TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/111389/11138900.057

Text File | 1990-09-19 | 3KB | 60 lines

NATION, Page 35

It Rhymes with Malta


    When they met in the Soviet Crimea in February 1945 to plan the
end of World War II, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and
Joseph Stalin also set the stage for the long-running drama that
may dominate next month's meeting off Malta. In effect, if not by
intent, Roosevelt and Churchill sanctioned Soviet dominance over
Eastern Europe. Now, 44 years later, George Bush and Mikhail
Gorbachev must grapple with the disintegration of that Soviet
supremacy.

    The American, British and Soviet leaders met at Yalta at a time
when the Red Army had liberated most of Eastern Europe from
Hitler's troops and were poised to take Berlin. Although the ailing
Roosevelt knew that the U.S. could soon assault Japan with the
first atom bomb, his top military advisers doubted that its use
would be immediately decisive. An American priority at Yalta was
to ensure Japan's quick defeat by persuading Stalin to join the Far
East conflict once Germany surrendered.

    So, rather than trying to rein in Stalin and his rampaging Red
Army, Roosevelt and Churchill made what they considered minor
concessions. They did not insist that Soviet military forces be
withdrawn from Eastern Europe. Instead they settled for a vague
commitment by the three powers to promote democratic governments
and free elections in each of the liberated but Soviet-occupied
nations.

    Stalin won outright annexation of parts of eastern Poland; the
Poles were compensated with parts of easternmost Germany. In the
Far East the Soviets were secretly awarded the Japanese Kurile
Islands and the southern part of Sakhalin Island, an arrangement
disclosed after Japan's defeat.

    Stalin kept only part of the bargain. On Aug. 8, three months
after V-E day and only six days before Japan surrendered, the
Soviets finally declared war on Tokyo. At almost no cost, Stalin
not only got the Japanese islands but also stripped Manchuria of
most of its heavy industrial equipment and shipped it back to the
Soviet Union. In Eastern Europe not only did Soviet troops remain
in large numbers, but Communists brutally subverted political
parties and seized control of national police and military
organizations to ring down the Iron Curtain. At the time, the
war-weary West was in no mood to react.

    Critics assailed Yalta as a sellout. Even George Kennan, then
a top State Department official, denounced the West's refusal "to
name any limit for Russian expansion and Russian responsibilities."
But Charles Bohlen, assistant to the Secretary of State and one of
the designers of the deal, called such criticism naive. Neither
Britain nor the U.S. had any way to coerce Stalin, he argued, and
"either our pals intend to limit themselves or they don't."

    Stalin did not choose to constrain himself, despite the vow of
the three Yalta leaders to help secure "the right of all peoples
to choose the form of government under which they will live." Now
that the Soviets are loosening the fist they clenched after Yalta,
it will be up to two men in the Mediterranean to redeem the
promises the Soviets made about Eastern Europe 44 long years ago.