter the Lublin
government. Finally, the “Declaration on
Liberated Europe” was signed. It provided
for the organisation of free elections and
established the right of all people to choose
the form of government under which they
wished to live.
HISTORY
Soviet hospitality at Yalta was definitely
lavish. The buildings had been renovated,
the gardens planted and the roads rebuilt.
There were logs burning in the fireplaces,
Persian carpets on the floors and museum
masterpieces hanging from the walls. The
food was sumptuous. Joan Bright, member
of the British war cabinet secretariat,
mentioned at a meal that she had never
eaten chicken à la Kiev. Within an hour she
had the dish in front of her. When Sarah
Churchill, daughter of the statesman, said
that caviar went well with lemon juice,
almost by magic a lemon tree appeared,
bending with the weight of the fruit.
Stalin’s success at the negotiating table was
_The Americans rejoice on Victory Day, at the end of the
war which had seen them involved on various fronts for
the liberation from Nazism
just as complete as the hospitality. To cite an
example, Christopher Andrew and Oleg
Gordievskii have observed that thanks to
infiltrated agents and listening devices
installed in the residences, “Stalin was
probably better informed than Churchill or
Stettinious as to the territory that Roosevelt
was willing to concede in order to obtain his
entry into the war against Japan”.
Indeed, because at Yalta Stalin enjoyed
unique access to allied information. At the
British embassy in Washington worked a
certain Donald Mclean who was in a perfect
position to report on the Anglo-American
talks prior to the conference, while in
London Guy Burgess was in the news
bureau of the Foreign Office. The most
important informer at the Department of
State was Alger Hiss; he was also a member
of the American delegation. As the second in
command at the Office for Special Political
Affairs, he had been actively involved in the
preparations for the conference. And in the
Contrasto_Corbis
Stalin’s negotiating skills
YALTA: ALMOST IMMEDIATELY ROOSSEVELT REGRETTED IT
economic talks, the Soviets were aided by
the significant support provided by Harry
Dexter White, the most important of
Moscow’s numerous agents within the
Treasury Department.
Roosevelt’s state of health must be factored
in to all of this. Alexander Cadogan,
permanent Undersecretary at the Foreign
Office, wrote to his wife in plain terms:
“Above all, the President is very confused
and insecure”.
History quickly proved merciless. Moscow
disregarded the commitments made at Yalta
even before the President died. At the
beginning of March, the Soviets installed a
friendly government in Romania – and
Washington’s protests of a violation of the
“Declaration of Liberated Europe” were in
vain. And further protests over the non
respect of the agreements on Poland also
came to nothing.
Roosevelt’s most adamant accusers claim
that he handed Central and Eastern Europe
to Moscow. In fact, Stalin grabbed what he
wanted and it was impossible to remove
him without resorting to force. As Mikhail
Geller and Aleksander Nekrich have
written, “the crux of the matter is that
Roosevelt hoped, on the one hand, to be
able to work with the Soviet Union in the
post-war world, and on the other that Stalin
would cooperate in finishing the war in the
Far East. The ‘details’ of how the European
problem would be resolved did not weigh
very heavily on the mind of the ailing
President”.
Roosevelt’s naiveté was mainly in thinking
that it would be possible to reach any kind
of agreement with Stalin on the post-war
world, and in accepting new borders and
Moscow’s domination over Eastern and
Central Europe and the Baltic States, with
the continent now divided into spheres of
influence. From this point of view, the
report of a conversation between Stalin and
leaders of the Yugoslav Communist Party in
April 1945 is instructive. “This war”, said
Stalin, “is different from all previous wars;
a country that occupies another will also
impose its own social system. Everyone
imposes his social system up to the point
where its army stops; it could not be
otherwise.”
