[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 63 (Friday, May 13, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E962-E963]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         PRESIDENT'S COMMENTS ON YALTA--AMNESIA OR DISTORTION?

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. MARK UDALL

                              of colorado

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 12, 2005

  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, these days of early May mark the 
60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
  Last week, as we observed the days of remembrance for those who 
perished in the Holocaust, I noted that we need to remember history 
because looking back can help us to understand the world around us and 
to interpret events that may lie ahead.
  This is important for our country and the world because our fate, and 
the fate of humanity, depends on our remembering and our understanding.
  President Bush has been in Europe to mark the victory over Hitler. I 
am glad that he went, and I especially applaud him for visiting Latvia 
and Georgia. This was the right thing to do to demonstrate that America 
has not forgotten that the end of the war in Europe did not mean the 
end of oppression for millions of people who found themselves behind 
the Iron Curtain.
  But learning from history depends on getting history right. And 
that's why I share the concerns of the Rocky Mountain News about part 
of the president's comments.
  Speaking in Riga, Latvia, the president correctly noted that ``For 
much of Eastern and Central Europe, victory brought the iron rule of 
another empire. V-E Day marked the end of fascism, but it did not end 
oppression.'' That was accurate, well put, and needed to be said.
  However, regrettably, the president went on to say ``The agreement at 
Yalta followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-
Ribbentrop Pact. Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the 
freedom of small nations was somehow expendable''--a statement that at 
best is erroneous and that at worse reflects an intentional distortion 
of history.
  As an editorial in today's Rocky Mountain News notes, ``Yalta did not 
leave the continent divided. The continent was already divided because 
Soviet armies were encamped in much of Eastern Europe and were not 
about to budge.'' In other words, the division of Europe was a fact 
before the Yalta conference began.
  That is reality. But to somehow equate Franklin D. Roosevelt and 
Winston Churchill with Molotov and Ribbentrop is something else 
entirely--either the product of a ``delusion,'' as the historian Arthur 
Schlesinger, Jr. has suggested, or the revival of an intentional 
distortion that once was a political weapon for opponents of some of 
the president's predecessors.
  As the historian David Greenberg, writing in Slate has noted, ``Along 
with the myth of FDR's treachery in leading America into war, the `stab 
in the back' interpretation of Yalta became a cudgel with which the old 
right and their McCarthyite heirs tried to discredit a president they 
had long despised. Renouncing Yalta even became a plank in the 1952 
Republican platform, although Eisenhower did not support it. In time, 
however, these hoary myths receded into the shadows, dimly remembered 
except as a historical curiosity, where, alas, they should have 
remained undisturbed.''

[[Page E963]]

  In short, Mr. Speaker, we should remember history but not be misled 
by myths.
  Here is the full text of the editorial in today's Rocky Mountain 
News:

              [From the Rocky Mountain News, May 11, 2005]

                         President Goes Too Far

       President Bush has taken surprisingly little heat--but 
     deserves more--for his remarks in Latvia in which he equated 
     President Franklin Roosevelt's conduct at Yalta with Neville 
     Chamberlain's appeasement of Adolf Hitler in 1938 and the 
     division of Poland by Hitler and Joseph Stalin in 1939.
       ``The agreement at Yalta followed in the unjust tradition 
     of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact,'' Bush said. 
     ``Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the 
     freedom of small nations was somehow expendable. Yet this 
     attempt to sacrifice freedom for the sake of stability left a 
     continent divided and unstable.''
       But Yalta did not leave the continent divided. The 
     continent was already divided because Soviet armies were 
     encamped in much of Eastern Europe and were not about to 
     budge. It is true that Yalta's promise of free elections for 
     Eastern Europe, given Stalin's record, amounted to the height 
     of naivete, wishful thinking or cynicism. But even so, there 
     is a vast difference between engineering oppression (Munich 
     and Molotov-Ribbentrop) and sugar-coating its existence on 
     the ground.

                          ____________________