The Ghosts of Yalta
Vladimir Putin had more reason than any other world leader to 'forget' the sixtieth anniversary of the Yalta Conference. In early 2005 he faced a growing international crisis whose roots could be traced back to the legacy of Yalta.
Russia ended 2004 as a big loser in international relations: its intervention in the Ukrainian presidential elections on the side of a pro-Russian candidate with a well-known criminal record and underground connections backfired. The Orange Revolution brought to power a Western-leaning and pro-democratic Ukrainian opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko. Russia was losing control over its closest neighbour, whose territory now included the Crimea and the site of the Yalta Conference. In December 2004, the Russian minister of foreign affairs, Sergei Lavrov, suggested to the American secretary of state, Colin Powell, that Ukraine was part of the Russian sphere of influence - a statement that had all the hallmarks of a Yalta-type approach to international affairs. It was intended to counter Western criticism of Russia's meddling in the Ukrainian elections and persuade the American leadership to give an increasingly authoritarian Russia a free hand in proceeding against democratic governments on the territory of the former Soviet Union. Powell rebuffed Lavrov's suggestion: the United States regarded developments in Ukraine as proof that democracy was on the march all over the world, from the Middle East to the former Soviet Union.6While the American administration rejected the Yalta-inspired principle of the division of the world into spheres of influence, politicians in Germany and Japan - the main 'losers' of the Yalta agreements - rejected not only the principles underlying the Yalta decisions but also the legitimacy of Russian territorial acquisitions approved by the Crimean conference. In October 2004 the opposition parties in the German parliament raised questions about the continuing militarization of the former East Prussia, allocated to Russia by the Big Three in February 1945 and known as the Kaliningrad oblast ever since.
They suggested calling an international conference with the participation of organizations representing Germans resettled from East Prussia to discuss the economic development of the region, to which they referred as the Konigsberg oblast. They also suggested the creation of a Lithuanian-Polish-Russian cross-border region to be called 'Prussia.' The Russian government was appalled. Stressing that Gerhard Schroeder 's government had no territorial claims against Russia, Sergei Lavrov condemned those German politicians who had raised the question of the lost territories.7 If in Germany the government decided against opening the can of worms represented by the post-Second World War European borders, in Japan there has always been a national consensus favouring the return of territories lost to Russia as a result of the Second World War. The Japanese government never recognized the loss of the southern Kurile Islands, which were 'awarded' to the Soviet Union by the Yalta Conference, and continues to insist on the return of what it calls the 'northern territories.' In the spring of 2005 the Japanese parliament adopted a resolution increasing the number of islands that it wanted back from Russia. The return of those islands is regarded as a precondition for the signing of a peace treaty, the absence of which has clouded Russo-Japanese political, cultural, and economic relations ever since the end of the Second World War.8In early 2005 Russia's neighbours to the west, the Balts and Poles, attacked the Russian government for its failure to apologize for Stalin's occupation of Eastern Europe, which had been sanctioned by the decisions of the Yalta Conference. The attacks came in response to Russia's decision to invite world leaders to Moscow to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the victory over fascist Germany in May 2005. Cashing in on the heroism and sacrifice of the Soviet peoples in the Second World War, the Russian government was hoping to carry out a publicrelations coup and improve its international image, which was suffering from growing authoritarian tendencies, the persecution of independent-minded business tycoons such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and the continuing war in Chechnia. The failure of Russian policy in Ukraine added urgency to the government's resolve to appear in the international arena wearing the mantle of principal victor over fascism and saviour of Europe from Nazi rule. VE Day, however, brought not only liberation from fascism but also the Soviet occupation of Eastern and Central Europe, which lasted in one form or another for more than forty years. The leaders of the 'captive' nations were now determined to remind the world of that episode and, in the process, to encourage Russia to face its Stalinist past and acknowledge the atrocities committed in Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union and its communist allies.