George F. Kennan: “Long Telegram”

Questions for Further Study

• 1. The Soviet Union had been an ally of the United States a mere six months before Kennan fired off his telegram to the State Department. What aspects of his text do you think would have surprised diplomats who had been working with the Soviets as colleagues in defeating Germany and Japan over the previous year?
• 2. At the time, in 1946, there were Soviet spies in the State Department, though the number of them was highly exaggerated. It is therefore a virtual certainty that the text of the telegram made its way back to Moscow within days of its arriving at the State Department in Washington. How do you believe that Stalin and the Soviet regime would have reacted to the telegram and its sentiments?
• 3. Two weeks after Kennan sent his telegram, Prime Minister Winston Churchill made a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, in which he used the famous phrase “iron curtain” to describe the fall of Eastern Europe to Soviet control. Churchill had read the “Long Telegram” as well, as a prominent politician and American ally. Do you think it had an impact on his own vision of the Soviets and, if so, how?
• 4. Why would Kennan have been encouraged to turn his telegram into a journal article in 1947? Who was the intended audience of the article, as opposed to the telegram? What do you think was the hope for the results of publishing the telegram?