1 Conversation between Alexander Yakovlev and George Frost Kennan 5 October 1990 Moscow Italics denote passages where Kennan speaks English most of the conversation takes place in Russian … Yakovlev You know the unpredictability of consequences is especially surprising Kennan I understand this is a historic moment I remember Tyutchev’s words “Blessed is he who visited this world in its fateful minutes ” Yakovlev Yes Maybe these are sentimental words but I said at the congress that I am happy that I was present during the period of history in which I have to live and work now It is really so I don’t know what we will be able to accomplish in the end Kennan This is the moment when everything is hanging in the air Yakovlev This year is very important for us the coming year Literally these several months and the first half of the next year if we can make it through Kennan Now is the most sensitive moment Yakovlev If we survive we will survive in the future Kennan I hope my visit does not burden you Yakovlev No no Kennan I can imagine how busy you are 2 Yakovlev You know it’s been five years I am used to it now Yesterday I spoke with Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev and told him that I was going to meet with you tomorrow He asked to pass his greetings very best wishes I asked him to let me go to Canada He did not let me go In January he said in January These three months-and-then-some are a very hard stretch He told me to write By the way I should write a letter to the chargé d’affaires and to go in January One university in Canada awarded me an honorary Doctor of Laws degree Kennan It is a pity that you cannot go there Yakovlev Yes it is a pity You Mr Kennan are history personified not just Mr Kennan Especially as far as Soviet-American relations are concerned I also studied them not all my life but since graduate school since the Academy of Social Sciences However to tell you the truth I have not managed yet to understand the patterns the causes of all these zigzags from both sides which took place in these relations first in the period before 1933 then Roosevelt the war Kennan Several times Yakovlev Yes yes the Cold War then some signs of short-lived thaws And then right now as snow on one’s head a new epoch Of course I know your X Article very well and I have to confess my sins I criticized it I criticized it Kennan Ha-ha I would not have written such an article today but it was forty years ago Yakovlev And I if I was writing today would not have written such books about the United States of America I would simply throw some things out If anybody proposes to me to re-publish them now I will refuse Although it seems like everything is in its place there that the quotes are right but something most important is missing in order for it to be true That’s what it is 3 Kennan It is the same with all of us And it has to be this way Because if we were writing the same things today as we were writing twenty years ago it would mean that we have not learned anything Yakovlev Yes and that life has stopped However I have to tell you that although you are saying that you would not have written that article this way today still even if we look at it with today’s eyes a lot of it was true Kennan In the end of the article there was a lot of truth Of course it was about the most difficult period of Stalin’s rule And it was on our part I was here during the purges of the 1930s and then again during the war and we felt a certain frustration and desperation regarding Soviet-American relations You understand we had very little hope We could not have foreseen today’s developments Yakovlev You know neither could we Moreover we failed to foresee it as they say doubly First of all that this time would come in principle now and second that events would move so quickly Kennan This is exactly what surprised me I also thought about ten years ago that a time like today would come but not so fast Yakovlev But at the same time—and this is what makes it so complicated—there were historical preconditions history confronted us with the need to address these issues Many people already understood that some events were swelling that some atmosphere was emerging some understanding that everything was going to change Everything had to change Especially after 1956 after the XX Party Congress Overall seriously speaking our society has been living through a chain of cataclysms since the XX Congress It is boiling over Declines takeoffs defeats victories But through the thorns it is advancing toward some kind of sane beginning toward common sense Although it is complicated You see at first 4 Khrushchev started his political career very actively It was a great contribution what he did Kennan I feel sorry for him If he lived today he would have understood everything that is going on now Yakovlev He—yes But at the same time he got scared And then he succumbed to the temptations of a personality cult And again “our Nikita Sergeich ” Applause went to his head Kennan And we did not help him much Yakovlev Yes That is true Probably true This is a good comment And how can we explain it what do you think Kennan Partly because of our hardliners who influenced the president More than that—the military and our unfortunate enthusiasm for nuclear weapons But also it seems to me it was a coincidence of timing It was the concurrence of the crisis in Hungary and the Suez crisis All these events and situations interfered And we did not understand him on our part when he said “I will bury you ” How did he say that Yakovlev “Закопаю” I will bury you Kennan We understood it incorrectly He wanted to say that “I will