ABSTRACT
George Kennan’s “X” article, published in Foreign Affairs in 1949, outlined for the United States a “doctrine of perpetual struggle” against communist ideology. The “containment” strategy optimistically assigned the American people the task of redeeming their Soviet rival. As long as the Kremlin remained wedded to its ideology, negotiation was futile. The struggle could only end with the collapse and conversion of the Soviet system. No matter what Wilsonian-minded American statesmen called them, by late 1945 spheres of influence were emerging across Europe, and they were to remain in place until the collapse of communism four decades later. Under US leadership, the Western occupation zones of Germany were consolidated, while the Soviet Union turned the countries of Eastern Europe into its appendages. Since the end of the war, Soviet pressures had followed historical Russian patterns. The Soviet Union controlled the Balkans and a guerilla war was raging in Greece, supported from bases in communist Yugoslavia and the Bulgarian Soviet satellite.
