The successful economic and social development of both the socialist community as a whole and its member countries, the strengthening of their ideological and political unity, the major achievements of their peace-loving policy aimed at defusing international tensions, the growing influence of the communist parties, on the one hand, and the serious defeats of the capitalist world, among which, first of all, we should mention the multilateral The crisis, which was most acute in the financial, monetary and energy spheres, the collapse of the military adventure of American imperialism in Vietnam, and the unprecedented devaluation of the social and political values of bourgeois society, on the other hand, make it immeasurably more difficult for bourgeois ideologists to both apologise for the capitalist system and "criticise" real socialism. It is not accidental that Western researchers complain about the fallacy of their theoretical ideas about the correlation of forces in the modern world1 and the recognition of the confident, stable development of the USSR in the 1970s2 .

The division of points of view within bourgeois ideology itself is most noticeable when discussing various aspects of detente. Seek to deepen detente, disarm and ban all types of weapons of mass destruction, or embark on a new round of the arms race; expand dialogue and cooperation with socialist countries or prevent this by returning to the adventurous models of the anti-Soviet foreign policy of the Cold War; seek a way out of the crisis situation created in capitalist society by understanding the deep-rooted problems of It is a dilemma faced by many bourgeois politicians and ideologues to see the cause of all the troubles of the Western world in the "machinations" of certain external forces.

From the point of view of solving this dilemma, an interview with the famous American historian and politician George Kennan, published in the September 1976 issue of the London magazine Encounter, which received a wide response in the West, is of considerable interest, as well as an article by the English historian X. Seaton-Watson, which appeared in the same magazine two months later and aims to challenge Kennan's views on major issues in world politics. To be precise, Kennan had two opponents in this controversy, since J. Urban, a consultant for Radio Free Europe, who interviewed him, takes basically the same positions as Seaton-Watson.

Kennan is a well-known figure in Western political and academic circles. Former U.S. Ambassador to the USSR and Yugoslavia, Professor Emeritus of History at Princeton University, one of the most respected Soviet scholars in the West, author of a number of books on Soviet-American relations and international politics. If we talk about his ideological and political views and practical activities, then first of all it should be remembered that it was Kennan who was one of the initiators of the notorious policy of "containment" carried out by the US ruling circles against the USSR after the end of World War II. At that time, Kennan still believed that the United States could stop the spread of communism by simply demonstrating its military might. A severe blow to Kennan's illusions was inflicted not only by the unexpected general growth of the Soviet country's economic and defense potential, but also by the indisputable fact that nuclear war means incalculable disasters for all mankind. Therefore, since the mid-50s, he has begun to speak out more and more clearly for peaceful coexistence.

1" Instead of being an illustrative example of a refutation of Marxist determinism, we have become an example that confirms its correctness, " writes a political scientist from Princeton University Sh. Wolin ("The New York Review of Books", July 12, 1975, p. 23).

2 See, for example, " The Soviet Union. The Seventies and Beyond". Ed. by B. W. Eissenstaat. Lexington-Toronto - L. 1975, p. 11.

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states with different social systems 3 .

Kennan strongly opposed the positions Urban had pushed him to adopt - the myth of a "military threat" to the West from the USSR and the resulting hawkish slogan about the need for further US military buildup. "A nuclear war will only be disastrous for all the countries involved," Kennan said, " and I think the Russians are well aware of that. They can do anything, as long as they don't threaten other governments by saying: "Do as we demand, or we will drop a nuclear bomb on you." In addition, Kennan added, the mass extermination of civilians for the sake of spreading ideology or achieving political goals "is not a Marxist principle at all." 4 Admitting that Soviet foreign policy is based on the humane principles of Marxism is rare for bourgeois ideologues who try either to portray the foreign policy of the USSR as a direct continuation of the policy of tsarist Russia, or to attribute to the Communists unscrupulousness and unscrupulousness in the implementation of their goals.

Of course, Kennan did not become more sympathetic to Marxism, but this example shows that he does not seek to find in the motivations of the Soviet Union's activities on the world stage some kind of "Machiavellianism" that leads to a divergence of word and deed, as many of his colleagues do, in order to put a mine under the idea of detente. He firmly rejects all "theoretical" justifications for intensifying the arms race. "It is extremely important to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons," he says, " These weapons are too terrible to be in human hands, whether ours or anyone else's, and they should be removed from the register of potential military assets. I am deeply saddened that the US Government is not taking encouraging action in this regard. We could have shown much more courage, and not so much in negotiations as in unilateral measures" (p. 34).

