The Long Telegram

This post is about what Russia is currently up to and why.  The way I going to go about doing this is to use a popular narrative device, starting in the middle of the story.  And the middle of this story is a famous diplomatic cable that garnered the nickname, the "Long Telegram".  It was close to 6,000 words long.  That is far longer than the usual diplomatic cable.  So how did it come to be sent?

In early 1946, a man named George F. Kennan found himself in temporary charge of the US Embassy in Moscow.  He would later be officially appointed to the job.  But this time around he was in temporary charge while the process of appointing, confirming, and installing a new Ambassador played out.

Kennan was one of a small group of Russia experts in the US government at that time.  Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas grouped the more prominent members of this group together as "The Wise Men" in their book of the same name.

Kennan had studied Russia extensively.  He had also spent many years serving in the US Embassy in Moscow.  Both his study and his on the ground experience drove him to the conclusion that US policy toward Russia (then officially known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR, but which I will uniformly call Russia in the interests of simplicity) was seriously in error.

Then someone made the mistake of asking his opinion.  He felt compelled to answer at length because

[the] [a]nswer . . . involves questions so intricate, so delicate, so strange to our forms of thought, and so important to analysis of our international environment that I cannot compress [my] answers into [a series of] single brief messages without yielding to what I feel would be dangerous degree of oversimplification.  I hope, therefore, [that the State] Dept. will bear with me if I submit in answer to this question five parts . . .

[In fairness, Mr. Kennan is an excellent writer.  But it was common practice at the time to leave out the odd extraneous word to minimize length in diplomatic cables.  I have added these words back in to improve clarity and readability.  You can read the full and unmodified "Long Telegram" for yourself here:  http://www.ntanet.net/KENNAN.html.  Also, I later make reference to the "X Article".  You can read it here:  https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Sources_of_Soviet_Conduct.]

Before getting into what he had to say I need to provide some context.  For centuries Russia relied on the Tsarist form of government.  It was a minor variation on the then common monarchial system that had long been the preferred form of government all over Europe.

As a side effect of the upheaval attendant to World War I, the Tsars were thrown out and the Communist Revolution installed a nominally Marxist government in its place.  They renamed Russia to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (The country's name eventually reverted back to "Russia" in 1989 when all the countries that had been swept up into the "Union" were allowed to revert back to being independent countries.)

As soon as the dust settled in the aftermath of World War I, various European powers sponsored a counter-revolution that was supposed to toss the Communists out.  (The Europeans supported the "White" Russians who opposed the Marxist "Red" Russians.)  The US joined in on the European side of the conflict.  The counter-revolution was unsuccessful.

In the run up to World War II the maxim that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" became applicable.  As a result, Russia eventually became an ally of the British, (and eventually) the US, and others, in the fight to defeat the "Axis" powers of Germany, Japan, and (at times) Italy..

At the end of the War there was real interest in the US in keeping the alliance intact.  So, a serious effort was made to remain on friendly terms with Russia but Russia wasn't interested in cooperating with that plan.  In early '46 the official policy of the US government was still to try to hold things together.

Kennan thought that effort was doomed to failure.  He wrote his Long Telegram to explain why.  It was broken down into five sections:

1. Basic features of [the] postwar Soviet [Russian] outlook
2. Background of this outlook
3. Its projection in practical policy on [an] official level
4. Its projection on [an] unofficial level
5. Practical deductions from [the] standpoint of US policy

It covers a lot of material that is not germane to what I want to talk about.  What I am interested in is the parallels Kennan makes between the Tsarist outlook and methods and the ones Kennan attributed to Russian leaders of that time.  Let me quote Kennan at some length

At bottom the Kremlin's [Russia's] neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive [to a] Russian sense of insecurity.  Originally, this was [the] insecurity of a peaceful agricultural people trying to live on [a] vast exposed plain in [the] neighborhood of fierce nomadic peoples.  To this was added, as Russia came into contact with [the] economically advanced West, fear of more competent, more powerful, more highly organized societies in that area.  But this latter type of insecurity was one which afflicted Russian rulers rather than Russian people; for Russian rulers have invariably sensed that their rule was relatively archaic in form, fragile and artificial in its psychological foundations, [and, therefore,] unable to stand comparison [to] or contact with [the] political systems of Western countries.  For this reason[,] they have always feared foreign penetration, feared direct contact between [the] Western world and their own, [and] feared what would happen if [ordinary] Russians learned [the] truth about [the] world without [the world outside Russia][,] or if foreigners learned about [the] world within [Russia].  And they have learned to seek security only in [the] patient but deadly struggle for [the] total destruction of [a] rival power, [and to] never [engage] in compacts and compromises with it.

