George Kennan (Part I)

In 1947 George Kennan (1904-2005), a career diplomat of the US, published an article anonymously in Foreign Affairs. This article was entitled "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" and was singed by "X". It asserted that Stalin's policy was based on a combination of Marxist-Leninist ideology that aimed at the defeat of capitalism in the world outside USSR. At that time Kennan was the director of policy planning under the supervision of Secretary of State George C. Marshall. When the real identity of X was eventually known, people began to believe that its content represented the official viewpoint of the Truman administration as far as US foreign policy towards USSR was concerned. On the death of Kennan on 17, April 2005 at the age of 101, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice published a statement on March 18 which called Kennan "one of the greatest strategists in the history of American foreign policy". Kennan was regarded by many as the US diplomat who first proposed the Cold War strategy of containment that would be followed by the Americans for over half a century. Some of the ideas presented in the "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" are quoted as follows:

1) The political personality of Soviet power as we know it today is the product of ideology and circumstances: ideology inherited by the present Soviet leaders from the movement in which they had their political origin and circumstances of the power which they now have exercised for nearly three decades in Russia.

2) The circumstances of the immediate post-revolution period -- the existence in Russia of civil war and foreign intervention, together with the obvious fact that the Communists represented only a tiny minority of the Russian people -- made the establishment of dictatorial power a necessity. (to be continued)

Reference:
1. [George Kennan]. "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" in Foreign Affairs, 1947.
2. US Department of State, Bureau of International Information Programs.(http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2005/March)
3. Una McGovern ed. Chambers Biographical Dictionary. Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd.,2002.