The Kremlin Letters: the psychology of the Big Three's correspondence

The Kremlin Letters (eds. David Reynolds and Vladimir Pechatnov, Yale University Press 2018) publishes and annotates Stalin's wartime correspondence with Churchill and Roosevelt — 682 messages from 22 June 1941 to Roosevelt's death on 12 April 1945. It is the correspondence in which Estonia's fate, too, was decided in silence: the Baltic states were rarely mentioned, yet their annexation was acquiesced to step by step. Below, based on the book, is a psychological analysis of each party: intent, goals, language, agenda, the flow of the conversation and the price of the decisions.

How the letters were actually made

No "personal" message was truly one man's. On the Soviet side the chief drafter was Molotov ("Stalin and I drafted many of them together. Everything was done through me"); nearly every draft went to "Comrade Stalin for approval", who added whole paragraphs in blue or red pencil — the editors call him the "editor-in-chief", "excellent on the small print – alert to grammar, punctuation and style". Churchill dictated ("from mouth to hand") and had the Cabinet approve key messages; some "Churchill" was really the Foreign Office "school of". Roosevelt was "least involved in the nitty-gritty of composition" — drafts came from Hopkins, Admiral Leahy ("Bill, suppose you take a shot at this… and he always changed it") and later Bohlen; FDR added "personal touches and encouraging noises to otherwise bureaucratic documents".

Two structural facts shaped the whole conversation. First, asymmetry: Churchill–Roosevelt bilateral traffic was more than double their combined messages to Stalin — they coordinated replies while Stalin could only guess (or spy); the editors say this "always left him at a disadvantage". Second, translation: messages were translated, enciphered with synonyms and jumbled word order; Churchill's "diversion" arrived in the Kremlin as diversiya — sabotage. Offence was sometimes caused by language, not intent.

Stalin: the bookkeeper who trusted no one

Intent and agenda. Stalin's aims were two from the start: immediately — a second front and supplies; further out — recognition of the June 1941 frontiers (i.e. the Molotov–Ribbentrop takings, Estonia included) and a postwar sphere. When recognition did not come in 1942, he decided to leave the borders to the "correlation of forces" — the Red Army. Estonia bears the consequences to this day.

Language. "Stalin, the editor, kept things short and sharp"; Cadogan said at Yalta that "he never used a superfluous word." His weapons were arithmetic (36 divisions moved west-to-east; "colossal sacrifices" against the Allies' "modest" losses), quoting his allies' own dated promises back at them (the prosecutorial letter of 24 June 1943), and silence as pressure — weeks of pause, or an icy "I received your message of 9th October. Thank you." He edited Molotov's uniform drafts two ways: softer to Roosevelt, tougher to Churchill. In intelligence traffic they were "Captain" (FDR) and "Wild Boar" (Churchill).

Psychology. "Stalin never trusted anyone": he was haunted by fear of a separate peace (the Hess obsession, the Bern accusations) and by status anxiety, and he had a "white-hot blind spot: Poland". He could also charm — the insulting aide-mémoire of 13 August 1942 ("are British soldiers afraid of the Germans?") was followed by a six-hour banquet and "I am a rough man, not an experienced one like you." The editors' verdict: after a clumsy start in 1941 he showed "increasing finesse", crowned by the facts-and-force diplomacy of Tehran and Yalta.

Churchill: a man of words, at cards not chess

Intent and agenda. Keep Russia in the war, defend Britain's Mediterranean-first strategy, and later contain the Soviet reach in Europe — the percentages deal was his "naughty document". Letters were his "surrogate for conversation", ranging "expansively over policy and problems"; some were written for posterity: "if I live long enough I may be one of the historians."

Language. Rhetoric, emotion and technical justification in turn: landing-craft and escort numbers, "My heart bleeds" after PQ17, the crocodile sketch of Torch drawn for Stalin, a five-minute untranslated tirade ("I do not understand the words, but by God I like your spirit").

Psychology. The editors: he oscillated "between hope and fear"; "Churchill's forte was cards, not chess: he lacked Stalin's patience and guile during the endgame." His lifelong "Stalin never broke his personal word to me" they call a "remarkable blind spot" — yet "perhaps a necessary fiction", without which the unholy alliance might not have held. Telling for Estonia: in January 1942 he wrote that the 1941 frontiers had been "acquired by acts of aggression in shameful collusion with Hitler" — and by that spring he was ready to yield on the Baltics.

Roosevelt: charm as strategy

Intent and agenda. Hold the alliance together, win the war, build the UN — and postpone territorial questions (the European "chessboard") until a personal meeting would solve everything. To Churchill, 18 March 1942: "I think I can personally handle Stalin better than either your Foreign Office or my State Department. Stalin hates the guts of all your top people." The editors call this the lodestar of his foreign policy until the day he died.

Language. The fewest words of his own: of his last 3,400 words to Stalin, none were self-written; he trusted the "tactile reports" of envoys over "cold words that got lost or twisted in translation". Characteristic was projected optimism: the promise to Molotov of a second front "in 1942" that his own military thought impossible; his last message to Stalin calling the Bern crisis a "minor misunderstanding".

Psychology. At Tehran he stayed in the Soviet embassy and pointedly avoided siding with Churchill — the charm offensive toward Stalin was deliberate. The editors note grimly that courting Stalin was, for FDR's health, "in effect a death sentence" — and his death is the Cold War's "great intangible".

