Preview

What Does George F. Kennan's Long Telegraph Mean

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
460 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
What Does George F. Kennan's Long Telegraph Mean
In George F. Kennan's Long Telegraph, he outlines three main points. The first the Soviet Union and their leaders ideology which he saw as an expansion of ancient Russian values. The second being Kennan's view surrounding the Soviet fear of the Western society. The final point Kennan makes is his own beliefs and perspectives surrounding what America should do in order to take action against the soviets
Kennan believes that Soviet ideology was an expansion of ancient Russian values, these values being the want to expand soviet territory and eventually destroy rivalling countries and those countries belief systems. Kennan also claimed that the Soviets strong beliefs in communism only intensified the Russian societies fear of the western world pre cold war as the want and desire for eternal thirst for communist power grew. Kennan believes that this gave the leaders of the Soviet communist party the excuse they were looking for to try dominate the rest of eastern and western Europe in order to make them one giant communist state with the Soviet Union being the head of that state.
…show more content…
Kennan argued that this is the reason of the growing angst among Soviet leaders, and the belief of these leaders that the western, capitalist world was an evil and bad place. Kennan continued to argue in his article that the Soviet leaders backed by the society which idolised the leaders were single-minded about the moving forward of the Soviet troops into the rest of Europe. And the mind-set of these leaders going into battle was there in order to try and defeat the capitalistic superpower even if this did result in an imperialistic

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Best Essays

    After the end of the Second World War, the world was left with two superpowers with competing ideologies: The United States of America and the Soviet Union. The Americans had come out of the war with a surging economy and served as the flagship for the capitalist nations of the West. The Soviets on the other hand practiced Communism, an ideology that was seen as a great threat to the Western way of life. 1 Though they had been allied at the end of the war, both nations quickly moved to bolster their military and economic infrastructure to prepare for the era of pseudo-colonialism and competition between the two powers they both knew would follow. By 1949, the Soviets would become the world’s second nuclear power, launching most of the world into a full out cold war between the communist East and the capitalist West. Competition between these ideologies meant that each side would fight to protect their influence in foreign nations, to spread their ideologies to new nations, and to protect against the spread of their enemy’s ideology to new nations; a policy the West…

    • 2308 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    APW CCOT Soviet Union

    • 1392 Words
    • 2 Pages

    priorities in an attempt to get back to the top. Looking around the rest of Europe, Russia saw the…

    • 1392 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ww1 Unit 3

    • 527 Words
    • 3 Pages

    - Soviet Position: Russia was intent on imposing communist. Stalin brought down an “Iron Curtain” (Churchill’s phrase) across Europe from the Baltic to the Adriatic and created a series of satellite governments.…

    • 527 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Apwh Tri 3 Review Answers

    • 1721 Words
    • 7 Pages

    | It gave communism legitimacy in the Soviet Union and control over half of Europe and much of Asia…

    • 1721 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    -George Kennan expert on Soviet Affairs and advised Truman that he thought the best idea for communism as to contain it in one place (not necessarily get rid of it)…

    • 1387 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Who Was Peter The Great?

    • 750 Words
    • 3 Pages

    This gave the citizens of Russia more knowledge of what is going on around…

    • 750 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    As the war draws to a close and the USSR closes in on Berlin, the clash between Communism and capitalism becomes an unavoidable event. With an Allied victory, communist USSR would be a major player in determining the fate of postwar Europe. With differing societal beliefs between the capitalist west and communist USSR, the redrawing of Europe, particularly the division between West and East Berlin, left serious repercussions that played a definite impact on the Cold War.…

    • 932 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Joseph Mccarthyism Dbq

    • 800 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Kennan wrote an 8,000-word telegram to the state Department about the threat of the roots of Soviet policy and the difficulties that will occur in the future with the Soviet Union. Kennan stated his concern by writing, "At bottom of Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity...[T]hey have learned to seek security only in patient but deadly struggle for total destruction of rival power, never in compacts and compromises with it" (George E Kennan, The Long Telegram, 1946 Document D). Kennan saw the truth about the Soviet Union which was that they are a dangerous power and if they do not get it their way they will use force to get it. Someone with enormous power and little patience is an exceedingly hard opponent to beat. Kennan described this struggle this way in his telegram by writing, "if Soviet power is to be secure... Problem of how to cope with this force [is] undoubtedly greatest task our diplomacy has ever faced and probably greatest it will ever have to face" (George E Kennan, The Long Telegram, 1946 Document D). The US saved the world from a global communist revolution. The Soviet Union is dangerous and the United States handled the situation with the correct…

