George F. Kennan - The Kennan Diaries

THE
KENNAN
DIARIES

George F. Kennan

EDITED BY

Frank Costigliola

W . W . NORTON & COMPANY

NEW YORK LONDON

To my former adviser, Walter LaFeber,
and to the memory of my father, Umberto Costigliola,
and my neighbor Carrol Stedman. Like the life of
George F. Kennan, each has been a model of
integrity, persistence, and achievement.

Contents

1904: Born February 16

192125: Studied as an undergraduate at Princeton University

1926: Appointed to be a Foreign Service officer

1927: Became vice-consul in Geneva, then was transferred to consulate in Hamburg

1928: Posted to Berlin, then to Tallinn, Estonia, and Riga, Latvia

192931: Assigned to study Russian language, history, and culture in Berlin

1931: Married Annelise Srensen

193133: Posted to Riga

193337: Sent to Moscow

193738: Assigned to Department of State, Washington, DC

193839: Posted to Prague

193941: Sent to Berlin

December 1941May 1942: Interned at Bad Nauheim, Germany

194243: Sent to Lisbon

1944: Worked in London

July 1944March 1946: Became assistant to Ambassador W. Averell Harriman in Moscow

1946: Wrote the long telegram and then was invited to become a professor at the National War College in Washington, DC

1947: Became director of the Policy Planning Staff in the State Department; published The Sources of Soviet Conduct in Foreign Affairs under the pseudonym of X

194849: As Policy Planning Staff director, influenced the Marshall Plan and other policies but also became disenchanted with the rigid Cold War orientation of U.S. policy

1950: Went on leave from the State Department to undertake research at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton; advised the Truman administration on its response to the North Korean invasion of South Korea

1951: Gave Charles R. Walgreen Foundation Lectures at the University of Chicago, which are published as American Diplomacy; helped to initiate talks with the Soviets that eventually settled the Korean War

1952: Served as ambassador to Soviet Union, MaySeptember; thereafter returned to the Institute for Advanced Study

1957: Broadcasted the Reith Lectures on the BBC advocating disengagement from the Cold War

195960: Continued his work as a scholar at the Institute and spoke publically on the issue of Germany and the Cold War

196163: Served as ambassador to Yugoslavia; thereafter returned to the Institute and for the next four decades struggled to balance public engagement with scholarly work

1966: Gave televised testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee criticizing the Vietnam War

1968: Gave an early endorsement of the antiwar Democratic candidate for president, Senator Eugene McCarthy; criticized tactics of youthful war protestors

1970s: Researched and wrote two volumes on the history of the preWorld War I Franco-Russian alliance; developed increasing concern about the nuclear arms race

1981: Awarded the Albert Einstein Peace Prize and in his acceptance speech recommended a 50 percent cut in the nuclear arsenals of the superpowers

1982: Joined the Gang of Four in calling for Washington to adopt a no-first-use policy on nuclear weapons

198391: Worried about imminent nuclear war almost to the end of the Cold War

1990s: Received many honors and awards; spoke out against the eastward expansion of NATO

1990s2004: Documented his physical and mental declineeven as he published a best-selling book on his personal and political philosophy and another on the genealogy of the Kennan family

2005: Died March 17

Dean Acheson. Secretary of state from 1949 to 1953 who increasingly disagreed with Kennans proposals on Germany and on nuclear weapons

Svetlana Alliluyeva. Stalins daughter who defected to the United States in 1967 and became a friend of the Kennans for a while

Joseph Alsop and Stewart Alsop. Influential Washington columnists

Georgy Arkadyevich Arbatov. Founding director of the USA and Canada Institute in Moscow and a welcoming friend during Kennans research trips to Moscow in the 1970s and 1980s

Isaiah Berlin. British diplomat and Oxford University political theorist who was a friend of Kennans for many years

Ernest Bevin. Foreign secretary in the postwar British Labour government

Charles E. Chip Bohlen. Diplomatic colleague and friend of Kennans since their days in the Moscow embassy in the 1930s

Charlotte Bhm. Kennans lover in Berlin during the late 1920s

Constance Kennan Brandt. Kennans older sister who took him in after his 1924 trip to Europe

Willy Brandt. Kennans friend who became mayor of West Berlin and then chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany

David K. E. Bruce. Influential State Department official

Mary A. Bundy. Daughter of Dean Acheson, artist, and Princeton friend of the Kennans

McGeorge Bundy. National security advisor under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, president of the Ford Foundation, and collaborator with Kennan in the Gang of Four article in Foreign Affairs urging Washington to adopt a policy of no-first-use of atomic weapons

William P. Bundy. Adviser to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, editor of Foreign Affairs, and Princeton friend of the Kennans; husband of Mary A. Bundy and brother of McGeorge Bundy

James F. Jimmy Byrnes. Secretary of state from 1945 to 1947

Harry Carlson. Kennans superior in the Tallinn, Estonia, consulate

Anton Chekhov. Russian dramatist and short-story writer whom Kennan greatly admired

John Paton Davies Jr. State Department expert on China and a friend of Kennans who was falsely accused of disloyalty by McCarthyite investigations

Anatoly Dobrynin. Soviet ambassador to the United States and an acquaintance of Kennans

Marion Dnhoff. Editor of Die Zeit and a close friend of Kennans

John Foster Dulles. Republican foreign policy expert and secretary of state, from 1953 to 1959

Elbridge Durby Durbrow. Kennans colleague in the Moscow embassy

Cyrus Follmer. Kennans friend from the diplomatic corps and the best man at his wedding

Dorothy Fosdick. The sole female member of the Policy Planning Staff and a confidant when Kennan was distressed

Oliver Franks. British ambassador to the United States

J. William Fulbright. Democratic senator from Arkansas and head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

John Lewis Gaddis. Yale University historian and Kennans authorized biographer

Mikhail Gorbachev. An admirer of Kennan and the last general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Bernard Gufler. Kennans longtime friend and colleague

Eleanor Hard. The daughter of prominent Washington journalists to whom Kennan was engaged before she broke it off

W. Averell Harriman. U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union when Kennan served as his number two from 1944 to 1946

Loy W. Henderson. Kennans superior and a friend in the Moscow embassy in the 1930s

Hans von Herwarth. Diplomat in the German embassy in Moscow in the 1930s who befriended Kennan and other Americans