cambridge massachusetts is the host of this one hour 13 minute event. [applause] >> thank you very much, kelly, for this wonderful and generous introduction. i would like also to thank all of you for coming today and the three institutions mentioned, the weather had center, [inaudible] , and the preferred ukrainian institute for making it possible. this event, i also want to thank my publisher not just for publishing the book but releasing it on the fourth of february because 65 years ago franklin delano roosevelt, winston spencer churchill and josef stalin walked into the ballroom of the palace to conduct the most fateful and probably one of the most secretive defence of the modern era. the picture that you see here i hope you can see what is there is very familiar and used on the covers of members books not necessarily dealing with healton but the second world war, the american foreign policy and so on and so forth. it was taken on the ninth of february, 1945. and the way that picture was used tells something about the importance of healton in today's mindset of people all over the world. the conference is very important but the way we understand this importance is different and that was one of the things that attracted me to this project the most. mcelwee mentioned some of my previous publications and i wanted to explain how in the world after writing the book on the early modern history i decided to make this huge leap into the 20th century, into the international history and how did it happen. one of the things there was something personal for me at least in my life when it comes to the yalta conference. i grew up in southern ukraine, and occasionally for vacation would go and there was this talk about this on believably it was three the cold war, the conference that also had american president's going over and of course it was out of reach for the citizens. it was an enigma yalta about which we were of least i knew very little at a time and then approximately ten years ago i started to do research on the dramatic page in the history of the ukrainian catholic church. i devoted a significant part of my time starting -- study the origins of the church and there was this irresistible urge to look at how its history and for a certain purpose of time immediately after yalta, and it was a major surprise for me that there was actually a direct connection between yalta and the end of the pre-catholic church and by stalin. stalin decided to ban the church at the time special representatives president roosevelt was visiting moscow trying to negotiate a deal on the treatment of women catholics in eastern europe and the conclusions that i came to was that it served as a signal to stall when of how one could predict what would happen as a signal to stalin that okay, they care about catholics in europe would like can do whatever i want to do within the recognition by yalta, and the church was before president roosevelt was dead, the church was liquidated so this is mine personal kind of story how i got to this topic and what i was thinking, i thought while i started the cultures in their early modern era. i have this experience written in a very close reading of the sources and documents, and maybe this quality i acquired working around a year earlier period what were also for the twentieth century international history. i thought maybe i will be the first one asking those questions. but then i realized that there is a trend in the last 20 years to ask questions about identity in terms of culture, cultural misunderstandings and interactions. so i read about this approach but still found out that no one did that were tried to do that in relation to the conference. in general, after the end of the cold war, after 1988, 99, the conference that received so much attention and public discourse and work of the scholars was completely forgotten, and there was one important stage in the conference that was completely messed. in 1991 not only the soviet union disintegrated but relatively short period of the openness of the russian archives in the soviet archives start and that lasted more or less until 1995, 1996. and tons of interest and materials were found, published. a lot of things about how the cold war was viewed during the cold war were reexamined and re-evaluated. but for whatever interest in yalta and white painted that ought to one of my colleagues they said if no one did it before probably there is a good reason why you shouldn't do that as well. [laughter] probably there is no interest in that at all. so i ignored that and embarked on that project. still, things about what new can i tell about the story that was started so much kept bothering me and after some hesitation and consideration i decided apart from my early modernist background there were two things not related to me but for related to the time in which started the project. one of them is the cold war is over, so now it is over almost for 20 years when they started to think about the project was 15 years over. and that gives us a very different perspective on what happened during the cold war, happened during the second world war or it creates an opportunity to look differently because now we know that the yalta conference was a conference last where the big three negotiated some kind of an armistice and nobody knows what will come at the end of that. there can be nuclear annihilation of that kind. today we can look at yalta differently and say okay, this is the conference that integrated will not long guest or maybe the ljungqvist in european history and to the degree in a global history as well. so, there is a paradox of yalta that started to emerge. the conference that got such bad press and has this image problem in the public discourse at the same time appears to be at the beginning. for the interest in the long period of existence. maybe by chance, or maybe there was something really interesting in that but certainly for me it was an indication that being somewhere in the year 2005, to those in six, to close of seven and looking at yalta you are getting a different perspective, you can ask different questions than my predecessors, the scholar school working before 1989. another thing was a light not only could ask different questions but could provide all so different answers partly because of the archival revolution that i just mentioned. did some archival research on my own work on the materials of the preparation of the conference but most of the soviet material that all i got were already published. they were there since the 1990's the problem was no one looked trying to compare from what we know from the western side, what we know from the american side, the british side and try to create a new picture and quality of debate and discussion. now, there was one more thing on this project that i never did before. very early on i decided i will try to write a book that addresses not only my colleagues, but a broad public, and what happened was it was may, 2005. i was watching tv and what was on tv was one of the talk shows and it was the recent george w. bush speech on the yalta conference where he compared yalta not only to the munich agreement but also to the role in traub pact. the level of discussion today seemed so pedestrian. i felt my gosh i know much more about that than you do and certainly there is a -- [laughter] all i felt okay, maybe i should write this book not only