    • 800 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    This allowed the Soviet Union to be associated with someone close to the United States. Communism grew all over Eastern Europe and the United States did not want it to start migrating towards them. They knew Communism was not good for the people and was prone to failure. The alliance between the two could be seen as a problem…

    • 1038 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Kennan in 1946, was a key document in shaping US foreign policy during the Cold War. The telegram argued that the Soviet Union was driven by an ideology of expansionism and that the US needed to adopt a policy of containment in order to prevent the spread of communism. The Long Telegram provided the intellectual framework for the Truman Doctrine and other US policies aimed at containing communism. The split of Germany was another key event in the Cold War. After World War II, Germany was divided into four occupation zones, with the Soviet Union controlling the eastern part of the country.…

    • 548 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The United States’ alliance with the Soviet Union began to crumble throughout World War II. Fueled by ideological differences, this climate of mutual mistrust between the two nations became known as the Cold War. Conflicts over Poland, a symbol of WWII, continued to divide these two nations apart as Stalin wanted a buffer in Eastern Europe to prevent another invasion. This is best represented by the concept of the “Iron Curtain” dividing Eastern and Western Europe. As a result of being unable to remove the Soviets from areas already under their control, the US implemented the philosophy of containment, as developed by George F. Kennan, to prevent the spread of communism.…

    • 2434 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Communism Dbq

    • 777 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Communism’s spread through the Soviet Union caused for major tensions to take shape during and after the end of World War II. Though the United States and Great Britain had once been strong allies with Soviet Russia during the war, the USSR’s fast spread of their communist beliefs to other Eastern Europe countries was a cause for alarm for the two nations, who feared that relations with these countries could falter in the event of a communist regime. “People’s Front” nations were constantly revolutionizing and becoming increasingly popular (Document F), and the United States was desperate to stop the USSR’s violation of both United States and United Nations policies and fight it. George Kennan believed that reason and arguing would not solve the USSR’s takeover, but felt that “if we can keep them maneuvered into a position where it is always hard and unprofitable for them to take action contrary to the principles of the United Nations and to our policies and were there is always an open door and an easy road to collaboration…sooner or later the logic of it…will force changes there (Document D)”. Likewise, the USSR felt that the United States and Great Britain had…

    • 777 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Cold War era was shaped by America's mission to spread democracy and to perfect the world. America still tries to impose their will on the rest of the world. The Cold War liberal concept of “political religion” emerged with the thought that: “[…] man is a 'religious animal' whose propensity to devotion can consequently be exploited for non-religious ends.” (Toscano 205) Furthermore Toscano explains that: “[...] political religions are marked by an enthusiasm for abstraction […] but in the case of communism also of borderless universality” (Toscano 208). The latter statement introduces the ideology behind the political religion of communism since communists wanted to abolish social classes, money and the state. The communist is described as a power gaining, religious person. While analyzing this concept it becomes evident that a strict distinction of the two ideologies is challenging. The political part of the political religion mostly dominates which is supported by the fact that it is a “Cold War liberal concept” which implies no religious notion whatsoever.…

    • 464 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    setting up in that part of the world was something the United States could live with.” The US was rather more concerned for a mutual benefit and wanted a working relation with the USSR. The U.S. were most interested in the west Europe, they wanted to introduce there ideology, demarcation, by trying not to collaborate, “,” Roosevelt-style—that is, by trying to work hand-in-hand with each other on whatever problems turned up. Instead, they could get along by pulling apart.…

    • 257 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Was the Cold War Inevitable

    • 2933 Words
    • 12 Pages

    The orthodox view of the Cold War elucidates its inevitability due to the great ideological differences that existed between the Soviet Union and United States. On the other hand, the revisionists argued that it happened due to the actions that Soviets took and the consequential responses made by the United States as a result of their inflexible, single-sided interpretations of Soviet action. Yet, even with the backdrop of the early Bolshevik conflict in 1918 as well as the great ideological gulf between the Soviet Union and United states, the cold war could have been avoided in its initial stages under President Roosevelt. However, what really determined it was the series of events that occurred after Roosevelt was succeeded by Truman. The inevitability of the Cold War, at its roots, was due to Soviet aggression and attitudes felt by the United States which was exacerbated from the post war climate of the time. To be precise, it was a combination of the subsequent events that followed Truman’s accession that sealed the unavoidability of the Cold War. American diplomatic policies were dictated by their fears of communism as well as opportunities that arise from modern warfare which aided in the evolution of American foreign policies. In the end, the Cold War was inevitable as a result of the conflict of interest between nations, whether it be the ideological gulf between communism and capitalism or the determining the political future of Eastern Europe, which was ultimately fuelled by the unstable post World War II environment.…

    • 2933 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays