October 9, 1944 Stalin and Churchill divide the Balkans

October 9, 1944 is the date left in history as the division of the Balkans between the leaders of the USSR and Great Britain Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill. The event is also known as a "Percent Agreement" or "The meeting with the percentages" (in English: Percentages agreement) - an informal understanding to determine the spheres of influence in South-Eastern Europe after the end of the Second World War.

It was achieved during the Moscow Conference on October 9, 1944. During a meeting with Stalin, Churchill proposed that the Soviet Union should have 90% influence in Romania and 75% in Bulgaria, that Great Britain should have 90% influence in Greece, and in Yugoslavia and Hungary that the influences should be 50%, and Stalin approved the proposal in principle, marking it with a pencil. The next day, October 10, Foreign Ministers Vyacheslav Molotov and Anthony Eden continued to negotiate the agreement, changing the values for Bulgaria and Hungary to 80% Soviet influence.

On October 10, Churchill informed US Representative Harriman of the arrangements, who was absent from the Interest Agreement meeting. It has not been formalized due to the reserved attitude of the Americans towards such secret deals, which they consider to be a remnant of a passing era of imperialism.

The interest agreement has limited practical consequences. In negotiating it, the Soviet Union occupied all of Romania and Bulgaria and began its advance into Yugoslavia and Hungary, and later began imposing a totalitarian system on all countries under its control, regardless of the specific percentages in the agreement. Its main practical result was that the Soviet Union did not enter Greece, allowing Britain to occupy the country. Initially, the Soviet Union limited to a certain extent the activity of the communist paramilitary forces in Greece, but before long it already supported the communists in the Civil War that had begun.