Kennan, George Frost (1904-2005), an American diplomat, is credited with developing the U.S. policy to prevent Soviet expansion after World War II. This policy became known as the containment policy. Two of his books received both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award—Russia Leaves the War (1956) and Memoirs, 1925-1950 (1967). He also wrote American Diplomacy: 1900-1950 (1951), Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin (1961), and Sketches from a Life (1989), a collection of his diaries. Kennan was a major architect of the Marshall Plan for post-World War II reconstruction of Europe. As ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1952, Kennan protested being restricted to Moscow. The Soviets demanded his dismissal.
Kennan was born on Feb. 16, 1904, in Milwaukee. He served on the U.S. Department of State policy-planning staff in 1947. He was ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1961 to 1963. Kennan was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1963.
Kennan became a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1956. He became a professor emeritus at the institute in 1974. In his book An American Family (2000), Kennan traced the origins of his family in America. Kennan died on March 17, 2005, at the age of 101.
