Turning the pages back... February 10, 1947 (02/09/97)

Turning the pages back...

February 10, 1947

Most students of history know about the agreements reached at Yalta and Potsdam by the Big Three (the U.S., the U.K., and the USSR) concerning the map of Europe following the defeat of Nazi Germany. Less known are a series of treaties that came to define many of Eastern Europe's boundaries and the various war reparations owed by states that had supported the fascist Axis in the second world war.

Following the European armistice, the foreign ministries of Great Britain, France, the U.S. and the USSR drafted five treaties for peace with Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Finland, and a preliminary conference was held in Paris between July and October 1946 to discuss them.

Delegates from 21 states attended, including a contingent from the Ukrainian SSR, headed by the notorious Comintern purger Dmytro Manuilsky. Ukrainian émigré organizations also used the opportunity of the talks to raise concerns as to whether or not Soviet Ukrainian delegates were truly representing the interests of the republic's citizens.

Among the matters settled were Ukraine's borders with Romania (which have occasionally come into question since December 1991) and Hungary.

Romania was compelled to recognize its cession of Bessarabia and northern Bukovyna to the Ukrainian SSR, which had been effected in 1940, at a time when the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact still held the Nazi-Soviet collaboration effort together. Hungary accepted its 1938 boundaries. Some Transcarpathian lands that had passed to Ukraine under a June 1945 arrangement were transferred back to the Czechs.

While Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary and Italy were required to pay the USSR reparations valued at over $500 million (U.S.), Ukraine was not awarded any direct payments.

The official signing ceremonies took place on February 10, 1947.

Source: "Paris Peace Treaties of 1947," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. 4 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1993).

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