for the, for my academic colleagues and not only the purpose of the advance in my career but also may be educate and public lives. well it turns out to be a really very difficult task to write for a general public call. it was certainly a revolutionary experience for me. in the one way highlight wanted to approach that i felt okay what we have here a first of all things are happening in yalta, people are talking about roosevelt and stalin and churchill but there was another very important figure associated certainly in the cultural history, it was yalta and you look a yalta there's a limited cast and a lot of trauma so what about taking his approach and trying to merge them together and they wrote a book proposal for the publisher i didn't know who the publisher would be and i was thinking in terms of the confrontation culmination midpoint resolution and i think it sold the book but when i returned there was no happy end to yalta. there were the last two days of the conference the expectations were heightened. they believed that they actually achieved everything that could be achieved. at the end of them was at least 50 years of uninterrupted peace, supported by corporations between three main partners. but very soon it was one tent and the 11 that said you were in that very soon by march or to see already the major problems that start to occur, and what i found out was that there was written a lot about this, the problems we associated most is the question of eastern europe. it was the composition of the polish government, the composition and the political regime in romania. it was the issue of the treatment of the american prisoners by the soviet authorities and so on and so forth and these were covered. but what i found that a lot of these things were really about culture, about expectations, about value systems and misunderstanding genuine misunderstanding, not just some kind of a miscalculation. but misunderstandings on the cultural level that led to that. first of all this absolutely and reasonably high expectations of the end of the conference. and then of course a major disappointment. so there is a misreading of each of the slides that happens with their you look at what fdr thinks about the people around them or what stalin does and people around him or what churchill deals at that time and especially the was a major difference what he writes or what people feel he writes in his memoir. that was something that made the project itself really interesting and rewarding to me. but all i will try to do now i already been neglected my screen and skipped probably four or five or six slides i wanted to show you so i will go through without commenting on them but then i want actually to block you through the major things chronologically and otherwise that are characters that are discussed. so if you could close your eyes for just three seconds and then opened them and i will tell you so. [laughter] okay and we can start our story may be here. first of all, i hope to can see what is there. first of all, the question of why yalta? well, one of the important things in this place was that in february of 1945 the deal is basically buying american president who is very sick and who nevertheless undertakes this major journey bringing him first by the ship to yalta and then he flies for six, seven hours to yalta. who knows, the chances were quite good that he wouldn't arias' even without possible german attack or just for the reasons of his health. so she is doing that first ball because he believes in what he is doing. there is this vision of the world that he presented in his last inaugural address but there is also another reason why he does that and he travels all the way to stalin because stalin holds all of the trump cards in the game unfolding now in europe and there is basically this huge travel, long travel is risk to personal life of the leaders of the free world is an indication of three's in charge, who is calling the shots into puree of 1945 when the western allies and their armies are still recovering from and the soviets across the red army come across the border and establishes the bridgeheads 40 miles striking to close, 60 kilometers away from the german capital and berlin. it was harry hopkins who convinced roosevelt he had to go all the way to the soviet territory. stalin didn't want to meet at yalta, he wanted to meet at odessa but roosevelt insisted on yalta and the reason for that isn't clear but certainly for him it made sense. yalta was visited at some point by mark twain, the 11 author commesso cultural and other wise it ran about and hopkins later wrote i knew fdr loved to travel to the places he had never been before so i don't know whether he had ever heard about odessa opportunity but yalta since the time of the war generally were in his memory and map. the palace was constructed in 1911 but then the revolution came in 1917 and was turned into a resting house for the workers and peasants and you can see here the picture of the 1920's with peasants and workers sitting and reading probably the last issue [inaudible] this picture was taken not molto come at the image it projects is close cooperation between the leaders of the free world. in reality it was not in the picture that there is no real business discussion going on. around the table doctor of fdr and the bodyguard and doctor of churchill, sarah oliver, and the british kept complaining that they said this specifically appointed to discuss the common strategy at yalta, and fdr does everything in his power to avoid any meaningful discussion. and he leaves at the end and accomplished that. his -- his hands were not tied. he could adopt whatever strategy and tactics he wanted it yalta. so this is a very interesting also psychological episode of how torturo invites roosevelt to malta. roosevelt comes but there is actually very little of what happens in terms of strategizing this is one of the pictures never used before and what you see are to basically very sick man and one of them as fdr and another is harry hopkins talking at the airport. the military base near the city and certainly hopkins who didn't make as far as i know any other picture of the conference was a major force during the negotiations. this is the first meeting between fdr and stalin, a very well known picture. while fdr believed that his personal charm would work with stalin, that he did get concessions that otherwise the other politician would get. well on a certain level he was right. whatever concessions were made that is on stalin. it is yalta that were negotiated not by churchill. and there were two things why fdr came to yalta and what he wanted from stalin both related to the good will of the soviets. one was the soviet participation in the united nations organization. without it that vision of the new world was liberal institutions that fdr was completely committed to wouldn't be realized, and the second was the issue of american lives and the soviet participation in the world of the far east. fdr had little to offer stalin in exchange and as anthony wrote we learned a lot from them and we have very little to offer. so that was certainly the case at yalta. churchill, another major figure at yalta is clearly upset here. it's possible the stalin makes a joke at his expense. for churchill yalta was a major disappointment compared to tehran. part of that was related to the fact the british didn't