be dancing at your funeral and not you at mine ” But this is very different It was a sad period of our history Yakovlev Of course many factors played a role there I am still surprised that immediately after the war—and we have documents about it—a special decision of the State Defense Committee was prepared to reduce the army by many millions 5 A decision of the State Defense Committee and the Politburo to prevent any kind of imposition of the Soviet model of life in the countries of Eastern Europe But everything turned out differently 1948 came 1949 and coups d’etat were essentially happening everywhere Kennan Yes this period is awaiting its historian … Kennan Before I proceed I would like … to say that I would be happy to conduct this conversation in Russian to the extent of my ability as much as I can but my language got a little rusty I have not spoken Russian for forty years Yakovlev You speak perfectly Kennan I know the language And still sometimes it is hard for me to hear This is from being old When people speak fast I notice it They speak faster than in the old time Yakovlev Now everyone speaks faster Kennan I would like to propose to you that we make two protocols of our conversation if this is recorded One in Russian and another one in English and that afterward we can check both versions and I hope you will forgive me if sometimes I switch to English Yakovlev Of course Let’s do it this way We will record it our conversation get it translated and send to you Kennan And if I sometimes speak English the same we need translation 6 Yakovelev Yes yes In two languages You will look at it make any corrections to your text that you consider necessary I even think that any insertions would be useful Sometimes good thoughts arrive at a desk where you write And I will do the same You will see it in the text and then it will be our joint text Kennan Then if I don’t understand something I ask for help and if I need to express myself in English I will do it sometimes Yakovlev You know I am interested in one question which I consider my personal moral pain that will not heal For several years I have been—and even now nobody has relieved me from those responsibilities—chairman of the rehabilitation commission the commission for rehabilitation of those unjustly convicted in the 30s-40s-50s In the years of its work our commission removed so to speak a blight from one million victims Recently a decree was passed to rehabilitate and reinstate full rights for all those convicted on political charges My question boils down to this During these years I have read and skimmed through an enormous volume of materials on this subject about people who were executed their testimony the testimony of witnesses … how yesterday’s friends betrayed each other and so on In other words I walked in the dirt up to my knees and even deeper I still cannot understand what happened I cannot understand the motives that dictated this kind of policy to Stalin You observed it from outside You were not under threat relatively not under threat of course to be executed or to be thrown in jail … Still why would Stalin … why did he choose these methods in his dealings with the party and with the country and with the people and with friends and with the intelligentsia Kennan I understand the question quite well Soon we will have in your country too I think a big book by my colleague Robert Tucker about Stalin’s life from 19 28 to 19 39 A very interesting and serious book a result of many years of study He 7 certainly looks at this question And even he was not able as far as I remember to answer this question fully because and it is obvious Stalin harmed himself too with these measures especially in the period 19 35- 19 39 Of course … here I would like to switch to English with your permission A lot of it can be explained by Stalin’s personality He was a person with many strange features because on the one hand he possessed exceptional sagacity and insight he understood the people with whom he was dealing and even made a strong impression on them On the other hand he was morbidly suspicious especially toward people who believed in him … and who professed their loyalty openly expressed their admiration As soon as it happened he started suspecting them It was almost impossible to keep his trust And if somebody came and said that they had to keep an eye on somebody— that’s it it was impossible to save that person His daughter told me about it But we saw it ourselves He acted much more normally with people who did not pledge their loyalty With Roosevelt with Churchill who admired him In my view he was a … sane person People who did not belong to his world did not provoke the abnormal aspects of his personality It is possible—if you let me continue on this subject—in part it could be explained by his sense of inferiority It all started with the feeling of inferiority that he felt when he interacted with the people in Lenin’s circle with Lenin’s associates Those were highly educated individuals bright personalities—most of them I remember in those years in the end of the 20s beginning of the 30s I often told my colleagues that the Moscow Politburo was the best educated government in Europe Many of them had lived abroad knew foreign languages Stalin did not have any of that And he perfectly understood his inferiority and suffered acutely on that account It exhibited itself in different ways All these purges and atrocities in essence started with his attempts to destroy everybody from his circle whom he suspected of admiring Lenin Stalin was an easily provoked person and a person who as strange as it may seem while