Soviet politicians and commanders into adopting his nocturnal work-style, he could not expect Roosevelt and Churchill to negotiate by candlelight. Stalin played his hand with an aplomb sustained by a secret advantage he held over his interlocutors in Tehran: he had their conversations bugged. Beria’s son Sergo wrote about this:15
At 8 a.m. Stalin, who had changed his habits for the occasion (usually he worked at night and got up at 11 a.m.), received me and the others. He prepared himself carefully for each of our sessions, having at hand files on every question that interested him. He even went so far as to ask for details of the tone of the conversations: ‘Did he say that with conviction or without enthusiasm? How did Roosevelt react? Did he say that resolutely?’ Sometimes he was surprised: ‘They know that we can hear them and yet they speak openly!’ One day he even asked me: ‘What do you think, do they know that we are listening to them?’
Even though the Western delegations worked from the premise that Soviet intelligence agencies might be listening to them, Stalin may have been less baffled about Roosevelt and Churchill than they were by him.
On Churchill’s trip to Moscow in October 1944 there was an acute need to talk further about the future of Europe. Churchill broached the matter deftly: ‘The moment was apt for business, so I said: “Let us settle our affairs in the Balkans.”’ Churchill took the bull by the horns and scribbled out his proposal on a blank sheet of paper. He suggested an arithmetical apportionment of zones of influence between the USSR on one side and the United Kingdom and the USA on the other. This was the notorious ‘percentages agreement’:16
| - | % | - |
|---|---|---|
| Rumania | 90 | Russia |
| 10 | The others | |
| Greece | 90 | Great Britain (in accord with USA) |
| 10 | Russia | |
| Yugoslavia | 50–50 | - |
| Hungary | 50–50 | - |
| Bulgaria | 75 | Russia |
| 25 | The others |
Stalin waited for the translation, glanced at the paper and then took his blue pencil from a bronze pot and inscribed a large tick. There followed a long pause: both men sensed they were deciding something of historic importance. Churchill broke the silence: ‘Might it not be thought rather cynical if it seemed we had disposed of these issues, so fateful to millions of people, in such an offhand manner? Let us burn the paper.’ But Stalin was untroubled, and said: ‘No, you keep it.’17
Churchill, talking later to the British ambassador, referred to his proposal as the ‘naughty document’. Stalin had second thoughts about details and asked for greater influence in Bulgaria and Hungary. In both cases he demanded 80 per cent for the USSR. British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, with Churchill’s consent, agreed to this amendment in a session with Molotov.18 Mythology has descended upon the agreement on percentages. The legend grew, for example, that Stalin and Churchill had carved up all Europe between them and that their conversation predetermined all the territorial and political decisions subsequently taken by the Allies. In reality the ‘naughty document’ was a provisional bilateral accord for action in the immediate future. It left much undiscussed. No mention was made of Germany, Poland or Czechoslovakia. Nothing was said about the political and economic system to be installed in any country after the war. The intended post-war order in Europe and Asia had yet to be clarified, and the percentages agreement did not bind the hands of the USA. Unconsulted, President Roosevelt could accept or reject it as he wished. Yet such in fact was his desire to keep the USSR sweet until Germany’s defeat that he welcomed the ‘naughty document’ without demur.
By the time the Big Three met at Yalta on 4 February 1945 it was urgent for them to grasp the nettle of planning post-war Europe and Asia. For Stalin it was also an occasion for the Soviet authorities to show off their
The Yalta Conference took decisions of enormous importance and Stalin was at his most ebullient. He asked to be rewarded for promising to enter the war against Japan after the coming victory over Germany. In particular, he demanded reparations to the value of twenty billion dollars from Germany. This was controversial, but the Western leaders conceded it to Stalin. More hotly debated was the treatment of Poland. At the insistence of Roosevelt and Churchill the future Polish government was to be a coalition embracing nationalists as well as communists. Yet they failed to pin down Stalin on the details. The wily Stalin wanted a free hand in eastern and east-central Europe. Roosevelt and he were on friendly terms and sometimes met in Churchill’s absence. As the junior partner of the Western Allies Churchill had to put up with the situation while making the best of it; and when Stalin demanded south Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands — known to the Japanese as their Northern Territories — in return for joining the war in the Pacific, Churchill was as content as the American President to oblige. Stalin and Churchill also acceded to Roosevelt’s passionate request for the establishment of a United Nations Organisation at