play as important of all evil in the effort as the plate during team on. on the western front it was the americans who were doing most of the lifting and what you see at yalta is for the first time an image emerges of this power of the british empire and stalin was the one who certainly felt that and churchill's doctor complained about the way that stalin treated churchill during the conference. the table in the palace where most of the -- all of the panel sessions took place and most of the decisions were made. other important kinds have taken place at yalta, the meeting of the foreign secretary, and this is the picture of the foreign secretary's meeting, the largest of the organization. there was nothing left when the germans left and 1943. so all of this, the china, all the furniture was brought from moscow and the museum's cause of that was the case. this is one of the images of the conference and why i want to use it here is the people you see behind them are the three military commanders and it isn't often forgotten when we look at yalta through the prism of the cold war that yalta was in the first conference of the cold war. it wasn't even the last conference of the second world war. when these events were taking place and negotiations were going on, the war was going on. in one in europe and another was far from ending at least that is how the imagined in the far east and fdr is the one who insist on bringing the military commanders to yalta. what was there for him he wanted them to start negotiations and force the red army commanders to start meaningful negotiations regarding the war and the far east and was a difficult task. american military were trying to do that. soviets would refuse to do that same. okay but don't have a green light before the political conditions set forth by stalin are met and what you see in the document of the yalta conference is one memo after another coming from the military commanders from the admiral leahy to fdr forcing them please, raise the questions with stalin. there is no operational level of the red army commanders. another question was eastern here up. the goals were to give legitimacy for the territorial acquisitions that he got as a result of the pact. so he got legitimacy from hitler and now the situation had changed and he needed legitimacy from the west, and that was the area, that was the subject where the big three spent most of the time at yalta, not on the far east, not on the united nations or any other subject on the agenda but on poland because what was there? it was the taste of eastern general that was important for stalin whose vision was creating this block of quote on quote friendly countries along the borders of the soviet union and neither fdr or churchill could ever afford for political reasons to give poland the way to stalin. there was no solution. the agreement was the composition of the polish government would continue. there was agreement on the eastern borders of poland that was agreed that the western borders were decided and there was no solution on the composition of the polish government. so, when the common view that yalta slash terrapin part was expressed what i think about and keep thinking about look at what was happening at yalta. they spent most of their time and reached very little in terms of agreement and that continued after yalta as if it was there they decided to divide europe, these don't match, they don't work nicely together. and i couldn't scoop this side of course this is the wonderful center of this debate on the border. !s i am running out of time and will give you a little to ease of another interesting thing you can find in the book to read the person you see here next to stalin is the head of stalin's secret police. fdr traveled to yalta together with his doctor. churchill was accompanied by his daughter. they asked him to travel with his daughter and stalin didn't travel either with his daughter or with his son. the only soviet official who traveled with his son was never in she did because the to but he had a special role at yalta. he was part of the eavesdropping team who were recording the negotiations, the conversations that were taking place in the premise and outside by that time they have this position in microphones and could pick up what was happening immediately after fdr landed and he was writing this report with one person in mind that was stalin. so yalta was in part first one also because he wasn't in complete control of what was happening there and once i'm already on this page of espionage of course major controversy over yalta and results associated with altria this and he is second from the left. this is a picture taken of himself. it is an interesting story with him. now we know a lot from the soviets and i would like to thank barked to pointing yacht to some of that literature. but one conclusion that is obvious is it is 99.9% but our true hiss was spying for the soviets and during the conference. but there is also another interesting thing that comes from the soviet archives and materials published since the 1990's is he worked not only for the political branches but the military branch and it was after yalta the political branch wanted actually to establish context and connections with him and that is how we know he worked with the soviets. judging by what he was doing at yalta and he was one spearheading this attempt to stop the admission of ukraine and belarus to the united nations against stalin allows us to suggest the soviet intelligence mishandled one of the most valued assets at yalta. they wanted a different information he was in the best position to provide. last but not least this is a very interesting picture. i found it too late to be included in the book so it isn't there. you see this active agent who worked on the manhattan project and she was at yalta it is not from her memoirs and then in the fdr library found that picture of what i believe is zoya zarubina, i have no proof whatsoever, walking from the palace. i don't have proof, i didn't include that in the book partly because -- couldn't resist this urge to share that with you and point that out to you. well, i will try to wrap up my presentation with the specter and this is a photo taken on the last day of the conference, the few pictures of him smiling, the only 1i have fact we ever seen, and from what i can gather it was taken during the signing of soviet british exchange of prisoners of war. the soviets had good reasons to be happy about was accomplished there and for me the case of the prisoners of war along with other issues discussed at yalta, but this is probably the best example of the importance and significance and consequences of what the cultural misunderstanding means in international politics because for the british and the americans, once the battle is over, there is no high task and obligation than trying to save people who got into the enemy hands and get them back and that is what the west was trying to do that yalta. for this stalin soviet union there is no higher crime the into into the enemy hands and they wanted to get people in and millions of refugees from central -- central -- who ended up in central and eastern europe to bring them back. and that issue that became so important after yalta received some any positions. i have a special section dealing with the question of prisoners of war max but there is a little long but i