It was the idea that the United States should take the lead in reducing its nuclear capabilities that Kennan's opponents most harshly attacked, accusing him of political blindness and capitulation. "How right the old Kennan was!" Seaton-Watson exclaims pathetically, referring to the policy of "containment." 5
Unfortunately, Kennan's opponent is not alone in nostalgia for the Cold War. The longing for the "good old days" when the slogan of "deterrence" united all the detachments of global anti-communism is quite loud in the growing right-wing propaganda campaign in the West over the past two years, aimed at burying detente and directing the foreign policy of the United States and its NATO allies in the direction of harsh anti-Sovietism. R. Tucker, a well-known American political scientist and professor at Johns Hopkins University, did not hesitate to directly call a spade a spade and called on the new Washington administration to "return to the policy of containment", which allegedly has no alternative .6
It is against the backdrop of this wave of hawk activity that Kennan's sobriety stands out, a bourgeois ideologue and politician who has never given up his anti-communist beliefs, but who has the ability to face the facts. This ability is also evident in his assessment of the role of the United States in the modern world. Unlike those who extol the United States ' position as a "city on a mountain" in relation to other countries7, Kennan expressed his concern and deep pessimism about the current state of American and Western society in general. "I don't think," he said, " that the American civilization of the last 40 or 50 years has been a successful civilization; I don't think that our political system is at the level of the modern era that we are now entering; I believe that our country is doomed to experience bad things-

3 For the evolution of Kennan's positions in those years, see N. N. Yakovlev. "Expert on Russia" George Kennan and history lessons. "History of the USSR", 1960, N 5.

4 "Encounter", September 1976, pp. 34, 38 (further references to Kennan's conversation are given in the text).

5 H. Seton-Watson. George Kennan's Illusions. "Encounter", November 1976, p. 34.

6 R. Tucker. Beyond Detente. "Commentary". March 1977, p. 46.

7 This metaphor comes from W. Lord, Director of Policy Planning at the State Department ("The Department of State Bulletin"). December 1976, p. 677).

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chee, which cannot but be tragic and huge in its scope" (p. 11). There is a "self-destruction" of the United States, and it is not really realized by either politicians or public opinion, because not only the traditional institutions of the United States, but also the American way of thinking are useless.

Hence, Kennan concludes that the US claims to global leadership are unfounded. "We have nothing to teach the world," he says, " we must accept that we do not have the answers to the problems of human society in the modern age. Moreover, each society has its own specific characteristics that we Americans do not understand" (p.20). In this connection, Kennan's recollection of a conversation that he had a few years ago with the head of one of the African countries is interesting (he does not mention his name). "I appreciate your seeing me," Kennan told the other man, " but I'm puzzled. My friends have asked me to meet you, but neither I nor, perhaps, my country has anything to say to you... We don't have an answer to your problems." When asked what the United States should do in relation to this country, Kennan said:: "Leave you alone, absolutely and irrevocably. If it were up to me, you would have no reason to complain that the United States was interested in you, unless you asked for it. We would have left you completely alone." To which Kennan's companion remarked: "You can't do this, you're stuck here and you can't get out of the game" (ibid.).

30 years ago, Kennan bombarded the State Department with dispatches in which, as an adviser to the American embassy in Moscow, he called on the United States to step up its anti-Soviet course. Now he recommends that the United States not interfere in the affairs of other countries, not only in Africa, but also in other parts of the world and regions, including Europe and the Middle East. In vain did Urban mention the "Soviet threat" to Western Europe. "After the war, Western Europe relied on us more than it was good for itself," Kennan told him....Now we must put an end to this." To the suggestion that the reduction of the American presence in Western Europe could lead to the "Finlandization" of the latter, Kennan objected: "The comparison of the positions of Finland and Western Europe by the Soviet counterpart is unfair both to the Finns, whose position is not at all weak or humiliating (they have actually increased their freedom in the last 25 years), and to Western Europe, because its relations with Moscow are based on completely different geopolitical, demographic and economic realities than in the past 25 years. in the case of Finland" (p. 18).

Kennan easily countered the accusation that his positions were a betrayal of the" idealism "and" moralism " that supposedly underlie US behavior on the world stage. If ever there was an idealism in American politics, he said, that idealism was crossed out by "the crimes and mistakes of recent years: Vietnam, the stupidity of the CIA, and the violations of democracy like Watergate" (p. 21). That is why the current claims of the United States to lead the world are unfounded; in order for America to gain the moral right to lead other countries, it is necessary not only to make some adjustments to the functioning of its political system ("I do not see any ways to reorganize the system"), but to revise the "national goal", which will require "a long time of reflection"(ibid.).

It should be noted that in the last decade, especially during the escalation of the criminal war against the Vietnamese people, many sensible American politicians, bourgeois theorists, and publicists have become acutely aware of the huge discrepancy between pompous declarations and the policies of their own government. "One of the problems of America is its inability to see itself in its true light," 8 noted the well - known journalist M. McCarthy. B. Russell, a professor at Yale University and editor of the Journal of Conflict Resolution, pointed out the irresponsibility of exclamations about "America's responsibility in the world" and the threat to its "vital interests." 9 Americans tended to idolize themselves, Senator W. Fulbright acknowledged, adding that it was time to rethink this attitude .10
Kennan brings the logic of these critical maxims to the end, raising the question of ab-

8 "The New York Review of Books", June 1975, p. 26.

