It Rhymes with Malta

When they met in the Soviet Crimea in February 1945 to plan the end of World War II, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin also set the stage for the long-running drama that may dominate next month's meeting off Malta. In effect, if not by intent, Roosevelt and Churchill sanctioned Soviet dominance over Eastern Europe. Now, 44 years later, George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev must grapple with the disintegration of that Soviet supremacy.

The American, British and Soviet leaders met at Yalta at a time when the Red Army had liberated most of Eastern Europe from Hitler's troops and were poised to take Berlin. Although the ailing Roosevelt knew that the U.S. could soon assault Japan with the first atom bomb, his top military advisers doubted that its use would be immediately decisive. An American priority at Yalta was to ensure Japan's quick defeat by persuading Stalin to join the Far East conflict once Germany surrendered.

So, rather than trying to rein in Stalin and his rampaging Red Army, Roosevelt and Churchill made what they considered minor concessions. They did not insist that Soviet military forces be withdrawn from Eastern Europe. Instead they settled for a vague commitment by the three powers to promote democratic governments and free elections in each of the liberated but Soviet- occupied nations.

Stalin won outright annexation of parts of eastern Poland; the Poles were compensated with parts of easternmost Germany. In the Far East the Soviets were secretly awarded the Japanese Kurile Islands and the southern part of Sakhalin Island, an arrangement disclosed after Japan's defeat.

Stalin kept only part of the bargain. On Aug. 8, three months after V-E day and only six days before Japan surrendered, the Soviets finally declared war on Tokyo. At almost no cost, Stalin not only got the Japanese islands but also stripped Manchuria of most of its heavy industrial equipment and shipped it back to the Soviet Union. In Eastern Europe not only did Soviet troops remain in large numbers, but Communists brutally subverted political parties and seized control of national police and military organizations to ring down the Iron Curtain. At the time, the war-weary West was in no mood to react.

Critics assailed Yalta as a sellout. Even George Kennan, then a top State Department official, denounced the West's refusal "to name any limit for Russian expansion and Russian responsibilities." But Charles Bohlen, assistant to the Secretary of State and one of the designers of the deal, called such criticism naive. Neither Britain nor the U.S. had any way to coerce Stalin, he argued, and "either our pals intend to limit themselves or they don't."

Stalin did not choose to constrain himself, despite the vow of the three Yalta leaders to help secure "the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live." Now that the Soviets are loosening the fist they clenched after Yalta, it will be up to two men in the Mediterranean to redeem the promises the Soviets made about Eastern Europe 44 long years ago.