Oral History Interview of George F. Kennan, February 27, 1990.

The following manuscript contains the edited transcripts of two interviews with George F. Kennan (1904-2005). These interviews were recorded at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1989 and 1990, and conducted by Patricia H. Labalme. George Kennan was born in 1904 in Wisconsin. He received his B.A. from Princeton University in 1925 and entered the diplomatic service, serving in Geneva, Hamburg, Berlin, Moscow, Vienna, Prague and Lisbon. He was ambassador to the Soviet Union (1952) and to Yugoslavia (1961-63). He was the founder and first Director of the Policy Planning Staff of the Department of State (1947) and was Counselor of the Department of State in 1949. In 1950, George Kennan came to the Institute for Advanced Study as a visiting member, and in 1951 he was appointed a long- term member of the Institute. In 1956, he became a Professor in the School of Historical Studies and Professor Emeritus in 1974. He taught at Princeton and Yale Universities and served as a fellow in the Department of History and Slavic Civilizations at Harvard University. He was the George Eastman Visiting Professor at Balliol College, the University of Oxford in 1957-58, and a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College in 1969. In 1967 he served as President of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 1975 he founded The Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington, D.C.