9 B. Russel. The Americans' Retreat from World Power. "Political Science Quarterly", Spring 1975, pp. 1 - 2.

10 "Time", May 12, 1975, p. 22.

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It is impossible to mobilize the enormous economic and military potential of the largest capitalist country to implement a wrong foreign policy course. It seems to him pointless to spend huge amounts of money and effort on what is called " saving the West from Russia." The real threat to the West, Kennan says, does not come from outside, but from within - it is the "internal corruption" of the West. "First show me an America that has successfully solved the problems of crime, drug addiction, declining education, urban decline, pornography and all the other manifestations of decadence, show me an America that has gathered its courage and become what it should be - and then I will tell you how to protect yourself from the Russians," Kennan argues. Urban's admonitions to recognize the" threat " to the West from the USSR. "As long as everything remains as it is, I do not see it as a great honor to organize protection from Russian pornographic shops in the center of Washington" (p. 36).

Coming from Kennan, a veteran American diplomat and seasoned analyst who 30 years ago published an article in Foreign Affairs magazine titled "Mr. X," calling on the White House to open its eyes to the extent of the "red danger," these words are truly remarkable. It is no coincidence that Encounter placed Urban's conversation with Kennan under the heading "From Deterrence to ... self-restraint."

But it would certainly be wrong to see Kennan's position as a critique of the very foundations of capitalist society. He rejects Marxism as the key to understanding social development, based on the world-old premise of subjectivist, apologetic philosophy, according to which all the ills of a person are to blame not for the social structure, but for himself. "The main source of evil," declares Kennan, "is not social and political institutions, and in most cases not even the will of politicians, military personnel, or bureaucrats, but simply the weakness and passivity of the human soul itself, which cannot be cured by social engineering" (p. 43). It is clear that a person who holds such views cannot be expected to denounce American imperialism as a system. When Kennan uses the term "system" in relation to the United States, he is referring exclusively to the mechanism by which political power is used by those who already have it; he does not even raise the question of changing the class character of power.

Hence the naivety and limitations of Kennan's reform prescriptions: he considers the creation of a "council of outstanding people" that unites 500 - 1000 people with a highly developed sense of public duty, a kind of "meritocracy" that would be immune to corruption and the influence of pressure groups, as a guarantee of conducting a "correct" domestic and foreign policy in the United States. How these "meritocrats" would escape the influence of lobbying, monopolies, and the military-industrial complex while preserving these inevitable attributes of capitalist society is a question that Kennan's concept of the enlightened and highly moral power of a thousand "chosen ones" does not and cannot answer. In addition, Kennan's utopianism is clearly at odds with the bourgeois-liberal theories of power, which for more than a hundred years have been raised on the shield of the ideologists of American capitalism and, in fact, cover up the vices of American society.

Kennan thus placed himself in a more than vulnerable position in the face of possible criticism from his fellow bourgeois ideologues. It remained to wait, which of them, how soon and in what main positions will give him a fight.

Just two months later, Seaton-Watson got into a controversy with Kennan on the pages of Encounter. This was not the first time that they found themselves in the position of debating parties. Ten years ago, at a conference organized by Harvard University to mark the 50th anniversary of the Russian revolutions of 1917, Seaton-Watson opposed Kennan's report on the causes of the collapse of autocracy. At that time, the positions of both were more in common than disagreements, but it is characteristic that while Kennan considered the main reason for February to be the contradiction between the political system of tsarism and the needs of" modernization " of the country, Seaton-Watson defended a more conservative point of view (within the framework of modern bourgeois Sovietology): the Romanov monarchy could have lasted if not for the first world War 11 . And now Seaton-Watson has taken a far-right stance on all points of the Kennan controversy. First of all, he defended the American establishment from accusations that its experience was unsuitable for humanity.

11 "Revolutionary Russia". Ed. by R. Pipes. Cambridge (Mass.), 1968, p. 20.

