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Creator
Kennan, George, 1845-1924
Call number
MssCol 1630
Physical description
3 linear feet (7 boxes)
Language
Materials in English, Russian and French
Preferred Citation

George Kennan Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.

Repository
Manuscripts and Archives Division
Access to materials
Request an in-person research appointment.
Portions of this collection have been digitized and are available online.

George Kennan (1845-1924), American journalist, lecturer, and author, is best-known for his writings on Russia. He traveled extensively in Siberia from 1865-1867 with a Western Union telegraph surveying party, and again in 1885-1886 to research the Imperial Russian exile and prison systems. His writings and lectures influenced American policy and public opinion about Russia before the 1917 revolutions. In addition to his work on Siberia, Kennan covered the Spanish-American War and the Russo-Japanese War for the Outlook magazine. His papers include his correspondence and source documents collected from Russian exiles, a small amount of personal correspondence, drafts of manuscripts, a small number of photographs, and Kennan family papers.

Biographical/historical information

George Kennan, journalist, lecturer and author, is best known for his writings on Imperial Russia. Born in 1845 in Norwalk, Ohio to attorney John Kennan and Mary Anne Morse Kennan, the young George left school at the age of twelve to take work as a telegrapher.

During the years of the American Civil War, he worked with the Military Telegraph Corps, which later led to employment with Western Union. In 1865, at the age of twenty, he was chosen for a Western Union expedition investigating the feasibility of laying telegraph cable from Alaska across the Pacific Ocean to Siberia. Traveling as part of a small team and with no previous knowledge of the Russian language, Kennan and his cohort trekked for a year by horseback, telega cart, dog sled and canoe. They endured the vagaries of the Siberian winter sleeping in tents and quartering with the nomadic Korak population. In 1866, expedition members had already begun erecting telegraph poles across the Siberian landscape when they received the belated news of the success of the Atlantic cable, which nullified their project. Kennan used this opportunity to travel across the entire Russian continent to Europe, and then returned home in 1867. His first book based on these travels, Tent Life in Siberia, was roundly praised after its publication in 1870.

Also in 1870, Kennan spent a year traveling in another outpost of the Russian Empire, the Caucasus. It was during this time that he began submitting articles to various publications, thus beginning his career as a journalist and cementing his reputation as an explorer and expert on Russia.

Upon his return to the United States, he worked in business for several years in Medina, NY, where he met Emeline Weld, whom he married in 1879. In 1877 he moved to Washington, D.C. to begin work as an assistant manager for the Associated Press, a job he held until 1885. In 1881, based on his professional reputation and skill, he was called to the White House to manage the telegraph and press reports of President Garfield's assassination.

In 1885, Roswell Smith, publisher of the The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, contacted Kennan with a commission for a series of articles on the Siberian prison and exile system. Kennan gladly accepted the assignment and arranged for a friend, artist George A. Frost, to accompany him and illustrate their voyage. Initially supportive of the tsarist government's efforts to maintain order against what he assumed to be a wave of Nihilists and revolutionaries, Kennan was soon surprised to find himself in sympathy with the radicals he so recently scorned. In his tours of Russian prisons and numerous meetings with exiles--among them Katherine Breshkovskaia, the "Grandmother of the Revolution"--he discovered many convicts to be from the educated classes, and found many guilty of crimes he felt to be legitimate opposition to the tyranny and arbitrary nature of the tsarist system.

In his series of articles for the Century (published between 1887 and 1891), Kennan exposed the abuses of the penal system. He highlighted the inhumane practice of total seclusion and indefinite detention of arrestees practiced in the Peter-Paul and Schlusselberg fortresses in St. Petersburg, as well as wrote about the journey to Siberia, traveled on foot by already exhausted and malnourished prisoners. He discussed the years of grueling mining work to which many were sentenced, as well as the horrid living conditions in which they were maintained. The violence to which exiles were subjected--floggings, beatings, shootings and hangings--was also exposed in his articles. Collected together into a two-volume book, Siberia and the Exile System (1891), his writings shocked the American public, and created high demand for Kennan as a public lecturer. According to the lecture schedule in his papers, between 1889 and 1900 he delivered more than five hundred talks on Russia, often appearing dressed in the rags and chains of exiles. Through this work, Kennan soon became the leading influence on anti-tsarist sentiment in the United States.

Russia was not Kennan's sole focus, however. He also traveled to Cuba as a war correspondent for the Outlook magazine during the Spanish-American War, to Japan during the Russo-Japanese War, and traveled to and wrote about the Philippines, Korea, China, and Martinique. Kennan's other interests included Native American rights and railway development in the United States. He was the author of a biography of E.H. Harriman, railroad magnate and financier of the Harriman Alaska Expedition.

In addition to his work an as author, Kennan worked as an assistant manager of the Associated Press (1877-1885), vice president of the American Red Cross (1898), and vice president of the Medina Publishing Company. He also served as vice president of the American branch of the Society of the Friends of Russian Freedom. The Society sought to raise funds for the support of anti-tsarist Russian exiles and counted among its founding members Mark Twain, Alice Stone Blackwell, and William Lloyd Garrison.

George Kennan died following a stroke on May 10, 1924.

Scope and arrangement

George Kennan's papers, spanning 1856 to 1924, document his Russian travels and research, and his relationships with Siberian exiles and radical revolutionaries. His professional writings and lectures are well-documented within the collection, and to a lesser degree, so are his efforts to influence American foreign and economic policy towards the Imperial Russian government. One finds a small glimpse into Kennan and his wife Emeline Weld Kennan's personal life through their correspondence, in particular concerning their friendship with the family of Alexander Graham Bell.

Curiously, while this collection contains letters related to Kennan's 1865 and 1885 Russian expeditions, his travels through the Caucasus in 1870 are not mentioned.

Included within the collection are correspondence, lists of Siberian exiles and biographical sketches of several individuals, often anonymous accounts and official reports on the system and its many abuses, a number of manuscripts by both Kennan and Russian authors, newspaper clippings and a small amount of printed matter, and personal miscellany including several photographs and addresses. Also included are some Kennan family papers, consisting of his wife's personal correspondence, and his grandniece Jeannette Hotchkiss's collected research notes, manuscripts, and correspondence. As the family authority on the elder Kennan, Hotchkiss intended to write a biography of her uncle. Notable within her materials are a small number of the letters of artist George Frost, Kennan's friend and fellow Siberian explorer.

Many of the Siberian research documents and items of correspondence are identified by document numbers. While these numbers were present at the time of donation to the library, it is uncertain what they represent, and who assigned them. There are significant gaps in the numbering, and there does not appear to be a coherent organizing principle behind them. Nevertheless, the numbers and matching envelopes, many of which have a brief description of the document, have been retained.

In English, Russian and French.

The George Kennan papers are arranged in five series:

  • Series I. Correspondence
    1866-1924, n.d.
    1 box

    The bulk of Kennan's personal and professional correspondence is arranged chronologically. Following the chronological arrangement are separate folders for letters from Adam Bialoveski, Katherine Breshkovskaia, Egor Lazarev, and Russian exiles.

    The letters at the earlier end of the date span are primarily family letters, including missives sent home by Kennan over the course of his first Siberian travels. Full of information on the sights, people and hardships he encountered, these letters also often express nostalgia for home. As with much of his correspondence, and indeed much of the tone of Tent Life in Siberia, these letters give one a sense of his wit and warmth, poking fun at misery experienced on the expedition. The letters here are addressed to his father John, sisters Jennie and Harriet, nephew Kossuth (father to George F. Kennan), and the young George F. Kennan.

    There are also a number of letters written by Siberian exiles. Those addressed directly to Kennan are arranged within his chronological correspondence or by author, and those which represent third-party correspondence forwarded to him are arranged within the last folder of the collection, "Other exiles' correspondence." The majority of these last letters, sent largely for informational purposes, were sent to Kennan from his contacts Moises Shlikerman and Dr. Wollman.

    Of interest are the May 11, 1886 letter to David McKee, in which Kennan discussed George Frost's mental illness during their travels through Siberia, and the May 22, 1917 letter to David Fairchild in which Kennan addressed Charles R. Crane's belief that the February revolution had been a bloodless one. Kennan predicted the waves of violence that would follow with the Bolshevik Revolution later that year.

    Letters received from Baron S.A. Korf in July and August of 1918 indicate Kennan's influence on American foreign policy with regard to the new Russian republic. Korf criticized Louis Brandeis and Elihu Root for restraining the United States from providing aid, and asked Kennan to use his influence with Secretary of State Robert Lansing to come to the aid of the Russian people, as opposed to the Bolsheviks, whom he felt would eventually fall away.

