Do not give tyrant an inch

If you give a tyrant an inch today, he will take a mile tomorrow. Seventy years ago, in early February 1945, the United States and Great Britain, the Western world’s leading democracies, made concessions to the Soviet Union, a Eurasian despotism, in the question of Europe’s postwar setup. In exchange for Stalin’s promise to end the war against Hitler as soon as possible, Roosevelt and Churchill opted for a compromise about the solution of the Polish and Yugoslav problems and, in broader terms, about the political organization of the entire Eastern Europe. But a deal with the devil remains a deal with the devil even if it pursues a noble goal: Stalin cheated his partners, and an “iron curtain” was soon drawn across the continent. The dreams of millions of people about a radiant future were sacrificed to the tyrant by his thoughtless partners who agreed to betray global values to achieve a local success. What lessons, if any, did the free world learn from that situation?

Saki, Crimea’s only military airfield that can receive transcontinental flights in bad weather, February 3. On the runway, the former and current Soviet people’s commissars for foreign affairs, Maksim Litvinov and Vyacheslav Molotov, and their entourage are waiting for British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin Roosevelt. There are three big marquees behind the delegation members’ backs with tables overladen with caviar, salmon, and all kinds of beverages. After a meal, the guests set out on a journey.

Saki and Yalta are connected with a 130-km road battered by the war and Soviet-style maintenance, almost a half of which dangerously serpentines through the mountains. A few days before the conference, security forces caught 12 Nazi saboteurs in the woods near Alushta, who were trying to reach the road – six months after the liberation of Crimea! To save the guests from nasty surprises, the Soviet side posted soldiers along the motorcade’s path, and, as no snow removal vehicles were found in time, the soldiers were told to trample down the snow on the road so that automobiles could run on it. To guard the conference, about 160 fighter planes, four NKVD regiments, and what had remained of the Black Sea Fleet – almost 30,000 servicemen on the whole – were mustered, and about 800 “security risks” were detained on the outskirts of Yalta.

Moscow decided to make an impression on the foreign partners at any cost and sent 1,500 railway carloads of food, drinks, furniture, and even windowpanes to Crimea, accompanied by the numerous service personnel selected in the capital’s best hotels. But all the efforts proved to be futile. The Livadia Palace, which hosted Roosevelt and the Big Three’s general conferences, was literally crawling with rats, so the overseas guests had to summon a deratization team from their flagship USS Catoctin moored in Sevastopol. The Americans also visited, if necessary, the infirmary on board this ship.

“Good for typhus and deadly lice,” Churchill said, unable to hide his irritation over the Vorontsov Palace. There was a lot of trouble with bedbugs that infested the luxurious bedrooms – they would sting the premier in the feet, and some of the guests even contrived to fall ill because of these stings. The attempts to kill the insects with DDT were of no success. But by far the most pressing problem was shortage of bathrooms – the British had an impression that Prince and Princess Vorontsov paid more attention to official duties than to washing. Sometimes up to 20 generals and admirals had to stand in the line to the only big bath and three washbasins in which there was no hot water. To crown it all, some smiling Soviet female “comrades” came into the Briton’s bathroom on the first day with gigantic brushes in hand. They intended to use these appliances in earnest – to rub the guest’s backs. Finally, even the proverbial English coolness gave way, and a luxury steamship, Franconia, was called to Sevastopol for the British delegation to spend the last three days of the visit. This especially pleased the premier. “How nice it is to get back to English food after that [Soviet] pigginess and wintertime fatty dishes,” he said.

It took a quarter of the conference’s whole time to discuss “the Polish question” – not only because the Second Polish Republic was the largest country in Central and Eastern Europe and the Polish people were the first to enter a war against the Germans and did not lay down their arms even after the state had surrendered, but also because other postwar disputes in Europe were to be settled on the basis of the Polish precedent.

A compromise was reached on three conditions. Firstly, the pro-Soviet provisional government in Warsaw was to incorporate some representatives of the London-based government in exile and local democrats. Secondly, the new government of national unity was to hold free parliamentary elections. Thirdly, the final borders of Poland were to be drawn at a future peace conference. Word has it that when Molotov told Stalin after the publication of a joint communique that these provisions in the agreement with the West might thwart Soviet plans, the Leader said: “Never mind. We will do it our way later.” It took the dictator 18 months to cheat his allies.

