Publication

This report examines the life of the influential US journalist George Kennan (1845 - 1924). After his first trip to the Russian empire in the 1860s, Kennan sought to create a benign portrait of the Tsarist regime. Between 1885 and 1886, however, his views on the imperial Russian government changed after meeting and talking with its critics. Kennan spent the next four decades successfully challenging US policy and molding US public opinion by exposing the American public and government to the failures of the Russian government, while separating its actions from those of the Russian people.