possessing extraordinary talents still suffered terribly from the sense of his inferiority 8 … Yakovlev Tell me please is it true that in America now public opinion is turning in a serious way toward our country – a favorable so to speak opinion about our country in its assessment of what is happening or do fears and apprehensions still remain Kennan Some of them still remain I would have to respond to this question in English because it is so important I do not think that the American people ever … it never turned away Americans were under the influence of Cold War hysteria an exorbitant exaggeration of Soviet might and a full misunderstanding of Soviet intentions It came together with the Cold War There were exaggerations on your part as well But an impression developed in the United States especially after the war in Korea that the Soviet Union was an aggressive country Many confused the Soviet Union with Hitler And they knew what Hitler was I have to say that it affected a large part of our population I think that it has changed now but many people are still unsure In part it depends on where they live I think that it is more prevalent in the Southwest of my country but not in the East of Midwest For example in the Midwest the place where I come from in the very center of my country people quite sincerely want to know the truth I don’t think that American public opinion right now presents a serious problem for our relations There are still certain circles that are deeply saturated with the psychology of the Cold War They have not recovered from it yet because the activities that emerged in that atmosphere—I am thinking of the Pentagon’s plans intelligence etc —for many people those became not just their habits but also their means for existence It is their life … 9 Today it is absolutely obvious to me as a historian as well that when we allow the military to develop plans against some country it leads to a situation where they create an enemy image And that leads me to desperation because I never even at the time of the X Article and until today believed that Moscow could attack the United States And the same with Western Europe I tried to argue with those people but they were thinking not like politicians but like the military For example I asked them why by all the saints do they think that the Soviet Union intends to invade Western Europe Well they replied they need the all of Germany I said—are you sure that they need all of Germany What do they need it for Who are they going to install in power there in Germany Do they want in your view to repeat the story with Eastern Europe But they refused to think as politicians Their arguments were as follows why then all this military power they must want to use it somehow And this is the tragedy all this so penetrated the consciousness of Americans during the Cold War It penetrated it also because of the following reasoning if you have big military potential you must have plans as well About a year ago I was invited to Western Europe to a meeting at NATO We talked all evening long sat around almost till the morning And I proposed to put this question this way could one possess adequate military power without naming a specific country as an adversary They had never thought about that How can we work it out so that we possess reasonable military power and at the same time do not pose the question of an enemy—the issue that brings so much harm And besides when you have ingenious plans for conducting a war against somebody then war starts looking inevitable And as soon as you agree that war is inevitable you make it inevitable even if it is not so Do you understand what I mean Because you start acting out of the realization about the inevitability of war And then what had been only a possibility turns into an inevitability 10 I am saying all this in order to explain the moods of the “hardliners” from Cold War times who existed in the United States and I do not doubt also existed in your country in certain circles anyway I do not know whether they ever existed among the people I think you had them to a lesser degree than we did But all this represents a danger to international relations Yakovlev Yes we also have these attitudes against disarmament against demilitarization that is happening in the our country This is true but I don’t think that this is a strong group it exists among certain elements among the military because their interests are affected and among certain parts of the industrial complex maybe of the propaganda apparatus which also so to speak made money from this and lives on this But even they do not believe seriously that there could be a war Recently we discussed the issue of conversion I had a conversation with the military with weapon producers They outlined how many tank factories could be cut and how to reduce the number of tanks they produce I asked one chief tank designer why do you need these tanks You are just mechanically cutting production of tanks by a factor of two or three But that means that the remaining tanks which you will continue to produce have some purpose It means that you plan to attack some country conquer it Which country tell us Then maybe we need more tanks not so few No—he tells me—we do not intend to attack anybody we do not have such plans Then why do you need tanks You know he could not answer this question However over many years the inertia of thinking acquires its own logic And then that logic becomes self-perpetuating … Yakovlev Our people fell into a tragic stretch of development And the people need to understand when they were lied to and when they led a righteous struggle 