Percentages Agreement

Background

Wartime spending drained Britain's reserve capital and left it economically dependent on American support. Churchill judged that the Soviet Union would emerge stronger and Britain weaker after the war, and he sought a preemptive understanding with Stalin to stabilize the post-war order on terms favourable to British interests, fearing a return of American isolationism. He was especially concerned with securing the Mediterranean; as early as May 1944 Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden discussed with Soviet ambassador Fyodor Gusev an arrangement placing Greece in the British sphere and Romania in the Soviet one. Greece and Romania were settled quickly, while Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Hungary proved more difficult.

The agreement and its record

The agreement first became known through Churchill's memoir The Second World War, published in 1953. The Soviet interpreter V. M. Berezhkov's memoir relates the conversation in virtually the same terms, and according to Churchill's account the Soviet shares in Bulgaria and Hungary were later amended to 80 percent. The core record of the division of Anglo-Soviet influence therefore rests on memoir accounts on Churchill's side. Churchill's Mediterranean strategy, including the plan to land in Yugoslavia and advance through the Ljubljana Gap toward Austria, and his wish to keep the left-wing resistance in Greece and Yugoslavia out of power, lay behind the proposal.

At the centre of the episode was the half-sheet of paper Churchill pushed across to Stalin: Romania, USSR 90 percent; Greece, Great Britain (in accord with the US) 90 percent; Yugoslavia and Hungary, 50:50 each; Bulgaria, USSR 75 percent. Stalin made a large tick with a blue pencil and handed it back. When Churchill asked whether they should burn the paper, Stalin said: "No, you keep it." The paper was published in document collections and is held in the British Public Record Office (PREM 3/66/7).

Washington was kept out of the deal. The summit was largely provoked by the Bulgarian issue and by the wish to prevent an Anglo-Soviet clash over Greece and the Balkans. Roosevelt could not attend because of his reelection campaign, and the American ambassador Averell Harriman attended only as an observer and was effectively excluded from the conversation.

Adjusting the percentages

Bulgaria soon became the difficulty. According to the Soviet record, Stalin objected to the 25 percent Allied share in Bulgaria, and Churchill proposed that Molotov and Eden negotiate the matter the next day. In those talks Molotov sought Soviet shares of 75 percent for Hungary and 90 percent for Bulgaria, and the Soviet share in both countries was ultimately raised to 80 percent. Churchill himself called the paper a "naughty document".

Stalin argued that the Soviets did not intend to use Bulgaria as a base to threaten Turkey and objected to any British role there, to which Eden replied that Britain, after three years of war with Bulgaria, was entitled to a "small share". The real point at issue turned out to be Bulgaria and the Turkish Straits, and Churchill secured from Stalin a promise that the Red Army would not enter Greece.

Assessment and aftermath

The agreement is often cited as an illustration of the cynicism of the statesmen who shaped mid-twentieth-century international politics, yet it was not a formal treaty and does not by itself explain the division of Cold War Europe. No mention of spheres of influence appears in the documents drawn up at the end of the Moscow conference. Richard Crampton described it as "infamous", dividing Eastern Europe into spheres of influence in a cavalier fashion with no effort to consult the peoples concerned.

A contested historiography

Upon his return to London on 12 October 1944 Churchill told the War Cabinet that the agreement was "only an interim guide for the immediate wartime future", and in his war memoirs he later presented it as a far-sighted balancing act that prevented the communization of Eastern Europe. That reading was contested almost at once. Stalin argued at the conference that the Bulgarian Communists were being restrained from their radicalism by the Red Army, and in 1958 Soviet historians acknowledged Churchill's account only in order to deny it. Gabriel Kolko and Geoffrey Roberts believe that the importance of the agreement is overrated. Its character and effect remain disputed.

Aftermath

After the war Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania fell within the Soviet sphere of influence, while Yugoslavia, after a brief alliance with the USSR, moved to non-alignment as its relations with Moscow deteriorated. Greece, where the Communists lost the civil war, came under British and then American influence, and in 1956 Soviet troops entered Budapest. The agreement is also often cited as evidence that the division of the Balkans was already being negotiated before the Yalta and Potsdam conferences.