BOOKS
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Soviet empire. Of the thirty-eight pieces, only five were written in 1991;
of these only three have bearing on Soviet-Russian topics. The volume is
divided into five sections entitled "Background," "Cold War in Full
Bloom," "Cold War, Its Decline and Fall," "Reviews and Introductions,"
and "Miscellaneous." Apparently Kennan did not give high priority to the
decay and disintegration of the Soviet Union or to a concerted effort to
inquire into their causes and circumstances; rather, he seems hardly sur–
prised by these events, as if he had taken for granted the demise of the
Soviet Union. At the same time these, as well as his earlier writings, sug–
gest that
bifore
the collapse he took for granted the persistence of the
Soviet system in spite of his well founded awareness of its many vulnera–
bili
ties.
Many ideas and preoccupations in this volume, unavoidably, will strike
the reader as obsolete or all too familiar: haunting fear of nuclear war,
American misperceptions of the Soviet Union, repeated advice to
American leaders and politicians not to be judgmental of and confronta–
tional toward the Soviet Union, the belief that Soviet leaders were not
significantly different from Western politicians, and the theme of moral
equivalence between the West (and especially the United States) and the
Soviet Union. In a 1982 address, Kennan urges Americans to learn "to see
both the Soviet leadership and the Soviet people, and ourselves as we real–
ly are--as God's creatures, embodying both good and bad...." Such a
statement does not lead to the pursuit of a differentiated understanding of
historical events and actors.
There also are familiar pleadings "for a greater humility in our nation–
al outlook" and the curious belief that if the United States mastered its
domestic social problems it would no longer need to spend vast amounts
of money on armaments. Kennan's critiques of U.S. foreign policy have not
been confirmed by the course of events. Contrary to his misgivings it was
the Reagan administration that improved the relationship with the Soviet
Union under Gorbachev, who after all did not conclude that he could
expect nothing but "a total, blind and almost dead hostility" from the U.S.
Nor was Kennan's apprehension about the Soviet leaders' "get[ting] their
backs up" in the face of Western military and political pressure justified.
He firmly believed that a major task of Western governments was to make
the Soviet rulers feel less insecure, less threatened; the more secure and suc–
cessful Soviet leaders felt the easier it would be for the West to live with
them; such a sense of securi ty would also make them more liberal at home.
In fact, the unravelling of the Soviet empire was greatly accelerated by the
defeat in Mghanistan, by the strains of the arms race and the growing
domestic disarray, and the insecurity and uncertainty of the leaders des–
perate enough to try even
glasnost.
It was an insecure Soviet leadershi p that