can say. it didn't look from the western point of view they were trying to allow them to get as close to the front line to get the people to defeat them, to help them in medical terms and bring them back. and none of the major issues of differences in values systems, when both sides are thinking about the issue that would come after yalta. stalin couldn't imagine for example what democracy really meant. he was absolutely shocked when natural lost elections. he also didn't realize that when roosevelt was saying i can't do certain things because there is a context he thought those dustin negotiation ploy and he would talk about the supreme court soviet that he has to go back to moscow and report back on those things. when they discussed, stalin would say i can't do that. but the ukrainians would say about. on the other hand the western leaders misjudged stalin completely and the soviet system as such. they saw the space development in their own country and they didn't understand what the dictatorship meant. they believe stalin who was a nice man was bullied into the anti-western positions by the hard-liners, they didn't know of that time a little bit later stalin went to jail and the former head of the union was in jail so on and so forth, so these for the western leaders, for the members of their delegations and on the american side there was this believe that okay we can work with the soviets partly because the country is so devastated. they don't need us, they will need financial help otherwise and that will be the leverage stalin's loyalty of the regime was not to the people over whom they fooled but little loyalty was to maintain their power and possibly export him. the kind of system that they had further west into europe. i don't know how i'm doing time why is. it's time to wrap it up, so i will stop here, thank you for your time and attention. i'm very happy that my computer didn't die. i didn't have the independence how to put it so thanks again and you will be happy to hear the comments are and i will be happy to answer whatever questions you might have. [applause] >> at this point we will turn the discussion over to the commentators. >> i will go first. it is a great pleasure to be here and be able to comment on my colleague and friend's work. it came as a surprise. i knew that he was a historian of the early modern religion of eastern europe identities as a biographer of khrushchev ski as an occasional commentator in the 21st century development of ukraine and including particular ukrainian religion. i knew him in the history department where some people called him search and some people called him serg, but i didn't know s.m. plokhy who turns out to be an international man of history writing an extremely well-written and readable international history of the conference of yalta. i read with great pleasure because it was written and i also with great pleasure like russian specialists i don't know if he shares my opinion here frequently reed international accounts that deal with russia which are typically not written by people whose base is in russia and when frequently reads them cringing when one gets beyond the core of the matter which they are good in getting into the russian and soviet history and one of the pleasures of reading this is his mastery of russian and soviet history. here i'm using russian and an injury list we for the ukrainian historians so that when one has in this book not just an account, there is detailed in close reading of the conference itself, but one has constant digression this into the elements going on elsewhere at the time in terms of military history or the deportation of the targets but also the deep history and so forth and it is all done with great authority and confidence and it will undoubtedly be a wonderful contribution not only to the general reader but international historians. he didn't talk about joseph stalin in his remark. he mentioned i think is a really fine portrait of stalin. early on in the book he says roosevelt as the central character in the story but i of course knew he was just pandering to his american audience and that any story that deals with joseph stalin undoubtedly has him at the center of the story. this is often one of the most kringen aspects of soviet history since it is difficult for people to get outside of the evil tyrant stereotype it's not that sick dahlin wasn't a tyrant, i don't like the word evil, i will call him with kid, i have no problem with that but there's a stereotype in the way one talks about it. one element that comes through wonderfully in the book is the stalinist charming. he doesn't show that he is charming, she repeatedly quotes american british both diplomats and followers at the conference repeating the fact and it's reminded because stalin politics but he was earlier. one of his closest aides in his biography he wrote at the end of this undeservedly long life talked about how stalin before 1932 was a remarkably charming man thoughtful about his colleagues and so forth. v"@ú5t,ñ3tof the story that he the were being -- that he was acting under and one sees this with stalin the personality oriented shifted after 1932 perhaps is from this he could revive the personality when he needed. this shows interesting incrementally that goes against the tyrants feelings. stalin is also remarkably intelligent and that comes through both in the comments and in the evaluation of him as the most successful negotiator. that, too goes against the stereotypes of stalin because he was surrounded by aa and the rest which frequently typed especially by the wonderfully malicious trotsky. the scholarship confirmed was by any standards a remarkably intelligent man. so it is a recognizable stalin that i can see here and i appreciate that. a book of this type i supposed to be either revisionist or be definitive. revisionists claim to be definitive but often never are. this is contrary and reckless, it's recklessness often brings most interest. he is clearly riding in the definitive camp the vast majority of the book is a narrative. there are opinions but they are approached within the narrative but in the last 20 pages he gives his opinion on the yalta conference and they are worthy of our consideration. if i can summarize, and i don't know if he will think this is to blunt he says that yalta was the way he was because it had to be done by and large. i agree with him. i don't typically agree with this type of argument because i think historians have a strong hindsight by yes, a strong tendency to rewrite history and we underestimate randomness as a fact of human history. it's almost an occupational advice for all we talked about in a contingency but a conference of this sort of the least likely place to find contingency and most likely place to find what stalin called a correlation of forces is wasn't a stand-alone but was a part of the process from the ron forward to potsdam. it was as he pointed out wartime conference and the war was a huge influence on this. she comes from the former soviet union. he grew up with billions of veterans not in their generation but he knew them and the older generation of the veterans of the war to a while american historians are increasingly more careful and aware of the fact of was the red army that defeated hitler i think when one gets into the popular discourse it becomes difficult for americans who view it as a good war to write about