DEPARTMENT OF STATE THE UNDER SECRETARY S/P
July 8, 1949
Mr. Secretary:
The British, who are the real worshippers of success, have an over-powering yen to make success respectable, and thus to find explanations in terms of human progress for a phenomenon - namely, present- day Stalinism - which is actually understandable only in terms of power.
Whoever, peering from the comfortable distance of the bourgeois-liberal world, views Stalin as just another successful political leader pushing his people firmly but roughly along the approved path of history, has failed to grasp the cataclysmic horror of modern totalitarianism.
If Stalin has been successful in anything, it is in proving that man's degradation can be just as effectively "organized" as his dignity; that contempt for the human individual can be made an acceptable and practicable basis for government; and that - whether or not it is possible to create a Heaven on earth - it is definitely possible and even profitable to create a purgatory and a Hell.
George F. Kennan
Attachment: Review, THE DIALECTICS OF STALINISM, from THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT.