ABSTRACT
In 1944, a senior American foreign service officer stationed in the Moscow embassy composed a long telegram for his superiors in the State Department in Washington, D.C. The telegram outlined the officer's assessment of the domestic motivations he thought would influence Soviet policy toward Europe, the United States, and the world during the years immediately following World War II. The officer vividly described and astutely analyzed the unique historical, cultural, economic, and political forces that distinguished the Soviet Union from the United States and other democratic nations. He cautioned his superiors against the inclination to assume that merely because the Soviet Union was a formal military ally of the United States in its war with Hitler's Germany, Soviet leaders and the Soviet public would be motivated by many of the same fears, interests, and hopes as Americans.
