Yalta and the 'voting formula.' (Big Three meeting at pre-United Nations summit)(A Look Back, February 1945)

Beginning at 11:30 on the night of 2 February 1945, the first of 25 military transport planes took off from the Mediterranean island of Malta. They left at 10-minute intervals, until all were airborne shortly before dawn. The American and British aircraft were carrying nearly 700 passengers, including United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt and United Kingdom's Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill, 1,400 miles east to the Crimea for a week-long summit conference at Yalta with the Soviet Union's Premier, Joseph V. Stalin.

With the end of the ferociously fought war in Europe 13 weeks away, critical military and political decisions had to be made. The heads of Government were accompanied by their foreign ministers, and half or more of the three delegations were high-ranking military officers. High on the agenda were military plans for the defeat of Germany and its occupation, as well as reparations to the Allied countries for damages. Other issues on which agreement among the three leaders was sought included assistance to the peoples of liberated Europe, the political future of Poland and Yugoslavia, and the Soviet's possible role in the war against Japan. Poland would prove to be the most contentious question of the Crimea Conference, one that critics later focused on in their condemnations of the Yalta agreements. They were also displeased with the Yalta solution to the problem of what was known as "the voting formula" for the proposed general international organization--the future United Nations.

At the Dumbarton Oaks Conversations, held in Washington from late August through early October 1944, a working draft of the Charter for the UN was approved by high-level representatives of China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. An impasse developed, however, over voting in the Security Council. The four Governments agreed on the requirement of unanimity among permanent members when the Council was to act on non-procedural matters concerning peace and security. If a Council member was a party to a dispute, the Americans and British proposed it not participate in the voting. The Soviet Union, however, favoured it retain the right to vote. Attempts at reaching a compromise failed. Moreover, the Soviets proposed UN membership for each of their 16 republics. Two months after the Dumbarton Oaks Conversations, an attempt by the United States to negotiate a compromise on the voting formula proved unsuccessful. The matter would have to be carried to Yalta. At a plenary session in Yalta's elegant Livadia Palace in the late afternoon of 6 February, the voting formula was discussed by the three heads of Government and their foreign ministers. Marshall Stalin asked for further study.

During the plenary meeting the following afternoon, the Soviet Foreign Minister announced that the Anglo-American voting formula was acceptable to his Government. He then raised the question of UN membership for the Soviet republics--not all 16, but 2 or 3. The foreign ministers were to study that proposal.

In plenary on 8 February, agreement was reached that the United Kingdom and the United States would support, at the United Nations Conference on International Organization, which would open in San Francisco on 25 April, a Soviet proposal admitting the Byelorussian and Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republics to original membership in the UN.