It was the winter of 1982. It was the freezing nadir of the Cold War. Soldiarity’s Revolution in Poland had been bitterly crushed. I was a student in England, passionate about Soviet studies and in the center of great scholarship. As Greenham Common leftists camped out to protest cruise missiles, Ronald Reagan and the U.S. troops there to defend Europe, not far from my university. As Lady Thatcher and Ronald Reagan stood firm. As the Soviet Union under the fearful, edgy, oppressive gray heirs to Stalin of the Kremlin prepared to hit the nuclear button. Never did the world come closer to world war than during those icy months.

Amid this, I discovered some ugly history. There was a book out, by Nikolai Tolstoy, a distant descendent of Leo Tolstoy, called ‘Victims of Yalta.’ It disturbed me, because of its description of how the victorious Allies handed their Eastern European allies in the Great War to Jozef Stalin. Prisoners of the Germans were to be forced back to Stalin brutal communist regime, the evilest tyranny on earth. Many of them jumped onto barbed wire rather than endure that fate worse than death. All begged to be spared. None were. Many were shot the minute they reached their now-Stalinist oppressed homelands.

One of my professors had been a Polish freedom fighter who fought with Sikorsky from London during the war. He was decorated for bravery. From him, I learned the term ‘sold down the river.’ The allies instead chose to preserve ‘peace’ with Jozef Stalin, at the price of their freedom. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were willing to do it, because they were ‘only’ Eastern Europeans, the third world of Europe, surely ‘used’ to oppression. So in the disgraceful last chapter of the war, they traded Eastern Europe’s freedom for their own.

And the injustice of that – of turning over our allies who had fought and destroyed Hitler, to Stalin’s waiting henchmen, was the cruelest thing. As a child, I was interested in freeing Eastern Europe even before I knew of this ugly chapter. After I learned this, I knew that freedom struggles were a moral obligation.

Obviously, the stain of history, this sellout, affected the thinking of President George Bush, too, who unexpectedly tried to atone for this evil this weekend in a speech in the Baltics. It’s must have affected him the same way it affected me.

Bloggers around the world share insights, too:

Belmont Club’s Wretchard writes a fine summary of the Yalta event and the crime against freedom it perpetrated.

Powerline has a link to the whole speech and this penetrating analysis here cuts right to the quick, pulling it into the context of the Iraq war. John writes:

I see it as another in a series of brilliant speeches, dating back to 2001, in which President Bush has outlined not only his foreign policy, but his–and our nation’s–philosophy. His purpose today, I think, was to locate his Middle Eastern policy squarely in the tradition that has animated America’s actions abroad since 1941. Implicit in his historical narrative is a rebuke to the liberals who oppose freedom and denounce the administration’s “neoconservative” foreign policy as a radical and unrealistic departure from America’s historical role.

Blogs for Bush writes another good summary of the entire crime of Yalta and explains, simply, that Bush, along with Ronald Reagan, get it.

Totalitarian Democracy, in San Diego, writes this:

Bush connected the struggles against Nazi and Communist despotism in this part of the world to his own campaign to bring democracy to the Middle East. “We will not repeat the mistakes of other generations — appeasing or excusing tyranny, and sacrificing freedom in the vain pursuit of stability,” he said. “We have learned our lesson. No one’s liberty is expendable. In the long run, our security, and true stability, depend on the freedom of others.”

Don’s Attic in the Midwest writes that Bush’s statement is a fine comparison to the whitewashing of history and the overpraising of Franklin Roosevelt done by the media.

The Liberal’s Lament in Santa Rosa, Calif., insists Bush’s view of Yalta is too simple and Roosevelt and Churchill were dealing with the Soviet Army in Eastern Europe anyway. It’s a nuance valuable to knowing the history, but I don’t agree with the writer.

Let Freedom Ring puts the Yalta controversy in the context of the need for freedom in Belarus.

Zenophobia in Texas says Bush is being a Monday Morning Quarterback. I don’t think so.

The Benjo Blog in Sacramento says this is Bush’s finest hour.

Max Blumenthal claims that Bush’s words were lifted from a speech by Joseph McCarthy. If he’s right, what a detail!

Old Hickory says the Yalta claims are entirely out of historical context. Another one I don’t agree with but he is articulate.

One Clear Call in Southern California points out that as President Bush made his remarks in Latvia, Latvia’s president was one such victim of the Yalta horror. She notes:

I recall reading that when the Iraq war started, Latvian President Vike-Freiberga made a remark to the effect that “it is easy to tolerate a dictator if one has not had to live under that dictator.”

Secular Blasphemy points out that Bush’s words were a reminder to Putin to remember which side he is now on. Wouldn’t hurt if Putin apologized, either. This is a thoughtful, original analysis.