Timeline: 50 Years of the Kennan Institute

Kennan Institute Founded

The Kennan Institute was founded as a division of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in December of 1974 through the joint initiative of Ambassador George F. Kennan, then Wilson Center Director James Billington, and historian S. Frederick Starr. Named in honor of Ambassador Kennan's relative, George Kennan "the Elder," a nineteenth century explorer of Russia and Siberia, the Kennan Institute is committed to improving American expertise and knowledge about Russia and Eurasia.

Ambassador Kennan was one of the most distinguished diplomats of the 20th Century. He relied on his intimate understanding of Russian history and culture to help shape the US national security strategy for the Cold War. The Kennan Institute has followed his example for five decades by putting knowledge into public service.  Learn more about Kennan's enduring legacy.

Left: Kennan Institute cofounders S. Frederick Starr, George F. Kennan, and James Billington.
Above: George Kennan "the Elder"
 

1975 - Nikolai Bolkhovitinov (1930-2008)
Bolkhovitinov (pictured left) was a prominent historian, pioneer of American Studies in the USSR, Honorary Foreign Member of the American Historical Association, and known as “the best Russian friend of American historians.” Read Nikolai Bolkhovitinov's biography by fellow Kennan alum Sergei Zhuk. 

1977 - Andrei Voznesensky (1933-2010)
Voznesensky (pictured right) was one of the greatest modern Russian poets, an iconic figure of the Khrushchev Thaw, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, who had been referred to by Robert Lowell as “one of the greatest living poets in any language.”

Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

In December 1979, the Soviet Union began a full-scale invasion of Afghanistan to help its client Marxist-Leninist government consolidate control amid an intensifying political crisis in the country. The Soviet military campaign marked the beginning of a nine-year civil war which killed or displaced millions of Afghans and was a contributing factor to the decline and fall of the Soviet Union.

The Kennan Institute was an important hub of research and debate on the Soviet Union’s actions in the region, and their consequences for the United States and the rest of the world.

Listen to  a clip of President Jimmy Carter's remarks on the Soviet invasion from 1980.

Left: A unit of Soviet soldiers pictured prior to their withdrawal from Afghanistan, 1989.

Creation of Soviet-Eastern European Research and Training Act / The Title VIII Program

The Soviet-Eastern Europe Research and Training Act of 1983 (22 U.S.C. 4501-4508, as amended), also known as Title VIII, marked a major step forward in developing America’s knowledge of the Soviet Union. The act authorized the State Department to provide grant funding to advance research on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Title VIII funding led to the creation of fellowship programs for Eastern European studies, scholar exchange programs with the Soviet Union, language training, and other research activities.

Thanks to Title VIII, The Kennan Institute was able to greatly expand its resident scholar program to include younger scholars in the early stages of their careers. Today, in addition to approximately 900 American alumni, mainly supported by Title VIII, the Kennan Institute has over 400 alumni from Russia and over 120 from Ukraine.

Left: President Ronald Reagan delivers the State of the Union address to Congress in 1983.

Vasily Aksyonov (1932-2009)
Aksyonov (pictured far left) was a renowned novelist and one of the last dissidents to be expelled from the Soviet Union. He was a winner of the prestigious Russian Booker Prize and author of Generations of Winter, which the Washington Post called “the 20th-century equivalent of War and Peace.” 

Yuri Nagibin (1920-1994)
Nagibin (center, top) was a novelist and screenwriter, “author of understated, lyrical short stories in the tradition of Turgenev, Chekhov and Bunin” according to the New York Times, and co-author of the screenplay for Akira Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1976.

James P. Scanlan (1927-2016)
Scanlan (center, bottom) was a Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Slavic and East European Studies at Ohio State University from 1988-1991. A scholar of Tolstoy’s and Dostoevsky’s philosophical ideas, Scanlan authored more than 170 publications in English and Russian and mentored several generations of Russian philosophy students.

Vladimir Soloukhin (1924-1997)
Soloukhin (right) was a prominent writer and one of the founders of the “village prose” movement in Soviet literature, famous for nostalgic depictions of Russian nature and rural life.

Mikhail Gorbachev Becomes Soviet Leader

On March 11, 1985, the Soviet Politburo appointed Mikhail Gorbachev as leader of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev’s tenure brought profound change to the Soviet Union with an agenda for internal reforms and a more constructive relationship with the United States. Gorbachev’s period in power ultimately concluded with the Soviet Union’s dissolution, an event for which he remains a figure of both enduring admiration around the world and resentment at home.

Gorbachev’s reform agenda enabled the Kennan Institute to expand its contacts within Russia and to host more scholars and experts from the country. This period helped forge new individual and institutional connections, including with President Gorbachev himself who served as the distinguished guest speaker at the Kennan Institute’s summit on the 15th anniversary of the Russian constitution in 2009.

Left: President Ronald Reagan meets with Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev at Hofdi House during the Reykjavik Summit in Iceland on October 11, 1986.

Above: Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev waves as he walks with Librarian of Congress and former Wilson Center Director James H. Billington on the U.S. Capitol grounds in 1992.

Chernobyl Disaster

Mistakes in safety testing within reactor four of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant just after midnight on April 26, 1986 triggered a catastrophic meltdown that precipitated the worst nuclear incident in history. The Chernobyl disaster deeply damaged the Soviet government’s reputation and contributed to the forces which ultimately tore it apart. It also left a lasting scar on the topography of modern Ukraine and the collective psyche of the Ukrainian people. The legacy of the catastrophe is still unfolding with the plant’s ruins serving as an unlikely battlefield during the initial phase of Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

The Kennan Institute has hosted several discussions about Chernobyl and its portrayal in the media, such as this look at Chernobyl's role in Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine and a conversation with "Chernobyl" HBO miniseries creator Craig Mazin.

Left: A photo of the destroyed Chernobyl reactor taken from a helicopter several months after the explosion in 1986.

Above: Craig Mazin speaks at the Wilson Center after a screening of the first episode of “Chernobyl.” 

Founding of Memorial Human Rights Organization

Memorial was founded in August 1987 as the Group for the Preservation of the Memory of Soviet Repression Victims, an NGO dedicated to securing justice for the millions of victims of the communist regime’s purges and abuses. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Memorial evolved into a Russian civil society organization dedicated to promoting democratization, human rights, and the rule of law.

Memorial was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, months after it was outlawed by the Putin government in the wake of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Listen to the Kennan Institute's discussion about the destruction of Memorial and what it means for the future of Russia.

1985 – Karen Dawisha (1949-2018)
Dawisha (left) was an outstanding political scientist and scholar of Russia, the founding director of the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami University, and an author of multiple books, including the seminal Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?.

1987 – Liudmila Alexeeva (1927-2018)
Alexeeva (center) was a Soviet dissident and Russian human rights activist and a founding member of the Moscow Helsinki Group. She received many awards for her work, including the French Order of the Legion of Honor, the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, and the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize, described by Human Rights Watch as “the doyenne of Russia’s human rights movement” and “a clear, moral voice for freedom and dignity.”

1988 – Anna Frajlich-Zając
Frajlich-Zając (right) is an award-winning poet whose “literary roots lie deep in Polish, Jewish and American culture." She is the author of 18 books of poetry, five of them bilingual, Senior Lecturer Emerita of the Department of Slavic Languages at Columbia University, and recipient of the 2017 Wybitny Polak "Distinguished Pole in the United States" award, presented by the Polish Consulate in New York.