George Kennan's “Long Telegram” (1946) | Hacker News Reader

George Kennan's “Long Telegram” (1946)

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If you enjoyed this, please do read Nikolai Novikov's (then Soviet Ambassador to the US) analysis of US Foreign Policy in a similar fashion, but from the perspective of the USSR. The Novikov Telegram (1946) is considered the soviet equivalent of George Kennan's Long Telegram.

http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110808.pdf?v...

Huh, there's a lot of interesting stuff there.

One striking thing to me there is the consistent use of "democratic" and "democratization" to refer to governments that the U.S. referred to as "communist". (For example, Novikov says that an important outcome of the Soviet military role in Eastern Europe was the creation of democratic regimes friendly to the USSR, and complains that the U.S. will not agree to the democratization of postwar Germany.)

Just to substantiate this:

"As a result of their reorganization on democratic principles, in such former enemy countries as Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary, and Romania regimes have been created which have set themselves the task of strengthening and maintaining friendly relations with the Soviet Union. In the Slavic countries - Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia - liberated by the Red Army or with its help, democratic regimes have also been created and are consolidating which maintain relations with the Soviet Union on the basis of friendship and mutual aid agreements."

In Romania the "democratic regime" had received something like 3% of the votes at its inter-war peak and had later been banned for subversive activities sponsored by the Soviets.

There were solid reasons those "former enemies" were enemies.

Communism in eastern europe always operated under the fiction that it had broad popular support. I find it striking that you find this striking!

I was brought up in the U.S. in the Cold War and regularly heard that several states Novikov mentions became "democratic" and underwent "democratization" in the 1990s because of the fall of the Soviet Union. It was striking to me that he used precisely the same word and concept to refer to the creation of the states that fell at that time, so that it was used unironically and even routinely to refer both to establishing and destroying them.

You have to remember that there was an internal narrative to communism. These people didn't sit on their chairs stroking white cats, thinking about how evil they were being. Many of them were opportunists, but there were also true believers. And everyone used the language of true believers to justify why things were the way they were.

The idea was that most people in capitalist countries were oppressed by the economic system, and that in the people's democracies they finally had a chance to have a say in how the country was governed, through workers' councils, a Party that represented them, and various forms of collective rule.

The difference was that one is real democracy, and the other a sham. But notice how even the most authoritarian states go to great lengths to pretend they have broad social support. Everyone loves democracy!

Kennan stressed the paranoia of the Soviet leadership. In the telegram you linked, you read things like:

"All these facts clearly show that their armed forces are designed to play a decisive role in the realization of plans to establish American world domination."

If viewed slantwise, this has a nugget of truth, i.e., the U.S. is establishing forward military bases partly to protect free trade and enable capitalism.

But these bases proved to be almost entirely defensive and were not really used for "world domination" in the sense meant by the Soviet ambassador.

You never establish a Military base "purely" for defensive purposes, ever.

How would you explain the existence of military installations such as Fort Worden (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Worden)?

The document vindicates a lot of the analysis that Kennan makes in his article. However, we do have to acknowledge the outlook that drove the party line. Among the recipients of this telegram were Stalin and Molotov (then Minister of Foreign Affairs), which I think would explain some of the extreme rhetoric here. Also note, that unlike the Kennan Telegram (which was published in Foreign Affairs under the pseudonym "Mr. X") the Novikov telegram wasn't meant for public consumption. It was part of the Glasnost files which came out in the 90s.

That being said, from the Soviet perspective, the United States -- during "peace time", had rapidly increased military spending and presence around the world. This only goes in to feed the "neurotic" world view that Kennan cited in his article.

"At bottom of Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity. Originally, this was insecurity of a peaceful agricultural people trying to live on vast exposed plain in neighborhood of fierce nomadic peoples. To this was added, as Russia came into contact with economically advanced West, fear of more competent, more powerful, more highly organized societies in that area. But this latter type of insecurity was one which afflicted rather Russian rulers than Russian people; for Russian rulers have invariably sensed that their rule was relatively archaic in form fragile and artificial in its psychological foundation, unable to stand comparison or contact with political systems of Western countries. For this reason they have always feared foreign penetration, feared direct contact between Western world and their own, feared what would happen if Russians learned truth about world without or if foreigners learned truth about world within. And they have learned to seek security only in patient but deadly struggle for total destruction of rival power, never in compacts and compromises with it."

Kennan's telegram wasn't published. It was written by Kennan to impress his understanding on Truman as he took office. The X article was a separate piece of writing.

Really interesting read there too. Thanks :-)

This is still relevant today. As Kennan points out, Marxism was a mere "moral fig leaf" covering the nakedness of "insecure nationalism".

