
Lessons in negotiation from Stalin at Yalta - awinter-py
https://abe-winter.github.io/2018/12/20/stalin.html
======
gritzko
> Roosevelt was probably sicker and had to travel all the way to Ukraine.

That is a bit sensitive these days, but Crimea wasn't Ukraine at the time. It
was transferred to Ukraine in 1954 by N.Khrushchev (without much elaboration).
He did many such transfers at the time. 40 years later, that caused several
wars.

[https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/why-did-russia-
give...](https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/why-did-russia-give-away-
crimea-sixty-years-ago?gclid=CLHnyZC7ndACFSLicgod-UEIXw)

~~~
decebalus1
> He did many such transfers at the time. 40 years later, that caused several
> wars.

All these types of things in my opinions were 'investments' in the future.
Geopolitical instability is always a good lever for waging war. First think
which came to mind when reading your comment was Transnistria.

~~~
lainga
I'm not sure Khrushchev intended it that way, many in the 50s-era USSR were
still pretty confident that the various "people's republics" in the Warsaw
Pact would soon apply for membership in the Union, followed by the gradual
obviation of national borders, and then the state itself. I think they played
fast-and-loose with moving territory between the soon-to-be-obsolete
territorial units for that reason.

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nkozyra
This was very light on analogous details of the conference and what the
specific negotiating victories were.

Otherwise these strike me as fairly boilerplate negotiating tactics; I didn't
find that Yalta itself validated any of them.

------
gooseus
As an aside - if anyone is interested in learning a whole lot about
negotiating/diplomacy throughout history, including Yalta (I think), I
recommend the When Diplomacy Fails Podcast with Zack Twamley:

[http://www.wdfpodcast.com/](http://www.wdfpodcast.com/)

------
DanielBMarkham
I know nothing about negotiation aside from a couple of classes I took early
in my career -- probably the best instruction I received early on aside from
deeply-technical stuff. Doubled my billing rate immediately.

Having said that, it's important to distinguish these kinds of negotiation
porn stories with real-world negotiations. Especially for tech teams.

Negotiation exists so that in a world of low-trust we can all meet _some_ of
our goals by working together in a careful manner. It's a kind of careful
"dance" where a back-and-forth between the parties slowly allows information
to move back-and-forth so that goals can be met. It's the spot between sharing
nothing and sharing everything.

A lot of management theory, like Agile, depends on some kind of weird total
trust environment that's never, ever existed. That means negotiation has to
happen. (If negotiation happens with your kids when you're talking about where
to go for dinner, it happens in tech teams, trust me.)

Yes, in the end you'll end up with a bit of remaining information asymmetry
that can be spun to make it like one party got away with a lot and took
advantage over the other one. But the real goal is also mentioned in the
essay: everybody comes back to the table again and negotiation happens again
on the next deal. Nobody wants to sit down with Stalin again. And thankfully,
nobody has to. Real-world negotiation is much more about building trust and
deep friendships -- sometimes using games and tactics which can appear to be
slimy -- than it is trying to bulldoze somebody.

Negotiation has gotten a bad name for many of us tech folks. It really
shouldn't be that way. It's an important thing to learn and practice for
everybody.

~~~
WalterBright
Put another way, negotiation is how one deals with having less than "perfect
information".

------
hitekker
The author tries basing his “lessons” on one historical moment, to little
avail. The gap between these two concepts is enormous and the logic connecting
them is simply too shallow to offer the needed support.

In wiser hands, this article would be worth reading.

~~~
pas
Could you please illuminate how the article falls short for those who ...
can't?

------
tree_of_item
I don't really understand the lesson behind "Control the agenda" or "Be the
agent of chaos".

> Use these underlying power dynamics to control the agenda

How did Stalin do this, exactly? What topic did he fight to avoid?

> If you’ve ever been an A student in a group project with a C student (or
> vice versa), you know this game.

