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ANNEX B
SELECTION OF CRITICAL STATEMENTS ABOUT THE SOVIET SYSTEM AND LEADERS MADE BY BRITISH STATESMEN SINCE 1945
Speech by Mr. Ernest Bevin (Foreign Secretary)-House of Commons,
66
7th November, 1945
If I may refer to Russia, I think the right honourable gentleman (Mr Churchill) will agree that we have met almost every demand that we ever thought we should be asked for.
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I must say that, having conceded all this and not taken one inch of territory, or asked for it, one cannot help being a little bit suspicious if a Great Power wants to come right across, shall I say, the throat of the British Commonwealth, which has done no harm to anybody but fought this war.
Mr. Churchill (in Opposition)—At Fulton, Missouri, 5th March, 1946
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From Stettin, in the Baltic, to Trieste, in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient States of Central and Eastern Europe-Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia. All these famous cities, and the populations around them, lie in the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence, but to a very high and increasing measure of control from Moscow. Athens alone, with its immortal glories, is free to decide its future at an election under British, American and French observation. The Russian-dominated Polish Government has been encouraged to make enormous and wrongful inroads upon Germany, and mass expulsions of millions of Germans on a scale grievous and undreamed of are now taking place. The Communist parties, which were very small in all these Eastern States of Europe, have been raised to pre-eminence and power far beyond their numbers, and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control. Police Governments are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except in Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy. Turkey and Persia are both profoundly alarmed and disturbed at the claims which are made upon them and at the pressure being exerted by the Moscow Government. An attempt is being made by the Russians in Berlin to build up a quasi-Communist Party in their zone of occupied Germany by showing special favours to groups of Left-wing German leaders.
At the end of the fighting last June the American and British armies withdrew westwards, in accordance with an earlier agreement, to a depth at some points of 150 miles on a front of nearly 400 miles, to allow the Russians to occupy this vast expanse of territory which the Western democracies had conquered. If, now, the Soviet Government tries, by separate action, to build up a pro-Communist Germany in their areas, this will cause new serious difficulties in the British and American zones, and will give the defeated Germans the power of putting themselves up to auction between the Soviets and the Western democracies. Whatever conclusions may be drawn from these facts-and facts they are this is certainly not the liberated Europe we fought to build up. Nor is it one which contains the essentials of permanent peace. . .
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. I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war.
What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines . .
Mr. Churchill (in Opposition)—House of Commons, 5th June, 1946
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There had been and there still was an earnest desire to dwell in friendly co-operation with the Soviet Government and the Russian people. On the other hand, the Foreign Secretary received the approval of the vast majority of the people when he protested against the prolonged systematic campaign of vilification which had been and was being daily pumped out upon us by the Soviet
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