11 genuine and honest when they were mistaken and when they had some insights into the future dreams and all that And now all this became compressed in time right now This the source of all these passions—nationalist separatist arguments over economic issues whether to keep the old model or to adopt some new model and if it’s new what kind Kennan Yes this is the main question if it’s new then from where Yakovlev What should it be You cannot just perform a transplant—just take the American or the Swedish or the German model and transplant it to our soil You cannot do it And then—on what soil On Russian or Turkmen or Tajik or Uzbek or Siberian You know how different everything is in our country different starting conditions different conditions of development different psychology different religions different cultural levels Besides the crisis has gone so deep that the material base has been lost It could be a completely different conversation at a different level Just imagine let’s say if all the shelves in the stores were filled with goods people would know no need they would have clothes to wear people would have apartments And our people at this historic turn a truly historic turn—to freedom democracy to dignity to common sense—they arrived without apartments doing not too well in terms of nutrition they have to stand in lines public transportation is bad other daily inconveniences a hard ecological situation take any city—smoke and shame In agriculture—we got into a dead end with this system People have forgotten” how to work Where is this noise about privileges coming from I think there is more noise than privilege Why It is from the psychology of distribution let us all be paupers but equal And as soon as somebody gets a thousand rubles more he is different he is an American … Kennan You will have to overcome it yes 12 … Kennan The crisis of agriculture This one would think will improve one way or another But your long-term crisis is deeper The consequences are very hard because the family structure has been destroyed to a certain degree Inserted in text in English high degree Losses among male population were terrible during the war In the villages as we can see there are no young males Women often have to bear the colossal burden of raising kids without fathers And all this is deeply damaging for the population Because in my personal opinion … I have to say this in English … The sense of personal security should originate from the family first of all One should protect family guard the spirit of the family A person learns to live precisely in the family and people should be taught to show initiative to be responsible and not only for society but for their own personal behavior The tragic events that have continued for many decades have done serious damage to all that We are talking not only about what was going on in the sphere of the political regime but about the terrible developments of World War II which your people lived through and which have practically no parallels in human history All these deep upheavals which Soviet society had to live through will have to be overcome gradually so that a new generation grows up in more normal conditions more favorable conditions so that children will have families—real families—fathers mother so that there will be love I am looking at these problems from the outside and appreciating how enormous and difficult they are Is it possible for this to happen The church could take care of some of the problems perhaps of preservation of families and not only the Christian church but all the churches The main thing— church should teach people self-respect And all this should start from scratch because 13 of the damage done by all that you talked about—the war with Japan the Great War the chain of revolutions … It is much harder to solve these problems today than it could have been under normal conditions You know if I was asked what do I consider the most serious wound that the Stalin regime and partly the Brezhnev regime inflicted on your people I would respond that the problem is not any concrete damage but that to some degree they robbed your people of the capacity to face real problems Seven decades of suppression of any individual initiative and spontaneous expression of individuals you understand what it means … Yakovlev Yes of course Kennan … this inflicted a deep wound on the society and it is very hard to correct today Among other things you talked about people’s skepticism their cynicism They believe that nothing good can be expected from the government from the parties This is terrible and I do not know how to rebuild his I don’t know how it could be resurrected The church also cannot do everything I think that party’s capabilities are also limited But the situation has to be improved It will take a long time I don’t think this can be done quickly You need to raise a new generation Yakovlev Yes this is so Kennan And it will be difficult … I personally am convinced that it can be done and that it will be done I think that in the Russian people—I am not speaking about others because I know nothing about the Kyrgyz for example—but in the Russian people there are great resources not only of natural intelligence but also of moral sense which will develop if you find the right approach to people 14 You know I am a great admirer of Anton Chekhov His great grandfather was a serf but in his generation there was hardly anybody who understood questions of morality as he did He understood them better than Tolstoy better than Dostoyevsky because he looked at the world in a much more realistic way … Yakovlev Oh yes I agree with