Kennan, George

Born in Norwalk , Ohio . At the age of 12, he dropped out of school and began to work as a messenger at the railway telegraph, later - a telegraph. In 1865, J. Kennan was hired by a Russian-American telegraph company to investigate a possible route for laying a telegraph from the United States to Russia through Alaska , the Bering Strait , Chukotka and Siberia . He spent two years traveling in Chukotka and Kamchatka, after which he returned to America through Petersburg. In 1870 he published the book " Tent Life in Siberia " about his journey. In 1870 he set off on a new journey to Russia (the Caucasus ), this time through Petersburg . After returning from Russia in 1871 , he worked as a bank clerk in Medina (New York State), but was extremely dissatisfied with his profession, dreaming of a career as a writer and publicist. In June 1876 he moved from Medina to New York, hoping to make a career in the literary field. However, in the first year, Kennan did not find a suitable job and in the summer of 1877 was forced to get a job in the Mutual Life Insurance Company. In November 1878, J. Kennan left New York and moved to Washington , where he became a correspondent for the Associated Press .

In May 1885 - August 1886, J. Kennan, along with the artist from Boston, George Frost toured Siberia, getting acquainted with the system of hard labor and exile. Here he met many political prisoners. Friends of Kennan became Ekaterina Breshko-Breshkovskaya , Yegor Lazarev , Felix Volkhovsky . Returning to the United States, in 1887-1889. Kennan published a number of articles in Century magazine, in which he sharply criticized the tsarist government and glorified the revolutionaries. Exposing the abuses of the Russian authorities made Kennan famous. He began to be actively published in serious socio-political magazines. In addition to Century , these were The Outlook, The Nation, Forum, and others. In addition, he has delivered numerous paid public lectures in the United States and England. To achieve greater effect, Kennan often appeared in front of an audience in prisoner clothing and shackles.

A direct result of John F. Kennan’s activities in England and the USA was the emergence in the early 1890s of a movement for “free Russia” and the formation of societies of “friends of Russian freedom”. Although he himself did not take part in the creation of the Society of American Friends of Russian Freedom in April 1891, he became a member of it, regularly giving small amounts for publication of the printed organ of the Free Russia Society. In the same 1891, Kennan published the book Siberia and the Exile System, which was less successful than his articles and speeches about Siberian exile. ^[five]

After some decline in interest in Russia, he switched to coverage of other topical events. In 1898, J. Kennan worked as a correspondent in the Spanish-American War . Shortly after the war ended, his book Campaigning in Cuba was published. All this time, he maintained correspondence with Russian political emigrants - Volkhovsky , Kropotkin , etc. In July 1901 , J. Kennan again came to Russia, stayed in St. Petersburg, but was expelled from the country a few weeks later.

During the Russo-Japanese War, he published a series of articles from the theater of war and, as he later admitted, was engaged in anti - government propaganda among Russian prisoners in Japan ^{[6] [7]} .

In 1904-1910 published a number of works on the socio-economic problems of the Russian Empire.

J. Kennan appreciated the October Revolution of 1917 sharply negatively, explaining this by the lack of knowledge, experience and education in the new government in order to successfully deal with the enormous problems that have ripened from the overthrow of the king. He criticized Woodrow Wilson 's intervention as an insufficient measure in the fight against Bolshevism. Shortly before his death, he wrote:

The new Bolshevik constitution ... leaves all power in the same place where it has been for the past five years - in the hands of a group of self-appointed bureaucrats, whom the people can neither remove nor control.

- newspaper “Medina Tribune”, July 1923

J. Kennan died in 1924 .

The modern Russian historian Dmitry Nechiporuk in his dissertation “The American Society of Friends of Russian Freedom” ^[8] writes that the personality and activities of George Kennan, who was the central figure in anti-czarist agitation in the late 1880s and early 1890s, occupies a significant place in the study of history cultural ties between Russia and the United States. In 1950, the American historian M. Lazerson studied in detail the influence of Kennan’s agitation on US-Russian relations ^[9] . Lazerson, with this research, laid the foundations of a liberal approach to studying both Kennan’s agitation and the activities of the American Society - according to this approach, Kennan was a sincere and disinterested opponent of the Russian autocracy, who helped the Russian socialists and liberals in their struggle for democratic Russia with their printed speeches and money. This thesis subsequently received wide circulation not only in American but also in Soviet historical literature ^[8] .

In the 1970s and 1980s, the American historian T. Stalls offered a more critical view of Kennan’s agitation than was accepted in previous works ^[10] . He first voiced the thesis about the commercial motives of the American journalist and, relying on archival materials, tried to dispel Kennan’s stable idea of ​​being an exclusively “ideological” fighter against the autocracy.

The most detailed study of the activities of George Kennan in 1990 was published by the American historian F. Travis ^[11] .

In Soviet historiography, Kennan was certainly portrayed as a convinced, sincere and disinterested opponent of tsarism, who supported the Society of American Friends of Russian Freedom and its agitation ^[12] .

P. S. Botkin , a Russian diplomat, former secretary of the Russian mission in Washington (1890–1895), later wrote in his memoirs ^[13]

At that time, George Kennan appeared in America. He said that he came from Siberia, brought with him valuable materials to prove the inhumanity of the Russian authorities and the failure of the state system in Russia.
Kennan began by publishing sensational articles in newspapers and magazines about the life of convicts in Siberia. Then he began to travel around America and give lectures. I went on stage in shackles, dressed as a convict, through a magic lantern showed various horrors and weaved incredible nonsense to Russia.
- What do you say to that? - Roosevelt once asked me.
- First of all, I’ll say that 90 percent of what this person says is utter nonsense, and secondly, that he himself does not believe that he is breaching, but does so by order.
- It is possible, but true, in any case, that this propaganda greatly undermines the popularity and disposition of Americans to Russia and Russians. Defend yourself.
- How and by what?
- Yes, with the same weapon. At the same time, Roosevelt pointed to the paper and pen.

I understood and sat down at work. Wrote an article entitled "Voice of Russia" (audiatur et altera pars ) and sent her to Century, the most serious American monthly, and is now published in New York. A month later, the issue of this magazine came out with my article.

• Tent life in Siberia, and adventures among the Koraks and other tribes in Kamtchatka and Northern Asia. - NY, GP Putnam & sons; L., S. Low, son & Marston, 1870. - 425 p.
• Siberia and the Exile System . - NY, The Century co., 1891.2 vols.
  • Siberia and the link . - SPb. : Edition of V. Vrublevsky, 1906. - 458 p.
  • Siberia and the link. In two volumes. SPb .: Russian-Baltic Information Center "BLITZ", 1999.
• Campaigning in Cuba . - NY, The Century co., 1899. - 269 p.
• The Chicago and Alton case: A misunderstood transaction - Garden City, NY: Country Life Press, 1916. - 58 p.

• Vodovozov V.V. Kennan George // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.