Kennan image from
JB: Kennan was, I would say, rather provincial (i.e ,"non-politically correct" speaking, from the Midwest, from a non-Eastern establishment background). He longed, as you know, to be F. Scott Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald image from
(another Princeton "outsider" from the Midwest), and went to Russia -- I'd argue -- in the same way many American "outsider-intellectuals" fled to Europe, especially at the beginning of the past century (some very familiar names, granted before Kennan became "public": Eliot, Pound, Stein; and of course Fitzgerald himself). Kennan chose Russia, knowing (perhaps) in his all-American way, that that's where he could "make it/his name' by becoming an "expert' in that little-known (to Americans) Eurasian corner of our small planet, with which his family had non-"ethnic" connections.
Image from, with caption George Kennan - photo from 1885
Essentially a conservative, intellectually uncomfortable with modernism, Kennan had profound doubts about Stalinism -- and popular American consumer-culture. Of the two, I would say (that, aside from hyping himself and his own remarkable career) Stalinism fascinated him most, given his suspicion of "democracy." Of course, his ideas have been "misinterpreted" (doubtless by yours truly as well) in part because he was essentially a second-rate, somewhat prepotente scribbler, not a first-rate thinker. But then anyone who is labeled as a "first-rate thinker" (a designation far from historical "truth") must watch out where her real talent comes from.