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CAMERA ROLL #10236 Interview with Professor George F. Kennan INT: I'd like to take you now to the
circumstances of the drafting of the long telegram and particularly what were the events that
caused you to unload on Washington this telegram of unprecedented length in February of 1946,
which really in many ways is repeating the substance of what you had said in dispatches that had
gone by pouch of course earlier. But of course this is the one that had the great impact, so if you
could tell us about the circumstances that led up to that outburst, if I can call it that, on your
part. GK: You know the time when the War came to an end, particularly
the beginning of the year 1946, I had been there now another two years and these years
had been a strain for me nearly all the way through, because I watched our government making
concession after concession to the Soviet government, for wartime reasons, largely because the
military said, 'Well we don't care, promise them anything, do anything you can to please them so
that they don't...' but they were... the military were fearful that Stalin would make a separate
agreement with Hitler. I don't think that was a very realistic fear and I didn't have this at all. But
in any case, in obedience to that injunction, we did behave in what I thought was an undignified
ingratiating way toward Stalin and toward the whole Soviet bureaucracy. I saw instance after
instance where we should have called them on something - it would have been even an act of
friendship in wartime to say, look, this was something we can't agree to. But we were never
permitted to do that. My goodness, we sent lend lease to them in great quantities, they were the
only people who were not asked to justify any of their requests. And as the war approached its
end, I once tried to question the general who was handling the lend lease things and said: 'Look,
here is this really necessary for their wartime needs?' He was furious about it, said, you had no
right to question this: 'That's a matter for the... for us, for the War Department, not for you in the
State Department.' Well, actually this was something that they were not going to use during the
War at all, but we saw endless examples of this. We saw magnificently expensive American
machinery sent over there and laughingly wrecked by the Soviet engineers. They said if you...
they were criticised, they would say, oh, you know, let's get another of these, all we have to do is
ask the Americans for it. I had witnessed all of this. I'd seen so many humiliations of our own
government during the War, but I had tried the best I could, I could only act through my boss,
who was Averell Harriman and I think I did influence Averell. And Averell, by this time, was
coming to understand this, but in the Treasury Department at home, they didn't understand this
and when they finally sent me a telegram expressing their astonishment and concern, because the
Russians were dragging their feet about joining the International Bank. I thought, well, for
goodness sake, I can't answer that in one question. They're going to have to give me space and I
sat down and tried to give a picture of this government as it emerged from the War. I'm sorry it
went to such length, perhaps I could have done it more briefly, but I can't complain, the document
as you know, made the rounds in Washington, was very widely read and did influence American
policy quite materially. INT: Your secretary, Dorothy
Hessman, told me that you actually dictated this document in bed with the flu, in a really foul
mood. GK: Yes. INT: And that perhaps the
temperament of the document (unclear)... GK: (Interrupts) I think that's true! I had a very painful attack also
of sinus, which you get after a bad cold and was laid up with that too. Well, there we were. I
thought this is not only my chance, but this is the provocation that has been asked...
Washington asked, how do you explain the motivation of the Soviet government here. Well, then
I had to go right back to page one and to try to tell them things that I felt they'd forgotten during
the War. This all hangs together with this whole question that this was the same group of people
who had dealt with Hitler, had tried to deal with Hitler at our expense and never had changed
their views about us. INT: Can I ask one question about
the reception of the long telegram in Washington. It's well-known that the reception was
extraordinarily favourable, it was circulated very widely, but I wonder about your own reactions
to suddenly having your voice carry in Washington after all of these years of not letting it do
so. GK: Yes, I was sometimes surprised and shocked at the enthusiasm
with which this telegram was received and the things that I had to say generally, not just in the
telegram were received in Washington and .... I realise there was a real danger there. I'm sorry
that in the telegram I did not more emphasize that this did not mean that we would have to have a
war with Russia, but we would have to find a way of dealing with them which was quite different
from that which had been going on. I realised this first when I came home and was asked to give
a speaking tour round the country and where this all surprised me was when I got out to Los
Angeles and a group... I spoke there to a very large but largely business group and I got such
rousing cheers out of anything I said critical of the Soviet government that I should have realised
that, watch out my boy, this will be distorted, as indeed it was. INT: Good. I think we can
stop... (END OF ROLL #10236) |
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