you Kennan I think that this is a minimum just one aspect and there are many other qualities abilities of the Russian people Morality to a greater degree than even some practical affairs lets one hope for the better I hope that help with come from this side that it will happen I must say that I see your problem but I have to admit that I don’t know how to approach it To a significant degree it will depend on school teachers In Russia you have very good teachers They impressed me greatly One of my daughters went to school during the war to a normal Russian school for girls—181st girls’ school—here in Moscow The teachers left a very strong impression on me They treated teaching as a sacred cause Like in church And maybe they will help there is decisiveness in them If the authorities the party whoever else will help them However the road will be long of course this is just one of the tasks that will have to be accomplished and many other things will have to be done to carry out a reconstruction of the economy … It seems to me that a reconstruction of agriculture is probably the most difficult task because you do not have a model from the past to which you can return The only thing that comes to mind is the Stolypin reforms which generally were positive It seems to me that it is important to accept that agriculture is different from other spheres and one can only achieve success here with the help of small family farms and full responsibility on the part of the farmer for his work 15 Family farms are no in danger of bureaucratization I myself have a farm in the United States A farmer works there all the time He is a good farmer he knows the work and treats everything attentively He works a lot If a cow gets sick in the middle of the night he gets up and calls the vet because it is his business It seems to me that this is the best way of organizing agriculture But there is very little of this experience little tradition in Russia especially in Central Russia Everywhere where serfdom existed you received a hard and tragic inheritance because serfdom also robbed people of confidence and initiative And where there was no serfdom as in the places where Gorbachev came from the relationship between the man and the land was healthier as I understand this There was no serfdom in Siberia either Yakovlev Yes and here there is great resistance too For example the recently created Peasant Union It is categorically opposed to any changes in the agrarian sector defending as a matter of fact two forms—the collective farms and state farms They are doing everything possible so that there will be no individual farmers no leasers no people who lease land from state and so on and so forth Even though this system that has developed is so obviously a total failure it cannot feed people it loses things already produced it does not care about the product not interested in what will grow etc But we will still carry out land reform We will carry it out And we will achieve in practice full equality of all forms of property no matter what Where a collective farm works well let it continue working But where there are open lands where a state farm is unable to cultivate the land that it has let renters work there let farmers work there let any groups of people work there Let them work to their heart’s content for their own interest But there is great resistance to that And not only on the part of collective farm chairmen who generally turned into small feudal landlords in our country but also on the part of regular people Three days ago I had a visitor—the chairman of a 16 collective farm from the Tula region—Kazachenko He has a good collective farm— 400 hundred working people A big collective farm Good income and yet he being a progressive person—he is a Candidate of Economic Sciences an educated person—he found three people with higher agricultural education and gave them 60 hectares each Here he says work as renters He gave them credits they each bought a tractor started to work and work not like they worked in the collective farm but more intensively And so one night two tractors were broken Kennan By others Yakovlev Yes by others Why Those people not leasers they got scared that it would lead to a situation where they would have to work like those three This is what the problem is They have already unlearned how to work they only know how to receive money Kennan This must be overcome Of course you should not allow harsh exploitation of people Everybody should work Yakovlev Well yes Kennan But you should allow them … you should allow them to make money They should have enough money to know that they can do something useful for themselves for their family and kids Yakovlev As far as the question that you touched upon—the moral renaissance—I agree that it would take a whole new generation Now for example we are being accused of … They accuse us of losing and killing the ideas of socialism Kennan Killing Yakovlev Killing 17 Translator That we have killed the ideals of socialism This is what we are blamed for Yakovlev But when you say—how could we have killed the ideals when we to the contrary are proposing the ideals of freedom democracy human dignity creative initiative and the freedom to create nobody appreciates it except for the intelligentsia Maybe other kinds of ideals are needed maybe based on a stick or on submission or on something else Those are kind of like ideals but maybe not and maybe they don’t fit and maybe they are not organic for a human being and so you need some other ideals of socialism What kind Nobody can say We used to have faith enthusiasm Good but why can you not have faith