Post-war world order: what role did the Yalta Conference play in history

February 4, 1945 in the Livadia Palace near Yalta, negotiations began between the heads of state - allies of the anti-Hitler coalition, which went down in history as the Yalta Conference. The leaders of the USSR, USA and Great Britain agreed on how the world would look after the final victory over Nazi Germany.

The path to Yalta

Relations between Moscow and Western countries have been strained since the Civil War. In the 1930s, the Soviet leadership tried to create an international association to counter Nazism, but did not find understanding on this issue from the Western states. Great Britain and France concluded international treaties with Hitler and approved in 1938 in Munich his plan for the division of Czechoslovakia. But after the signing of the Soviet-German non-aggression treaty in 1939, the USSR was criticized by the West.

In 1941, after the German attack on the Soviet Union, relations between Moscow, London and Washington became warmer. However, for two years, the Allies actually ignored the requests of the Soviet leadership to open a Second Front in Europe.

Only against the backdrop of a successful Soviet offensive on the Kursk Bulge in the summer of 1943, negotiations between Britain and the United States revived on the need to land on the Atlantic coast of Europe. A fundamental decision on this issue was made at the end of 1943 at the Tehran Conference.

The Allies landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944. The Nazis tried to wage war on two fronts and even launched a successful counterattack against the Anglo-American forces in the Ardennes in December. However, the active actions of Soviet troops on the Eastern Front in January 1945 forced Hitler to transfer forces there.

“At the beginning of 1945, the prospect of the defeat of the Reich became completely obvious, and the Allies had a need to determine the rules of the game in the international arena after the war ended. A new conference was to serve this purpose, ”said military historian Yuri Knutov in an interview with RT.

• On the Kursk
• RIA News
• © Natalia Bode

According to Alexander Mikhailov, a specialist in the history of the Victory Museum, the leaders of the member countries of the Anti-Hitler coalition could not agree on a meeting place for a long time.

“Churchill offered to meet in the UK. Other venues were also considered: Alaska, Malta, Athens, Cairo, Rome. However, Joseph Stalin urgently demanded that the meeting be organized precisely in the Soviet Union so that foreign delegations could see with their own eyes what the Nazis did and what damage was caused to the citizens of the USSR. As a result, the choice was made in favor of Yalta, ”the expert explained.

Conference preparations

The American delegation was assigned the Livadia Palace. He was elected as a platform for negotiations. The Soviet delegation was to live in the Yusupov Palace, and the British in Vorontsov.

According to Alexander Mikhailov, the Crimean peninsula during the occupation was badly damaged, but in a short time everything necessary for organizing the work of the conference was found and delivered to Crimea. About 1,500 wagons arrived on the peninsula with building materials, furniture, machinery and equipment necessary to put in order the destroyed palaces and create the conditions for the conference.

Despite the fact that the front line at that time was already far from the Crimea, the most stringent security measures were introduced because of the danger of sabotage in the negotiation area.

“The protection of delegations and their places of residence was carried out by special groups of aviation and artillery cover, along the southern coast of Crimea, security functions were assigned to the ships of the Black Sea Fleet of the USSR, together with the vessels of the United States and Great Britain. The peninsula was still within the reach of the flight of German bombers, so 160 fighters were allocated by the command of the naval aviation of the Black Sea Fleet to protect them from air attacks, ”the historian continued.

As Mikhailov said, several regiments of the NKVD troops, as well as operational officers of the department, were called upon to identify spies and saboteurs to protect the palaces and the meetings of the conference. The park around the Livadia Palace was surrounded by a four-meter fence, and the movement of the conference staff was subject to special permits.

“Around each of the three palaces, two guard rings were created, to which one was added at night - it included military personnel of border units with service dogs. For the convenience of residence and work of all delegations, contact points were created in their territories with telephone operators who knew English, who could provide long-distance as well as international calls anywhere in the world, ”the expert noted.

• Livadia Palace
• RIA News

In honor of the arrival of foreign delegations to the USSR, a gala reception was held right on the airfield near the Crimean city of Saki. On the way to Yalta, special places were prepared for guests to relax. Winston Churchill took advantage of Soviet hospitality: he stayed for about an hour in Simferopol in the house where high-ranking German officers lived during the occupation and smoked a cigar there. According to historians, so the British prime minister gathered his thoughts after a long flight.

Fateful Conference

During the Yalta Conference, the Allies needed to discuss several strategic issues. It was, in particular, about the conditions for the surrender of Germany and its post-war structure. During the negotiations, the leaders of the countries - members of the Anti-Hitler coalition decided that their common goal is "the destruction of German militarism and Nazism and the creation of guarantees that Germany will never again be able to violate the peace of the whole world." To this end, the defeated country was planned to be demilitarized and divided into occupation zones.

