Through the History of the Cold War
Through the History of the Cold War: The Correspondence of George F. Kennan and John Lukacs
EDITED BY JOHN LUKACS
Copyright Date: 2010
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
Pages: 288
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt3fhwxs
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Through the History of the Cold War
Book Description:

In September 1952, John Lukacs, then a young and unknown historian, wrote George Kennan (1904-2005), the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, asking one of the nation's best-known diplomats what he thought of Lukacs's own views on Kennan's widely debated idea of containing rather than militarily confronting the Soviet Union. A month later, to Lukacs's surprise, he received a personal reply from Kennan. So began an exchange of letters that would continue for more than fifty years. Lukacs would go on to become one of America's most distinguished and prolific diplomatic historians, while Kennan, who would retire from public life to begin a new career as Pulitzer Prize-winning author, would become revered as the man whose strategy of containment led to a peaceful end to the Cold War. Their letters, collected here for the first time, capture the writing and thinking of two of the country's most important voices on America's role and place in world affairs. From the division of Europe into East and West after World War II to its unification as the Soviet Union disintegrated, and from the war in Vietnam to the threat of nuclear annihilation and the fate of democracy in America and the world, this book provides an insider's tour of the issues and pivotal events that defined the Cold War. The correspondence also charts the growth and development of an intellectual and personal friendship that was intense, devoted, and honest. As Kennan later wrote Lukacs in letter, "perceptive, understanding, and constructive criticism is . . . as I see it, in itself a form of creative philosophical thought." It is a belief to which both men subscribed and that they both practiced. Presented with an introduction by Lukacs, the letters in Through the History of the Cold War reveal new dimensions to Kennan's thinking about America and its future, and illuminate the political-and spiritual-philosophies that the two authors shared as they wrote about a world transformed by war and by the clash of ideologies that defined the twentieth century.

eISBN: 978-0-8122-0485-8
Subjects: Political Science
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-iv)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. v-vi)
  3. Introduction
    Introduction (pp. vii-xii)
    John Lukacs

    I wrote and sent my first letter to George Kennan on September 3, 1952. He answered it on October 13. His last letter was dictated for me on August 27, 2003. I wrote to him my last letter on January 25, 2004. This exchange of letters went on through more than 50 years—a reciprocal correspondence amounting to almost 400 letters containing more than 1,000 typed or handwritten pages.¹

    There are, I think, three reasons why this correspondence should have more than routine interest to many people, and not only to scholars. One obvious reason is George Kennan (and, in...

  4. I The Cold War Begins: Containment or Liberation LETTERS, 1952–1954
    I The Cold War Begins: Containment or Liberation LETTERS, 1952–1954 (pp. 1-10)

    I am a diplomatic historian and have read your writings with much interest and often with admiration. You are surely aware about the present and somewhat obscure debate which is developing in this country about the applications of “containment” and it is a mere coincidence that an article of mine dealing with this subject appeared presently in two successive issues of Commonweal.

    Articles, however, have strange case histories. I wrote this article a year ago upon the request of Foreign Affairs. They deemed some of my arguments as difficult to substantiate and I could not rewrite it in the way...

  5. II The Cold War at Its Peak: The Soviet Union Redux LETTERS, 1954–1964
    II The Cold War at Its Peak: The Soviet Union Redux LETTERS, 1954–1964 (pp. 11-34)

    After some hesitation, I am sending this to you and thus I impose again on your privacy for one, predominant reason: I should like to know whether you agree with what I tried to phrase in that last part; whether you agree with this definition of what I see as a great, and growing, national dilemma. Foreign affairs are such an integral part and parcel of this kind of thing they ought not be treated as separate disciplines or techniques. I think that the American character is changing, and that virtually none of the existing intellectual hypotheses of divisions: Conservative...

  6. III How History Should Be Written LETTERS, 1964–1983
    III How History Should Be Written LETTERS, 1964–1983 (pp. 35-84)

    I am reading your manuscript on the ship and I shall note detailed comments first, as I go along, leaving general observation to the end.

    (1) pp. 9–10. You speak here of the impossibility of studying history scientifically. I would rather say “of studying history only or even primarily scientifically,” but basically, I strongly agree. I also agree with your reason—that historical information is incomplete. But here, I would go a bit further. Generally speaking, those sciences that do, as you say, involve study of human beings by human beings (anthropology, sociology, etc.) are ones that draw their...

  7. IV The Evil Empire and the End of the Cold War LETTERS, 1983–1988
    IV The Evil Empire and the End of the Cold War LETTERS, 1983–1988 (pp. 85-152)

    During the last three years I have been working on an interpretation of the history of this country in the last one hundred years.* It is an interpretation, on different developing levels, not a monothematic and chronological history; it will be published next January by Doubleday. All of my previous books, with one exception, were dedicated to past or present members of my immediate family. When this manuscript was finished, I chose to dedicate it to you. . . .

    An hour ago I heard on the radio that the Reagan government now proposes to send, and permanently establish, more...

  8. V The End of an Age: American Hegemony LETTERS, 1988–2004
    V The End of an Age: American Hegemony LETTERS, 1988–2004 (pp. 153-262)

    After apologizing for this extraordinary paper,* let me thank you for your letter of the 3rd. Yes indeed. What you call a “split-mindedness” runs through the entire fabric of American policies & attitudes towards the Soviet Union. One great part of the U.S. government professes to be seeking peace with Moscow; another great part of it—C.I.A. & the Pentagon—appears to live and act on the assumption that we are either at war with Russia or are about to be. Both of these attitudes have their domestic cliques and constituencies; and our good president, anxious to return the support...

  9. Calendar of the Letters A SELECTIVE CHRONOLOGY OF WORLD EVENTS THROUGH AND AFTER THE COLD WAR
    Calendar of the Letters A SELECTIVE CHRONOLOGY OF WORLD EVENTS THROUGH AND AFTER THE COLD WAR (pp. 263-272)
  10. Index
    Index (pp. 273-276)
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