George Kennan: The Perils Of History
Pachter, Henry M.
"When there is something the Russians want from us, one or the other of these (distasteful) features of their policy may be thrust temporarily into the background. And there will always...
...Kennan spreads before us the nostalgic view of the "balance of powers" and of a multi-national universe, free from arch-enemies and undying alliances...
...Many people in Western governments came to hate the Soviet leaders for what they did...
...But Kennan needs the legend of the underling Stalin who wormed his way up by deceit and intrigue, for a pur pose: constituting himself as a lay...
...he also is a nineteenth-century statesman, and his political wisdom comes from the school of Castlereagh and Talleyrand...
...With this obstacle removed, and Khrushchev an altogether different person, we no longer need feel that we are compromising with evil if we try to establish communications, nor need we fear that such attempt will fail of a positive response...
...Should we not rather look for the real problems for which these policies were the solution...
...He does not think that the Spanish Civil War was the great divide between profascists and antifascists or, for that matter, that this division is of any consequence and has any meaning...
...b) Underlying this theory is a more profound conviction that the character of a regime is reflected in its foreign policy, so that a more "liberal" dictator is easier to talk to than a paranoiac tyrant...
...The sailors of Kronstadt may have thought differently about Lenin and so might have numbers who were purged by him before, during and after the revolution...
...Kennan's efforts to restore a multi-lateral universe have endeared him to the small nations in particular...
...Though alluded to throughout the book, this conviction is contradicted on other pages...
...But in all his extensive writings he has failed to state how his interpretation of "containment" applies, for instance, to the coup of Prague...
...But the use he makes of documents would not stand criticism in a sophomore class...
...When there is something the Russians want from us, one or the other of these (distasteful) features of their policy may be thrust temporarily into the background...
...In the forthcoming elections the Communists anticipated a resounding defeat...
...With a keen sense for the dramatic, Kennan shows us first the intractable Lenin, then the impossible Stalin, to work up to the great turning point where the new "parliamentarianist" dictator is both tractable and possible...
...But a historian must have his facts right...
...but in newspapers and pamphlets Mr...
...Kennan mentions neither of these conceptions in his most recent survey of East-West relations,* but comes out with a third suggestion, which on closer inspection turns out to be the most characteristic notion of • Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin, Atlantic Monthly Press, Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1961, 411 pp...
...If a deal can be made with Khrushchev, it will be for the same reason that deals could be made with Stalin: that the policy-makers here and there decide that it pays to regularize the status quo...
...but they show the carelessness with which Mr...
...One might subscribe to these and other dicta, which have come down from Machiavelli via Metternich, Talleyrand, Ranke and others to Walter Lippmann and finally to Kennan, had the author not claimed for them special significance...
...In the change, the foreign policy of a movement became the foreign policy of a single man...
...He does not just disagree with this or that particular line of the State Department...
...Later Stalin organized the Baku Congress of Eastern Nations which may be considered a turning point in Soviet foreign policy...
...But the British and United States governments did not recognize the Soviet Government definitely until 1931 and 1933, respectively...
...RUSSIA'S INTEREST in the twenties, e.g., demanded that the Chinese nationalists should pursue the war and civil war which tended to weaken the Peking Government and the war lords, its masters, who were servants of Japan...
...This policy called for political remedies against communist penetration...
...Sun-Yat-sen...
...there were enough people around who understood what he said or refused to say...
...To make Stalin out as a usurper, Kennan characterizes him as "only a colorless drone in the Party's administrative offices...
...He was a member of the Central Committee before the revolution and in that capacity attended national congresses abroad...
...When an intelligent man utters such arrant nonsense, one always must look for an ulterior reason, which in the...
...Half of the volume is devoted to events up to 1922, while Stalin's lastten years, to whose knowledge the authormight have contributed from personal experience, are left out completely...
...Kennan's The Decision to Intervene was...
...On the other hand, there was no sicker place in the world than Berlin, but we successfully defended it while Mr...
...Whether he speaks through rockets or swings his shoe, his language is always clear, though no one can pretend that it makes communication much easier...
...He had created a situation in which, fortunately for us, it would have been very hard for any other Stalin to establish himself...
...Amazingly "simpliste"—the historian does not look in archives for the philosophy of a decision...
...he spoke two hours later and ended in hailing "a free German Republic...
...I know of no other historical work that relies so much on the writer's personal assurances andthat knocks so many strawmen down withanything like so much grace...
...he rather is inclined to the opposite opinion: that such recognition, if for purely practical reasons it must be extended to the Chinese Communists, is distasteful at best...
...But writing under the stress of Khrushchev's Berlin ultimatum, I wonder how our Ambassador to Belgrade turns into practical policies the concluding line of wisdom in this book: Leave some problems for our children to solve...
...but if words have meaning, it also implied the engagement of aggressive forces at the point of friction...
...Khrushchev is not Stalin, by the principle of identity...
...Himself only a converted police agent, Stalin furiously persecuted those who might remember his obscure beginnings, and he vented particular wrath against the "cosmopolitans" who were his betters by education and ability and, simultaneously, were suspect by their international urbanity...
...our relations with the peoples of the non-Communist world...
...Moreover, his attitude to the Russian and Chinese revolutions is based on a kind of Tory righteousness which once seemed the trademark of Dulles, his antagonist: Already in The Decision to Intervene, his most scholarly book, Kennan assumed a fundamental difference between Western attitudes toward Bolshevism and Bolshevist attitudes to capitalism...
...One could not agree more— but the question is not whether the view is simpliste but whether world affairs have been reduced to a twopower struggle...
...c) As a corollary, it is postulated that such a change not only has taken place in the domestic relations of the Soviet regime with its people, but the nicer rulers of today also have given up the world-revolutionary plans to destroy the center of capitalistic power and to conquer the outlying areas...
...Well, the historian Kennan knows that in 1947 Czechoslovakia was part of the non-Communist world, and our relations could have been quite helpful, had not a telegram from Moscow forbidden Masaryk to accept Marshall aid...
...Kennan places on Mr...
...Nor was containment an answer to the civil war in China...
...Castlereagh's world: "balance of powers...
...Because "Russia herself was the scene of the most nightmarish orgies of totalitarianism...
...while Scheidemann was proclaiming the German Republic...
...X" in Foreign Affairs, July, 1947...
...Discussing the Yalta agreements, Kennan blames "the traditional American sentimentality about China" for a treaty which he thinks was highly satisfactory to the Chinese...
...To prove the difference between the pragmatic approach of the West to the Soviets and the Soviet leaders' dogmatic approach to Western capitalism, he does not compare public speeches of the one and of the other side, or diplomatic correspondence of the one and of the other side, but contrasts Bolshevist propaganda speeches with the fumbling process by which Wilson arrived at the decision to intervene...
...In rejecting the policy of "unconditional surrender," e.g., Kennan follows orthodox conservative doctrine...
...for buttressing his view by reference to someone else's gospel...
...The personal view of history which Kennan is serving up in this volume serves one major aim: to blame Stalin, and him alone, for the bad relations between Soviet Russia and the West...
...Can the brilliant execution of a disengagement maneuver, justified to the Comintern by the doctrine of "socialism in one country," or the inspiring Popular Front offensive, Litvinov's frantic attempts to force collective security through the League of Nations, can the successful device of diverting the Japanese aggression away from the Soviet Union and south into China or the desperate stroke of embroiling Hitler with the West, can all this be called either unimaginative or "the policy of a single man...
...a realistic view of history— and particularly of Soviet foreign relations— shows that national interest always got the better of political sympathies...
...though Lenin had to admit that their criticism of the ill-fated "March Action" in 1921 was sound, he "responded" with a public tongue-lashing and expelled them from the Comintern...
...Mr...
...THE BOOK from which I have quoted most extensively, however, is not a historian's book, as Mr...