The Allies agreed to recover reparations from Germany, half of which was to go to the USSR, which was most affected by the actions of the Nazis.

The leaders of the Anti-Hitler coalition signed a joint “Declaration on a Liberated Europe” in Yalta, which provided for the liquidation of the allied Nazi authorities in the states occupied by Germany and the establishment of democratic institutions on the basis of general elections.

“One of the key points of the Yalta Conference was the decision to create a new international organization with the broadest powers - the future UN. The principle of unanimous decision-making by the Security Council has allowed the world since then to avoid global conflicts, ”said Yuri Knutov.

According to the historian, a key role in the activities of the Security Council of five countries was then agreed upon: the USSR, the USA, Great Britain, France and China. And it was also decided to provide certain places in the UN of the Belarusian and Ukrainian SSR - the republics that were most affected by the Nazi occupation.

During the Yalta talks, Stalin agreed to the Allies for the USSR to enter the fighting in the Pacific Theater. In order to enter the war against Japan, the Soviet Union received "two to three months" from the moment of the final defeat of Germany. For this, they promised Moscow to return the Kuril Islands and South Sakhalin, annexed earlier by Japan, as well as the right to use the naval base in Port Arthur and the Sino-Eastern Railway. Mongolia, according to the Yalta agreements, became an independent state.

• Yalta Conference of Heads of Government of the USSR, USA and Great Britain
• RIA News

The most painful and long, according to Yuri Knutov, were negotiations on the separation of spheres of influence in Europe and on the "Polish question".

“The émigré government of Poland made desperate attempts to gain power elusive from it, but did not succeed. Most of Poland had already been liberated by the Red Army, and its own organs of power were being created there. Therefore, in the end, the West had to be content with the general declaration of the democratic principles of power in Warsaw, ”he said.

A lot of controversy was around the Polish borders. According to historians, the Western Allies did not like the expansion of the USSR at the expense of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. However, in the end, it was decided to draw the border along the previously proposed Entente “Curzon line” (dividing the territory on the basis of the predominance of Poles), but with a retreat of several kilometers in favor of Poland. At the same time, the USSR confirmed its consent to the voluntary transfer of Bialystok to Warsaw.

“During the negotiations, the leaders of the Anti-Hitler coalition confirmed the assignment of Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia to the zone of Soviet interests, but the transfer of Western Europe, Italy and Greece to Anglo-American control, despite the fact that powerful communist movements existed there,” Knutov said.

Western politicians were initially pleased with the results of the Yalta Conference.

“I’m sure that thanks to the agreements reached in Yalta, Europe will be more stable politically than ever before,” said US President Frankin Roosevelt in a message to Congress on March 1, 1945.

US Secretary of State Edward Stettinius in his memoirs explicitly wrote that in Yalta "the concessions of the Soviet Union to the United States and England were more than their concessions to the Soviets."

“I do not know any other government that would so firmly and consistently fulfill its obligations, sometimes even to the detriment of its own interests, like the government of Soviet Russia,” said British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during a speech in the House of Commons on February 27, 1945 of the year.

• Monument to the participants of the Yalta Conference of 1945
• RIA News
• © Artem Kreminsky

However, just a year later, on March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill, speaking at Westminster College in the city of Fulton (USA), severely criticized the system of relations that developed in Europe after the Yalta Conference, and urged the West to unite against the USSR.

And today, Western politicians prefer not to recall the assessments that their predecessors gave the USSR only a few decades ago.

“The so-called stability of the Yalta Agreements has been a constant source of injustice and fear,” said US President George W. Bush, speaking in Brussels in 2005.

Over time, the assessment of negotiations in Crimea in 1945 by American politicians became even more critical.

“The Yalta Conference was one of the most tragic moments of the 20th century: Great Britain and the USA tacitly recognized the right of the USSR to extend its sphere of influence to the entire eastern half of Europe,” said US Under Secretary of State Daniel Fried in his letter to the Los Angeles Times in 2007 .

According to Yuri Knutov, today the discussion of the post-war structure of Europe is paradoxical.

“Poland now accuses the USSR of imposing communism, occupation, and so on. But why does she forget that the situation in 1945 was fully supported at the Yalta Conference by London and Washington? ”The historian notes.

According to him, the negotiations in Yalta were one of the most crucial in the recent history of mankind.

“The Yalta Conference defined the post-war world order. Humanity lived completely according to its ideas until the end of the 1980s. And even after the bipolar world ceased to exist, the Yalta mechanisms for conducting international relations themselves remained. Nobody came up with anything better, ”Knutov summed up.