George Frost Kennan

Kennan, George Frost

 

Born Feb. 16, 1904, in Milwaukee. American diplomat and historian.

After graduating from Princeton University in 1925, Kennan worked at the US State Department, occupying various diplomatic and consular posts. Kennan was one of the authors of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan; he actively supported the policy of “containing communism” and took part in the establishment of NATO. In March 1952 he was appointed US ambassador to the USSR; however, in October 1952, in connection with hostile attacks against the Soviet Union, he was declared persona non grata by the Soviet government. He worked as a scholar and teacher from 1953 to 1961 and is a professor at Princeton University. From 1961 to 1963 he was US ambassador to Yugoslavia. In the later years of the Eisenhower administration, Kennan criticized certain aspects of the government’s foreign policy and called for an unbiased revision of the US position in the world. He is considered one of the leading American specialists on the Soviet Union. He is the author of a number of books on US foreign policy and Soviet-American relations, including Memoirs (vols. 1–2, 1967–72). [12–122–4; updated]