The fig leaf seems to have been replaced in the era of Putin by a sort of generalized disdain for the west, and for western ideas like democracy and liberalism (in the sense of the word used in Europe, not the US).

But nothing ever really changes for the Russian state. Putin's Russia can be described and understood in the same terms as Soviet Russia and Czarist Russia before it.

I'll end by pointing out, again, as Kennan does, that I'm referring to the Russian state, rather than its long suffering people, who are some of the most warm hearted and genuine folks I've ever met.

You can draw parallels between autocratic periods in Russian history, but then you lose everything that's interesting and end up with a kind of cartoon.

Even in Soviet times, when the ruling class was tied into the straitjacket of Marxist ideology, there were large shifts in foreign policy and attitude towards the outside world as different factions assumed power.

Russia has a complicated relationship with the West that is not well served by a simplistic reading of its history.

I think you are correct in that for a long time many in Russia looked to the West for culture and even political ideas. Unfortunately, Soviet communism's explicit goal was to overthrow liberalism, and Putin is hardly any more friendly.

It goes back and forth. There's a constant tension in Russia's history between the West and "East", used in this context to mean an essentially anti-western turn.

I'm not really advocating a simplistic reading of Russia's history. There are broad themes that are very important to understanding it, and these are generally constant. Among them is the tension between looking inward and outward, which does, as you mention, swing back and forth over time.

Another important theme is, of course, that the Enlightenment never made it out of the Hermitage.

Kennan was also pretty critical of American foreign policy towards Russia in the 90's.

It should be noted that later in life Keenan was distraught by the extreme anti-communist hysteria and need for containment that was inspired by his telegram and general foreign policy views [0]. It seems that postwar US was much more cordial and trusting of the Soviet Union but quickly swung to other side as it became clear that Stalin was interested only in grabbing as much land as possible to form a sizeable buffer between Russia and western Europe. Which seems reasonable: German forces had reached the outskirts of Moscow and an unbelievable number of Russians died in the war.

I highly highly recommend the Wise Men [1].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_F._Kennan#Academic_care... [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Wise-Men-Friends-World-They/dp/147672...

"...as it became clear that Stalin was interested only in grabbing as much land as possible to form a sizeable buffer between Russia and western Europe. Which seems reasonable: German forces had reached the outskirts of Moscow and an unbelievable number of Russians died in the war."

Wanting a buffer does seem reasonable, and you are correct that Russia suffered considerably during WW2.

But what Russia did with that buffer, and the countries therein, is a damning indictment of Communism.

The exploitation of that "buffer" was pretty horrible. Keep in mind that the US felt betrayed and hoodwinked over those events, as Stalin duped the ailing Roosevelt completely.

I second _The Wise Men_. I found it to be both a pervasive and highly entertaining read.

Most interesting, thank you for posting. Kennan in his memoirs remarked that timing was a large part of its influence: a bit earlier and it would have been ignored, a bit later and it would have seemed obvious.

Kennan's memoirs and histories are interesting and well written. Those wishing for a taste might have a look at Sketches from a Life, which is relatively short and still in print.

This was most of the Cablegate leaks - not scandals, but these kinds of peeks into the opinions of very smart State Department officials regarding assorted foreign countries. (The scandals usually involved foreign allies that the State Department doesn't think too highly of, like many of the Arab dictatorships that soon after experienced the Arab Spring.)

A British Ambassador leaving his post was encouraged to write what was known as a valedictory despatch, to be circulated to a small number of influential people in government. This was the parting shot, an opportunity to offer a personal and frank view of the host country, the manners and morals of its people, their institutions, the state of their cooking and their drains. But it was also a chance to let rip at the Foreign Office itself and to look back on a career spent in the service of a sometimes ungrateful nation.

They where normally quite blunt there is a great book collating some of the best https://www.amazon.co.uk/Parting-Shots-Matthew-Parris/dp/067...

We talked about this telegram in one of my classes in college - American Nuclear Politics. The professor, who had been in the Foreign Service for 20-odd years before moving to academia, had a (somewhat) joking theory that Kennan's Long Telegram had done more harm than good, because it inspired countless other Foreign Service Officers to write Long Telegrams of their own in the hopes of having similar levels of influence.

Some context for the "Long Telegram" can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Article

Here is an interview with Kennan that puts certain things in perspective in post-Cold War era.

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/02/opinion/foreign-affairs-no...

if you're interested in this stuff, also check out "nsc 68", which is the actual policy material this stuff evolved into. then also the latest reincarnation of all this, "rebuilding america's defenses" by project for new american century.

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