Churchill on Stalin: A note

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Notes

¹Churchill's misinterpretation of his ‘most unpleasant discussion’ (Churchill 1951, p. 437) with Stalin at their second meeting in August 1942, and also of his October 1944 meetings with Stalin, according to which Stalin was beholden to other, more extreme, figures in the Soviet leadership, is already well known. See for example Reynolds (2004, pp. 327 and 463).

²The British official record (which was marked ‘Most secret’ and ‘To be kept under lock and key’) of both the informal late-night meeting and the earlier evening meeting is in the UK National Archives (PREMIER 3/76A/12). It has been declassified, and can be downloaded from the National Archives website (available at: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk). For a Russian translation of the British official record of the late-night meeting see Rzheshevskii (2004, pp. 369 – 372). The official Soviet record was printed in Kynin and Laufer (1996, pp. 165 – 167). It is also printed in Rzheshevskii (2004, pp. 367 – 369). Rzheshevskii's book is an excellent and very well informed book of documents and analysis. The earlier Soviet publication Sovetsko – angliiskie otnosheniya vo vremya Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny 1941 – 1945 (1983) contains the Soviet record of the Churchill – Stalin meetings of 12 and 13 August and of the evening meeting on 15 August, but not of the informal late-night meeting of 15 – 16 August.

³See Birse (1967); ‘Avtobiograficheskie zametki’ (2000, pp. 94 – 111). The part of the latter relating to the late-night Churchill – Stalin meeting of 15 – 16 August 1942 is reprinted in Nevezhin (2003, pp. 329 – 330).

⁴However, in his memoirs Birse wrote that: ‘From time to time I succeeded in penciling a few notes, for I felt that some record would be required, not only of the earlier official interview, but also of this informal, often disconnected, and yet highly important conversation’ (Birse 1967, p. 103).

⁵According to Reynolds (2004, p. 325) Churchill's account of his meeting with Stalin in August 1942 was ‘a compound of recollections dictated by him in 1948 and the official record of their meetings, which Deakin turned into a first person narrative. Churchill also used the diary of Ian Jacobs, who had accompanied him, but not that of Sir Alexander Cadogan of the Foreign Office …’.

⁶Pavlov lived until 1993. He retired in 1974 and in 1987 presented his (unpublished) memoirs to the USSR deputy minister of foreign affairs L. F. Il'ichev who gave them to the historical-documentary department of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They were published in 2000 (see fn. 3).

⁷The website of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has a collection of documents Churchill and Stalin: Documents from the British Archives. It is preceded by a short introduction by the historical section. This refers to the agreement as ‘notorious’ (website available at: http://www.fco.gov.uk).

⁸The earlier Soviet publication Sovetsko – angliiskie (1983) omits both the Churchill – Stalin meeting of 9 October and also the Molotov – Eden meetings of 10 – 11 October. These omissions create a misleading picture of Churchill's visit to Moscow in October 1944. They are a good example of how selective publication of official documents can create a distorted impression of the event to which they relate.

⁹Another important meeting, the account of which given by Churchill is misleading in important respects, is that between Chamberlain, Halifax, Churchill and Margesson (the Conservative chief whip) which took place at 10 Downing Street at 4.30 p.m. on 9 May 1940. This was the meeting that led to Churchill becoming Prime Minister (see Ponting 1990, p. 66; and Reynolds 2004, p. 127). Churchill's account puts the meeting on the wrong day and is more dramatic than the reality. However, although far from being an account accurate in all details, it does convey the gist of the matter. Reynolds (2004) suggests that, ‘factual inaccuracy is balanced by poetic truth’.

¹⁰For a well-documented critique of a broader aspect of Churchill's war memoirs, his picture of the events of 1940, see Ponting (1990).

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Michael Ellman

The author is grateful for help from Patricia Ellman. The usual disclaimer applies.