In 1946, the Kremlin’s growing aggression was baffling Washington. In order to explain it, George Kennan, an American diplomat in Moscow, wrote his 5,400-word “Long Telegram”. A year later, he expanded his views in an anonymous article for the journal Foreign Affairs. His writings inspired the west’s policy of “containment” of the USSR, which held throughout the cold war, though Kennan often felt it became too aggressive and militarised. Late in life (he died aged 101 in 2005), he opposed Nato’s expansion into eastern Europe.
A Russophile who always wanted to write a biography of Chekhov, Kennan took the long view of Russian thinking. In places, his writings eerily anticipate Vladimir Putin, who, as a career KGB officer, is a child of the Soviet system. Kennan can still help us read Russia, in the current crisis and beyond.
