Disputing Yalta
WARSAW/RIGA/BERLIN (Own report) Questions are being raised in Poland about the outcomes of the Yalta Conference, and consequent doubts raised about the anti-Hitler coalition's decisions to cede the Eastern parts of the German Reich. When they met at Yalta in the Crimea in 1945, the victors of the World War had taken the decision to shift Polish territory westwards, compensating Warsaw for its losses on its eastern borders by handing over to it German regions. At the same time, the Yalta Allies came to an agreement on European spheres of influence, with Poland, among other countries, ending up in the Soviet orbit. According to Polish Members of the European Parliament, Yalta was not ,,the beginning of a new peaceful order in Europe, but also the beginning of a new slavery in Central and Eastern Europe". The post-war order is also coming in for trenchant criticism from high-ranking politicians in the Baltic States, leading to disputes about participation in the ceremonies in Moscow to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation from National Socialism. It is being argued - by Polish foreign policy experts - that heads of state should not travel to the Russian capital for the event on 9 May, as this would amount to a tacit acceptance of the ,,injustice"done at. Berlin's revisionists welcome the Eastern European Yalta-critics' activities as a contribution to their attempts to de-legitimise the Potsdam Agreement and all the other decisions taken by the USA, the USSR and the UK in respect of Germany.
Members of the European Parliament belonging to the conservative Polish party ,,Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc"(PiS - Law and Justice) have produced a draft resolution sharply criticising the provisions of Yalta and thus attacking the change to Poland's eastern border in 1945. The PiS MEP Wojciech Roszkowski has stated that the European Union has to adopt ,,a new way of looking at history". 1)At the same time, several Polish opposition parties are calling on President Alexander Kwasniewski and the prime minister, Marek Belka, to back out of participation in the ceremonies in Moscow to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation from National Socialism. ,,Let the 60th anniversary of the victory over Hitler's Germany be celebrated, but certainly not as an anniversary of liberation for Central Europe or Poland", said the PiS chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski. 2)
Fighting over territory
The chairman of the PiS's demand has been issued at a time when attempts are being made by Germans to ,,re-evaluate"history, and it is largely in line with the political thinking of German ,,expellees", whose revisionist organisations acknowledge the ,,unjust acts"committed by the Nazi aggressors, while regarding the ,,expulsion"of the Germans decided on at Yalta as similarly unjust, and deriving from it what they regard as legal entitlements. Objections to the equal treatment of these events are now being countered by the Germans with references to the territories lost by Eastern European states, which, they argue, also have legitimate territorial claims - to the detriment of today's Belarus and Ukraine, formerly states of the USSR. 3)The policies put forward by Berlin's revisionists hold out the prospect of support for territorial conflicts between Eastern European neighbours in the event of the former German territories being ,,Europeanised"- that is, removed from the jurisdiction of the post-war nation states. Although what is sought for is a new shift to the East, one obstacle to this is the memory of the shared victory of the anti-Hitler coalition and the Westward shift on which it decided.
Approval
Trenchant criticisms of the Moscow ceremonies and of the associated recollection of the outcomes of the Second World War are being voiced not only by Polish politicians, but also by prominent representatives of the Baltic states, where the view is taken that the commemoration on 9 May would obscure the injustices committed against Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Although the President of Latvia, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, intends to be present at the events in Moscow, she will be taking a critical line on the post-1945 order. According to the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which is close to the German CDU, she has already initiated ,,discussions with influential European politicians"on the subject, and looks forward to receiving support for her position. 4)
Unscrupulous
In this, she can expect support from the Americans. The London Independent writes that the US President Roosevelt was ,,intellectually impaired"during the Yalta conference and had made ,,costly mistakes"in his dealings with the Russian negotiators; this judgement is derived from a study by a former FBI advisor. 5)Moscow rejects every attempt at detracting from the historical legitimacy of the Yalta conference. As a statement by the Russian foreign ministry puts it, ,,it is unscrupulous to rewrite the history of the Second World War by taking historic events out of their historic context". 6)
1) PiS przygotowal projekt rezolucji Parlamentu Europejskiego w rocznice zakoczenia wojny; euro.pap.com.pl/cgi-bin/europap.pl?ID=63992
2) ,,Nie wieder Jalta!"; Mitteldeutsche Zeitung 17.02.2005
3) see also New Policies for the Eastand ,,Ganging up on Moscow"
4) Bewegung in den baltisch-russischen Beziehungen; KAS-Länderbericht 04.02.2005
5) Roosevelt was ,,mentally impaired"at Yalta; The Independent 21.02.2005
6) On Assessments in Polish Media Regarding Yalta Conference of the Allied Powers; Itar Tass 14.02.2005