About this ebook
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography and of the National Book Award for History and Biography in 1968, this is the personal and professional record of one of America’s most distinguished diplomats. An intimate and thought-provoking account of diplomatic history, it may be the “single most valuable political book written by an American in the twentieth century.” (The New Republic).
“[A] remarkably candid, beautifully written and utterly fascinating intellectual career autobiography of a distinguished diplomat and scholar... This is, in short, major history, and here augmented by selections from the author’s journal and his policy memorandums. It gives an intimate view of how policy, particularly that pertaining to Soviet-American affairs, was fashioned, influenced, criticized and implemented... through it all emerges the portrait of a brilliant man of keen observation, depth of knowledge and strong opinion.” — Eliot Fremont-Smith, The New York Times
“[A] historically invaluable, often mercilessly candid ‘intellectual autobiography.’” — Murrey Marder, The Washington Post
“These memoirs are expertly written, often fascinating... this is an important book, both as diplomatic history and as intellectual biography... Kennan is perhaps the most impressive figure ever to have emerged from the shadowy labyrinth of the American diplomatic establishment.” — Ronald Steel, The New York Review of Books
“From these pages there emerge both the sensitive, introspective, compassionate human being and the sometimes frustrated diplomat. Ranging from his observations of the German occupation of Prague to the genesis of the ‘X’ article in Foreign Affairs and the problems of the postwar world, these vignettes from the author’s diaries are skillfully linked into a consecutive story of lasting historical importance.” — John G. Stoessinger, Foreign Affairs
“[A] major contribution to the diplomatic history of our time.” — Dimitri von Mohrenschildt, The Russian Review
“This widely acclaimed volume — recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award — can be read as the first installment in the autobiography of an eminent historian; as the intellectual odyssey of a sensitive student of international relations; as an instructive portrait of a professional diplomat, alienated from society and impatient with domestic pressures; as a contribution to the historiography of the cold war; and as a commentary on decision making in recent American foreign policy. It is immensely useful in each area and, like all of Kennan’s works, beautifully written.” — Richard W. Leopold, The American Historical Review
“George Kennan’s Memoirs: 1925-1950 may well become a standard by which future American diplomatic autobiographies will be judged — a standard difficult to emulate... [an] immensely interesting book... This biography paints a panorama of unusual personal dimensions.” — Paul Seabury, Slavic Review
“Kennan was an enormously healthy and stimulating influence in our diplomatic establishment, and his Memoirs provide a provocative analysis of the intellectual, political, and military thinking that went into the evolution of our attitudes and policies for some twenty-five years.” — Smith Simpson, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
“George Kennan, who already has a substantial reputation as a professional diplomat and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, has now ensured his place in history with this volume of Memoirs.” — Robert A. Divine, The Journal of Southern History
“[Kennan’s] lucid, elegant, scrupulous, even finicky account of his career is an excellent way to understand exactly how our foreign policy is shaped and why it ought to be shaped differently. His ambition is to alter the conduct of American foreign policy by influencing the climate of opinion and thereby those who will formulate that policy.” — George P. Elliott, The Hudson Review
“[Kennan] focuses on essentials and illuminates them; in so doing his sense of the drama of events merges with the drama of self. His literary style, genuine and full, carries well the weight of complex considerations. His sense of responsibility in public service — for the public good as he sees it — shines out truly and clearly. What a good man, what an attractive man, what an instructive and elevating commentator!” — Herbert Feis, The Virginia Quarterly Review
“George Kennan’s lantern illuminates the world; it shines like a beacon in an era of militarist adventure and ‘personalized’ foreign policy.” — Harrison E. Salisbury, Saturday Review
About the author
Born in Milwaukee, George Frost Kennan (1904-2005) entered the Foreign Service after graduating from Princeton in 1925 with a BA in history. He was posted in Geneva as vice consul, and then in Hamburg. Selected to be trained as a linguist in Russian by the Foreign Service, Kennan studied Russian history, politics, culture, and the Russian language at the University of Berlin’s Oriental Institute in 1929. He was then posted in Tallinn, Estonia, Riga, Latvia and other “listening posts” around the Soviet Union, with which the United States had no diplomatic relations until 1933 when Kennan accompanied the first US ambassador, William C. Bullitt, to Moscow. In 1935 he was assigned to Vienna, and he finished the decade with posts in Prague and Berlin.
Interned briefly by the Nazis at the outbreak of World War II, Kennan was released in 1942 and subsequently filled diplomatic posts in Lisbon and Moscow during the war. Kennan's “Long Telegram,” sent from Moscow in February 1946, enunciated the “containment” policy; it was widely read in Washington and brought Kennan much recognition. He returned to the United States, and in 1947 Secretary of State George C. Marshall asked Kennan to create the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, of which he became the first director. He played a key role in drafting what would be known as the “Marshall Plan” for the reconstruction of Europe. Kennan clarified his views on containment in a highly influential article, signed “X,” published in Foreign Affairs in July 1947: in it, Kennan questioned the wisdom of the United States’ attempts to appease the Soviet Union and advocated US counterpressure wherever the Soviets threatened to expand. This view subsequently became the core of US policy toward the Soviet Union.
Kennan became counselor to the State Department in 1949, but resigned in 1950 to join the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He returned to Moscow in 1952 as US ambassador but came back to the US in 1953 after the Russians declared him persona non grata for remarks he made about Soviet treatment of Western diplomats. In 1956 he became permanent professor of historical studies at the Institute in Princeton, a tenure broken only by a stint as US ambassador to Yugoslavia (1961-63). In the late 1950s Kennan revised his containment views, advocating instead a program of US “disengagement” from areas of conflict with the Soviet Union. He later emphatically denied that containment was relevant to other situations in other parts of the world such as Vietnam.
Kennan won simultaneous Pulitzer Prizes and National Book Awards for Russia Leaves the War (1956) and Memoirs, 1925-1950 (1967). Other autobiographies include Memoirs, 1950-1963 (1972), Sketches from a Life (1989), and At a Century’s Ending: Reflections, 1982-1995 (1996). In addition to numerous honors, including honorary degrees from Oxford, Harvard, Yale and Princeton and the Albert Einstein Peace Prize in 1981, Kennan was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1989.