yalta soberly. someone coming from the east european perspective by which it cannot be considered a good war, necessary because it was false, a bad war that did better in did than the alternative but to win ukraine with lithuania is going to become a good war. allowed for a more sober yalta. he points out the allies did reasonably well. roosevelt wanted the u.n. and he wanted soviet participation in the war with japan and he got both of them. churchill had less power so he got less of what he wanted but he got recognized. these were things stalin didn't want to do what he was sent -- he didn't get poland, what he wanted in poland was stalin's priority and he was able to do the correlation of the forces to get that savitt is a sober conclusion but judicious. i think that your man is in many ways the most interesting contingency that comes out of it. that is something stalin certainly didn't need to get something i think americans are not particularly fond of and one couldn't imagine coming out of the multipolar world. it's the one element of the conference that fits into the liberal internationalist or public territorial from work. when he gets to the end talking about misunderstanding generally stalin comes through as the dominant figure in the negotiating negotiator and one at that is most formidable but he doesn't leave it at that and i was glad he pointed out that stalin's misunderstandings of the allies have consequences. i would also say stalin's limitations as a strategic thinker had considerable consequences. it is striking in 2010 with the concerns we have now to get back into the conference and realize how incredibly territorial the questions were and often petty. poland wasn't petty and the german wasn't pretty. certain points ridding it i thought we took a global conference dealing with the japanese, chinese, iran, turkey, germany, yugoslavia, greece, then i thought what is this, the perimeter of the soviet union and stalin's years of influence on which he is nitpicking to be what comes through is an accurate account come bargaining strategy to push to the limit and stop and stalin knew when to step back. he went over the top and we have even seen that in the documentation on korea he was willing to develop and search when mao didn't come in. but he viewed the world narrowly. there is no third world principally in his vision. it was khrushchev who picked that up to the was no appreciation of the liberal internationalism. i will use that term and you can put a more negative spin on it if you wish to but i'm not going to. it's difficult to imagine the european community and the union, nato commit u.s. troops in europe, the u.s.-japanese security organization, the marshall plan, the world bank and the functioning at all of those attributes of liberal internationalist world we know emerging without solid's in transcendence and it occurred to me in that way one could argue the liberal internationalism thrived best in the bipolar environment and that it was roosevelt who realized the territorial issues were trivial who pushed for the when he needed and the war with japan team needed and that helped set up the organizations that ultimately prevailed in the cold war worked to his strategic limited vision so i will reach rall -- with doblmeier earlier comments. >> first of thinking for a much for inviting me to comment. i read the full manuscript it was probably about a year or a year and a half ago and then looked at the book as well for today's session and let me say when i approached the manuscript i approach it with great trepidation because i knew that he was a medieval historian and being an expert on the cold for myself, i was worried that it would be like me writing about medieval history. it wouldn't be a book i would want to read or anyone else would, but to my relief i found that it was not only as mentioned a very readable book but also it reflected great mastery of the subject. let me comment on them on a few aspects. volume going to focus on why did he write about yalta as opposed to see the boston conference what i would argue is a more important conference. part of the reason is that, and again, he can speak for himself. i am not talking about his motivations per say but in other words why is this a topic even worth writing about? why would a major commercial publisher agreed to publish a book about this? when the cold war ended at the end of the 1980's, i remember books published with titles like overcoming yalta, beyond yalta. even before that there were books published with that title, overcoming yalta with the implication that there could be a better arrangement devised for eastern europe and even though scholars have long known even well before the cold war ended because there were a lot of materials at least in the 1970's and the 1980's from the american british or even earlier the american and british side plus an official soviet record which is now available in the full addition even though what was available before was pretty revealing. so it has long been known that in fact the feet of eastern europe wasn't really decided that this conference. it was discussed extensively particularly with regard to poland as he mentioned, but this isn't what decided the fate of eastern europe. what decided the fate of eastern europe were facts on the ground that is the soviet army occupied most of eastern europe by the time of this conference and it was clear already before this conference that when stalin was pushed or when stalin pushed hard enough that ultimately the western governments would back down. so she mentions toward the beginning and talking about yalta stalin was prepared to do what would take to ensure his control over poland and western diplomats see whether hard or soft would do little to change that. i think that is entirely correct and part of the reason that there wasn't agreement at yalta but also part of the reason yalta didn't really have any bearing on in eastern europe despite the stigma that later became attached to a very promptly even by the late 40's people were already referring to yalta. now that was in part because roosevelt was at this conference, he wasn't at potsdam. and so some of it was motivated by people who wanted to attack roosevelt's brauts legacy but it wasn't just that. there was this sense that somehow the western governments could have taken a stronger stance at yalta and in that sense i think it does reflect a lack of having a detailed sense of what went on. now there were studies done during the cold war by various scholars particularly american scholars and british scholars who looked at the yalta conference and provided quite good accounts. since the cold war ended, they're have been -- he mentioned the conference was forgotten. it wasn't quite forgotten but certainly there hasn't been a detailed account of it. in the new excellent book above germany it is looked in the utility handling of germany at the yalta conference. but basically he also combines that with the potsdam conference. but there certainly hasn't been this kind of magisterial account of the conference that has appeared and one written by someone able to take advantage of the new available long available sources from all sides, so from that sense as terrie mengin if you want to call it a definitive book, it certainly is one that fits the description. let me talk a couple of things about eastern europe as well. here