About this ebook
In the second volume of his memoirs, George Kennan resumes the narrative of his remarkable career, re-creating his development as a historian and analyzing the crucial issues of the twentieth century.
“I don’t see how a memoir could be better; even if you aren’t interested in the subject at hand, the language carries you along. And the story here told — with all action subject to the finest Kennan introspection — is both important and absorbing... All of it is graced by the Kennan style; all is stamped with the Kennan foreign‐policy trademark [which] consists of an ability to think clearly about complicated matters with an utter independence of mind. He draws on a superb stock of historical knowledge... Most of the conclusions that George Kennan has reached over the years involve, in one way or another, the Soviet Union, and they emerge with admirable clarity from this book... [Kennan is the] most brilliant and civilized of students of the public scene.” — John Kenneth Galbraith, The New York Times
“Delightfully written and appallingly frank... Mr. Kennan writes with a freedom and a sensitivity which carry the reader easily into a much deeper understanding of the difficulties of foreign policy-making in a mass democracy of the American model.” — D.C. Watt, New Statesman
“[An] engrossing volume... this volume and its predecessor form one of the outstanding memoirs of our time.” — Richard W. Leopold, The American Historical Review
“[T]his second volume of his memoirs can be read with as much speed and pleasure as a novel... This book is frank, honest, and introspective, and it therefore reveals a great deal about Kennan as a person... Kennan is obviously a complex, fascinating character — intelligent, proud, articulate, independent-minded, dedicated to serving his country, concerned over the fate of the world, generous in giving of his time to others, and yet suffering the pangs of frustration, loneliness, and alienation from his native land.” — Thomas T. Hammond, The Russian Review
“As scholar and diplomatist, policymaker and critic of policy, George F. Kennan possesses a rare combination of expertise and experience... This book is notable for its lucid style and for the verbal portraits which it presents of such persons as Acheson, Dulles, Truman, Eisenhower, Stalin, and Tito... this volume ranks as an important contribution to our understanding of American postwar foreign policy.” — Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr., The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
“[T]here is much here worth any serious student’s time, indeed close attention... Kennan should and will be read” — Kirkus
“Kennan writes so well it is no doubt his intention that, though he shows himself plainly as a public figure, as a private person he remains elusive — a sort of Marquand character: gentlemanly, conservative (in the best sense), urbane, direct and honest; yet to any but his friends very private. I’m glad. There are so few celebrated men who refuse to become celebrities.” — Richard J. Walton, The Washington Post
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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.
