Abstract
ALTHOUGH BY THE END OF 1943 BOTH THE BRITISH AND THE UNITED States governments had committed themselves to supporting the Soviet claim to the Baltic states at the peace table, Moscow’s long-term objective remained de jure recognition. Kremlin was anxious to handle the issue most delicately, however, probably fearing a Western rebuff in case of direct confrontation. When the British Foreign Office wondered why Moscow had not approached them on the topic, which had seemed to be so important for them in 1941–1942, the answer was that they were probably “frightened for a flat refusal.”1 This might be true, but it is also clear that Moscow’s cautious approach reflected the overarching concern of Stalin’s diplomacy, established by the time of Teheran, to carry the Alliance with Anglo-American powers into the postwar period.2
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
On this overarching aim, Vladimir O. Pechatnov, “The Big Three after World War II: New Documents on Soviet Thinking about Post War Relations with the United States and Great Britain,” Cold War International History Project, working paper no. 13 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1995); Vladislav M. Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold Warfrom Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 11–6; Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War: 1939–1953 (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2006), 190–91, 195; Eduard Mark, “Revolution by Degrees: Stalin’s National-Front Strategy for Europe, 1941–1947,” Cold War International History Project, working paper no. 31 (Washington, DC, 2001).
Juri Zhukov, Stalin: Tainy Vlasti (Moskva: Vagrius, 2005), 215–18; Serhy Yekelchyk, Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation (Oxford, 2007), 146; Tõnu Tannberg, “Moskva Institutsionaalsed ja Nomenklatuursed Kontrollimehhanismid Eestis NSVs Sõjajärgsetel Aastatel,” in Tõnu Tannberg (ed.), Eesti NSVAastatel 1940–1953: Sovetiseerimise Mehhanismid ja Tagajärjed Nõukogude Liidu ja Ida-Euroopa Arengute Kontekstis (Tartu: Eesti Ajalooarhiiv, 2007), 225–72; Indrek Jürjo, “Välisminister koha-kaasluse alusel,” Maaleht, March 1, 2001.
Ardi Siilaberg, “Nõukogude Võimu Naasmine Harjumaa Operatiivgrupi Näitel 1944. aastal” (Unpublished BA thesis, University of Tartu, 2008), 3.
John Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad: Stalin’s War with Germany, vol. 1 (London: Orion, 2000), 168.
Vojtech Mastny, Russia’s Road to Cold War; Diplomacy, Warfare, and the Politics of Communism, 1941–1945 (New York, Guildford: Columbia University Press, 1979), 180.
See the section on the political education of the conquering armies in the analysis of the Soviet theorist Vladimir K. Triandafillov in 1929, reprint: V. K. Triandafillov, The Nature of the Operations of Modern Armies (Ilford: Frank Cass, 1994); Siilaberg, “Nõukogude võimu naasmine,” 12.
Olev Liivik, Eestimaa Kommunistliku Partei Keskkomitee Aparaat 1945–1953 (Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 2006), 66. This deficiency was to some extent compensated by the use of Estonian immigrants in the USSR, who had mostly settled there in the nineteenth century, but because many of them could not speak Estonian, they were mostly regarded as aliens by the Estonian people, David Feest, Zwangskollektivierung im Baltikum: die Sowjetisierung des Estnischen Dorfes 1944–1953 (Köln: Böhlau, 2007), 87.
This explains the strong reliance on the Soviet-trained cadres and NKVD personnel, more recent books, Martin Mevius, Agents of Moscow: The Hungarian Communist Party and the Origins of Socialist Patriotism, 1941–1953 (Oxford: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 2005), 81–82; Vesselin Dimitrov, Stalin’s Cold War: Soviet Foreign Policy, Democracy and Communism in Bulgaria, 1941–48 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 147–50.
There were also Estonian units in the Red Army, Peeter Kaasik, “The 8th Estonian Rifle Corps in the Conquest of Estonia in 1944, in Courland and from summer 1945 in Estonia,” in Toomas Hiio, Meelis Maripuu and Indrek Paavle (eds.), Estonia, 1940–1945: Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity (Tallinn: Inimsusevastaste Kuritegude Uurimise Eesti Sihtasutus, 2006), 1001–18.
Mart Laar, Sinimäed 1944: II Maailmasõja Lahingud Kirde-Eestis (Tallinn: Varrak, 2008).
Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 439.
Conversation between Stalin, Molotov, Harriman, Eric Johnston, Page, Pavlov, June 26, 1944, Box 173, W. Averell Harriman papers, Library of Congress (hereafter LC). The importance of Roosevelt for the Soviet regime is stressed for example in Zubok, A Failed Empire, 11–16; Gromyko emphasized that Roosevelt “gave” the USSR the Sakhalin and the Kurile islands, Andrei Gromyko, Memoirs (London: Hutchinson, 1989), 88.
Fred L. Israel (ed.), The War Diary of Breckinridge Long; Selections from the Years 1939–1944 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966), June 13, 1944 (p. 353–55); John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 143.