he is sitting at the context for the conference. as terry mentioned, the book is filled with sites and portraits of the major figures and sometimes even of some major if you look at the warsaw uprising in 1984 when the u.s. and british leaders wanted to fly to undertake their resupply airlift for the polish nationalist resistance and stalin blocked the use of the air fields for the purpose and in general how his own forces on the banks of the river it gave a solid indication of what his intentions in poland work. u.s. and british officials protested that but basically did nothing to read you could argue even going back earlier but particularly in 1944i think it was already clear what was going to happen with poland and much of the rest of eastern europe so by the time yalta cantelon what strikes people is the u.s. and british leaders didn't in fact cave in. they prevented stolen from doing what he wanted but yalta didn't require the stigma that acquired. .. >> it has not been known about the pressure pushing for soviet's role in the far east. known what happened in the year, it might have caused greater controversy. that aspect is brought out well in the book talking about some of the issues that even though received less discussion, still became extremely important later. versus other conferences, by the time, not only was churchill no longer on the seen, he had been voted out of office, but also roosevelt had died in april. yalta -- i'm sorry it occurred in late july in the very beginning of august 1945. you can already begin to see some the consequences of those facts on the ground reflected there. now by the time, the war in europe was over. that's why germany beginning to lose large calculations. there wasn't such a resolution until 1990. looking at, there were decisions made there, they were controversial, they might be in retrospect, especially regarding the mass expulsion of millions of people, primarily europeans but also hungarians. but became in the case of soviet union and poland, bloody mass exchanges of pohls and ukrainians. so in some ways, looking at it particularly in some direct consequent thes it has, probably deserves more of a stigma than yalta has. but it's certainly either in the popular assessment of it or a government assessment of it. it's not looked that way. it's the conference that the despite it's importance, i think, often gets overlooked. what is -- that's why i was encouraged to move on now that he has completed this extraordinary book at yalta. >> what they have brought up? >> sure. first of all, i want to assure that you the person with double i and polnkii and the person on the cover is the same person. the publisher actually wanted me to introduce one more form of my first name, so they thought that people don't know what to do with double i. so then they decided, i'll shorten it, it'll be just initials, s.m. second i wanted to take terry and mark for this wonderful comments and i also wanted to send the first of all for looking at manuscript for reading and providing commentary on that. when i found out we will be my commentators, today, i was basically in trepidation. i started to recall whether i introduced into the final manuscripts those comments that they made or not. one thing about what terrorist said, this is about yalta, what happened at yalta happened because it had to happen to a degree, yes. what i tried -- the way how i tried to do it was this kind of subtlism. i was trying to discuss possible alternatives, it's the one that i came up with worse than what would happen at yalta. if one were to take the fears of stalin, as the kind of indication, that would be separate risk to nazi germany, or in france. this is something that not only moral terms, impossible, but that kind of policy could be considered dead end to western politicians. one more commentary got something that marks that. this is about yalta get thing a bad name. the result that i got was that exactly this extremely high inflated expectations at yalta. we immediately after yalta. they were one the big reasons why then that kind of disappointment coming after that. as they were when it comes to yalta. fdr, that was his last conference. of course, that made that a major issue in the internal political debate between the democrat and republican in united states. what is the point to attack when truman probably would not be reelected anyway. if you attack fdr, you attack not only the entire pool si, but also in terms of the of the policy in the united states. last but not least, but yalta? one the reasons is that the position, my position here at harvard is professor of ukrainian history. what i was trying to do with this book also was my hidden agenda to a degree. something that had major impact on what happened to ukraine after the war. ukraine turned out to be one the major victims of the war. one the major beneficiaries of the settlement after the war. we have to look at it from a number of sides. i don't think including yalta into history, this is a limit, i'll think about including israeli. i don't know how i'm going to accomplish that. thanks again. thank you very much for your comments. [applause] >> hopefully at this point, there is time remaining. he asked to yield questions on everything from stalin's charm to the implications of yalta. the floor is open to those of you who would like to ask questions. if you don'tind, just introduce yourself to the group. doctor? >> okay. i'm from the russian center. one the paragraphed -- paragraphs that you showed showed two german officers discussing. i don't know what that referred to. something else. but that's a larger question. you said this was all a question of cultural misunderstanding. well, i wonder -- yeah, that one. and was it really a cultural misunderstanding of what it simply an appalling ignorance of history and geography. churchill certainly, if not roosevelt on his staff should have remembered 1815. the congress inaugurated a first call much longer than the one we know 1945. they would have known that in 1815, alexander the first wanted the hall. which precipitated a role with the questions endears treians. they did not even know that there were two nice rivers in the west and eastern and the russians were talking about the western and the british and america was talking about the eastern one. stalin was basically, they did not even know if they had come from later that the it's not churchill who invented the phrase that is iron curtain had descend on eastern europe. it was first used by the french ambassador in 1807 who used the phrase probably in 1815. basically, to me, it was an extremely conservative traditionally minded russian statesman. and at first, they went to berlin. and talking about this at the first made it to paris. all of these small territorial claims that -- beyond the very specific -- it was nothing. your sentiment was viewed by many people in the british foreign office and in the u.s. state department who complained to their bosses refused to read the briefs that they provided for them. and the brief book in particular. so from that point of view, they are really knowledge of history was to a degree, limited. and stalin was the only one who was thinking in those historical terms. and it was at yalta@ú@ú,ñpt,ñ3t so he should talk about how wonderful german was when germany was when it was divided into 70 states when he has a young man visited that