The lecture will revisit the Yalta Conference, one of the most controversial international conferences in the era of modern diplomacy. It is well known that the so-called “Big Three” at the conference made the settlement on the postwar order in Europe and East Asia. Less known is how the three got there in a series of wartime meetings and the road they had taken to do that later caused many Cold War conflicts, including the division of the Korean Peninsula.

Kyung Deok Roh, educated in Seoul National University and University of Chicago, is currently Assistant Professor of History at Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology(GIST). His main academic interest resides in Stalinism, the comparative politics of communist states and the history of the Cold War. He has written numerous articles and reviews in those fields and is also the author of Stalin’s Economic Advisors: The Varga Institute and the Making of Soviet Foreign Policy, 1927-1953 (London: I.B.Tauris, forthcoming).

Cosponsored by the Department of History.