George Kennan (explorer)
Encyclopedia
George Kennan was an American
explorer noted for his travels in the Kamchatka
and Caucasus
regions of the Russian Empire
. He was a cousin twice removed of diplomat and historian George F. Kennan
, with whom he shared his birthday.
, and was keenly interested in travel from an early age. However, family finances dictated that he begin work at the Cleveland and Toledo Railroad Company telegraph office at age twelve. In 1864, he secured employment with the Russian American Telegraph Company to survey a route for a proposed overland telegraph line through Siberia
and across the Bering Strait
. Having spent two years in the wilds of Kamchatka, he returned to Ohio via St. Petersburg
and soon became well-known through his lectures, articles and a book about his travels.
In his book, Tent Life in Siberia, Kennan provided ethnographies, histories and descriptions of many native peoples in Siberia, that are still important for researchers today. They include stories about the Koraks
, Kamchatdal (Itelmens
), Chookchees
, Yookaghirs
, Chooances
, Yakoots
and Gakouts. In 1870, he returned to St. Petersburg and travelled to Dagestan
, in the northern Caucasus
region, which had been annexed by the Russian Empire only ten years previously. There he became the first American to explore its highlands, a remote Muslim region of herders, silversmiths, carpet-weavers and other craftsmen. He travelled on through the northern Caucasus area, stopping in Samashki
and Grozny
, before returning once more to America in 1871. These travels and earned him a reputation as an "expert" on all matters pertaining to Russia.
Kennan subsequently (in 1878) obtained a position with the Associated Press
based in Washington, D.C.
, and as a war correspondent
travelled throughout his career to many conflict areas around the world. He also contributed articles to magazines, such as Century Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, McClure's Magazine, (a muckraker
magazine) and The Outlook
.
In May 1885, Kennan began another voyage in Russia, this time across Siberia from Europe. He had been very publicly supportive of the Tsar
ist Russian government and its policies and his trip was approved by the Russian government at the very highest levels. However, in the course of his meetings with exiled dissident
s during his travel, notably Nikolai Mikhailovich Yadrintsev
(1842–1894), Kennan changed his mind about the Russian imperial system. He had been particularly impressed by Catherine Breshkovsky
, the populist "little grandmother of the Russian Revolution". She had bidden him farewell in the small Transbaikal
village to which she was confined by saying "We may die in exile and our grand children may die in exile, but something will come of it at last." He also met a teenage Leonid Krasin
during this trip.
On his return to the United States in August 1886, he became an ardent critic of the Russian autocracy and began to espouse the cause of Russian Democracy. Kennan devoted much of the next twenty years to promoting the cause of a Russian revolution, mainly through lecturing. Kennan was one of the most prolific lecturers of the late nineteenth century. He spoke before a million or so people during the 1890s, including two hundred consecutive evening appearances in 1890-91 (excepting Sundays) before crowds of as many as two thousand people. His reports on conditions in Siberia were published serially by Century Magazine, and in 1891 a two-volume Siberia and the Exile System was published. This book, with first-hand interviews, data, and drawings by the artist George Albert Frost
, and an influential impact on American public opinion.
In addition to Catherine Breshkovskaia, Kennan befriended other émigré
s such as Peter Kropotkin
and Sergei Kravchinskii. He became the most prominent member of the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom—whose membership included Mark Twain
and Julia Ward Howe
—and also helped found Free Russia, the first English-language journal to oppose Tsarist Russia. In 1891 the Russian government responded by banishing him from Russia.
Kennan was not completely obsessed with Russian matters: as a reporter and war correspondent, he also covered American politics, the Spanish-American War
, the assassination of President William McKinley
, and the Russo-Japanese War
, as well as World War I
and the Russian Revolution.
Kennan was vehemently against the October Revolution, because he felt the Soviet government lacked the "knowledge, experience, or education to deal successfully with the tremendous problems that have come up for solutions since the overthrow of the Tsar." Kennan criticized President Woodrow Wilson
for being too timid in intervening against Bolshevism.
"The Russian leopard has not changed its spots... The new Bolshevik constitution ... leaves all power just where it has been for the last five years--in the hands of a small group of self-appointed bureaucrats which the people can neither remove nor control."—Kennan's last criticism of Bolshevism written in the Medina Tribune (a small-town newspaper), July 1923
Kennan died in 1924.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
explorer noted for his travels in the Kamchatka
Kamchatka Peninsula
The Kamchatka Peninsula is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of . It lies between the Pacific Ocean to the east and the Sea of Okhotsk to the west...
and Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
regions of the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
. He was a cousin twice removed of diplomat and historian George F. Kennan
George F. Kennan
George Frost Kennan was an American adviser, diplomat, political scientist and historian, best known as "the father of containment" and as a key figure in the emergence of the Cold War...
, with whom he shared his birthday.