in freedom in a person’s creative nature This is how confused we are by this—I would call it mass-sclerotic phenomenon—which has affected the public conscience And so we have to get rid of all this because you know well that this theory of the October revolution of the permanent revolution it certainly did great damage to my country and not only to my country It was a forceful imposition a desire to impose some regime on somebody … The way it happened in Eastern Europe How many years Forty-five Forty-five years Kennan Yes forty-five years It is very important because in my country many people do not understand it either—that there is no pure freedom without responsibility I don’t remember who said this that freedom can be defined only in terms of the restraints we take This is necessary for you and for us Because many people in my country do not understand this This is important and this of course will take a long time This problem cannot be solved in one year or in one decade In my view this should be started in school Family parents should be engaged in order to do it You have 18 given me enough material for my thoughts for several months Perhaps I see and understand your problems quite well they are not easy And it is very important that in America they understand them too Understand all the depth of these problems And I will try to do all I can to help with this Yakovlev Tell me please do you personally believe in our current experiment Kennan I think that in terms of ideas it is absolutely correct But the depth of the problems and the possibility of implementing these ideas are perhaps more serious than you and I perceive them today Yakovlev Absolutely right Kennan And it will probably take more time And it is very hard to gain this time Maybe this is the main question Yakovlev You are right Kennan I think that in the nearest future you should of course improve your economic situation It is very important You should start from this Yakovlev We should calm down the working people bring them into some normalcy take them out of this stretch of anger bitterness intolerance bring them into a calmer setting And on the other hand we need to take people out of the state of euphoria of the nationalist separatist kind Everybody is talking about sovereignty now without much understanding of what it is and what it could lead to All this should be calculated everything should be assessed realistically and now we are just calculating on the basis of emotions on the computer of emotions This is what is working here today And we need a computer of numbers calculations strict sober calculations This is what we are lacking so far And we are lacking skills 19 And yet if I was to react to your comment regarding the United States of America it would be much better if we could start to understand each other better and faster and trust each other It is already very clear that nobody wants to deceive the other nobody wants to trick the other to set up traps There are two countries like this now there will be more countries like this in the XXI century West Germany Japan Brazil Australia Canada Indonesia are catching up There are many countries that will be right on our heels but so far on this little ball the United States and the Soviet Union are the guarantors of stability Kennan If I may ask—for the Soviet people who visit us are these exchanges and contacts useful Yakovlev Very useful Kennan Yes but you should remember … that we also have serious problems in our country Not everything is right there We have serious problems including those with young people as well The standards of education have been going down You should not think that you can take all young Americans as models When visiting our country one should remember that we have our own problems different from yours but also very serious They are much more serious than is admitted more serious than your problems We have great problems with poverty in inner cities with drugs with dropping educational standards the financial system So when your young people come to visit us they should not just imitate what young Americans do They should be taught to look at our young people critically and to decide for themselves what to borrow and what to reject from our civilization Maybe some day they will be able to help us too A lot depends on who accompanies them both here and in our country And it is very important that they be able to see the weaknesses of our civilization 20 Yakovlev To think together what to do with this civilization Kennan I always tell our people in America regarding international students do not show them only those things that you consider to be the positive side of American life take them to city ghettos show them the deficiencies tell them about the difficulties that emerge when one tries to correct the situation Tell them about the efforts that are being made Only then they will be able to form a real opinion And it used to be the same in the Soviet Union The Americans who listened to the dubious explanations by the Intourist guides that everything was “wonderful ” came back full of suspicions and negative impressions Whereas those who was able to see the real problems hidden behind the façade came back full of sympathy and deep interest … Let me say that I really enjoyed our conversation even though we spoke about sad things I would like to thank you for your patience and to wish you all the best Yakovlev Thank you very much I am very glad that you found time to visit Source State Archive of the Russian Federation Fond 10063 opis 2 delo 39 Translated by Svetlana Savranskaya for the National Security Archive