The famous nineteenth-century Spanish statesman and author Emilio Castelar believed that the history of mankind is a continuous struggle between ideas and interests, where interests win for a moment, and ideas for a long time. The Yalta Conference of the Allied Powers, to which the Russian Mind magazine’s new issue is dedicated, is a perfect illustration of this statement. On 4-11 February 1945 Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Armed Forces Joseph Stalin, US President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met in the Crimea, liberated from Nazi occupiers, to draw up new national borders on the territory of Europe, recently occupied by the Third Reich, and create a global mechanism guaranteeing the immutability of the demarcation lines drawn on the world map.
The first point on the agenda of the world’s leaders was the embodiment of the post–war interests of their powers, and the second was the implementation of the idea of a universal structure to solve cardinal issues of preserving peace on Earth, to ensure mutual understanding and fruitful cooperation between nations. So, a few months later, the United Nations was founded in San Francisco.…
A great game of interests and ideas ended successfully with the creation of a new world that lasted for almost half a century. We are publishing materials of historians, political analysts, and writers on various aspects of the Yalta Conference. The echo of Yalta-45, albeit sometimes drowned out today by some foreign “well-wishers” of Russia, still resounds everywhere. Nowadays no one will dare dispute that the planet needs to find new coordinated solutions of the leaders of various countries if we want to preserve peace on Earth, which is so vulnerable and fragile in our nuclear age. The UN may not be the perfect modern international structure, but humanity has not yet invented another universal tool for resolving inter-State conflicts.
The second part of this issue consists of our traditional themes. You will continue reading a real saga about the history of the Russian Empire; we will celebrate the 295th anniversary of the birth of Alexander Suvorov, the 225th anniversary of Karl Bryullov and, of course, the bicentennial of Alexander Griboyedov’s wonderful comedy in verse Woe from Wit. In a word, as Alexander Chatsky, the main character of this immortal play, said: “The smoke of the Fatherland is sweet and pleasant to us…” As if to illustrate this postulate, we also include the Orthodox Messenger, the continuation of Eugene Efremov’s book on Prince Grigorii Trubetskoi, and much more.
By Kirill Privalov