...Mr...
...On the other hand, our sense of being considered mortal enemies by the Soviet leaders has been enhanced rather than diminished by Khrushchev's table-thumping...
...Kennan might have found reflections of the pressures which bore down on Wilson to fight Bolshevism for what it was...
...While Stalin was promulgating the doctrine of "socialism in one country" and fought hard inside the Comintern for his doctrine of coexistence, the Western governments continued to treat the Soviet Union as an ostracized country with which one might, at best and then under precautions, entertain business relations...
...His mind remained open...
...A Communist revolution in China then was out of the question...
...The etymology of the word implies that communication is a two-way affair, and if I had to define the difference between Stalin and Khrushchev in terms of communication, I would say that Stalin listened but spoke little, while Khrushchev speaks too much and has no ability to listen...
...The interventions of 1918, according to Kennan, can easily be explained by fortuitous circumstances such as Wilson's weakness and approaching stroke, whereas the Bolsheviks quite frankly stated their world-conquering aims...
...No doubt this was true in the first four years of Soviet power...
...But in saying that "Stalin's Russia" was no fit partner, Kennan sets the stage for the statement that Khrushchev's Russia is...
...Why...
...Kennan goes as far as to maintain that Stalin did not really believe in the danger of a Nazi attack, because he was concerned only with the "protection of his personal position...
...Kennan later repudiated this meaning...
...Asuperbly written book, though slightlymistitled...
...Thepersuasive style and the magisterial poseof the author unfortunately make it impossible to review the book...
...George Kennan's urbane style...
...but he adopts quite a different stance when he talks about the present and the future...
...He shares with the Left and with the neutralists at least three basic assumptions: a) Pragmatically the most important, and in his new book the one which seems to be central, is a notion of "Stalinism...
...Do ambassadors to Moscow not read State and Revolution, about half the text of which is quotation from "gospel...
...The fact that some members of the Central Committee presumably differ with Khrushchev on occasion is styled "rudimentary parliamentarianism,"* and Khrushchev's manner of banishing the dissenters is dismissed with the words: "Let us not be put off by the angularities of Khrushchev's character...
...Ebert never was "Chancellor" of the Reich...
...Kennan sees the past in the light of conservative doctrines...
...He strikes the pose of a leader demanding confidence, or at least of a teacher of wisdom...
...Trotsky and all that Trotsky represented was Stalin's fear...
...259) It is difficult to imagine a more ambiguous statement...
...In Realities of Foreign Policy, writ ten six years after that event, he pokes fun at "another view which would hold Moscow responsible for all Com munist activity everywhere" and goes on to explain that Soviet penetration is made possible by "weakness and ill ness of a given society," and to con clude that "containment is basically a problem of...
...The Bolsheviks, who had to ask themselves that question, were justified in discovering a pattern there, suggesting that they were being attacked for what they were rather than for what they did...
...After all, if Stalin prevailed at Yalta and Potsdam, it was not for lack of communication...
...Lenin therefore had initiated his famous friendship with Dr...
...Kennan all too often simplifies or omits them...
...States conclude alliances with others regardless of their religion and constitution...
...Inability to communicate with Stalin, it seems, also was the reason why the Western powers failed to rescue the Spanish Republic...
...It is something one might call "applied history" or "appreciation of some lessons of history...
...According to Kennan, he feared the revenge of the pre-Bolshevist Socialist International and the connections some of the old Bolsheviks maintained with their old comrades...
...Kennan was director of the Planning Office in the State Department...
...Republic in November, 1918...
...There is more than manner and know-how in Mr...
...The real villain of Kennan's book is Stalin...
...And there will always be an American who will leap forward with the gleeful an nouncement: `The Russians have changed: "— Mr...
...IF THE "DISENGAGEMENT" slogan has endeared Kennan to certain circles traditionally associated with a "left" label, the real Kennan disengages himself from the shibboleths of radical and socialist democracy...
