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Greece and the Yalta Declaration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Stephen G. Xydis
Stephen G. Xydis*
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

Under the secret agreement on the Balkans which Churchill and Stalin concluded in the Kremlin on October 9, 1944, the British share of responsibility in Greek affairs was defined as 90 per cent. The United States took part neither in this particular deal nor in the talks as a whole. Harriman attended them only as an observer. President Roosevelt, however, made clear to both the Prime Minister and the Generalissimo that the United States would not be bound by any decisions taken by the two, that he reserved his rights in any of the matters that might be discussed, and that America, not only militarily but also politically, had interests that were world-wide.

During the three-power diplomatic exchanges that preceded the conclusion of this arrangement, both the British and the Soviet governments became fully aware that the United States government acquiesced in it on the understanding that the agreement defined merely respective spheres of military operations in the Balkans and therefore would be of strictly wartime duration.

Type
Articles
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , February 1961 , pp. 6 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1961

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References

1 Xydis, Stephen G., “The Secret Anglo-Soviet Agreement on the Balkans of October 9, 1944,” Journal of Central European Affairs, XV, No. 3 (October, 1955), 248–71.Google Scholar

2 Churchill, Winston S., The Second World War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1953), VI, Triumph and Tragedy, 233–34.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., pp. 293, 305, 400, 420, 713.

4 Ibid., pp. 314-15.

5 Telegrams of Premier Papandreou to the King, December 16, 1944, and December 19, 1944; telegram of the Under-Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Philip S. Dragoumis, to the King, December 19, 1944. Archives of Mr. P. S. Dragoumis, Athens (Hereafter cited as “Drag. Archives.“)

6 Text of the Varkiza Agreement, Woodhouse, C. M., Apple of Discord (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1948), pp. 308–10Google Scholar. Article IX reads: “At the earliest possible date, and in any case within the current year, there shall be conducted in complete freedom, and with every care for its genuineness, a plebiscite which shall finally decide on the Constitutional question, all points being submitted to the decision of the people. Thereafter shall follow as quickly as possible elections to a Constituent Assembly for the drafting of the new Constitution of the country. The representatives of both sides agree that for the verification of the genuineness of the expression of the popular will the great Allied Powers shall be requested to send observers.“

7 Foreign Relations of the United States, The Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 1945 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1955), p. 237 (hereafter cited as The Malta and Yalta Conferences).

8 Ibid., pp. 781, 849.

9 Ibid., pp. 847, 853, and 857.

10 Department of State Bulletin, XII (March 4, 1945), 361 (hereafter cited as SDB).

11 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, Correspondence between the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the U.S.S.R. and the Presidents of the U.S.A. and the Prime Ministers of Great Britain during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1957, and New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1958), II, 202 Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Soviet Correspondence).

12 Ibid., I, 340 (letter of April 28, 1945) . This paragraph (No. 5), together with the four preceding ones of the Soviet version is not given by Churchill, though the remaining paragraphs (6-12) are virtually identical. Churchill, however, dates the letter April 29. Churchill, op. cit., VI, 494-97. It should be added that after V-E Day, on June 23, 1945, in a message to Stalin, Churchill mentioned again the fifty-fifty agreement with regard to Yugoslavia, complaining that the American and British governments had been obliged to set in motion large numbers of troops in Venezia Giulia in order to prevent Tito from attacking. Churchill, ibid., pp. 560-61. The Soviet government asserts no such Churchill letter was found in its archives. Soviet Correspondence, I, 5-6. If any political motive lies hidden behind this claim, it conceivably could lie within the realm of Soviet-Yugoslav relations. The Yugoslavs, not unnaturally, appear to have been especially sensitive to this fifty-fifty deal with regard to their country. In the last analysis, it could eventually lead to two Yugoslavias, not one. In 1957, it might be added, because of the Soviet rapprochement with Yugoslavia, the Soviet government may have been anxious to avoid any impression that the percentages agreement had been invoked even after the end of the war in Europe, and was not merely a strictly wartime arrangement.

13 Greek Government Position Paper of August 27, 1944, “Drag. Archives.

14 de Gaulle, Général, Mémoires de Guerre (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1959)Google Scholar, II, Le Salut, 1944-1946, 67-68.

15 Soviet Correspondence, I, 342. Churchill, op. cit., VI, 495-96. The latter gives April 29 as this letter's date, not April 28, as the former.