Molotov’s conversation with Lange, April 24, 1944, Stalin’s conversation with Orlemanski, April 28, 1944, T. V. Volokitina (ed.), Vostochnaia Evropa v Dokumentakh Rossiiskikh Arkhivov: 1944–1953gg (Moscow, Novosibirsk: Sibirskii Khronograf, 1997), 36–42; Stalin’s and Molotov’s conversation with Orlemanski, May 4, 1944, T. V. Volokitina (ed.), Sovetskii Faktor v Vostochnoi Evrope, 1944–1953: Dokumenty: v Dvukh Tomakh. T. 1, 1944–1948 (Moskva: Rosspen, 1999), 58–62. Dennis J. Dunn, Caught between Roosevelt’s Ambassadors to Moscow (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998), 227.
George F. Kennan, Memoirs, 1925–1959 (London: Hutchinson, 1968), 221.
Walter Lippmann, “Policy without Entanglements,” December 14, 1944, New York Herald Tribune. My emphasis. Also Walter Lippmann, US Foreign Policy (London, 1944); and a biography on Lippmann, Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (London: Bodley Head, 1980).
Jan Ciechanowski, Defeat in Victory (London: Victor Gollancz, 1948); Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, 262–63.
The question was in effect decided at the Politburo on January 26, G. M. Adibekov, K. M. Andeson, L. A. Rogovaia (eds.), Politbiuro TsK RKP(b)-VKP(b): Povestki Dnia Zasedanii. 1919–1952, Katalog, v Trekh Tomakh (Moskva: Rosspen, 2001), 334; “Materialy plenuma TsK VKP(b), 27 Jan. 1944,” Istoricheskii Arkhiv, no. 1 (1992): 61–5; Molotov’s speech, Pravda, February 2, 1944. An interpretation of legal aspects, Alec Nove, “Some Aspects of Soviet Legal Theory,” Modern Law Review, vol. 12, issue 1 (January 1949): 20.
Historian Arieh J. Kochavi suggests that Stalin raised the frontier question at this time because of the Western postponement of the second front in Europe. But perhaps the Soviet had more to do with understandable fears about extra-European powers dictating Soviet policy. Arieh J. Kochavi, “Britain, the Soviet Union and the question of the Baltic States in 1943,” Journal of Baltic Studies, vol. 22, no. 2 (1991): 173–82.
On the British views on the Polish question in early 1944, Martin Kitchen, British Policy towards the Soviet Union during the Second World War (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986), 176–7.
Korneichuk had served as the vice-commissar of foreign affairs under Molotov. His connections to Poland were manifold: his wife was the famous Wanda Wasilewska, leader of future Soviet Polish government; in early 1943 his articles had started off the Soviet press campaign against the Polish government in London, Alexander J. Motyl, “The Foreign Relations of the Ukrainian SSR,” Ukrainian Studies, vol. 4, no. 1 (March 1982): 62–78.
Steven Merritt Miner, Stalin’s Holy War: Religion, Nationalism, and Alliance Politics, 1941–1945 (Chapel Hill, NC; London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 247.
Alexander Werth, Russia at War, 1941–45 (London: Barrie & Rockliff, 1964), 768.
Churchill had the difficult task of bringing to the Polish government the news about the Teheran agreement on the Curzon Line—this was met by bitter accusations from the Polish side. As a result the Poles placed their hopes on Roosevelt, which was a grave mistake, Edward Raczynski, In Allied London (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962), 187–202.
Vernon V. Aspaturian, “The Union Republics and Soviet Diplomacy: Concepts, Institutions and Practices,” The American Political Science Review, vol. 53, no. 2 (June 1959): 383–411.
Warren F. Kimball, The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 83–106; Julius W. Pratt, CordellHull, 1933–44 (New York: Cooper Square, 1964), 611.
Rothwell attributes the erratic attitude of Churchill to the phenomenon that at personal Big Three meetings all problems seemed to dissolve, Victor Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War 1941–1947 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1982), 131.
Beatrice Bishop Berle, Travis Beal Jacobs (eds.), Navigating the Rapids, 1918–1971: From the Papers of Adolf A. Berle (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), July 28, 1944.
This allows me to look more favorably at Churchill’s ideas than is the case in E. J. Hughes, “Winston Churchill and the United Nations Organisation,” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 9, no. 4. (Oct., 1974): 177–94.
Thomas M. Campbell, George C. Herring (eds.), The Diaries of Edward R. Stettinius, Jr. (New York: New Viewpoints, 1975), April 15, 1944.
David Reynolds, Summits: Six Meetings that Shaped the Twentieth Century (London: Allen Lane, 2007), 114.
Bohdan S. Kordan, Canada and the Ukrainian Question, 1939–1945: A Study in Statecraft (Montreal, London: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001), 155.
The Diaries of Edward R. Stettinius, 252; Edward R. Stettinius, Roosevelt and the Russians: the Yalta Conference (London: Jonathan Cape, 1950), 169–70; Towsend Hoopes, Douglas Brinkley, FDR and the Creation of the UN (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1997), 180–1; Stephen C. Schlesinger, Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations: A Story of Superpowers, Secret Agents, Wartime Allies and Enemies, and Their Quest for a Peaceful World (Boulder: Westview Press, 2003), 127, 137.
A contemporary critique of this compromise, N. Timasheff, “Legal Aspects of the Grant of Three Seats to Russia in the United Nations Charter,” Fordham Law Review, vol. 14, no. 2 (November 1945): 180–90.
Copyright information
© 2014 Kaarel Piirimäe
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Piirimäe, K. (2014). United to The End: The Road to the Yalta Summit, 1944–1945. In: Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Baltic Question. The World of the Roosevelts. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137442345_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137442345_9
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-49504-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-44234-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)