...Lenin's foreign policy was utterly opportunistic, but Stalin certainly produced more ideas and often took the initiative where Lenin was a victim of outside forces...
...THESE MAY BE MATTERS of taste and interpretation...
...The most superficial reading of Party history belies these statements...
...Instead of tracing the real interests of the Soviet State, its Party and its leaders, and thereby elucidating Soviet foreign policy, Kennan reduces it all to the characters of two men: "Soviet diplomacy was so much more variegated and colorful in Lenin's time than in the Stalin era...
...This is drama, but is it history...
...Normal relations, he insists, were not possible either with Stalin as a person or with the system he imposed on the Soviet Union...
...Kennan chooses to believe that Stalin "consumed—almost to the last crumb —those very prerequisites in Russian society on which his fearful, jealous, totalitarian power maintained itself...
...To make these points, Mr...
...To MALIGN STALIN, it is necessary to exalt the humanity of Lenin...
...But Kennan's statement is even less adequate as an analysis...
...On the contrary, experience points in the other direction: his "angularities" are becoming less predictable than Stalin's roughness...
...Just as Emil Ludwig has blamed the First World War on Kaiser Wilhelm's crippled arm, Kennan wants us to believe that Stalin's inferiority vis-A-vis the Jewish intellectuals, turned into a persecution complex, was responsible for the Second World War...
...The grain of truth which may be hidden in such assertions—just as with Woodrow Wilson's tiredness—is rolled into a mountain...
...German troops returning from Russia in 1918 were not noticeably more affected by Communist propaganda than others...
...Khrushchev...
...Trifles...
...the United States should not have put out of business a militaristic regime which provided effective balance against Soviet power in the Pacific...
...As a description of two periods in Soviet foreign policy, this is not very convincing...
...Nor does he cite the evidence—not even to refute it—that Stalin did not start the Korean war, a puzzler for historians of our country...
...Perhaps it is—but not for that reason...
...We have no proof that the "nice" Khrushchev will keep treaties any more faithfully than the bad Stalin...
...He thinks that having to deal with Khrushchev and Mao simultaneously makes things much easier for us than having to deal with Stalin alone...
...Those who shared his belief in the basic justification of the revolution could come to him and talk to him, and could find their thoughts accepted in the spirit they were offered and responded to...
...on the contrary, the infamous "Balticum regiments" supplied the nucleus of the Nazi forces...
...This entailed an attack on one of the pundits of pre-Bolshevist Marxism— Otto Bauer...
...Nor was the "given society" sick...
...Stalin was bad, by definition...
...Kennan once formulated the so-called policy of containment...
...Kennan indulges in a number of verbal exercises, historical falsehoods and misinterpretations which accumulate to a partisan view of history...
...He later found the consequences unpalatable and suggested the opposite policy: "disengagement," meaning, if words mean what they say, the interposition of a certain neutral zone between hostile blocs...
...Or: " (Lenin) could rule them through the love they bore him, whereas Stalin was obliged to rule them through fear...
...Chamberlain and Chautemps, and anyway Kennan's research then was not available to them, Kennan decides that "Stalin's Russia was never a fit partner for the West in the cause of resistance to fascism...
...Though the NATO alliance was born out of this containment thinking, Mr...
...in Lenin's famous "Testament" he is named as one of the two most likely to become his successor...
...Long before the revolution Lenin assigned to "a wonderful Georgian named Koba" (Stalin's Party name then) a difficult and most consequential job: to work out the Party's policy toward the nationalities...
...analyst, he has decided that Stalin was jealous of the brilliant Jewish intellectuals who made up "half the Russian Social Democratic Party...
...Thus it is asserted that Lenin "was relieved of that ignominious need...
...The book is composed as a great counterpoint to the hopes Mr...
...hence Khrushchev is not bad...
...Kennan easily proceeds to grave assertions, always personally assuring his readers that his conclusions are based on careful study of the documents...
...With their pragmatic approach, Westerners never really doubt the legitimacy of other nations, whereas Communist power not only was founded on the hope of Western doom, but was dedicated to the destruction of other states...