Know _what_ game?

~~~
probably_wrong
Regarding your second question: the "game" in which a C student doesn't do
their part in a group project and the A student has to decide whether to do
all the work by him/herself or to accept that the C student will turn in
crappy work and both will get a B.

If you care less about the consequences of your action than the other part,
you get an advantage. This is not really recommended as a negotiation strategy
in the long run (it only works once, and the other person is now your enemy),
but it's good to know it can happen.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
In light of current US politics, I find this idea rather frightening.

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mothsonasloth
Stalin was smart and certainly had many cunning moments.

However he had plenty of blunders too, especially being blindsided by Hitler's
Operation Barbarossa in the eastern front.

I read the post and I don't think I would be able to or want to apply any of
those lessons.

Still an interesting insight into Yalta

~~~
ekianjo
He was not blindsided by Hitler at all. Soviet Russia had its own plan to
attack Hitler and were amassing troops at the border as well. Hitler decided
to strike first.

~~~
PavlovsCat
He was completely blindsided, rather than not at all, and so shocked he
isolated himself.

[https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080112053013A...](https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080112053013AAGQp5p)

> It was one thing for Stalin to begin trusting, to some extent, the judgment
> of Zhukov and Timoshenko (instead of Voroshilov & Co.) on how best to defend
> the USSR in the event of a German attack. It was quite another matter for
> Stalin to begin believing that a German attack would actually be launched.

> Several other answers have stressed Stalin’s refusal to accept the validity
> of intelligence reports re Barbarossa from Sorge and other spies. That is
> perfectly true. In fact, according to at least two books (‘Russia’s War’ by
> Overy; and ‘Third Reich’ by Burleigh), Russian Intelligence received no less
> than 84 different warnings of Barbarossa, from a variety of sources. Quite
> apart from British/American warnings (obtained via Enigma intercepts),
> Sorge, and various diplomatic listening posts; Moscow was being kept well
> informed by moles inside three German ministries: Economics, Air and
> Foreign. As the clock ticked down, the warnings became increasingly precise
> and accurate. It did not matter. Stalin kept on dismissing every warning as
> an “English provocation!” ... with the ominous footnote that the loyalty of
> the source should be investigated.

[..]

> Even after Barbarossa was launched, Stalin still refused to believe that
> Hitler could have ordered it. When Zhukov met him at the Kremlin late on
> June 22, 1941, Stalin was still insisting that the attack was “a provocation
> of the German officers” and that “Hitler surely does not know about it”.
> Once the truth finally sank in, it is hardly surprising that Stalin slunk
> off into isolation. Quite understandably, he feared that his staggering,
> glaring display of incompetence would mean the end of him. When Molotov led
> a deputation from the Politburo to winkle him out from his dacha on June 30,
> and talk him into coming back to the Kremlin to take charge, Stalin’s
> initial reaction to their arrival reveals that he assumed they had come to
> arrest him.

> This still does not answer the key question: why did Stalin trust Hitler’s
> intentions?

> As Churchill later wrote, at least as regards Hitler and Barbarossa, Stalin
> showed himself to be “the most completely outwitted bungler of the Second
> World War”. But ... there are a couple of rationalizations to explain
> Stalin’s apparently blind stupidity. To any logical man, Hitler’s decision
> to launch a two-front war - while Britain was still far from being conquered
> in the West – was crazy. Furthermore, the timing of Barbarossa was also
> wrong: Stalin knew that, by late June, the Germans were not likely to have
> time to crush the Red Army completely before the autumn rains made Russia’s
> roads into impassable bogs.

> However, I think that the likeliest explanation of Stalin’s obstinate trust
> in Hitler lies more in his Marxist convictions, and to his intense suspicion
> of Britain’s intentions, than anything else. Stalin did not see Nazism as
> being as much a natural enemy to Communism as was Capitalist Democracy.
> Above all, Stalin hated and distrusted the British. He constantly harked
> back to the 19th century Crimean War and ‘Great Game’ struggles for mastery
> of Central Asia, and to Britain’s post-WW1 interventions in the Russian
> Civil War. He was convinced that Britain was conspiring to undermine his
> pact with Hitler, and to form an alliance with the Axis powers to attack
> Russia. When Rudolf Hess flew to Britain in May 1941, Stalin interpreted it
> as the prelude to a secret Anglo-German pact to combine against the Soviet
> Union.

> Perhaps the most revealing clue lies in one of Stalin’s immediate reactions
> once he accepted the reality of the Barbarossa attack. He warned his cronies
> to expect, as a follow-up blow, an amphibious assault by Britain’s Royal
> Navy against Leningrad!

------
apo
_Nobody wants to sit down with Stalin twice._

Probably the best observation in the whole article.

------
xte
Do not forget a thing: Stalin at start receive big money from British crown,
not much differently than Lenin from Germany before.