Only a month after the end of the Yalta Conference, on March 27, 16 Polish politicians and “underground state” leaders, who had come to Moscow for negotiations, were arrested by the NKVD, but the war was still underway and the West did not react to this. A show trial held between June 17 and 21 sentenced these oppositionists to prison terms of 4 months to 10 years, but as negotiations were underway at this very time in Moscow at Stalin’s will on the formation of a Polish national unity government, the free world continued to hope for the better. In the next year (1946) the Soviet and Polish secret services inflicted a defeat on the national armed underground, the so-called “accursed soldiers,” and held a fake referendum about the new state’s setup on June 30. The postwar Sovietization of Poland was crowned with the elections to the Constituent Sejm in January 1947, when, as a result of pressure on voters and numerous falsifications, the real opposition managed to garner a mere 10 percent of the votes and the rest were taken by communists and bogus parties.

The early-to-mid-20th century’s history showed us a lot of proof that being unprepared to defend yourself on a small scale always leads to the necessity of fighting on a large scale. Profound concern instead of concrete actions, appeasement of the aggressor, and compromises with a tyrant will never guarantee anybody peace and stability.

Preserving the outer signs of “independence” – the government, the army, and a multiparty parliamentarianism, – the USSR turned Poland into its client state and used the same pattern to deal with the other East European countries. In response to the Stalinist expansion, on March 12, 1947, the US proclaimed the Truman Doctrine aimed at “containing” the Soviet Union, but it was too late – Moscow had already established full control over a half of Europe.

Two years, a month, and a day separated the signing of an agreement with the devil and the announcement of a crusade against him (at least as “containment”). The West only managed to save Greece thanks to economic and military assistance, while the rest of East European countries turned in the course of time into the USSR’s satellites – the “socialist camp.” Those who had to pay with their blood for an attempt to withdraw from it were residents of East Germany in 1953, of Hungary in 1956, and of Czechoslovakia in 1968, while the Poles rose up against the regimes three times: in 1956, 1970, and 1981-1982. The count of the victims of Soviet domination in Europe is dozens of thousands, and nobody knows how many human destinies were broken. The compromise with Stalin cost an extremely high price, and it was not all paid by those who opted for this compromise.

The early-to-mid-20th century’s history showed us a lot of proof that being unprepared to defend yourself on a small scale always leads to the necessity of fighting on a large scale. Profound concern instead of concrete actions, appeasement of the aggressor, and compromises with a tyrant will never guarantee anybody peace and stability. From the Munich Agreement to the Yalta Conference, the Western world was learning not to deal with dictators, no matter how advantageous this (even temporary) cooperation with them might look. On September 30, 1938, Neville Chamberlain reported to the British Parliament on the results of his negotiations with Hitler: “I believe that it is peace for our time.” On March 1, 1945, after signing an agreement with Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt assured Congress: “I come from Crimea with a firm belief that we have made a start on the road to a world of peace.” History twice derided the two leaders’ self-confidence, and the uncompromising period of the Cold War seemed to have shown that the negative lesson of “reconciliation” was learned.

But only a quarter of a century after the end of a global face-off, it became clear that some conclusions need to be made twice. People have to be reminded again that an unsettled dispute at one edge of the continent may well lead to mobilization, gas mask distribution, and trench digging at the other. It must be said again that unwillingness to die for Gdansk (or Donetsk) today may make it necessity to die for Paris tomorrow. We must not forget the aphorism that the nation that chooses shame out of war and shame is bound to get a war, too.

On March 21, 1945, US Ambassador Averell Harriman wrote to Roosevelt: “We must come clearly to realize that the Soviet program is the establishment of totalitarianism, ending personal liberty and democracy as we know it.” We “owe” the current state of affairs in Crimea and the Donbas not in the least to the fact that on March 21, 2014, the day Russia finally legalized the annexation of Crimea, nobody in the West said similar words about the Russian World program. Unlearned lessons tend to emerge again. So, are we doomed again to be a study material for the West which has an inclination to deep concern and compromises with dictators?