...This thinking leads on to slippery ground...
...before 1917, he was known to his colleagues only as a trouble-maker...
...Liebknecht did not "proclaim a Soviet Germany...
...Quite a "trouble-maker," but certainly no colorless drone...
...Paul Levi and Ernst Reuter (later the Mayor of Berlin) had a different experience...
...present case is not difficult to find...
...Poland came into being gradually by the creation of a National Council in 1914 under Austrian Auspices, a proclamation of independence in 1916 by the Central Powers, a recognition of independence by the Provisional Government in St...
...he denounces the totalitarian traits which have tainted the policies of the most democratic statesmen in the twentieth century—such as the Treaty of Versailles, the policy of Unconditional Surrender, the moralistic view that all people on our side are saints, all on the other sinners, the willingness to put up with the threat of nuclear war, and the obsession to hold outlying positions...
...Though the great trials only started after the NonIntervention Committee had been convened, and though the fate of a few old Bolsheviks could not be of much concern to Messrs...
...Kennan believes that in 1920 Poland was "only a few months old" and owed its existence to the "sentimental benevolence of the Western powers...
...But Kennan places the blame for this attitude exclusively on the messianic spirit of Bolshevist foreign policy and on the persecution complex of Stalin as a person, and to do that he has to suppress Stalin's numerous pleas for "Co-Existence...
...it was precisely for this reason that Moscow—not to be held responsible for Communist activity everywhere— despatched Zorin to Prague personally to engineer and to supervise the coup of February 1948...
...If the decision to intervene was just a blunder, Kennan does not ask himself why all Western statesmen seemed to blunder in one direction only, and that rather consistently over a period of time...
...Applications are tacked onto the recital of an event, and the lesson drawn usually is one of Realpolitik: not to blind oneself by ideology, not to be led into war for the sake of principles, always to keep an eye on the balance of power that will exist after an opponent has been knocked down, to restrain one's friends in formulating aims of total salvation, and to envisage limited rather than virtuous goals, to put one's house in order before preaching to the savages and anyway not to overestimate cultural propaganda as a weapon, not to believe in absolute evil (except where Stalin is concerned...
...Such are the facts about Yalta," he exclaims, suppressing the "fact" that the treaty had to be rammed down Chiang Kai-shek's throat...
...And notably to the incessant conflict between the revolutionary traditions of the Communist party and the political needs of the Russian state, or between the interests of the Comintern and those of socialism in one country...
...Yet, according to Kennan, it was Stalin who "for the temperamental reasons of which I have spoken (1), was more interested in the expulsion of the imperialists from China than in an early Communist revolution...
...But when he comes to discuss Russia, the change which supposedly took place around 1956 there seems to make the difference between possibility and impossibility of communications...
...Hitler was largely an excuse for fear...
...any other view is "simpliste...
...Petrograd in March of 1917, and a solemn Foundation of the * Does not even the most rudimentaryform of parliamentarianism require aminimum of publicity for divergent opinion...
...Nor is he convinced that de jure recognition of the Chinese People's Republic is the slogan by which the righteous recognize each other...
...That is indeed good advice—if Kennan only knew how to convey it to Khrushchev...
...It reminds one of Machiavelli's Discorsi in style, manner and content...
...the Communists hated the Western governments for what they were, regardless of what they did...
...We all wish it had not, and Mr...
...Mr...
...The illusion of total antagonism can be created only by a complete absence of effective communication...
...Likewise, Khrushchev's emphasis on rocketry at the expense of consumer satisfactions (and I suppose his attempt to wreck the United Nations, his claim to get Berlin, etc.,), are summarized as "a tendency toward preoccupation with internal and defensive interests, away from the world revolutionary dreams of the early aftermath of the revolution...
...Q.E.D...
...For this reason [one] may be inclined to doubt whether an enemy with whom one can communicate is really an enemy, after all...
Vol. 8 • September 1961 • No. 4
