The Sensible Realism of a Bygone Generation: George Kennan’s Attitudes on Race, Eugenics, and Multiculturalism, Part 1
The Kennan Diaries
by George Kennan, edited by Frank Costigliola
New York: Norton, 2014, 768pp
The newly published diaries of George Kennan contain numerous passages that indicate the distinguished diplomat, scholar, Russian authority, and foreign policy sage also had a firm grasp of adverse racial, ethnic, cultural, and domestic political trends, which he clearly viewed as detrimental to the national interest. If any public figure in this day and age was as outspoken as Kennan, their career would be finished!
The diaries provide an exceptional snapshot of the author’s mindset over the span of nearly nine decades. Editor Frank Costigliola points out that Kennan left behind a private diary that takes up five linear feet of archival space. Researchers have had access to this material, but much of this work until now remained unpublished.
Reviewing the edited volume in the Washington Post, historian Douglas Brinkley notes that The Kennan Diaries “should come with a warning label.” He describes Kennan as a “gold-plated Cassandra” (referring to the goddess who had the gift of prophecy but the curse of never being believed). Brinkley counsels his fellow “Henry Wallace-George McGovern liberals” that his otherwise appealing foreign policy views are eclipsed by his unacceptable statements on apartheid and “his antiquated opinions on women’s rights,” not to mention “homophobic” and “pro-eugenic” beliefs, which “make it impossible for him to be a true hero of the left.”