Later in the Telegram he wrote

This thesis provides justification for that increase in military and police powers of [the] Russian state, for that isolation of [the] Russian population from [the] outside world, and for that fluid and constant pressure to extend [the] limits of Russian police power[,] which are together the natural and instinctive urges of Russian rulers.  Basically[,] this is only the steady advance of uneasy Russian nationalism, a centuries old movement in which [the] conceptions of offense and defense are inextricably confused.

Kennan is not attributing these concepts to the Marxists that were running Russia at the time.  He says that's how Russians have always operated.  In fact, he explicitly makes reference to "a centuries old movement".  At the time of the Telegram, the Marxists had been in control for less than thirty years.

Kennan's thesis was that there was a commonality and continuity of behavior that extended from the Tsarists to the Marxists.  So, if your understanding of Russian behavior and attitudes in a contemporary context required them to differ markedly from the well established Russian norm, then either you needed to come up with a strong justification for the change, or you were likely wrong.

Kennan had been dealing with various Russian government officials, all the way up to Stalin, the leader at the time, and had seen no justification at all for a belief in a change either in attitude or in behavior.  In fact, he had seen a lot of first hand evidence to support a belief that it was "same old, same old".  So, in Kennan's mind, you could delete the word "likely" from the phrase and just go with "wrong".

Kennan's Long Telegram quickly received wide circulation within upper echelons of the US Government.   It turns out that others had also come to the conclusion that Russian thinking just did not run along the lines of alliances and cooperation.  They realized that Kennan had said what they were thinking.  He had just done so far more articulately than they could have done so.  So, rather than muddying things up, they just endorsed the Telegram.

Kennan reworked his Long Telegram, added some additional material, and published it in the July, 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs, a highly respected journal.  The author was initially only identified as "X", so the article became known as the "X Article".  But Kennan was quickly identified as its author.  This article was the first one to characterize the US Anti-Russian strategy as the "containment" strategy.  (The word "containment" appears several times in the piece.)

So the attitude of the US toward Russia went from friendly and accommodating to hostile during this period.  You can pick various events and use them to mark the start of the Cold War.  Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech, for instance, happened in this time period.  But, starting shortly after the Long Telegram was sent, "containment" and "Cold War" came to dominate international politics.  It was many decades before that changed.

Before continuing, I want to take a moment to acknowledge that there was considerable justification for Russian paranoia.  First of all, Russia does not have the kind of natural barriers to hide behind that the US has.  Instead of wide oceans Russia has wide flat plains that can easily be marched across while simultaneously feeding the invading army.

And the idea of invasion was not a theoretical concept for them.  Besides the "fierce nomadic peoples" alluded to above, we have the fact that both Napoleon (France) and Hitler (Germany) invaded Russia from the West.  The greatest power in the world for many centuries (China) was located to the South.  And again, there was no natural barrier to protect Russia from a Chinese invasion.

Beyond that, there was the experience of the Marxist government in charge at the time of the Telegram.  The western powers had joined together to support the "White" Russians in their efforts use military force to kick the Marxists out less than twenty years previously.  Sure, all these attempts had failed.  And lots of countries have done lots of nice things for Russia over the centuries and decades.  But the case for paranoia remains a strong one.

So paranoia has been a feature of pretty much every Russian government going back centuries.  Unfortunately, so has repression and a large and generously supported secret police operation.  The justification for this has been far less clear.  The only thing I can come up with is economics.  Russia has not seen a lot of economic success.  But what little economic success it has seen has, for the most part, come while authoritarian governments were running things.

But non-authoritarian governments have not had much time to get themselves sorted out and, presumably, work their economic magic.  The Tsars got Russia into World War I.  That was an unmitigated disaster for Russian.  Under Lenin things at least stopped getting worse.  And he could blame a lot of economic troubles that happened on his watch on the war with the White Russians.

