ABSTRACT
The victories of the Soviet Union and certain communist-led resistance movements over ‘fascism’ towards the end of the Second World War reduced the isolationism implicit in Soviet ‘socialism in one country’ by extending Soviet tutelage and communist ascendancy into Eastern Europe. By early 1945 the region had been recognized by both Britain and the United States as a legitimate Soviet ‘sphere of influence’, in return for Soviet acquiescence in a preponderance of British or American influence in areas such as Greece, Japan and the Arab world. Winston Churchill’s war memoirs describe how, during bilateral discussions between himself and Stalin in Moscow on 9 October 1944, the British war leader had scribbled some percentages on a sheet of paper: Romania Russia 90 per cent
Churchill pushed the paper over to Stalin. ‘There was a slight pause. Then he took his blue pencil and made a large tick upon it, and passed it back to us. It was all settled.’ There ensued a long silence. Finally, Churchill asked, ‘Might it not be thought rather cynical if it seemed we had disposed of these issues, so fateful to millions of people, in such an offhand manner? Let us burn the paper.’ ‘No, you keep it,’ Stalin replied (Churchill 1989:852-3). Perhaps in an attempt to allay his own sense of unease, Churchill tried to justify this extraordinary deal in a letter circulated to his ‘colleagues at home’. He explained that the percentages were ‘not intended to prescribe the numbers sitting on commissions for the different Balkan countries, but rather to express the interest and sentiment with which the British and Soviet governments approach the problems of these countries’. He even added that they could ‘in no way’ tie the hands of the United States, which had not been a party to the deal (although it seems not to have occurred to him that other European governments might be entitled to a say in the matter). Nevertheless, he acknowledged that ‘Soviet Russia has vital interests in the countries bordering the Black Sea, by one of whom, Romania, she has been most wantonly attacked…and with the other of whom, Bulgaria, she has ancient ties’. In the case of Yugoslavia, ‘the numerical symbol 50-50 is intended to be the foundation of joint action…to favour the creation of a
united Yugoslavia…and also to produce a joint and friendly policy towards Marshal Tito’. In the case of Hungary: ‘As it is the Soviet armies which are obtaining control…it would be natural that a major share of influence should rest with them’ (pp. 855-6). Hungary and most of the Balkans were thus consigned to the communist ‘sphere of influence’ in late 1944. Moreover, Stalin even refrained from assisting the Greek communists in the subsequent Greek civil war; in return he expected Britain to keep its side of the bargain by allowing Tito a free hand in Yugoslavia and leaving the Russians a free hand in Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary.