The flow of the conversation and its sentiment arc

Period	Sentiment	What happened
Summer–autumn 1941	desperation + distrust	Stalin: the USSR in "mortal peril"; demands a second front and 25–30 British divisions at Archangel (Churchill privately: "absurdities"). November: Churchill reads Stalin's letter "white as chalk".
December 1941 – May 1942	bargaining	Stalin demands of Eden the June 1941 borders (Baltics included). Churchill at first: "shameful collusion with Hitler"; by spring he bends. On 24 May 1942 Stalin himself drops the territorial clauses — after the Kharkov disaster.
Summer 1942	the lump of ice melts	PQ17, convoys suspended, the second front postponed; in Moscow an insulting aide-mémoire, then the reconciliation banquet. In October Stalin to Maisky: Churchill "gives a promise easily only to forget about it just as quickly or insolently break it".
January–June 1943	near breakdown	Casablanca, "a table just for two"; promises slip; on 24 June Stalin's dossier of quotations — allied confidence "severely tried". Ambassadors recalled; Churchill: "this is probably the end of the Churchill–Stalin correspondence."
April 1943 (Katyn)	moral low I	Stalin blames the victims and breaks with the London Poles; Churchill and FDR swallow it (O'Malley: "we have used the good name of England like the murderers used the little conifers"). The editors: the Big Three's "unfinest hours".
October–December 1943	repair + summit	The Moscow conference, then Tehran: a date for Overlord; Stalin baits Churchill (the 50,000-executions "joke"), FDR leans toward Stalin. Churchill: the "poor little English donkey" between the bear and the buffalo.
June–July 1944	euphoria	D-Day + Bagration, as pledged at Tehran. Stalin: "History will record this deed as an achievement of the highest order." Churchill: "we have never asked you a single question because of our full confidence in you."
August–September 1944	moral low II	The Warsaw Uprising: Stalin calls the insurgents "a group of criminals who have embarked on the Warsaw adventure in order to seize power"; refuses the airfields; FDR: "I do not think this needs an answer." ~250,000 Poles die.
October 1944 – February 1945	the deal-making summit	"Only the three of us"; the percentages paper (Stalin ticks it); Yalta — FDR: "I leave greatly heartened"; Churchill in the Commons: "their word is their bond."
March–April 1945	the last crisis	Bern: Stalin alleges separate negotiations ("it may be assumed that you have not been fully informed"); FDR: "bitter resentment toward your informers… for such vile misrepresentations." On 12 April FDR dies; Stalin holds Harriman's hand for thirty seconds.

The main arguments

Stalin argued from numbers and facts: the divisions on his front (147 German divisions), the asymmetry of losses, his allies' own dated promises — and finally the fact of possession ("when the time comes, we will speak"). Churchill answered with military-technical constraints (landing craft, escorts, shipping) and the logic of the Mediterranean strategy; the editors note his "promises" were "views continually modified by events". Roosevelt avoided the argument as such: unity above all, territory to the war's end, a personal meeting to solve everything. When Stalin and Churchill collided, he often pointedly declined to side with Churchill.

The decisions and their price

The correspondence's tangible outputs: the Lend-Lease protocols; Torch instead of Sledgehammer (1942); the second front slipping to 1944; the Tehran decisions (a date and commander for Overlord, the southern-France landing); the percentages agreement (Greece was left untouched by Stalin — the one major promise he kept); Yalta's elastic wording on Poland ("it's the best I can do for Poland at this time" — FDR). The editors' overall verdict is double-edged: the alliance worked — "the Big Three's anti-Hitler coalition worked, whereas the Berlin–Rome–Tokyo Axis did not" — yet the roots of the Cold War lie partly in how each man tried to shape the postwar relationship. None of the three foresaw it.

Estonia and the Baltics: decided in silence

Estonia was never a subject in this correspondence — only an object, rarely mentioned and yielded step by step:

When	What happened
December 1941	Stalin demands of Eden recognition of the June 1941 frontiers — per the editors, the Nazi–Soviet Pact borders giving the USSR "control of eastern Poland, parts of Romania and the three Baltic states".
8 January 1942	Churchill to Eden: those frontiers were "acquired by acts of aggression in shameful collusion with Hitler".
Spring 1942	Churchill yields to Eden's pressure: ready to concede "Soviet control of the Baltic states"; the British draft treaty allowed the annexation, demanding only a right of emigration ("included to appease the Americans"); Moscow rejected it.
24 May 1942	Stalin himself drops the territorial clauses — the borders are left to the "correlation of forces", i.e. the Red Army.
Tehran, November 1943	FDR makes clear to Stalin that the United States "would not seriously impede the restoration of Soviet control over the Baltic states", so long as the USSR provided "a veneer of democracy".
1944	The editors: "Churchill knew the Allies could do nothing about the Baltics" — Poland was a different matter. On 29 September 1944 Stalin writes of "the annihilation of the Baltic group of German troops hanging over our right flank".
30 November 1944	The correspondence's one Tallinn mention: Churchill tells Stalin that two German T5 acoustic torpedoes were found on a U-boat captured at Tallinn (U-250); Stalin agrees to share one.

Thus the correspondence closed the circle opened by the pact of 28 September 1939: the occupation of Estonia was legitimised not by any decision, but by the avoidance of one — in silence, for a "veneer of democracy".

A pattern that repeated

The correspondence lays bare a pattern. The Soviet Union first pressed Estonia into a “mutual-assistance” pact under false pretenses — while secretly colluding with Nazi Germany. Yet once its own first battles turned against it, Stalin did everything he could with the West to ease the pressure on his troops: pressing Churchill and Roosevelt to open a second front, and securing decisive Lend-Lease supplies of critical matériel. Those very supplies were then turned against the small nations the Soviet Union had already occupied — and which it went on to drain for fifty years.