The passing of George Kennan last week, and the showering of praise on the achievements of perhaps the most influential foreign affairs theorist of the last century provided ample reminder of what forceful thinking can do, as opposed to saber-rattling. It led to a stray thought or two, intellectual speculation of what the American diplomat at the full peak of his powers would have suggested be done with Putin’s Russia. This with regard to present-day tactics against the Baltics and Eastern Europe.

Kennan was familiar with all three Baltic Republics from before their illegal annexation and occupation by the Soviet Union. His early postings in the Foreign Service after graduation from Princeton University in 1925 included stays in Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius. He saw first-hand the rise of National Socialism after being posted to Berlin in 1929. It seems that he was destined to look east, perhaps influenced by his famous uncle, also George Kennan, a noted expert on czarist Russia, who is remembered best for his 1891 work, titled “Siberia and the Exile System.” It was the younger Kennan’s understanding of Soviet Russia and the communist system, however, that provided him with his stature of a giant in foreign affairs and a place in history as the architect of the containment strategy.

Briefly, Kennan saw in 1947 that Washington’s policy toward the Soviet Union must be “that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.” America must, he wrote, “confront the Russians with unalterable counterforce at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interest of a peaceful and stable world.” This was to be achieved through diplomacy and politics, not by waging war. Kennan prophesized the eventual collapse of communism. What would he say about the strategies of Putin today?

No idle thought, for there is no one of Kennan’s stature advising the present American administration. Putin’s Russia is developing into a hybrid authoritarian state which, while claiming to work towards democratic goals is in fact doing precisely what containment was designed to ward off — encroaching on peaceful and stable countries.

Examples abound around what Russia claims as its “near abroad”. Nowhere is that more noticeable than in the propaganda around the May 9th Moscow events, especially as pertains to the Baltic republics. Now that the Lithuanian and Estonian presidents have decided to stay home from the Kremlin-orchestrated events, Russia is reacting as expected, claiming human rights violations in the Baltics galore, encore.

BBC Monitoring provided the transcript and translation of a March 12th Russian TV (RTR) interview with Sergey Yastrzhembskiy, an aide to Putin. The Moscow party line, according to the interview, is that the Baltic leaders’ absence will “hardly be noticed.”

During the course of the interview the RTR TV presenter pointed out that the Baltic stance is explained by their goal of getting Russia to admit to the fact that after Stalin’s annexation of the Baltics repression and deportations followed. Noting that Lithuanian president Valdas Adamkus said 1 in 10 of his countrymen were subjected to repression, Putin’s position on this statement was asked for. Yastrzhembskiy replied: “History is history…no one can turn a blind eye to the crimes committed by the Stalin regime… we sympathize with the feelings in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.” But the kicker was slow in coming — the Balts want “to essentially put the Soviet Union on a par with Nazi Germany” thus “crossing out the liberating role of the Soviet Union.” That, apparently, is a “blasphemous attempt at rewriting history.” So what are we to conclude? Stalin’s crimes are admitted to, yet once again dismissed, because Hitler’s were greater? There is no question of degree when it comes to evil.

In the same interview the Russian leadership’s attitude to Poland was revealed. Warsaw had denounced the recent murder of Chechnya’s elected president Aslan Maskhadov, calling it what it was — a crime. Poland, it seems, missed a “good opportunity to keep quiet.” Poland, in Yastrzhembskiy’s view, “is trying to find some independent and noticeable role for itself in European affairs but unfortunately at times is trying to do so at Russia’s expense.” Worse, apparently the Polish tendency to see the present through the prism of the past is a bad thing — “historical fears, historical facts and the negative historical experience affect [the Polish political elite’s] attitude to today’s reality.”

The reality is that Poland suffered greatly under Soviet occupation and the ensuing imposed communist rule. One day before the interview was aired, Russian prosecutors announced that the 1940 Katyn execution of nearly 15,000 Polish prisoners of war by Soviet forces was not genocide. However, neither did they say what it was, other than a killing spree.

Moscow sees no reason to investigate the Katyn massacre any further. A confirmed number now replaced conservative estimates of Katyn’s dead — the Russians have established 14,540 officers as dying in the massacre. It took 50 years for the Soviets to admit culpability — it was only in 1990 that Mikhail Gorbachev admitted that the NKVD secret police had killed the Poles. Today, however, no prosecutions will be brought, because Chief Military Prosecutor Alexander Savenkov claims all of the perpetrators of the massacre are dead. So is Stalin — his crimes are being swept under the carpet. Hitler is dead, his crimes are not. Countering this continuing double standard is what the Baltics and Poland are attempting to do while Russia is again meddling in their affairs.

Which brings us back to George Kennan. An obituary in the Washington Post noted that Kennan was driven by the conviction that the United States cannot reshape other countries in its own image. Russia’s long history of imperialism, communism and expansion has been fuelled by the belief that the only image that matters is their own. The world is a poorer place without Kennan, and one hopes another visionary emerges, who can, as Kennan wrote in 1947, “promote tendencies which… find their outlet in… the break-up or the gradual mellowing of Soviet Power.” Today, substitute Putin for the word Soviet.

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