PPS Files, Lot 64 D 563, USSR

The Director of the Policy Planning Staff (Kennan) to the Counselor of the Department of State (Bohlen)

Dear Chip:1 Coming over here2 on the plane I had time to think a little more about recent Soviet moves, and I thought I would let you have my views on this subject with the idea that you might want to show this letter to the Secretary and Mr. Webb and Dean Rusk along with whatever comments you may have to make on it.

The more I think about the removal of Molotov and Mikoyan, the more convinced I am that this marks some sort of turning point in the attitude of the Soviet Government toward its dealings with the Western powers. Some sort of a policy decision has been taken in Moscow, and it is plain that whatever the people in the Kremlin expect to achieve in this coming period, they do not expect to achieve it through negotiation with ourselves.

I find particularly interesting, in this connection, the press report I have seen to the effect that at the Supreme Soviet session reference was made to Stalin’s speech of March 10, 1939,3 at the XVIII Party Congress in which he stated that it had been decided “not to permit the provokers of war, who are in the habit of getting others to pull their chestnuts out of the fire, to draw our country into their conflicts.” You will recall that this was the first clear sign that there was a change in Soviet policy in 1939, and that the next major moves were the suppression of the Journale de Moscou4 on May 1 and the removal of Litvinov and his replacement by Molotov on May 3. That these things reflected very important Soviet policy decisions, and were [Page 593] meant to indicate as much, cannot be doubted. When Ribbentrop met Stalin in August,5 he referred to that phrase in Stalin’s speech and said that they had interpreted it as expressing Stalin’s desire to improve relations with Germany, to which Stalin replied: “This was indeed my intention.” And Molotov, in the toast6 he gave after signature of the pact,7 stressed that “it was indeed Stalin who—in his speech of the month of March which was well understood in Germany—evoked this reversal of political relations.” As for the dismissal of Litvinov, two days later Astakhov8 paid a special visit to Schnurre9 to make sure that the significance of this move had not been lost upon the Germans.10 (I take the facts from Rossi’s book on the Soviet-German pact,11 which I am now reading.)

When today we have again a change in the Foreign Ministry, the suppression of the Moscow Daily News,12 and a ceremonious and unquestionably deliberate reference to Stalin’s speech of March 10, there can be no question in my mind but that this spells some important departure in policy.

Again, it is a gesture of disgust with the West: a gesture testifying to the futility of trying to gain Soviet objectives by dealing with us, just as the 1939 move recognized the futility of trying to gain Soviet objectives by dealing with the French and British.13

What has me puzzled and worried is this: In 1939 the Russians had an alternative, a tremendous and dramatically promising alternative, in the possibility of dealing with Hitler.14 Their present moves would indicate that they consider that they again have an alternative. The reference to Stalin’s speech of ten years ago would indicate that that alternative is not a war in which the Soviet Union would be engaged. [Page 594] But then, what is it? Those people think dialectically. It is not likely, in my view, that they would balance off against the possibility of an agreement with us any minor program of secondary significance. And yet, what major one could they have? The possibilities of the foreign communist parties for mischief-making along lines short of major violence and sabotage have been largely exhausted. Resort to such violence would be initially effective, but would probably fail everywhere to be decisive and would backfire by leading to the final smashing of the communist apparatus in many places. What, then, can they have in mind? Can it be some sort of exploitation of the satellites against us, from which Russia herself would remain aloof?

Somewhere Moscow must think that it has a means of bedeviling the West and promoting Soviet objectives which will not involve the Soviet Union directly. And it is toying with the idea of invoking that means at sometime within the coming period.

Yours,

G[eorge] F. K[ennan]
  1. Charles E. Bohlen.
  2. George F. Kennan visited Germany and other Western European countries in March 1949 in connection with the German question. For documentation on his visit, see vol. iii, pp. 113138.
  3. See Foreign Relations, The Soviet Union, 1933–1939, p. 741.
  4. The Journal de Moscou, a newspaper published in French, reputedly an organ of the Foreign Office, ceased publication “for technical reasons”.
  5. Joachim von Ribbentrop was Reich Foreign Minister. For a memorandum of conversation between him and Stalin on the night of August 23–24, 1939, see Raymond James Sontag and James Stuart Beddie, editors, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1939–1941 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1948), pp. 72–76.
  6. Ibid., p. 76.
  7. Treaty of Nonaggression (with secret, additional Protocol) between Germany and the Soviet Union signed in Moscow, August 23, 1939. For text, see ibid., pp. 76–78, or Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945, Series D (1937–1945), vol. vii (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1957), pp. 245–247.
  8. Georgy Alexandrovich Astakhov was Counselor of Embassy of the Soviet Union in Germany in 1939.
  9. Dr. Karl Schnurre was head of the Eastern European and Baltic Section of the Commericial Policy Division of the German Foreign Office in 1939.
  10. For Astakhov’s visit to Schnurre on May 5, 1939, see Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1939–1941, p. 3.
  11. A Rossi, Deux ans d’alliance, Germano-Soviétique (Paris, Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1949).
  12. The English language newspaper in Moscow ceased publication on February 1, 1949, with a special issue commemorating the death on January 21, 1924, of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The newspaper had been founded in 1930 by the American Communist, Anna Louise Strong, and others.
  13. For documentation regarding the Anglo-French-Soviet negotiations attempting to reach an agreement against aggression, see Foreign Relations, 1939, vol. i, pp. 232312.
  14. Adolf Hitler was Führer, Chancellor of the German Reich, and Supreme Commander of the German Armed Forces.