![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() His intense ambition, yearning for transcendence, and biases stayed in place even as his career rocketed upward. The emotional beliefs underlying Kennan’s swings remained consistent. For him, containing Soviet expansion required nimble policies akin to fencing. To both acts of this drama he brought urgency. As World War II ended and relations with the USSR soured, he at first pushed for confrontation – and then in later years just as firmly pushed away from it. Ostracism “was harder than ever to swallow.” Years later, he reflected that only during his heartbreak months as ambassador to Moscow in 1952 did the isolation “weigh more heavily on me, or more deeply affect my thinking, than in these first weeks following the return to Russia.” Įxamining precisely how love for the Russian people and hatred for their government “deeply affect” Kennan’s thinking is key to understanding his shifting stance toward the Cold War. The wartime alliance had eased but not erased purge-era restrictions on contact between foreigners and Soviet citizens. Immersing himself “deeper into Russia” could bring him “face to face with that indefinable something, so full of promise and meaning, that I always have felt to be just around the corner.” Yet however much Kennan pined for transcendence, Josef Stalin pinned him to cruel reality. The “pulsating warmth and vitality” of the Russian people sparked “an indescribable sensation.” Living in Siberia as “part of them” packed more allure than luxuriating on “Park Avenue among our own stuffy folk.” Kennan envisioned the Russian people and their government as “a beautiful lady guarded by a jealous lover.” In this setup he figured as the true partner of the beloved. Kennan marveled after returning to Russia in July 1944. “I react intensely to everything I see and hear,” George F. Christian Ostermann and Charles Kraus "My Voice Now Carried": George F. Professor Costigliola may be contacted through the University of Connecticut. Kennan (Princeton, 2022), and is not to be quoted from without his express written permission. The essay is excerpted from Professor Costigliola’s forthcoming book, Between America and Russia: The Inner Life of George F. He is the author or editor of several other books, including Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances (Princeton, 2012), which won SHAFR’s Robert H. ![]() Norton, 2014), for which he received the Link-Kuehl prize given by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) for documentary editing. Kennan’s “Long Telegram,” the History and Public Policy Program is privileged to publish the following essay from Professor Frank Costigliola exploring Kennan’s relationship to Russia and the Soviet Union, his mental and physical state in 1946, and the impact of his February 22, 1946, cable to the State Department.įrank Costigliola, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor at the University of Connecticut, previously edited and published The Kennan Diaries (W.W. Careers, Fellowships, and Internships Open/CloseĮditors’ Note: To mark the 75th anniversary of one of the most consequential and well-known foreign policy documents in American history, George F.Wahba Institute for Strategic Competition.Science and Technology Innovation Program.Refugee and Forced Displacement Initiative.The Middle East and North Africa Workforce Development Initiative.Kissinger Institute on China and the United States.Nuclear Proliferation International History Project.North Korea International Documentation Project.Environmental Change and Security Program.Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy. ![]()
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