Biography
Kennan was born in Norwalk, OhioNorwalk, Ohio
At the 2000 census, there were 16,238 people, 6,377 households and 4,234 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,950.3 per square mile . There were 6,687 housing units at an average density of 803.1 per square mile...
, and was keenly interested in travel from an early age. However, family finances dictated that he begin work at the Cleveland and Toledo Railroad Company telegraph office at age twelve. In 1864, he secured employment with the Russian American Telegraph Company to survey a route for a proposed overland telegraph line through Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
and across the Bering Strait
Bering Strait
The Bering Strait , known to natives as Imakpik, is a sea strait between Cape Dezhnev, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia, the easternmost point of the Asian continent and Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, USA, the westernmost point of the North American continent, with latitude of about 65°40'N,...
. Having spent two years in the wilds of Kamchatka, he returned to Ohio via St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
and soon became well-known through his lectures, articles and a book about his travels.
In his book, Tent Life in Siberia, Kennan provided ethnographies, histories and descriptions of many native peoples in Siberia, that are still important for researchers today. They include stories about the Koraks
Koryaks
Koryaks are an indigenous people of Kamchatka Krai in the Russian Far East, who inhabit the coastlands of the Bering Sea to the south of the Anadyr basin and the country to the immediate north of the Kamchatka Peninsula, the southernmost limit of their range being Tigilsk. They are akin to the...
, Kamchatdal (Itelmens
Itelmens
The Itelmen, sometimes known as Kamchadal, are an ethnic group who are the original inhabitants living on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia. The Itelmen language is distantly related to Chukchi and Koryak, forming the Chukotko-Kamchatkan language family, but it is now virtually extinct, the vast...
), Chookchees
Chukchi language
The Chukchi language is a Palaeosiberian language spoken by Chukchi people in the easternmost extremity of Siberia, mainly in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug...
, Yookaghirs
Yukaghir
The Yukaghir, or Yukagirs , деткиль ) are a people in East Siberia, living in the basin of the Kolyma River.-Region:The Tundra Yukaghirs live in the Lower Kolyma region in the Sakha Republic; the Taiga Yukaghirs in the Upper Kolyma region in the Sakha Republic and in Srednekansky District of...
, Chooances
Chuvans
Chuvans are one of the forty or so "less-numerous peoples of the North" recognized by the Russian government. Most Chuvans today live within Chukotka Autonomous Okrug in the far northeast of Russia...
, Yakoots
Yakuts
Yakuts , are a Turkic people associated with the Sakha Republic.The Yakut or Sakha language belongs to the Northern branch of the Turkic family of languages....
and Gakouts. In 1870, he returned to St. Petersburg and travelled to Dagestan
Dagestan
The Republic of Dagestan is a federal subject of Russia, located in the North Caucasus region. Its capital and the largest city is Makhachkala, located at the center of Dagestan on the Caspian Sea...
, in the northern Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
region, which had been annexed by the Russian Empire only ten years previously. There he became the first American to explore its highlands, a remote Muslim region of herders, silversmiths, carpet-weavers and other craftsmen. He travelled on through the northern Caucasus area, stopping in Samashki
Samashki
Samashki is a village on the western plains in Achkhoy-Martanovsky District of the Chechen Republic, Russia; since 1992 it is a border village with the Russian Republic of Ingushetia. The pre-war population of Samashki counted about 14,600 people .A railway line from Nazran to Grozny runs through...
and Grozny
Grozny
Grozny is the capital city of the Chechen Republic, Russia. The city lies on the Sunzha River. According to the preliminary results of the 2010 Census, the city had a population of 271,596; up from 210,720 recorded in the 2002 Census. but still only about two-thirds of 399,688 recorded in the 1989...
, before returning once more to America in 1871. These travels and earned him a reputation as an "expert" on all matters pertaining to Russia.
Kennan subsequently (in 1878) obtained a position with the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
based in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, and as a war correspondent
War correspondent
A war correspondent is a journalist who covers stories firsthand from a war zone. In the 19th century they were also called Special Correspondents.-Methods:...
travelled throughout his career to many conflict areas around the world. He also contributed articles to magazines, such as Century Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, McClure's Magazine, (a muckraker
Muckraker
The term muckraker is closely associated with reform-oriented journalists who wrote largely for popular magazines, continued a tradition of investigative journalism reporting, and emerged in the United States after 1900 and continued to be influential until World War I, when through a combination...
magazine) and The Outlook
The Outlook
The Outlook is a weekly newspaper based in Rathfriland, County Down, Northern Ireland, serving the south of county Down. It is published by the Alpha Newspapers Group and was founded in 1940 and sells 3,244 copies a week....
.
