Hiss drafted a memorandum arguing against Stalin's proposal (made at Dumbarton Oaks) to give one vote to each of the sixteen Soviet republics in the United Nations General Assembly. Fearing isolation, Stalin hoped thus to counterbalance the votes of the many countries of the British Empire, who he anticipated would vote with Britain, and those of Latin America, who could be expected to vote in lockstep with the United States.Historian Fraser J. Harbutt recounts that at Dumbarton Oaks, "The consternation aroused by this Soviet demand (Stettinius recalled that it burst upon the British and Americans 'like a bombshell') is a telling illustration of the State Department's lack of imagination and foresight in this area." Harbutt points out that FDR had been present in April 1917 when pre-Lenin Russia brought up the same issue during negotiations for the League of Nations and argues that he and Stettinius ought to have anticipated and been prepared for it. See Fraser J. Harbutt, Yalta 1945: Europe and America at the Crossroads (Cambridge University Press, 2010) p. 261. In the final compromise offered by Roosevelt and Stettinius and accepted by Stalin, the Soviets obtained three votes: one each for the Soviet Union itself, the Ukrainian SSR, and the Byelorussian SSR.Details of the final Yalta agreements on spheres of influence, hammered out at Tehran (1943), Moscow Conference (1944), and earlier, were kept secret, even from Vice President Harry Truman. Instead, Roosevelt, aiming at getting domestic public opinion to support American internationalism and the establishment of the United Nations, chose to publicize the deceptively optimistic "Declaration on Liberated Europe," which pledged the three allies to establishing free elections and democratic governments, in accordance with the principles of the 1941 Atlantic Charter) in the nations they had liberated. See Harbutt.
Hiss drafted a memorandum arguing against Stalin's proposal (made at Dumbarton Oaks) to give one vote to each of the sixteen Soviet republics in the United Nations General Assembly. Fearing isolation, Stalin hoped thus to counterbalance the votes of the many countries of the British Empire, who he anticipated would vote with Britain, and those of Latin America, who could be expected to vote in lockstep with the United States.Historian Fraser J. Harbutt recounts that at Dumbarton Oaks, "The consternation aroused by this Soviet demand (Stettinius recalled that it burst upon the British and Americans 'like a bombshell') is a telling illustration of the State Department's lack of imagination and foresight in this area." Harbutt points out that FDR had been present in April 1917 when pre-Lenin Russia brought up the same issue during negotiations for the League of Nations and argues that he and Stettinius ought to have anticipated and been prepared for it. See Fraser J. Harbutt, Yalta 1945: Europe and America at the Crossroads (Cambridge University Press, 2010) p. 261. In the final compromise offered by Roosevelt and Stettinius and accepted by Stalin, the Soviets obtained three votes: one each for the Soviet Union itself, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR.Details of the final Yalta agreements on spheres of influence, hammered out at Tehran (1943), Moscow Conference (1944), and earlier, were kept secret, even from Vice President Harry Truman. Instead, Roosevelt, aiming at getting domestic public opinion to support American internationalism and the establishment of the United Nations, chose to publicize the deceptively optimistic "Declaration on Liberated Europe," which pledged the three allies to establishing free elections and democratic governments, in accordance with the principles of the 1941 Atlantic Charter) in the nations they had liberated. See Harbutt.