Source: The Militant, Vol. IX No. 7, 17 February 1945, pp. 1 & 5.
(William F. Warde was a pseudonym of George Novack.)
Transcription/Editing/HTML Markup: 2018 by Einde O’Callaghan.
Public Domain: George Novack Internet Archive 2018; This work is completely free. In any reproduction, we ask that you cite this Internet address and the publishing information above.
Meeting in conspiratorial secrecy at Yalta on the Black Sea, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin further elaborated their plans outlined at Teheran to carve up Europe, reduce its segments to semi-colonial status, subjugate its peoples, and crush the popular revolutions against capitalist rule which are maturing throughout the war-torn continent.
Their latest deliberations, like their previous conclaves, were shrouded in secrecy because these leaders do not dare to divulge the real character of their predatory aims and oppressive schemes. The people will learn the true nature of the decisions at Yalta, as they learned about the Teheran agreements, only as they are revealed in the brutal actions of the Allies. Thus, the world found out about the agreement to have British troops occupy Greece and restore the monarchy, is part of the deal to divide Europe into spheres of influence, only after men, women and children were massacred in Athens.
The “Big Three” conspirators have issued a statement from Yalta which consists of the same hollow generalities as the declarations of Cairo and Teheran. They reaffirmed the Atlantic Charter which Roosevelt himself recently characterized as nothing but “a pretty good thing to shoot for.” Their pronouncement is further embellished with noble promises to “assist the peoples ... to solve by democratic means their pressing political and economic problems ... rebuilding of national economic life ... relief of distressed peoples.” The peoples are guaranteed in words, “free elections of governments responsive to the will of the people ... the right to choose the form of government under which they will live ... self-government.”
How glaring is the contradiction between these deliberately deceitful phrases, these false promises and the actual deeds of the Allies. In Western Europe, against the manifest will of the people and without bothering even to consult them, the Anglo-American imperialists have set up dictatorial puppet regimes, as in Italy and Greece, composed of militarists, monarchists and ex-fascists together with the traitorous Stalinists and Social-Democrats. The masses starve, while the Allied armies loot the scant resources of the occupied countries. The scum of the ruling classes who collaborated with the Nazis are not only protected from the just wrath of the people, but kept in positions of authority and power.
In Eastern Europe, the Kremlin has followed a similar pattern. In Rumania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, Stalin has established regimes staffed by the most reactionary capitalist and landlord oppressors of the people and by his servile native agents.
These are the hideous living realities which expose the utterly reactionary content concealed within the glittering phrases of the Yalta declarations.
The Anglo-American imperialists aim, with Stalin’s aid and connivance, to divide and exploit Europe for the benefit of Wall Street and the London bankers. They want to eliminate Europe as a rival in their drive to master and plunder the whole world.
These designs are most clearly indicated in their expressed plans for Germany. Germany, whose capitalist rulers have twice in a quarter century challenged the Anglo-American imperialists, is to be ruthlessly dismembered and subjugated. The country is to be occupied indefinitely by American, English, Soviet and possibly French forces, and divided up into separate spheres of military and economic control.
All industry for “military production”—that is, all basic industries—are to be “eliminated or controlled.” “Reparation in kind” — unrestricted confiscation of goods, machinery, raw materials —is to be exacted. Stripped of all means of livelihood, the impoverished German people will also be saddled with the costs of occupation. They are to be herded into slave labor battalions at the service of their conquerors. Thus, Hitler’s slave labor battalions of foreign workers are to be succeeded by Allied slave labor gangs.
The fate of the “liberated” peoples, including nominal “allies,” will be little better. The evil three at Yalta arrogantly disposed of the territories and destinies of entire nations. Poland was partitioned and a government handpicked and thrust upon its people. A similar governmental arrangement was imposed on the Yugoslavs. As for the remaining millions in the Balkans, they were dealt with in one ominous sentence ... “There was also a general review of other Balkan questions.”
Thus with a cynical disregard of their own phrases about “self- determination, etc.,” the conspirators at Yalta remade the map of Europe in line with their diplomatic needs and reactionary aims. What contempt they display for the hundreds of millions of starved and tortured people who have poured out their blood in this “war for democracy”! Outside of the USSR, there was not even a single representative of any European country at the conference!
What mockery is their talk about the “rebuilding of national economic life” in Europe while they threaten to despoil Germany. Germany is the very heart of European economy. The dismantling of its industrial system and the plunder of its resources would spell economic ruin for all Europe. It would prohibit any possibility of economic recovery for the war-devastated continent and drive it down to Asiatic levels.
But Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin understand that the peoples of Europe will not submit to such prospects but are determined to resist them fiercely. The workers and peasants have already demonstrated their will to struggle in Greece, Belgium and elsewhere. That is why all the Allied calculations depend upon the execution of their agreement to crush the rising revolutionary movements of the masses.
These sinister counter-revolutionary intentions are almost explicitly proclaimed in the following words:
“When, in the opinion of the three Governments, conditions in any European liberated state or any former Axis satellite state in Europe makes such action necessary, they will immediately consult together on the measures necessary to discharge the joint responsibilities set forth in this declaration.”
The Belgium, Italian, and above all the Greek events have already shown what these measures will be. Whenever the workers and peasants act to achieve their “self-determination and self-government,” the machine-guns, artillery and bombers of the. Allies are prepared to “discharge the joint responsibilities.”
The Yalta conference cemented the counter-revolutionary alliance between the Anglo-American imperialists and the Stalinist bureaucracy. In return for concessions in Eastern Europe and Germany, Stalin has given iron-clad assurances to the imperialist bandits that he will continue the same reactionary policies he has already pursued in the countries occupied by the Red Army.
In Rumania, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia, the Kremlin has used the Red Army and the GPU to maintain capitalist property relations, aid in quelling revolutionary actions of the masses, and establish governments of the old hated oppressors of the people dedicated to defending the interests of the capitalists and landlords.
Stalin’s counter-revolutionary collaboration with Anglo-American imperialism is not only the most terrible threat to the inhabitants of the occupied countries, but a colossal danger to the Soviet Union as well. If Stalin is permitted to carry through the Yalta decisions, all the sacrifices and bloodshed of the Soviet masses will have been in vain. The maintenance of capitalist property relations in countries dominated by the Kremlin menaces the existence of nationalized property in the USSR. It would serve to strengthen the growing and powerful tendencies toward capitalist restoration within the Soviet Union itself.
By their plans to strangle socialist revolutions, balkanize Europe, plunder its resources and enslave its peoples, the Anglo- American imperialists and their accomplice Stalin are paving the way, not for peace, security and freedom, but for a new dark ages, in which the further decay of capitalism will drag civilization down toward barbarism.
The salvation of the European peoples, and of the USSR as well, depends not upon the support of their present rulers but upon their own independent action. The reactionary designs of the Allies can be frustrated only through the revolutionary fight for socialism. Europe cannot be unified or its economy restored unless capitalist rule and the national barriers which stifle the productive forces are swept aside. The peoples of Europe can make their way to peace, security and freedom only through their common struggle for the Socialist United States of Europe under the banner of the Trotskyist Fourth International.
Last updated on: 19 September 2018