Members Event
7 November 2018 - 6:00pm to 7:00pm
Chatham House | 10 St James's Square | London | SW1Y 4LE
Event participants
Professor David Reynolds FBA, Professor of International History, Fellow of Christ's College, University of Cambridge; Author, The Kremlin Letters, Stalin’s Wartime Correspondence with Churchill and Roosevelt
Dr Olga Kucherenko, Assistant Editor, The Kremlin Letters, Stalin’s Wartime Correspondence with Churchill and Roosevelt
Chair: Dr Rachel Polonsky, Affiliated Lecturer, Department of Slavonic Studies, Fellow of Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge
Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 prompted Winston Churchill to announce to the British people that 'The Russian danger is our danger' and the vast Allied shipments of Lend-Lease material to the Red Army characterize the alliance's spirit and resolve.
David Reynolds and Vladimir Pechatnov's new book, The Kremlin Letters: Stalin's Wartime Correspondence with Churchill and Roosevelt, analyses Stalin's written exchanges with his two Western allies during the Second World War, ranging from intimate personal greetings to weighty exchanges about strategic and diplomatic issues such as the Second Front, the Arctic convoys and the future of Eastern Europe.
Utilizing newly available Russian archival materials, the authors shed light on this crucial alliance that won the Second World War and the issues – and egos – that set the stage for the Cold War that followed. They also explain the challenges of trying to build cross-cultural relationships through the old-fashioned medium of letter-writing in the digital age.