YALTA: The Price of Peace

By Serhii Plokhy

Published by Penguin Books

January 2011

480 pages

ISBN: 9780143118923

Summary by Laurisa Hrycyna 

In February 1945, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin met at Yalta, a resort town on the Black Sea. Over the eight days of the conference, they partitioned Germany, decided the fate of people living in Eastern Europe, and laid the foundation for a new international organization to settle disputes in the future. Despite the enormous significance of the outcome of these negotiations, there was no official record of the Yalta conference.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Soviet archives were opened in what is referred to as the “archival revolution”. Plokhy reassessed the Yalta conference in light of these documents, and provides a new perspective on the Yalta conference.

The book is factually detailed providing many historical references yet is surprisingly readable. The book will take some time to read, but is definitely worthwhile.

The book begins by describing the journeys made by the three leaders to Yalta.

FDR set sail on the USS Quincy to Malta with his daughter and select advisors. Churchill’s party consisted of three planes but only two reached their destination in the predawn mist. Stalin arrived overland with his contingent of NKVD officers and Soviet troops.

Each of the leaders came with their own specific perspectives and objectives.

Stalin was the most informed and viewed American Imperialism as the enemy. FDR’s health was seriously declining and was focused on attaining a permanent peace. Churchill’s goal was to maintain Britain’s interests in Italy, Yugoslavia and Greece which had communist parties in power. Churchill, Britain’s great orator was often dismissed by Stalin.

International borders were redrawn and millions of people were forcibly resettled without consulting the governments and nations involved. Spheres of influence were created and Stalin’s rule over Eastern Europe was never overtly challenged.

You will be surprised and shocked by the parallel of events with russia’s current invasion of Ukraine. russia the liberator versus the invader; Stalin’s and Putin’s willingness to incur huge military losses to obtain personal goals of invasion and imperialism.

The Yalta Conference was key to the official creation of the United Nations – within months of the conference – as well as the Soviet Union (and subsequently russia) and China each having veto powers  in the UN Security Council. Yalta shows that the unity of democratic countries is essential to achieve democratic rights and freedoms. russia’s invasion of Ukraine is showing that this cannot be forgotten.

 

Good Citizens Need Not Fear

by Maria Reva

Published by Cadmus Press

February 9, 2021

223 pages

ISBN: 978-1984897589

Review by Laurisa Hrycyna

Maria Reva is a Canadian writer, who was born in Ukraine. She moved to Canada with her family in childhood, and grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia.

She is most noted for her short story collection Good Citizens Need Not Fear, which won the 2022 Kobzar Book Award.

The collection of linked stories is set in Ukraine and takes place before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is about ordinary people living in a typical Soviet block apartment building. In the first story called Novostroika (new building) we learn this building #1933 Ivansk St. has no heat. When the tenant Daniel Petrovich Blinov goes to the city administration to complain he is told by a bureaucrat that the building doesn’t exist.

We learn later that it doesn’t exist because it was built from the surplus materials from the adjacent two buildings. Our readers wondered about the significance of the address “1933” because the Holodomor took place between 1932-1933.

Each story introduced us to a new protagonist and set of circumstances. Although we could not see the connection between the first two stories, it became more apparent by the end of the third. Zaya, Milena Markivna and Konstantyn Illych, were particularly intriguing main characters whose lives closely intersected with each other as the stories unfolded. The stories illustrated acts of resilience, defiance and creativity in response to crushing and absurd bureaucratic dictates.

Some of the stories included page long lists of vegetables, canning size calculations and diagrams of the apartment building which added to the quirkiness of the book.

This book generated thoughtful discussion amongst the book club members and allowed us to share personal experiences we had from earlier trips to Ukraine.

We would recommend this book to others to read.