THE NIGHT OF THE DECLARATION OF WAR IN BERLIN.

Yes. The night was, it was late at night when we were invited with our ambassador to come to Ribbentrop's office in the Wilhelmstrasse. And when we arrived we saw that something really is going to happen. Because really we didn't know yet that this would be a declaration of war. And because there were already cameramen and all the lights ready, you know, it was still dawn, early in the morning. And so we entered the ministry and went up to the second floor where Ribbentrop was expecting us. And he then actually read or quoted Hitler's memorandum, actually accusing the Soviet Union, that the Soviet Union is a threat. He never said that they declare war on us, but the Soviet Union is a threat. That Hitler decided to counter this threat and to defend the German people. And that's why he ordered the troops to cross the Soviet border and that was it. See?

THE RESULT, OF YOUR UNDERSTANDING, WHAT WAS THE RESULT OF THE TEHRAN CONFERENCE?

The results of the Tehran Conference, is I can imagine you know, for Stalin was certainly I think...

STALIN'S SENSE OF WHAT WAS ACHIEVED IN TEHRAN.

I think that Stalin was overall satisfied with Tehran. For him it was the first meeting with Roosevelt, which was important. He met Churchill before in '42. Ah, and I think that he had a feeling that they have established some degree of confidence with President Roosevelt, and I think that this was the most important thing. Because on this, on such an atmosphere depended all the other things and the relationship with between our countries. So I think that he probably considered the Tehran Conference as a very important conference and in a positive way.

HOW WOULD YOU SUMMARIZE HIS VIEW OF YALTA?

Yalta was already nearer to the victory and by that time there were, I would say, more felt the problems that would arise after the war. And in some cases the discussion was not so easy, but rather complicated. And um, and the other point was that there was a considerable difference between Churchill's attitudes and Roosevelt's attitudes. I think that still Stalin considered that he would be able to maintain a certain degree of positive relationship with Roosevelt. But the influence of Churchill was important. I think it was connected with the fact that now Churchill understood that in Europe after the war, will be only one major power. As you know, the British policy was always based on the balance between several, two European, at any rate, two European powers. Now the only possibility was to balance on Soviet-American difficulties, so he was very worried about the possibility of a rapprochement between America and the United States.

WHAT WAS THE MAIN PROBLEM?

Well the main problem was of course, East European countries. Problems of also to some extent of Germany, what to do with Germany because there was still an idea... a Western idea of dividing Germany into many small countries, and the Soviet Union didn't support this point. And of course, there was also the problem of Soviet entry into the war in the Far East. But here this point was more or less agreed upon.

WHAT ABOUT THE BERLIN CONFERENCE WITH CHURCHILL THE MAIN POINT OF VIEW OF STALIN?

Oh, you mean with Churchill? Well Churchill was only in the first half of the conference. Then he was voted out and Attlee came as a Labour leader, and the new personality was certainly, somehow influenced the conference because the...the President was also new. There was no Roosevelt, there was actually only Churchill...

NO, I MEAN THE MOSCOW CONFERENCE. THE MOSCOW MEETING BETWEEN CHURCHILL AND STALIN?

In '44, you mean, the... Well, this was um, this, I think this showed that difficulties are ahead, and especially on Polish problem. You see, I think the idea of Churchill especially and to some extent supported also by some American quarters, maybe not by Roosevelt himself was to reestablish this so-called "cordon sanitaire" which was established after the Revolution when they were afraid of the spread of revolutionary ideas and socialist ideas, so they created this cordon sanitaire around the Soviet Union. And this was the idea also. The whole thing was about what kind of regimes whether they would be friendly to the Soviet Union or not, and they did, they wanted to have regimes or and systems that would pursue or would follow Western politics against the Soviet Union, as far as the Soviet Union was concerned. Um, so this was the problem. We wanted to have friendly, friendly countries around, at our perimeter, which is natural.

THE POTSDAM CONFERENCE, THE SAME KIND OF SUMMARY FROM STALIN'S SOVIET POINT OF VIEW.

Yes. The...the Potsdam Conference was different from the other wartime conferences, first of all because it was after the war, after the victory in Europe. Second, because there were new participants like President Truman, and the second half of the conference Prime Minister Attlee, because Churchill was out-voted by British voters, and he didn't come back. And this of course created a new atmosphere, more I would say, more difficult atmosphere. And I think also the presence of the atomic bomb which was tested just during the, or on the eve of the opening of the Potsdam Conference. It also certainly confirmed probably the opinion, Stalin's opinion, that we will be confronted with all kind of problems, and maybe with a rather unfriendly attitude of the Western powers towards us and towards our security interests.

YOU QUOTE THE CONVERSATION APPARENTLY QUOTED BY MARCEL ZHUKOV BETWEEN STALIN AND KURCHATOV. CAN YOU THEN TELL ME ABOUT THIS?

This...this was after Truman told Stalin that Americans have got a... a very destructive device, and that they have just tested the device. When Truman had said it, there was Secretary Stimson and Churchill were watching Stalin's reaction. But Stalin didn't show on his face anything. So they...they got an idea that he didn't understand what it was about. But Zhukov says that when Stalin after that went to his quarters and there was Molotov and Zhukov, and Stalin said we should call immediately Kurchatov to accelerate our program. And Zhukov says, I understood that this was the atomic, the atomic project, which we had. So Stalin understood it, but he just didn't show it, and it made a great difficulty for Truman, because Truman had expected that now he can press and demand change of Polish borders and so on, many other questions. But when he saw that Stalin didn't understand he thought he didn't understand, so he had that surely more leverage, you know, to do something about that. And actually this first atomic blackmail actually failed.

YOU HAVE ALSO SAID THAT MOVING ACCOUNT, YOU HAVE A MOVING ACCOUNT OF THE VICTORY DAY IN THE RED SQUARE. CAN YOU TELL ME PERSONALLY HOW YOU FELT, WHAT YOU DO ON THE VICTORY DAY?

Well, since this day was in the, we were already expect it. It was May, Hitler has committed suicide. We enter, believed, we...we knew that very soon there will be, And still somehow you know, you didn't have this feeling that we really will have it someday, after this terrible four years of what we have gone through. And in the morning we just started our work as usually, and only by 12:00 we were set to celebrate. But now it's victory, you see. We didn't know, we didn't have yet all these telegrams see, so we didn't know that on the eve there was this arrangement in Flensburg, and then it was repeated in Karlshorst, and actually the capitulation were before the Allies and the main commanders of the Allies. It was really a great day you know. Every, see, everybody called his friends. And so, then we all went down here, Gorky Street, to the Red Square, and helped them celebrate in this. It was really a great day, yes. It was very great.