Sergey Radchenko is the Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. His new book, To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power is a finalist for the 2025 Lionel Gelber Prize, presented by the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.
For a week in February, 1945, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin hosted the U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill at Yalta, Crimea, to discuss their joint plans for the postwar order. Their agreement ratified Soviet control of Eastern Europe. For this reason, it has come to be seen as a sellout, especially by the Eastern Europeans who endured more than 40 years of misery under the Kremlin’s control.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s bid to end the war in Ukraine by, effectively, dividing it with Vladimir Putin, has similar resonance. Mr. Trump has dangled the promise of Russia’s triumphant return to Europe and the world, and Mr. Putin – eager for such recognition of his greatness – will have to seriously consider the offer. And so, a prospect of a new Yalta looms ahead, a prospect that cannot help but alarm America’s allies, and especially the embattled Ukrainians who fear a sellout.
In February, 1945, Roosevelt badly needed Stalin’s co-operation. The war in Europe was already drawing to a close. But Roosevelt required Stalin’s help in Asia, and he was even willing to trade away Japanese-held Southern Sakhalin and the Kurile Island chain in exchange for Stalin’s participation in the war against Japan. Stalin did not have to be asked twice.
What the Soviet leader wanted above all else was not just territorial gains in Europe and Asia, as important as they were for someone with Stalin’s imperialistic mindset. What he wanted was America’s recognition of the legitimacy of these gains – and it was here that Yalta mattered most. It marked the Soviets’ rise not just to the status of a superpower (this Stalin owed to his victory in the Second World War), but to that of a legitimate superpower, accepted by the United States as an indispensable partner in the creation of the postwar order.
Stalin, believing that greater gains with lesser legitimacy weren’t as good lesser gains with greater legitimacy, moderated his appetites. The Yalta agreement played into his initial refusal to support the Greek Communists in their civil war, his pullback from Iran (in exchange for a promise of an oil concession that never materialized), and his willingness to sacrifice the cause of Chinese Communism for a profitable relationship with Chiang Kai-shek’s government (though Stalin later reversed himself to back Mao Zedong).
He expected the world to be divided into spheres of influence and wanted the Americans to recognize his. Soviet postwar planners took it for granted that Eastern Europe would fall under the Soviet sway, which would extend far into Western Europe, they thought – perhaps as far as Sweden in the north and the Libyan coast of Africa in the south.
Stalin did not want to communize Europe, at least not for a while. Instead, he put a premium on left-wing coalition governments, which he could influence, if not directly control, through Communist parties. Meanwhile, the United States would mind its own business in the Western Hemisphere.
He could achieve all that, Stalin thought, because he had won a victory in Europe. “There is a universally-known rule,” he explained not long before Yalta: “If you cannot advance, then resort to defence, but once you have accumulated your strength, go on the offensive … We are not guided by emotions but by reason, analysis, and calculation.”
Yet he miscalculated. Stalin had not expected the Americans to stay in Europe, but they did. The United States also extended massive aid to Western Europe – known as the Marshall Plan – to prop up postwar European economies and make misery-induced Communism less appealing to the Europeans. Fearing the attractiveness of American values and the power of the U.S. dollar, Stalin moved rapidly to consolidate his grip on Eastern Europe through brutal communization. He attempted to expel Americans from Berlin, triggering a crisis and an airlift. Great power co-operation in the spirit of Yalta went out of the window. In came the Cold War.
Still, it’s hard to blame FDR for signing on to Yalta. Eastern Europe was already under Stalin’s military control. A war with the USSR was unthinkable (though Winston Churchill was ahead of the curve by ordering war plans to this end, which were called, appropriately Operation Unthinkable).
Mr. Putin, by contrast, is still mired in Eastern Ukraine. But what he has failed to get by force, he may yet get through skillful diplomacy. Mr. Trump, in his eagerness for great power co-operation with Russia (which he wrongly thinks will help him confront China), may yet abandon Ukraine to its grim fate.
Mr. Putin, standing tall and proud, seems ready to negotiate. What he wants is American acceptance as an equal. And, unlike Stalin and Harry Truman, who assumed the presidency upon Roosevelt’s death, Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump have an alignment of values, which makes their entente more durable. Then – working hand-in-hand – they will try to impose these same values on recalcitrant Europeans, steering Europe not toward the far left (as Stalin tried unsuccessfully in his time), but toward the far right.
And so, 80 years after Yalta, a new Yalta could be on offer, one that would bring a weak, authoritarian Russia run by an aging dictator back in from the cold. Only this time, the sellout would be even more brutal, because it is so completely unnecessary.