BRITISH HISTORY II. TEXTS
Percentage agreement
Churchill recorded the proceedings at Moscow in October 1944 in his diary
'The moment was apt for business, so I said "Let us settle about our affairs in the Balkans. Your armies are in Rumania 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 per cent predominance in Rumania, 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 a sheet of paper:
| Rumania | Russia 90% | The others 10% |
| Greece | Great Britain 90% (in accord with USA) | Russia 10% |
| Yugoslavia | 50-50% | |
| Hungary | 50-50% | |
| Bulgaria | Russia 75% | The others 25% |
'I pushed this across to Stalin, who had by then heard the translation. There was a slight pause. Then he took his blue pencil and made a large tick upon it, and passed it back to us. It was all settled in no more time than it takes to set down, ... After this there was a long silence. The pencilled paper lay in the centre of the table. At length I said, "might it not be thought rather cynical if it seemed we had disposed of these issues, so fateful to millions of people, in such an off-hand manner? Let us burn the paper". "No, you keep it" said Stalin'.