Yalta: The Price of Peace (edition 2010)

Interesting new book, filled with thorough analysis of new archives which have been opened only recently. Details about how only so much could be done. ( )

In this readable, yet information-packed story of the Yalta conference that brought the aging Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin together in the waning days of the second world war, S. M. Plokhy mines newly available Soviet as well as British and US archives to provide insight into the differing perspectives on what was taking place. The heart of the book takes readers day by day through the conference, but Plokhy intersperses this with the background of issues being discussed -- from the progress of the war to the potential dismemberment of Germany to the fate of Poland and other eastern and central European countries to the war with Japan to the return of POWs to zones of influence and much more -- and some of the post-conference results.

For me, the most fascinating part was the portraits of the leaders and how they interacted with each other: Churchill sticking to some principled stands but grumpy because he thought Roosevelt and Stalin were ganging up on him and because he could see the power of the British empire fading; Roosevelt ailing but wanting to serve as the honest broker, "the judge," and committed to the creation of the United Nations; Stalin, turning on the charm with Churchill and Roosevelt while knowing all their foreign and military policies in advance through both his ongoing spying and his bugging of the palaces in which they and their advisers stayed, and while being the only one who could make decisions for the Soviet Union, not even Molotov, not even Beria, not even top generals, all of whom accompanied him to Yalta. I also found it fascinating to see the shifting alliances and to gain an understanding of how Stalin fundamentally didn't understand or trust democratic electoral systems and Churchill and Roosevelt fundamentally didn't understand Stalin and his total control over the USSR. I also was glad to learn a lot more about the conference that shaped a lot of the world I grew up in, including some of the "secret" agreements of the conference and the betrayal of some allies (especially Poland and China).

Plokhy explicitly aims to dispel some of the myths that have grown up around Yalta. He points out that with the success of the Red Army, there was probably little the US and UK could have done about Poland and the rest of eastern and central Europe at the conference or on the ground, but that it was later actions and reactions, particularly after Truman succeeded Roosevelt, that led to the harder edge of the cold war. He also points out that although it may have appeared that the Soviet Union got more of what it wanted than the US and the UK, the US did succeed on the issues that were most important to Roosevelt: the creation of the UN and the commitment of the Soviet Union to enter the war with Japan (it could not have been known, at the time of the conference in February 1945 that the creation of the atomic bomb would be successful and that it would end the war almost before the USSR had time to enter it).

There's a lot more to this book than I've had time to go into, including the portraits of the various advisers and assistants and the way Plokhy situates the conference in a longer history, but all in all it was an interesting and thought-provoking read.

This book is the most comprehensive that I have found about the wartime conference at Yalta. It benefits from previously unavailable material released after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, along with access to the records of the conference proceedings released by the other allies. There was no offical protocol ever produced for the conference, so comparison of these sources, along with the diaries of those presence, is essential for a reconstruction of the actual negotiations. Plokhy's story is readable and his analysis thorough and cogent. ( )