NEW MISSIONARY TO MOSCOW

Nominated last week by President Truman to replace Admiral Alan G. Kirk as U.S. Ambassador to Moscow:

George Frost Kennan.

Family Background: Born Feb. 16, 1904, in Milwaukee, of Scotch-Irish parents. His great-uncle, George Kennan, traveled by dog sled 5,000 miles through Czarist Russia on an abortive project to link Moscow and the U.S. by a Siberian-Alaskan telegraph line, wrote an anti-Czarist book, Siberia and the Exile System.

Personal Life: Married Sept.11, 1931, in Kristiansand, Norway, to Norwegian-born Annelise Sorensen. Two daughters and a son: Grace, 19, Joan, 15, and Christopher, 2. In appearance, balding and wiry (5 ft. 11 1/2 in., 160 Ibs.) ; retiring, scholarly and shy. For relaxation he most enjoys: reading (favorites: Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Gibbon) ; piano and guitar; heavy outdoor work on his Pennsylvania farm.

Education: St. John's Military Academy in Delafield, Wis.; Princeton (Class of '25). Speaks, reads & writes German, Russian, French.

Professional Background: Entered the U.S. foreign service at 22, was spotted as a bright young man in 1933 and pulled out of the U.S. legation in Riga, Latvia, to help U.S. Ambassador William Bullitt open the first U.S. embassy in Moscow since the Russian Revolution. In 1946, when he was charge d'affaires in Moscow, his urgent warnings of Russian aggressive intentions so impressed Secretary of State George Marshall that Kennan was picked in 1947 to head a new policy-planning staff. His "policy of firm containment" (first outlined under the pseudonym "X" in Foreign Affairs in 1947) finally became the basis for U.S.

policy in Europe. On leave from State, Kennan has studied U.S. diplomatic history for the past 1 5 months at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, served (until his resignation five weeks ago) as president of the Ford Foundation's Eastern European fund. Three months ago, in his American Diplomacy, he urged a return from "shallow self-righteousness" and "impractical idealism" to the 19th century ideal of delicate power balances and limited objectives.

Outlook: Believes the Kremlin represents the most ruthless dictatorship in modern times, but that it may change or collapse under internal pressures, possibly at Stalin's death. In general, approves Dean Acheson's foreign-policy course, both in Europe and Asia. Thinks the West should never expect the U.S.S.R. to be a capitalist democracy like the U.S., but that the West could live in peace with a Russia which would: 1) lift the Iron Curtain, 2) give up "the ancient game of imperialist expansion and oppression." Kennan suffers from no illusion that he can perform any solo miracles in his new job. Wrote he as Mr. X : "The foreign representative cannot hope that his words will make any impression on [ the Russian leaders] . . . Facts speak louder than words to the ears of the Kremlin; and words carry the greatest weight when they have the ring of . . . being backed up by facts of unchallengeable validity."

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