1 Geoffrey Roberts Anglo-Russian Seminar on Churchill and Stalin Foreign and Commonwealth Office London, March 2002 BEWARE GREEK GIFTS: THE CHURCHILL-STALIN “PERCENTAGES” AGREEMENT OF OCTOBER 1944 The Churchill-Stalin “percentages agreement” of October 1944 is one of the most famous deals in diplomatic history. There were contemporary reports and rumours of such a deal, but the full story only really came out in 1954 with the publication of volume six of Churchill’s history of the Second World War. 1 Subtitled Triumph and Tragedy, the book gave an account of Churchill’s trip to Moscow in October 1944. Churchill arrived in Moscow on 9 October and, says Churchill, “that night we held our first important meeting in the Kremlin” 2 . The story continues: “The moment was apt for business, so I said [to Stalin], ‘Let us settle about our affairs in the Balkans. Your armies are in Roumania and Bulgaria. We have interests, missions, and agents there. Don’t let us get at cross-purposes in small ways. So far as Britain and Russia are concerned, how would it do for you to have ninety percent predominance in Roumania, for us to have ninety per cent of the say in Greece, and go fifty-fifty about Yugoslavia?’ While this was being translated I wrote out on a half-sheet of paper: Roumania % Russia 90 The others 10 1 W.S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol.6, London 1954 pp.194-195. 2 Churchill’s mention of an important meeting at the Kremlin on the very day of his arrival in Moscow lends considerable drama to the tale. It seems, however, that Churchill dined at the Kremlin that night and this was the context in which the percentages conversation took place. This explains why there is no record of the meeting on 9 October 1944 in Stalin’s appointments book. Stalin’s meetings with Churchill in his office on the 14, 16 and 17 October are recorded, however. See: “Posetiteli Kremlevskogo Kabineta I.V. Stalina”, Istoricheskii Arkhiv, no.4, 1996 p.87.