Russia at war 1941-1945

[ The Slovak Communist Party, allegedly riddled with "bourgeois nationalists", was also to be blamed for its half-heartedness and for its failure to carry out the instructions of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak C.P. (IVOVSS, vol. IV, p. 318).]

Both the Slovak Insurgents and the Soviet troops, fighting in incredibly difficult

conditions in the Carpathians, suffered very heavy casualties.

Significantly (and the London Government was largely to be blamed for this) only about a thousand men from Bohemia and Moravia came to join in the Slovak rising, the average unromantic Czechs preferring not to stick their necks out.

The facts available on the Slovak rising are numerous, but highly confusing, and the Russian presentation of the rôle played by the non-communist elements in Slovakia has been far from generous.

There was also much recrimination in the opposite direction, and in Slovakia, to this day, there continues to be some ill-feeling against the Red Army amongst many non-communists, whose stories about having been "let down" are not unlike those still current amongst pro-Western elements in Poland.

Chapter XI CHURCHILL'S SECOND MOSCOW VISIT

In October 1944 the Red Army was overrunning Estonia and Latvia in the north; farther south, General Cherniakhovsky's troops first set foot on German soil at the eastern tip of East Prussia; but what interested—and worried—Churchill above all were first, the Polish Problem and second, the Russian penetration of the Balkans and Central Europe—by

which he meant, in the first place, Hungary.

He was ready to write off Rumania and Bulgaria as part of the Russian sphere, but was not prepared to do so in the case of Yugoslavia, Hungary and, above all, Greece. The Kings of Greece and Yugoslavia were looking to Britain for protection against

communism and although the Russians were losing thousands of men every day in the

heavy fighting in Hungary, he felt that Hungary, like Yugoslavia, should at least be the object of an East-West compromise.

As we know from Churchill's own account the whole question of the Balkans, including Hungary, was "settled" in a few minutes between him and Stalin.

[Churchill, op. cit., vol. VI, p. 198.]

During their very first meeting on October 9, he scribbled on a half-sheet of paper his proposal for Russian or British "predominance"—Rumania: Russia 90%, the others, 10%; Greece: Britain (in accord with USA) 90%, Russia, 10%; Bulgaria: Russia, 75%, the

others, 25%; Yugoslavia and Hungary: 50-50%.

I pushed this across to Stalin... Then he took his blue pencil and made a large tick upon it, and passed it back to us... At length I said:

"Might it not be thought rather cynical if it seemed we had disposed of these issues ... in such an offhand manner? Let us burn the paper." "No, you keep it,"

said Stalin.

As Churchill himself says, even in retrospect, relations between him and Stalin were never better than they were during that October visit to Moscow. Shortly before that, he had gone out of his way to flatter the Russians by saying that they had "torn the guts" out of Hitler's war machine. The British Ambassador, Sir Archibald Clark-Kerr was eager to make the Churchill-Eden visit to Moscow an overwhelming success and something of a

personal triumph for himself.

[He was very conscious of his historic rôle as wartime Ambassador to Russia. Asked,

before leaving Moscow for Washington in 1945, what had impressed him most in Russia, he said unhesitatingly, " Stalin." Stalin had gone out of his way to be pleasant to him.]

Since the British statesmen were the guests of the Soviet Government, Clark-Kerr (at Churchill's suggestion, it is true) organised a banquet and, for the first time in his life, Stalin dined at the British Embassy. The Ambassador also exercised all his diplomatic skill and charm on the two sets of Poles. He tried to be particularly nice to Bierut and Osöbka-Morawski who had been offended by the treatment given them by Churchill and

Eden, who looked upon them as a pair of Russian "quislings" who had gone so far as to declare that the "Polish people" did not want Lwow. Clark-Kerr also hoped that he had persuaded Mikolajczyk during this Churchill-Eden visit to return to Moscow after a

flying visit to London, and to go to Poland immediately to form the new government

there. When Mikolajczyk failed to return, Clark-Kerr felt he had been badly let down.

Outwardly, an unprecedented atmosphere of cordiality surrounded the Anglo-Soviet

talks; for several minutes a thunderous ovation at the Bolshoi Theatre greeted Churchill and Stalin as they both appeared in the State Box.