~~~
lostlogin
Could you explain this further? My understating is that Stalin was a key part
of party finances early on but obtained money via robbery, hijacking, murder
and other violent methods. The party tried hard to restrain him but loved the
cash.

Why would the British want instability in Russia? That would suit Germany.

~~~
xte
At first yes, Stalin was a thief that give money to bolsheviks, after Lenin
death however was founded by British crown to avoid the "new regime" became
more "socialist" instead of more dictatorial.

Basically no "western" élites want socialism and they do their best to stop
them, they found ex socialist like Mussolini in Italy, they found "communism",
they found nazism to stop that trans-national movement.

~~~
badpun
Any sources to back this up? Seems unlikely than those elites would support
regimes that nearly defeated the West, just for the sake of suppressing
socialists.

~~~
lostlogin
It would certainly be interesting to have supported the White army (including
landing troops) and then fund the reds. I don’t believe this happened but that
whole time period is incredibly complex and every time I think I understand
part of it, it turns out I don’t.

~~~
xte
White army was actively supported by UK, France, USA, Italy, Japan (White
Siberian/Kolčak Army for Japan) and many others, even with landing troops, but
after the substantial defeat and the food crisis of 1921-23 UK came in through
"Save the Children" (formally and NGO created to help Russians people in
trouble with Bolshevik government approval) and taking advantage of Lenin
health crisis they offer support to Stalin and they maintain it for many years
becoming de facto a "new economic friend" like Germany was for Lenin.

------
patrickg_zill
It didn't hurt that there were many traitors among FDR's administration.

~~~
Latteland
Maybe there were some, can you elaborate. Where's the evidence? I always
thought there were a few american communists walking around then, but they had
few misconceptions about the evil of russia if they paid attention at all.

The big thing was the leader of the us was dying, probably of cancer.

~~~
patrickg_zill
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_espionage_in_the_Unit...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_espionage_in_the_United_States)

Also you can read up separately on Harry Dexter White.

Edit to add: it wasn't until Khrushchev that the crimes of Stalin were
revealed, and that was 1956. See the "Secret Speech"
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Cult_of_Personality_a...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Cult_of_Personality_and_Its_Consequences)

~~~
Latteland
Thanks for the info. That was a good read. It was maybe a little more than I
suspected, but I still think a lot of different countries had people from the
US spying on them. I guess the communists in the US were true believers,
instead of just economic agents. A lot of people were discovered by
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bentley](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bentley)
it looks like.

------
sverige
I think the lessons in negotiation to be learned would be better explained by
showing how the many mistakes made by the Americans and the Brits in giving
away too much to Stalin could possibly have been avoided, rather than showing
how Stalin's treachery worked in the short term.

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NelsonMinar
Next up: "Lessons in resource management and controlling unruly populations by
Stalin in Ukraine".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor)

