Russia at war 1941-1945

On the whole, Stalin left the British and, even more so, the Americans at Yalta with a rather favourable impression. Byrnes thought him "a very likeable person"; Churchill thought he had "greatly mellowed since the hard days of the war"; while he struck Stettinius as a man "with a fine sense of humour"—

At the same time one received an impression of power and ruthless-ness along with his humour... The other members of the Soviet delegation would change their minds perfectly unashamedly whenever Marshal Stalin changed his.

[Ibid., p. 107. This remark is all the more curious in the light of both Stettinius's and Harriman's "theory" that if Stalin "went back on the Yalta decisions" soon afterwards, it was under the pressure of the other members of the Politburo, who were supposed to have criticised him for having been too soft in his dealings with Churchill and Roosevelt.]

He appeared as a calm and skilful negotiator, who only showed any strong emotion when he spoke of German reparations and of the fearful devastation caused by the Germans in Russia. On the whole, he was reasonably accommodating, and did not press on his

partners demands they thought wholly unreasonable—such as the one that all the sixteen Soviet Republics be represented at UN.

[Stalin and Molotov started this gambit by explaining that, in 1944, the Soviet

Constitution had been amended so as to give all the sixteen Soviet republics the right to conduct their own foreign relations. This was an obvious device to get extra seats at UN.

I remember visiting the improvised "Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Georgian SSR" at Tbilisi in 1946. None of its officials took it in the least seriously. It consisted of only three or four rooms.]

Western observers were impressed by the fact that, throughout the Yalta Conference,

Stalin remained in the closest touch with the conduct of the war and did his work as Commander-in-Chief between midnight and 5 a.m.

As one looks closely at the Yalta records, several points stand out clearly. Stalin was all in favour of a United Nations, based on the unity of the Big Three. He was very reluctant to admit France to Germany as a fourth partner, but gave way at Churchill's insistence.

He made no secret of his contempt for France's military record or of his personal dislike of de Gaulle, whom, according to Harriman, he described as "an awkward and stubborn man." Kindness, he argued, was the only possible reason for giving France a zone in Germany. According to Stettinius, Stalin called de Gaulle "not a complicated man".

Nor did Stalin make any secret of his mental reservations about Poland. He kept on

talking about "agents of the London Government shooting Russian soldiers," and no doubt felt that, so long as Russia was needed as an Ally against Japan, he had little to fear from any Anglo-American protests about Russian policy in either Poland or the Balkans.

In the Balkans, moreover, there was a tacit understanding about splitting them into

"spheres of influence": just as Stalin "didn't give a hang about Greece", so Churchill had told King Peter of Yugoslavia that he wouldn't sacrifice a single man or a single penny to put any king back on his throne.

The protocol on Germany, and its demilitarisation and denazification, satisfied Stalin, though he thought the agreement on reparations was much too vague. Maisky had spoken of the "astronomical figures" of the damage caused by the Germans to the Soviet Union, and there was one extremely important—and closely-related —point which was raised at Yalta, but apparently dropped almost immediately: the question of a big American

reconstruction loan to the Soviet Union.

According to Stettinius's record, this question came up only incidentally when Molotov said to him that Russia expected to receive reparations in kind from Germany, and "also expressed the hope that the Soviet Union would receive long-term credits from the

United States."

[ Op. cit., p. 115.]

Stettinius recalls that Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau had sent a letter to the President shortly before Yalta advocating "a concrete plan to aid the Russians in the reconstruction period", and suggesting that "this would iron out many of the difficulties we have been having with respect to their problems and policies." But, as Stettinius says:

"The Soviet Union did not receive a loan at the close of the war. Whether such a loan would have made her a more reasonable and co-operative nation will be one of the great

'if questions of history."