16 Soviet Correspondence, I, 347. Churchill, op. cit., VI, 499-500. The latter gives May 5 as the letter's date.

17 Rizospastis, the organ of the Communist Party of Greece reported this meeting on May 5, 1945. A penciled note in “Drag. Archives” dated May 8, 1945, refers to the substance of this conversation. On his return to Athens, Foreign Minister Sofianopoulos mentioned such a demand by Molotov. MacVeagh's telegram to Acting Secretary of State Grew of July 24, 1945, Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conference of Berlin, 1945 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1960, in page proof), II, 1046-47, Document No. 1068 (hereafter cited as The Potsdam Conference).

18 Rizospastis, February 27, 1945.

19 Ibid., March 9, 1945.

20 Ibid., March 10, 1945.

21 Ibid., April 24, 1945.

22 Ibid., May 31, 1945.

23 Ibid., June 12, 1945 (reference to an article in Belgrade's Borba). References to this Yugoslav pressure are also found in a telegram from MacVeagh to Byrnes of June 23, 1945, and in a telegram from Shantz (American chargé in Belgrade) to Grew, of June 25, 1945, The Potsdam Conference, I, 666-68, No. 454; and 668, No. 455.

24 The Potsdam Conference, I, 1010-57.

25 Rizospastis, June 26, 1945.

26 The Potsdam Conference, I, 656, No. 445, refers to this British aide-mi'moire, which, however, is not printed.

27 “Ibid., I, 651-53, No. 442; and pp. 653-54, No. 443.

28 Ibid., pp. 654-56, No. 444.

29 Ibid., pp. 656-58, No. 445.

30 The Eleventh Plenum of the Central Committee cf the Communist Party of Greece (April 5-10, 1945) had called upon EAM, the National Liberation Front, to readjust its policies, and a communiqué published on April 24, 1945, in Rizospastis, announced that this resistance group had been transformed into a purely political coalition of parties with a program similar if not identical to the one prepared by the Eleventh Plenum.

31 The Potsdam Conference, I, 658, No. 446 (Harriman to Grew, July 7, 1945).

32 Ibid., I, 659, No. 447.

33 This information was kindly provided to the author by Mr. E. Taylor Parks, Officer in Charge, Research Guidance and Review, Department of State, in a letter of March 14, 1960.

34 The Potsdam Conference, I, 660, No. 448. For paraphrased Foreign Office telegram, Ibid., 660-61.

35 Ibid., I, 662, No. 450.

36 Ibid., I, 663, No. 451. Also in Archives of the Royal Hellenic Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Athens.

37 The Potsdam Conference, II, 1046, No. 1067 (Kennan to Grew, July 24, 1945).

38 Truman, Harry S., Memoirs (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1955)Google Scholar, I, Year of Decisions, 346. The Potsdam Conference, II, 52; 643-44, No. 745.

39 Churchill, op. cit., VI, 636.

40 The Potsdam Conference, II, 1042-43, No. 1061.

41 Ibid., II, 127.

42 Ibid., II, 698-99, No. 804; 1044, No. 1064; 1061, No. 1073.

43 Ibid., II, 150-55.

44 Ibid., II, 1043-44, No. 1063.

45 Ibid., II, 166.

46 Ibid., II, 646-47, No. 748.

47 Ibid., II, 228-29.

48 Ibid., II, 1045, No. 1066 (Churchill memorandum) ; 524-25 (dropping of matter at the eleventh plenary meeting of the conference).

49 The Malta and Yalta Conferences, pp. 971-72.

50 SDB, XIII (August 26, 1945), 283.

51 413 H. C. Deb. 5s, 290-91.

52 Rizospastis, August 22, 1945.

53 The full text of this editorial was published in translation in Rizospastis on August 23, 1945. The Communist organ commented the next day: “This article had completely clarified the radical difference of views as to the meaning attached to democratic selfdetermination by the Soviet Union, on the one hand, and the other governments of the Great Allies, on the other.“

54 See second paragraph of the text of the Declaration, The Malta and Yalta Conferences, p. 972.

55 On August 24, a TASS dispatch reiterated as an expression of official views the juridical principles invoked by the Soviet government to justify its stand. Telegram of the Greek Embassy in Moscow to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Athens, Archives of the Royal Hellenic Embassy in London.

56 Reuters dispatch from London, carried by Rizospastis, August 20, 1945.

57 SDB, XIII (September 23, 1945), 429.

58 Pipinelis, Panayotis, George II (in Greek) (Athens, 1951), p. 183.Google Scholar

59 Ibid., p . 181.