X Article - Origin of The Article

Origin of The Article

The Sources of Soviet Conduct began as a private report prepared for Secretary of Defense James Forrestal in January 1947. It was never intended as a public document, but on the urging of Hamilton Fish Armstrong, editor of Foreign Affairs, Kennan obtained permission from Forrestal to publish the article under the pseudonym “X”. When published, the article was not intended to be a statement of the government’s official views of the Soviet situation. But when it was revealed that the author was George Kennan, the connection to official policy was made and some high-ranking officials, including Secretary of State George C. Marshall, questioned the approval for the publication.

Kennan was heavily involved in the evolution of US policy toward the Soviet Union following World War II. Both his writing of the Long Telegram and his input into the Clifford-Elsey Report factored into the content of the article. When he wrote the Long Telegram, it was a review of the facts of how the Soviet Union saw the world. The Clifford-Elsey Report took those facts and interpreted how they affected the world and what the US should do about it. The X Article took the information presented in the two prior reports and constructed a road map for the Cold War. The article proved to be the public face of American foreign policy in the Cold War — even though Kennan himself has noted that he felt that he was misunderstood — in the statement that the “United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”

This policy was misinterpreted to mean that the US would contain the Soviet Union globally. Much of the meaning that was interpreted from the article, even within the government, was not the true meaning that Kennan intended. He admitted that there were serious deficiencies in the article and he was afflicted with ulcers over the response that the article received.