country. when there is a discussion about the straits and control over the straits, he says, well, we have this wonderful border which is not protected and that kind of borders would exist in other places as well. so, yes, their knowledge of history wasn't unlimited. >> what's the picture? >> this is a picture -- this is the -- basically immediately after it had been dropped. it is the fall of 1939, the soviet and german commanders are trying to figure out who's the map that they got, where is the limitation line between the soviet and german troops. so they divided poland. >> i had a problem with the comment that staled linn was very intelligent. if we take the premise that violence is stupid, then the man who murdered so many people -- i have a question. was that a measure of his intelligence or was that a measure of his deviousness and his hunger for power and only hunger for power. i just can't imagine an intelligent person would do what he did in the 20th century. >> uh-huh. well, i share your -- i'm trying to find some words. okay. this is -- i like this picture very much. and maybe i read into it too much. but it tells me the story of what really stalin was. it's yalta, this is the person who had no higher pleasure than to make fun of his subboard nans. this is certainly the person that from my perfective has certain deviations when it comes to normal. and certainly, it should be started from psychiatric point of the perspective as well. with all of that, if ridden documents and written the conference from yalta, it's very difficult to deny the fact that this is -- was the most well prepared -- the most caring, negotiator that existed at yalta. and he got very often what he wanted. not only because his troops were on the ground in eastern europe, but also because of the kind of strategy that he had chosen and he how he played one russian leader against another. later in his memoirs wrote that if he would be going into negotiations, stalin would be number one on his list. so again, it is extremely and extremely difficult task to try to research stalin to understand stalin, and then it's even more difficult to speak and write about him. >> very quickly, they as well. i wish it were the case that intelligence were with linked with with virtue. but the question is what your values are. and if -- that's why i was disagree with the premise of the question that i don't think you can say that violence is stupid. if your values allow you to engage in mass violence, as stalin's did, i think he was very skillful in doing it. i wish he hadn't been. i think he was one of the most repugnant dig -- dictators that ever lived. i think you have to ability to charm people. stalin's values were antithetical to mind. he not only lasted in office for 25 years without any seeming challenge despite destroying people around him who potentially could have tried to remove him. but, you know, he also turned the soviet union into a great power in the world. and that's what his values were. agree, i think it's a tragedy that he, in fact, was able to do all of those things. but he from his own perspective was remarkably successful at it. >> thank you. i'll turn it this point to professor predecessor in the you're -- ukrainian history. >> i have not read the book to remember the soviet union when people were condemning not everything. i have in the rest of the book. but i condemn. so i have not read your book. but i admire. [laughter] >> it's a major change. >> i have a question that i have you will develop the thoughts which you expressed in your remarks. about the view. and you said, had stalin not claimed the view for the soviet union, he did it in the name of [inaudible] perhaps the soviet union would have survived. i like him very much. i remember reading the very distinguished historian who talked about the russian policy. his present here, so he wishes to remain unanimous, i have in mind someone that spoke before me. by annexing pohl land in 1815 brought into their fire not just in minority or nationality but in fact another corp, another major nation. and that contributed and all historians agree. if stalin was such a gratis ton your. if he knew in the end having russians in warsaw was not a great idea, why did he go all of those crazy things in 1945, since we now agreed there would have been no ukraine of the kind, would there have been the solidarity in poland if they had ukrainians to fight within with. in other words, as soviet blocked in the way helps to destroy not only communism in eastern europe, but undermine the soviet union. and in on much grander scale, perhaps, stalin should have left it for the poles? >> if he wanted to keep the empire in tact? >> well, thanks for admiring the book. and thanks for really great question. maybe one day i'll write an essay on him. but -- [laughter] >> there were -- there were two things that as far as i understand went into stalin's thinking about beliefs. and one of them was the he believed that the soviet union was much more secure forever his perspective. if there are no significant parts of nationalities that also live in the soviet union left outside of the soviet borders. if he can control the entire ewe trainian population and territory, he felt it was better. then parts of it would be outside of the soviet union. he didn't know exactly what happened in eastern europe. he didn't have an exact plan. from his experiment during the interwar period, he had all of the troubles from poland to the soviet soviet union. the same thing applies to all of the other places. he also didn't want minorities to leave them on the bottom lands, smaller minorities. that was certainly the case with the ukrainians that were shipped from ukraine before the yalta conference. so the first thinking is what to do with nationalities. divide them or keep them all in one place. and another thing was that there was a personal matter. stalin -- his career as a military commander during the revolution and civil war was crushed because of belief. he sent -- he divided the troops. he sent part of the troops to the relief. others went to warsaw. what happened was the miracle of warsaw on that tour in the eyes of the rest and of course a ma josh disaster in the eyes of stalin. he never forget that lesson. i claim that in the book had also the very symbolic meaning for him. so he was trying to get back what he wasn't able to get back in the 1920. at least that's two factors. >> i actually want to ask you about fdr and you talk a lot about stalin. one question is just a question of image. this is only instruct me fairly recently before i saw the cover to your book, fairly recently, is that all of the images that these official images of the big three that we with see of yalta, fdr is always at the center. and we, you know, america takes for granted, of course, he would be in the center. given the correlation of forces and stalin's importance in the conduct of the war and given the fact that stalin was the host of the conference, why was it arranged? why did stalin agree to yield that central position? or was there another set of picture that is we don't know about for stalin is central? >>that's the first question. the other question about fdr, i personally think other historians as well find him to be one of the most elusive presidents in american history. which is rather puzzling. he was the one who stayed the longest. we should have a lot of