    A selection of letters written by Katherine Breshkovskaia are also present within Kennan's correspondence. The majority are copies that may have come to Kennan through his involvement with the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom. The letters addressed to such individuals as Alice Stone Blackwell, Lillian Wald, Isabel Barrows, Helena Dudley and Ellen Gates Starr discuss her life in exile in great detail.

    Other correspondence relates to Kennan's work in Cuba, his efforts on behalf of the American Red Cross, and letters from admirers of his writings.

    Prominent correspondents include: Lyman Abbott, Adam Bialoveski, Nikolai Chaikovski, Charles A. Dana, David Fairchild, W.D. Foulke, W.H. Gilder, Gilbert Grosvenor, George Frost Kennan, Baron S.A. Korf, Sergius Kravchinskii ("Stepniak"), Peter Kropotkin, and Egor Lazarev.

    Letters are in English, French and Russian.

  • Series II. Research and publications on Russia and the Siberian exile system
    1856-ca. 1919, n.d.
    2 boxes

    Kennan's research and publications on Russia are divided into four categories of material: biographical sketches on exiles; accounts of Russian prisons and the exile system; manuscripts of writings by Russian exiles; and other documents, which consist primarily of statistics, reports, and official communications.

    Many of the items sent from Siberia are unattributed or written by anonymous authors. In addition, two of Kennan's correspondents, Dr. Wollman and Moises Shlikerman, appear to have collected many of the items and sent them to Kennan for his research. Their contributions are noted on the itemized list included in box 6, folder 6 of this collection, as well as on the numbered document envelopes maintained with the documents themselves.

    There is some overlap of themes between the biographies and accounts of prison and exile, as materials in both pertain to the Yakutsk massacre, the Kara mines, and individuals associated with both.

    In English, French and Russian.

  • Series III. Writings, speeches, publications and notes
    1866-1922, 1963, n.d.
    2 boxes

    A selection of Kennan's writings, both fiction and nonfiction, texts for his speeches, and notes are included in this subseries. The materials collected, however, by no means constitute a complete representation of his work.

    Pertaining to events in Russia, Cuba and China, the writings include his first submission of Russian news analysis to a newspaper. Also present is one folder of miscellaneous incomplete manuscripts which appear to represent three different stories. The bulk of these are double-sided, with different stories on each side of each page. Many pages are numbered, but it is nonetheless very difficult to establish a coherent sequence of pages for any of the three stories.

    One folder of "writings by others" includes profiles written about Kennan, as well as other miscellaneous articles.

  • Series IV. Personal miscellany and photographs
    1863-1924, n.d.
    0.5 box

    The personal miscellany consists of Kennan's address book, his lecture tour schedule documenting the busy tour seasons of 1889 and 1890, the official documents permitting him to travel in Siberia, and a small number of photographs and other images.

    The photographs portray Kennan variously bundled against the Siberian cold, sailing, and in academic garb; his parents John and Mary Ann Morse Kennan; his wife Emeline Weld Kennan as a young child and an adult; their vacation home and the interior of their house in Washington, D.C.

  • Series V. Kennan family papers
    2 boxes

    The collection of Kennan family papers consist of materials collected by George Kennan's grandniece Jeannette Hotchkiss as research for an intended biography of him, Emeline Weld Kennan's correspondence and personal miscellany, and a small amount of papers belonging to other family members.

    In English.

Administrative information

Custodial history

At the time of accession, Kennan's papers included a number of photographs of Siberian exiles. These items were transferred to the Slavic and Baltic Division, and can be viewed in the New York Public Library Digital Gallery as part of the collection "Portraits of Russian Political Exiles and Convicts...."

Source of acquisition

Donated by George Kennan, 1920; George Frost Kennan, 1988-1990; and purchases, 1945-1987

Processing information

Processed by Laura Ruttum.

Related Material

  • Russia and Eastern Europe in Rare Photographs, 1860-1945. The New York Public Library Digital Gallery: http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/explore/dgexplore.cfm?col_id=193.
  • Catherine Breshkovsky Papers, 1923-1934. Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.
  • Papers of George Kennan, 1840-1937. Manuscript Division. Library of Congress.
  • Meeting of Frontiers: Selections from the George Kennan Papers, Library of Congress. http://memory.loc.gov/intldl/mtfhtml/mfdigcol/aboutkenph.html.

Using the collection

Location

Manuscripts and Archives Division
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018-2788
Brooke Russell Astor Reading Room, Third Floor, Room 328