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However, Seaton-Watson's article focuses on attempts to refute Kennan's arguments in favor of defusing international tensions. For this purpose, the entire set of anti-Soviet and anti-Russian cliches that have been used in Sovietology for more than half a century has been used. Seaton-Watson does not try to hide his Russophobia and accuses the USSR of striving to "conquer the world" at any cost, including nuclear war12 . Kennan's assertion that the West should defend itself not against the Soviet Union, but against its own vices, seems to have literally exasperated the venerable professor of anti-communism. Nothing, he said, can protect a society whose "governing elite" is about to capitulate with "criminal recklessness." 13
Seaton-Watson's article shows once again that bourgeois scientists are by no means detached from politics, as some of them portray it. In his fierce opposition to detente and his desire to discredit it by manipulating facts, Seaton-Watson has many like-minded scientists in the West, and he is not the first to indulge in this disreputable occupation. One can recall, for example, the collective statement of a group of Sovietologists on the pages of the printed organ of international anti-communism, in which detente was anathematized .14
The close connection of bourgeois scientists with politics is a fact that they themselves are increasingly acknowledging. "Social scientists and politicians do not just interact with each other, they develop professional ways of thinking and norms that determine current and future interaction," writes the famous American sociologist and historian I. Horowitz in one of the sections of his book, which bears the expressive title"A new impure union: social sciences and policy makers"15 . To an even greater extent, this applies to Sovietology, a specific branch of bourgeois social science that has been cultivating the spirit of anti-communism and anti-Sovietism for many years. "Anti-communism... It exerted a powerful and pervasive influence on our understanding of the actions and intentions of the USSR, as well as the communist movement around the world, " said the well - known American Sovietologist, Professor A. Mayer of the University of Michigan. "He was so dominant in academic activities that often we didn't even realize how wrong our views were... I claim that the ideology of anti-communism served to educate what can be called semi-fascist psychology. " 16 Giving examples of various myths about Soviet ideology and politics that were created jointly by Sovietologists and US politicians, Mayer writes that they contributed to the implementation of the Cold War course by "people like Acheson and Dulles" who "did everything possible to prevent any conciliatory actions on the part of the USSR ... systematically put forward unacceptable ideas to Moscow in advance suggestions". "By taking the toughest possible position," the author concludes, "since 1917, the Western world has forced the Soviet Union and many other countries to take a tough position as well." 17 The fallacy of this policy, Mayer's article goes on to say, is now recognized by many theorists and politicians (among them Kennan). Detente has thus created a kind of dividing line among bourgeois ideologues: it has brought some even closer to the militaristic policy of imperialist circles, and others into a certain, if not completely consistent, opposition to this policy. Both of them turn to history, trying to find arguments, facts, and parallels in it to support their positions. But anti-communism blinds the opponents of detente and forces them to ignore historical experience. Seaton-Watson, who preaches a new crusade against the USSR, forgets that if in the three major wars that his country has waged in the last two centuries on the European continent and around the world, the enemy's soldiers never set foot on its land, then this was no small merit of Russia and the Soviet Union, who fought on the side of England. None of these wars was started by Russia, and none of them came out of it defeated. This is a lesson that detente opponents, even those with considerable experience in historical research, neglect.

12 "Encounter", November 1976, p. 34.

13 Ibid., p. 25.

14 "Survey", Spring-Summer 1974.

15 I.L.Horowitz. Ideology and Utopia in the United States, 1956 - 1976. L. - Oxford - N. Y. 1977, p. 339.

16 A. G. Meyer. An Anti-Anti-Communist Looks at Detente. "The Soviet Union. The Seventies and Beyond", pp. 327 - 328.

17 Ibid.

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Kennan is more forward-thinking than his opponents. He understands that during the existence of the USSR, the leaders of American politics made many mistakes in determining their attitude to it. He explained his understanding of these mistakes in the article "The United States and the Soviet Union" 18 . "American statesmen," Kennan concluded at the time, " will have to take a more stable and realistic view of the existence of Soviet power. They should strive to curb the demands of the military-industrial complex more successfully than before, and to make serious efforts and progress in reducing the scale and intensity of the arms race through agreements and self-restraint, or both. " 19 Kennan expressed the same thoughts, but in a more strident form, in his interview with Urban. "For the life of me, I can't understand what our diehards really want," he said, explaining that the USSR would not succumb to nuclear blackmail (p.38). Kennan condemned the attempts of a certain part of US politicians and ideologues to return the world to the Cold War era and called for expanding comprehensive contacts between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Let us repeat: Kennan, of course, remained entirely faithful to the postulates of bourgeois historical and political science. But it is precisely the persistence of the anti-Marxist, anti-communist components of Kennan's ideology that makes his advocacy for detente, an end to the arms race, and peaceful coexistence of the two main social systems of our time significant. The fact that a sophisticated diplomat and an erudite historian, one of the most authoritative Sovietologists in the West, and finally a man who, having soberly assessed world realities, managed to abandon his previous views that did not correspond to them, once again shows that detente is now an objective imperative of the time.

18 See A. I. Repalov. Changes in the approach to the history of Soviet-American relations. Voprosy Istorii, 1977, No. 5.

19 G. Kennan. The United States and the Soviet Union, 1917 - 1956. "Foreign Affairs", April 1976, pp. 678 - 681, 689 - 690.

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