Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography, & More
Episode: The Long Telegram
Description: On February 22, 1946, George F. Kennan, a career diplomat working in the American embassy in Moscow, sent an 8,000-word cable to the State Department in Washington.In it, he explained why the Soviet Union behaved as it did, outlining its unique combination of a communist ideology and historical Russian paranoia and suspicion.Â
He also gave a prescription for how the United States should respond.
Although he couldn’t have known it at the time, that message became the foundation for American policy during the Cold War.Â
Learn more about the Long Telegram and how it i...