# Sources of Soviet Conduct Following the end of WW2, and especially with a bulk of its troops in Europe, the United States needed a clearly defined policy to use when dealing with the Soviet Union. The so-called Containment Policy, which was based on the political personality of the Soviet Union, was suggested in the late ‘40s by George Kennan in an article titled *The Sources of Soviet Conduct*, published in *Foreign Affairs* in 1947 (under pseudonym Mr. X). In analyzing Soviet political personality, Kennan took into consideration two forces that outline the political behavior of the Soviet Union: Soviet ideology and circumstances that brought the Soviets to power. Communist ideology taught them "that the central factor in the life of man … is the system by which material goods are produced and exchanged,” which basically increased the importance or the working class;[^1] that capitalism is, to put it bluntly, bad, because it leads to the exploitation of the working class and imperialism which, in turn, leads to war and; that it "contains the seeds of its own destruction," and will eventually destroy itself. [^1]: Soviets subscribed to the [[Labor Theory of Value]] When preaching their ideology, the Soviet leaders placed huge emphasis on the antagonism between communism and capitalism. However, according to Kennan, this antagonism was not real. > The real facts concerning [the emphasis on antagonism] have been confused by the existence abroad of genuine resentment provoked by Soviet philosophy and tactics and occasionally by the existence of great centers of military power, notably the Nazi regime in Germany and the Japanese Government of the late 1930s, which indeed have aggressive designs against the Soviet Union. Kennan also analyzed the circumstances that were in place in the post-revolution period: civil war, only a tiny minority of Communists within the Russian people, and capitalist elements within the country that were in conflict with their ideology. Due to this set of circumstances an establishment of a dictatorship was a necessity if the regime was to survive, even though Soviet leaders most probably didn’t seek absolutism by itself. Later on, when the circumstances changed and when the regime wasn’t threatened from the inside anymore, the Soviet leaders used the threat of capitalist influence from abroad to justify the continuation of dictatorship. In fact, the above mentioned antagonism was emphasized for this purpose. The Soviet Union, under the communist leadership, will eventually pursue to deal with the capitalist threat it wrongfully perceived but, having in mind their belief that any capitalist regime is bound to failure, they were not in a hurry. "Like the Church, [the communist regime] is dealing in ideological concepts which are of long-term validity, and it can afford to be patient." Based on this analysis, Kennan recommended a policy of long-term containment of Russia. "In these circumstances it is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies." It is important to note that Kennan did not specify the kind of containment he was calling for. The article is ambiguous and it is not clear whether he is calling for a containment of a military or a political type. However, despite Kennan’s clear reluctance towards histrionics, this policy recommendation was interpreted as a call for containment in a military fashion, and was critiqued as such by Walter Lippman, see [[Walter Lippman's Critique of The Containment Policy]].