an 8,000-word telegram from George Kennan, an American official in the Moscow embassy, responding to a request from the State Department for an analysis of the Soviet position; Feb 1946.
The Long Telegram (just as the later X-Article) is ‘rejectionist’ through and through. It was precisely this aspect that made it so useful. The Soviet regime became an unchangeable essence of total, destructive, expansionist power, a state with which no relations of traditional diplomacy were possible.