What counted, then, were the raw facts on
the ground, not what was written in the
166
Putin himself maintained
that the Pact had already
been repudiated by a
resolution of the Congress
of the People’s Deputies
in 1989. In fact, the
resolution condemned
Stalin, but did not
recognise the occupation
of the Baltic States
“Declaration on Liberated Europe”. From
this perspective, it’s interesting to speculate
whether the Cold War began even before
the Second World War had ended.
But Putin has a hard-nosed response.
During his presidency, George W. Bush
has spoken several times about Yalta. On 15
June 2001 in Warsaw, he said that “Yalta did
not ratify a natural divide, it divided a living
civilization. The partition of Europe… was
an act of violence”. On 31 May, again in
Poland at Wawel Castle in Krakow, he
repeated that “Europe must finally overturn
the bitter legacy of Yalta and remove the
false boundaries and spheres of influence
that have divided this continent for too
long”. In Brussels on 21 February of this
year, Bush observed that “the so-called
stability of Yalta had been a constant source
of injustice and fear” and he emphasized
that the rise of “democratic movements like
Solidarity” had made it possible to part “an
iron curtain drawn by tyrants”.
But the most important speech was surely
the one given on 7 May in Riga, capital of
Latvia: “As we mark a victory of sixty years
ago, a paradox comes to mind. For much of
Germany, defeat led to freedom. For much
Grazia Neri_AFP
HISTORY
_Bush in Riga repeated that Victory Day marked the end
of fascism in Europe, but did not put an end to oppression, because it brought the iron domination of another
empire into Central and Eastern Europe
of Eastern and Central Europe, victory
brought the iron rule of another empire. V-E
Day marked the end of fascism, but it did
not bring an end to oppression. The
agreement at Yalta followed in the unjust
tradition of Munich and the MolotovRibbentrop Pact. Once again, when powerful
governments negotiated, the freedom of
small nations was somehow expendable. Yet
this attempt to sacrifice freedom for the sake
of stability left a continent divided and
unstable. The captivity of millions in Central
and Eastern Europe will be remembered as
one of the greatest wrongs of history”. And
he added: “The end of World War II raised
inevitable questions for my country: Had we
fought and sacrificed only to achieve the
permanent division of Europe into armed
camps? Or did the cause of freedom and the
rights of nations require more of us?”
Reflecting on the events of the century that
had just ended, George W. Bush gave a
drastic evaluation of the bipolar balance of
power strategy that Washington had relied
on for fifty years. According to Bush, the
division into spheres of influence was in
some ways the continuation of the
capitulation of democracies to dictators,
symbolized by Munich and the Molotov-
Ribbentrop Pact and continuing after the
war with Yalta. Accepting Soviet domination
in Eastern and Central Europe had been a
retreat by America from its mission to
defend freedom.
This is a challenge to Moscow, which is
unwilling to reconsider the wisdom of the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and to
acknowledge its responsibility, for example,
for the Katyn massacre. “Interfax” has
quoted Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov, one
of Vladimir Putin’s closest allies as saying:
“To claim that the Soviet Union occupied
the Baltic States is an absurdity that makes
absolutely no sense. You cannot occupy
something that belongs to you”. This idea
was taken up by Sergei Yastrzhemsky: “You
cannot call these events ‘occupation’”. Putin
himself in an interview on German
television maintained that the Pact had
already been repudiated by a resolution of
the Congress of the People’s Deputies in
1989, and therefore there was nothing else
to add. But the 1989 resolution only
condemned Stalin because his actions in
1939 went against “Leninist principles” and
the “interests of the Soviet people”. It did
not acknowledge the occupation of the Baltic
States and above all did not recognize their
right to independence.
Europe has also been challenged, because
encouraging democratic revolutions on
every continent with the aim of isolating or
neutralizing dictatorial, tyrannical and
totalitarian regimes seems to have become a
feature of this American administration’s
strategy, and it therefore requires a common
policy of equal stature and a direct
commitment. Europe, even though today it
is a bit short of breath, must take up this
challenge of democratic interventionism.
Issues of secret agreements, decisions made
behind people’s backs – the Poles and East
Germans…
167