material to understand him. i find him extremely elusive, and the more i read about the aspect of his career, the more elusive he becomes. i wonder if you have a sense, you know, when i teach this in my u.s. and the world course that i teach this yalta and generally the discussions towards this peace a and world war ii, i use the quote from stalin which i can't remember if you included in the book or not about algebra and arithmetic. and it's about, you know, for stalin what was important was arithmetic, what territories, what forces. he says, well, let these other guys have the algebra. and it's clear on the other hand that for fdr, it seems clear at least to me after reading the book, for fdr, algebra was much more important. to what extent have you within able to reconstruct how fdr saw the post war order of operating. what was his vision? what did he imagine that you can tell was going to happen? world order in five, ten, 20 years after yalta? >> thanks for excellent questions. regarding fdr's position in the center, what you see at yalta is continuation of the of the yalta happened, that was also one the indication of how stalin preferred to play his game. hemented to be basically very generous host. but didn't want to be at the center of it. at the last day of yalta, there is discussion takes place who -- in what order they both sign the document. and stalin's escorting fdr. that was happening during tehran, because he needed second front and fdr was promising that churchill was really very immediately jumps in and says if he uses latin alphabet i am the first. stalin says okay, please be my guest. think will have an aggressive, and stalin forced you to sign this and that. i will be happy to sign in the third. so more important issue than -- but it is reflected in these pictures. is that fdr both at tehran and yalta is a permanent chair of all of the plan -- he used it occasionally. he himself was -- we know that from the diaries and letters of the daughters of fdr and churchill that he himself was very proud of that. he was saying i'm the youngest among three of them. and they put me in charge, and churchill's said well, because you are the only formal head of the state, you are the president. and there is a king and there is also moscow the formal head of the soviet uniwithin. you are the only one. so you have to preside. but on part of stalin's game that he had played, fdr being with it was absolutely. and also people who were the closest to him felt and you see that from the memoirs and from that diaries that at some point actually there was -- there was area where the closeness would stop at some point. he would close and very few people actually -- probably no one had full access to immediately around him. and apparently hopkins was the one who had basically the doctrine of churchill says he could sit for hours waiting for the right moment. this should be sad or this suggestion should be made. and we have now the modes that hopkins was writing to fdr, and then you look at the protocols and fdr makes exactly or does exactly what hopkins suggests him to do regarding his decisions. the united nations at this point was in the top of the agenda. his understanding of the united nations was really very much informed by his previous belief in the world organizeed. the image of what the united nations should be was in my understanding adjusted to what fdr would accept. and security council was this either the four or five or six major, major great powers. that was something that basically from his perspective, he believed that this would work. that shows what he believes about the rhetoric, yalta signaling the world of the spheres of influence, the wall of the balance of power that leads only to the war to the future disasters. it is notes a clear. but again from the perspective, he has no problem basically establishing or allowing to stand into establish his sphere of influence in china. and he can establish clearly american presence and american dominance there. i have this theory again, it's not proven that fdr treats the principal abilities hours of influence when it it comes to europe and asia. there are different yardstick. i can't prove that. but that's what i got from reading those documents. >> final question. >> yalta, stalin did exactly what he wanted to do and he what should do. the interesting thing is that after the team or after what the russians did in the august of 24, it would have been obviously to the west that the knowledge that poland was going to be under the soviets fear for the west or for stalin. but was there ever any possibility of a bigger deal where germany, united germany, not divided, would have been totally literalized and poland would have under some kind of military control with eternal control like finland? was that ever, in other words, denying stalin's will. that was impossible. everybody should have known this. was there ever a discussion of some alternate arrangement that might have been acceptable to stalin? >> well, one of the decisions of the yalta conference that was never realized and which is forgetten today, the yalta the three decided to petition germany many principal. where the borders will be, it wasn't clear. certainly the borders between western and eastern germany were done later. one the decisions was petition and create a number of german states outside from austria. that was one decision that was made. regarding stalin, the solution of poland basically being under the soviet umbrella, but being neutral and democratic, that was the exactly the vision that churchill and fdr had. that's what they were trying to do when they were arguing endlessly about the composition of their polish government. they wanted, for example, fdr and americans wanted the arch bishops, the man of future pope, john paul ii to be part of the government. so that exactly was division, that's what they wanted. and at this point, of course, stalin was prepared and before he agree that is some of those people included into the government. but he tells that while it doesn't really matter much what we're signing, it's their -- it's the balance of forces on the ground that will matter. and from what we know to day from the new findings in the soviet archives, in 1945 or 1946, stalin wasn't absolutely convinced that it should be the one party system in the countries of eastern europe, that there should be absolutely introduction of the communist regime and a so on and so forth. from what we know, he was telling to his communist allies or puppets, whatever in their thoses. they never said this is the only way. it just happened in the soviet union that they were the only ones. but it's not necessarily that it should happen in eastern europe as well. so it wasn't clear also in his mind what would happen. and then it basically, they developed into later years of the second half of the 40s and early 50s that proven to stalin what i believe there was no other way for him to control that part of the world, but to introduce the one party system controlled by the secret police and so on and so forth. there was no other way after persuadeing poland to stay happy within the sphere of the soviet influence. >> i'm sorry to say our time is at a close. i'm sure we could stay here for hours and hours. i'd like to thank all of you for attending the event. i thank our commentators for their insights into the work, and to congratulation