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Serhii Plokhy, Yalta: The Price of Peace (Viking 2010)
Yalta: The Price of Peace is the first major history of the conference in more than 20 years and draws on Soviet archives only declassified in the early 1990s. Harvard professor S.M. Plokhii offers a fresh account of the eight days Joseph Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill spent carving up the map of Europe. The ink was not yet dry when the recriminations began. The conservatives who pilloried Roosevelt's New Deal accused him of selling out. Was he too sick? Did he give too much in exchange for Stalin's promise to join the war against Japan? Both Left and Right would blame Yalta for precipitating the Cold War, but Plokhy concludes that Roosevelt faired better than we think.
Yalta's stunning thesis is the result of complete access to Soviet archives, virtually all of which are in Russian. Plokhii allows us to hear Molotov and Stalin in their own words and makes extensive use of the diaries of secondary players, including Churchill's doctor and Roosevelt's daughter, to bring each figure to life. Yalta is an authoritative, original and vividly-written narrative history. At the same time, it offers a lesson for the future: no matter how skillful the participants in an international conference and however promising its outcome (the Yalta Conference was, at the time, perceived as a great accomplishment), democratic leaders and societies should be prepared to pay a price for close involvement with those who many not share their values.
Chair in the Special Book Panel at ASN 2010: TBA
Participants in the Special Book Panel at ASN 2010: Lis Tarlow (Davis Center, Harvard U, US), Marta Dyczok (U of Western Ontario, Canada), Dominique Arel (U of Ottawa, Canada), Serhii Plokhy (Harvard U, US)