Historians discuss legacy of Yalta Conference at UIA event (03/13/05)

Historians discuss legacy of Yalta Conference at UIA event

by Andrew Nynka

NEW YORK - Four prominent historians came together here on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Yalta Conference to say that the 1945 summit, seen widely as partitioning Eastern Europe in terms favorable to the Soviet Union, no longer has a practical application and is now only a remnant of history.

Hosted by the Ukrainian Institute of America on March 1, the four historians addressed the evening's theme - a meeting between then U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Marshal Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union that was held in the Ukrainian resort city in the Crimea. The summit, which took place on February 4-11, 1945, is known simply as the Yalta Conference.

The discussion examined the historic summit against a context of several milestone events that have occurred recently in Eastern Europe. Those events, the historians argued, freed many of the countries that were affected in part by the outcome of the Yalta Conference. The first of those events - membership in the European Union and NATO by Poland, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania - were the first in a series that culminated with the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the historians said.

"Yalta is receding from memory into history," said John Micgiel, adjunct associate professor of international affairs and the director of the East Central European Center at Columbia University in New York. "Yalta is not quite dead, but with any luck it will soon be."

A second scholar, Charles Gati of Johns Hopkins University, agreed. "I don't think 10-15 years from now Yalta will become a topic of discussion even in this room because it has largely lost its significance," said Mr. Gati, a senior adjunct professor of European studies at the School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

"What has Yalta become?" Mr. Gati rhetorically asked the audience of nearly 100. "It's finished. It's gone, and I think we should celebrate it. The details of Europe have been taken care of," added the professor, a fellow at the Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute and a former senior advisor for the U.S. State Department.

Each of the four scholars was given 15 minutes to speak on the theme of the evening - the Yalta Conference in 1945 and its legacy 60 years later - and to discuss "the impact of the tripartite meeting from an Eastern European perspective," a statement released prior to the event announced.

The discussion was moderated by Adrian Karatnycky, a counselor and senior scholar at Freedom House, who, in introducing the speakers said the evening had assembled "an extremely accomplished and excellent panel of experts on the post-Yalta region." He also reminded guests that a "wonderful" exhibit of photographs, rarely displayed outside of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, accompanied the panel discussion and would be on display at the Ukrainian Institute's landmark building at 2 E. 79th St. until March 4.

A sign describing a portion of the exhibit, made up of black and white photographs of the famed meeting, was hung on the second floor of the UIA's building. A portion of it read: "Today the conference occupies an ambiguous place in historical memory."

Addressing that place in history, Dr. David Woolner, a professor of history at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., said the feelings of many Ukrainians toward then Soviet leader Stalin and the Yalta conference stem, in part, from the actions of President Roosevelt.

"Your rage, and the rage in this room, at Joseph Stalin is defined by F.D.R.," said Dr. Woolner, the executive director of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. "If the U.S. had gone back to its unilateral approach of isolationism, the world would have been much worse off because that's what isolationism is. It is a unilateral decision not to engage with anyone else."

Dr. Vojtech Mastny, a senior research fellow at the National Security Archives at George Washington University in Washington, addressed the goals of the participants of the Yalta Conference.

"That was the frame of mind on both sides," Dr. Mastny said, referring to the Western allies and the Soviet Union. "They wanted to preserve a measure of cooperation - not a deep cooperation but they certainly didn't want the problems that were to come," said Dr. Mastny, also a coordinator of the independent Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact, a partnership of more than 20 international institutes.

Dr. Mastny added that, although the participants left the conference feeling they had achieved a measure of success in deliberating on the future of Eastern Europe, they quickly realized they had made a mistake.

"Let's remember that they parted in the best of spirits," Dr. Mastny said of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin. "They really all believed that they got out of it all that they wanted. Of course, that was not the case, and they would realize that in the coming weeks."

In a statement issued for the opening of the photography exhibit, Serhii Pohoreltzev, Ukraine's consul general in New York, said there were positive results for Ukraine in the aftermath of the conference at Yalta. Following the summit, "the leaders of the three nations declared their resolve to establish 'a general international organization to maintain peace and security,'" Mr. Pohoreltzev's statement read, referring to the subsequent creation of the United Nations.

"This year we will celebrate the 60th anniversary of this organization born out of the sufferings caused by the second world war. The determination, enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, 'to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war' is as vital today as it was 60 years ago," Mr. Pohoreltzev said.

"Despite the fact that Ukraine was not an independent state," the consul said, when delegates from 50 countries gathered on April 25, 1945, in San Francisco for the founding conference of the United Nations, "it is my strong belief that millions of Ukrainian soldiers who perished on the battlefields of World War II fighting against the Nazi regime deserved their homeland to be among the first 51 original member-states of the U.N."

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