~~~
badpun
You're being downvoted, but surely we can do better than trying to learn from
a monster?

~~~
NelsonMinar
Hacker News loves its iron-fisted rulers.

------
throw2456
The main principles of the post-war world were negotiated by Stalin and
Roosevelt before Yalta - at the Teheran conference in 1942.

Roosevelt spent a few days in the Soviet ambasy together with Stalin and they
agreed on how to divide the world - divide Germany, split China and Japan, get
rid of the British and French empires, etc.

------
gcatalfamo
_> In hindsight Stalin was a bad dude_

That's a great understatement for the single guy responsible for an amount of
deaths 10 times greater than WWII casualties.

edit: number typo

~~~
nkozyra
I think that was awkwardly worded, but seemed to be expressing the stance of
the US in 1945.

I don't think it's entirely accurate, though. Yes, the US had to align with
USSR, yes the public face was he was our ally, but the US was already aware he
was a "bad dude." In fact, the US would have no reservations kicking off a
public campaign to that end immediately following the war.

~~~
sverige
Actually, Patton proposed marching the US Army to Moscow in the immediate
aftermath of the Nazi surrender but was pushed out of active leadership, in
part for suggesting that. For some reason, Americans (then and now) are a
little defensive about Stalin's legacy of mass murder on a scale greater even
than Hitler. It's inexplicable.

~~~
nkozyra
I don't think we're saying different things.

------
dgut
I wouldn't talk about the evidently poor quality of this article. What I truly
don't understand is how repulsive and intellectually poor topics like Stalin
get to be #1 on the front-page. Surely people wouldn't have upvoted this if
the name happened to be Hitler. Surely we have plenty of Western literature on
negotiation that doesn't involve a turd and pagan mass murder like Stalin
whose negotiation skills are at best a result of accidents and lucky
coincidences. Why is Stalin less repulsive for the HN crowd? What exactly
makes Stalin intellectually interesting?

Are Americans so poorly knowledgeable of Western literature they find this
well versed but empty writing interesting?

~~~
watwut
It is an interesting thing through in your comment. Once historical person is
morally bad, the person just can't be skilled or good at something - success
must be coincidence and luck. ThE same way as people get angry if you say that
Hitler was not all that bad painter.

That is just not how it is. Murderous psychopath can achieve success due to
talents and hard work etc - neither makes him less guilty.

What makes Stalin or Hitler intellectually interesting are their tactics and
abilities. The next succesfully murderous dictator will have them too. Else he
would just stayed violent young man.

~~~
dgut
I get your point but Stalin was not an intellectual and has never been
considered one, not even by the Intelligentsia and much less by western
intellectuals. It's not a case of good or bad, the man simply wasn't very
bright. I welcome you to read any of his writings, he was a historicist and a
refuter of science (Lysenkoism) much like his peers.

To understand Stalin's "success", you must first understand Russia and its
history.

The idea that we can just profile Stalin/Hitler and what not, then try to find
people that fit that profile to keep them away from power is at best naive and
at worst dangerous.

~~~
watwut
Intellectuals rarely raise to power. So, I dunno why I should expect Stalin to
be intellectual. It is almost by definition. In order to raise to power you
have to seek it or at least to embrace it and bw able to keep it in dirty
competition. Intellectuals are concerned with something else.

And no, neither Stalin nor Hitler were merely passive victims of unchangeable
history flow. Both made conscious decisions that made them who they were and
how much power they gained.

------
throw2455
Stalin was a terrible actor for his country but calling his actions "Be
inconsistent and unfair" is a fastfood-history propaganda.

~~~
dgut
I wish people stopped using throwaway accounts for every unpopular opinion on
HN.

------
uncleJoe
>> Roosevelt was probably sicker and had to travel all the way to Ukraine.

Ukraine? I'll just leave this map link:
[https://www.loc.gov/resource/g7011f.ct004274/?r=0.032,0.683,...](https://www.loc.gov/resource/g7011f.ct004274/?r=0.032,0.683,0.759,0.539,0)

P.S. I know, I know, but please, don't confuse history with momentary politics