Stalin came in and started collectivizing everything.  This was a disaster in the agricultural segment of the economy.  But by then he had complete control of the reigns of power so there was no way to oppose him effectively.  And there was little outside information people could use for comparison purposes.  And what outside information there was, could be easily spun.  At the time the rest of the world was working its way through the Great Depression.

Kennan cautiously predicts that the Marxist's days might just be numbered.  He was completely wrong about that.  Russia suffered terrible devastation as a result of World War II.  But they were able to leverage the economic resources of all the territory they gained control of (Eastern Europe) to rebuild quickly.  Then Russia went through a period of economic growth that lasted for decades.

One thing Kennan got right was his discussion of "the succession problem".  He says it took 13 years to transition from Lenin to Stalin.  That seems like a bit of an exaggeration to me.  Russia did not come to a dead stop for anything like 13 years.  The succession that started with Stalin's death was another matter, however.

It took several years after Stalin's death for Khrushchev to emerge.  But then he didn't last long.  He was kicked out of the top job (and managed to not get killed in the process) after only a few years.  It then took several years for Brezhnev to consolidate power.  And he was ultimately a disaster.

Lenin seems to have had some real faith in Marxist principles.  But Stalin was just your basic dictator.  He did make a lot of noise about Marxism.  But it was just window dressing to disguise his political maneuvering.  His collectivization of agriculture and industry can be justified using Marxist doctrine.  But his real reason for collectivizing was simply to increase his own power and control.

His use of "show trials" (and other actions he took) actually ran counter to Marxist ideology.  Stalin needed to eliminate his enemies and this was often the tool he chose to use.  In many cases the people on trial for being "enemies of Marxism" were actually people who carefully adhered to Marxist doctrine.  The "Marxist deviation" they were accused of having participated in was entirely fictitious.  Stalin, on the other hand, frequently engaged in Marxist deviation.  But he had the power so there was no one to challenge him.

Khrushchev was not much of a Marxist.  But he was a far better one than Brezhnev.  All Brezhnev cared about was staying in power and keeping his cronies in power.  Everything else was left to rot.  When he finally died Russia was in bad shape.  But by this time he had systematically eliminated anyone he perceived as a threat.  The only people left were a bunch of his cronies.  They were both old and incompetent so Russia drifted for several more years.

By the time the dust settled it was too late.  We got the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the USSR.  Russia was back to being just Russia.  But by now no one knew how to run a democratic country.  And anyone who had any belief in things like honesty and the rule of law had been eliminated by Brezhnev and his cronies.  Things went badly and an opening emerged for Putin.

Putin spend a long time in the Russian intelligence service before he moved over to politics.  And there was a lot of continuity dating all the way back to the Tsars in how Russian intelligence people operated.  Putin is a capitalist and a democrat in the same way that Brezhnev was a Communist.  Putin has a strong interest in getting and keeping power.  Everything else comes in a distant second.

Unlike Brezhnev, Putin is relatively young and in good health.  So he has the energy necessary to get and keep power.  And, since he doesn't know any other way, he uses the intelligence services the same way Russia has always used its intelligence services.  And he executes foreign policy the same way Russia has traditionally executed foreign policy.

Again, quoting the Long Telegram, Russian foreign policy is designed

[t]o undermine [the] general political and strategic potential of major Western Powers[.] Efforts will be made in such countries to disrupt [their] national self-confidence, to hamstring measures of national defense, to increase social and industrial unrest, to stimulate all forms of disunity.  All persons with grievances, whether economic or racial, will be urged to seek redress[,] not in mediation and compromise, but in defiant, violent struggle for [the] destruction of other elements of society.  Here poor will be set against rich, black against white, young against old, newcomers against established residents, etc.

And, going back to the five point summary, both "official" (item #3) and "unofficial" (item #4) techniques will be used.  Official techniques comprise the public and acknowledged actions of the government.  This includes things like official pronouncements, treaties and other agreements, policy statements, etc.  Unofficial techniques include any action the government attempts to keep hidden.  This includes efforts by the intelligence services, secret treaties and agreements, government actions that are denied, etc.

Remember, the section I quoted above was written in 1946.  But it is an accurate description of what is going on today.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The only people who don't have a clear picture of what is going on are those that are ignorant of history and those who are willfully ignorant.  Unfortunately, there are far too many people that fall into one or both of those categories.