Long Telegram and the Novikov Telegram

Long Telegram and the Novikov Telegram

The single document that best illustrated American anti-communism and general suspicion of Soviet aspirations was George Kennan's famous Long Telegram of 1946. The Long Telegram was perhaps the most cited and most influential statement of the early years of the Cold War.
George Kennan had been an American diplomat on the Soviet front, beginning his career as an observer of the aftermath of the Russian Civil War. He witnessed collectivization and the terror from close range and sent his telegram after another two years' service in Moscow from 1944 to 1946 as chief of mission and Ambassador Averell Harriman's consultant. In 1946, Kennan was 44 years old, fluent in the Russian language and its affairs, and decidedly anti-communist.
The essence of Kennan's telegram was published in Foreign Affairs in 1947 as The Sources of Soviet Conduct and circulated everywhere. The article was signed by "X" although everyone in the know knew that authorship was Kennan's. For Kennan, the Cold War gave the United States its historic opportunity to assume leadership of what would eventually be described as the "free world."
Kennan hated Communism and the Soviet government. However, he had lived in Moscow since 1933 and knew what he was talking about. His telegram was re-written as a paper entitled: The Sources of Soviet Conduct, and read by many Americans. It formed the basis of American policy towards Russia for the next quarter of a century.

His analysis of the Soviet position focused on…
(1) Basic features of post-war Soviet outlook.
(2) Background of this outlook
(3) Its projection in practical policy on official level.
(4) Its projection on unofficial level.
(5) Practical deductions from standpoint of US policy.

The Soviet ambassador in Washington, Nikolai Novikov, drafted Novikov telegram just afew months after the Long Telegram. Drafted in September 1946, He stressed the dangers of possible U.S. economic and military domination worldwide.
In his telegram, Novikov attempted to interpret U.S. foreign policy for his superiors, much the same way George F. Kennan had done in his "Long Telegram" to the State Department earlier that year.
Nikolai Novikov, describes the advent of a more assertive US foreign policy. Novikov cautions the Soviet leadership that the Truman administration is bent on imposing US political, military and economic domination around the world. This telegram has, since its discovery in the Russian archives, been labelled the Soviet equivalent of US Ambassador to the Soviet Union George Kennan's "Long telegram."

What were they planning on each other??
Near the end of WWII, Roosevelt from the US, Churchill from Great Britain, and Stalin from the USSR met at the Yalta Conference to decide what to do after WWII. They made many important decisions.
One reason that WWII started was that everyone ignored the League of Nations. This was because it didn’t have an army and because the U.S didn’t join. At Yalta they decided to form the United Nations to help keep future peace. Unlike the League of Nations, the US joined and the UN could raise an army from its members to enforce its decisions. In order to help make sure countries joined the US’s side, the US gave billions of dollars to Western Europe in what was called the Marshal Plan and was named after George Marshall.

The USSR was communist (They became this way after Lenin led a revolution during WWI that put Czar Nicholas II in J.A.I.L. Their ideas were based on Marx who wrote The Communist Manifesto.)
The USA had a Democracy (where people vote) and followed Capitalism (the economic theory of Adam Smith.)

Although the US and USSR were enemies, they never fought each other. Instead they had what is called a Cold war. This lasted from 1945 to 1989. The 2 countries did everything possible to stop each other but never had a “hot” war. They were both afraid of each other because both had nuclear weapons. Neither wanted to fight because they could have both destroyed the other. This is called the fear of mutual destruction or deterrence theory. So instead of having a hot war, the problems between the US and USSR from 1945-1989 were known as the Cold War.

The Soviets Blockaded all land traffic to and from Berlin to force the west either to abandon the creation of west Germany or to face the loss of Berlin. And Americans viewed this act as further proof of soviet hostility. Truman ordered Marshaling a massive effort of men, provisions, aircrafts. And the increasing flow of airplanes and supplies into west Berlins 3 airports testified America’s economic, military and Americas resolve to stand firm against the soviet and in May 1949 Stalin, without an explanation ended the blockage.