In May 1885, Kennan began another voyage in Russia, this time across Siberia from Europe. He had been very publicly supportive of the Tsar
Tsar
Tsar is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism...
ist Russian government and its policies and his trip was approved by the Russian government at the very highest levels. However, in the course of his meetings with exiled dissident
Dissident
A dissident, broadly defined, is a person who actively challenges an established doctrine, policy, or institution. When dissidents unite for a common cause they often effect a dissident movement....
s during his travel, notably Nikolai Mikhailovich Yadrintsev
Nikolai Yadrintsev
Nikolai Mikhailovich Yadrintsev was a Russian public figure, explorer, archaeologist, and turkologist. His discoveries include the Orkhon script, Genghis Khan's capital Karakorum and Ordu-Baliq, the capital of the Uyghur Khaganate. He was also one of the founding fathers of Siberian separatism.-...
(1842–1894), Kennan changed his mind about the Russian imperial system. He had been particularly impressed by Catherine Breshkovsky
Catherine Breshkovsky
Catherine Breshkovsky was a Russian socialist and revolutionary, better known as Babushka or, more solemnly, the Grandmother of the Russian Revolution.-Revolutionary life:She left her home at the age of 26 to join followers of anarchist Mikhail Bakunin in Kiev...
, the populist "little grandmother of the Russian Revolution". She had bidden him farewell in the small Transbaikal
Transbaikal
Transbaikal, Trans-Baikal, Transbaikalia , or Dauria is a mountainous region to the east of or "beyond" Lake Baikal in Russia. The alternative name, Dauria, is derived from the ethnonym of the Daur people. It stretches for almost 1000 km from north to south from the Patomskoye Plateau and North...
village to which she was confined by saying "We may die in exile and our grand children may die in exile, but something will come of it at last." He also met a teenage Leonid Krasin
Leonid Krasin
Leonid Borisovich Krasin July 1870, Kurgan – November 24, 1926) was a Russian and Soviet Bolshevik politician and diplomat.-Early years:Krasin was born in Kurgan, near Tobol'sk in Siberia. His father, Boris Ivanovich Krasin was the local chief of police...
during this trip.
On his return to the United States in August 1886, he became an ardent critic of the Russian autocracy and began to espouse the cause of Russian Democracy. Kennan devoted much of the next twenty years to promoting the cause of a Russian revolution, mainly through lecturing. Kennan was one of the most prolific lecturers of the late nineteenth century. He spoke before a million or so people during the 1890s, including two hundred consecutive evening appearances in 1890-91 (excepting Sundays) before crowds of as many as two thousand people. His reports on conditions in Siberia were published serially by Century Magazine, and in 1891 a two-volume Siberia and the Exile System was published. This book, with first-hand interviews, data, and drawings by the artist George Albert Frost
George Albert Frost
George Albert Frost was an American artist of the 19th century. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts and had a studio in North Cambridge, Massachusetts for several years. He studied under Nicolas de Keyser at the Academy Royale de Belgique in Antwerp...
, and an influential impact on American public opinion.
In addition to Catherine Breshkovskaia, Kennan befriended other émigré
Émigré
Émigré is a French term that literally refers to a person who has "migrated out", but often carries a connotation of politico-social self-exile....
s such as Peter Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...
and Sergei Kravchinskii. He became the most prominent member of the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom—whose membership included Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
and Julia Ward Howe
Julia Ward Howe
Julia Ward Howe was a prominent American abolitionist, social activist, and poet, most famous as the author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".-Biography:...
—and also helped found Free Russia, the first English-language journal to oppose Tsarist Russia. In 1891 the Russian government responded by banishing him from Russia.
Kennan was not completely obsessed with Russian matters: as a reporter and war correspondent, he also covered American politics, the Spanish-American War
Spanish-American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, effectively the result of American intervention in the ongoing Cuban War of Independence...
, the assassination of President William McKinley
William McKinley
William McKinley, Jr. was the 25th President of the United States . He is best known for winning fiercely fought elections, while supporting the gold standard and high tariffs; he succeeded in forging a Republican coalition that for the most part dominated national politics until the 1930s...
, and the Russo-Japanese War
Russo-Japanese War
The Russo-Japanese War was "the first great war of the 20th century." It grew out of rival imperial ambitions of the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire over Manchuria and Korea...
, as well as World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and the Russian Revolution.
Kennan was vehemently against the October Revolution, because he felt the Soviet government lacked the "knowledge, experience, or education to deal successfully with the tremendous problems that have come up for solutions since the overthrow of the Tsar." Kennan criticized President Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
for being too timid in intervening against Bolshevism.
"The Russian leopard has not changed its spots... The new Bolshevik constitution ... leaves all power just where it has been for the last five years--in the hands of a small group of self-appointed bureaucrats which the people can neither remove nor control."—Kennan's last criticism of Bolshevism written in the Medina Tribune (a small-town newspaper), July 1923
Kennan died in 1924.
Further reading
(1870; reprint 1986 ISBN 0-87905-254-6 ; reprint 2007 ISBN 1602390452- Siberia and the Exile System (1891; reprint 2003 ISBN 0-89875-902-1
- Campaigning in Cuba (at Project Gutenberg), 1899
- "The Fight for Reform in San Francisco," McClure's, Sept. 1907 & Nov. 1907.