Reith Revisited: Angela Stent on George Kennan

The Reith Lectures

BBC

Society & Culture, Science, Government, Technology

4.2 • 770 Ratings

🗓️ 29 September 2017

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Professor Angela Stent examines the lessons to be learnt from the 1957 Reith Lectures by the legendary American diplomat George Kennan, titled "Russia, the Atom and the West". Kennan, the architect of the American post-war policy of containment of the Soviet Union, was a key player during the Cold War. Stent, the former National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the US National Intelligence Council, evaluates the continuing relevance of the lectures, in conversation with Sarah Montague.

The series assesses the contributions of great minds of the past to public debate, in a dialogue across the decades with contemporary thinkers. In 1948, households across Britain gathered before the wireless as the pre-eminent public intellectual of the age, the philosopher Bertrand Russell delivered a set of lectures in honour of the BBC's founder, Lord Reith. Since then, the Reith Lectures on the Home Service and subsequently Radio 4 have become a major national occasion for intellectual debate. In this series Radio 4 revisits five of the speakers from the first ten years of the Reith Lectures.

Producer: Neil Koenig Researcher: Josephine Casserley

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Nicola Cocklin.
0:02.8	Young people have been making history for years, but we don't often hear about them.
0:06.6	My brand new series on BBC Sounds sets out to put this right.
0:10.6	In history's youngest heroes, I'll be revealing the fascinating stories of 12 young people
0:16.0	who've played a major role in history and who've helped shape our world.
0:19.8	Like Audrey Hepburn, Nelson Mandela,
0:22.5	Louis Braille and Lady Jane Grey, history's youngest heroes with me, Nicola Cochlin. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:30.4	Thanks for downloading this edition of Reith Revisited, part of the special programming
0:34.9	celebrating BBC Radio 4's 50th birthday.
0:38.5	In this episode, Sarah Montague and Professor Angela Stent
0:41.7	looked back at the 1957 Reith Lectures by the influential US diplomat George Kennan.
0:49.7	Russia, The Atom and the West by George F. Kenan.
0:54.1	This year is given by Dr. Nicholas Pilsner.
0:56.7	Authority and the individual, and the speaker is the eminent philosopher Bertrand Russell.
1:03.0	We present the Reef Lectures, an annual series of broadcasts named in honor of the BBC's first director general.
1:14.5	June. of broadcasts named in honour of the BBC's first director general. George Kennan was a hugely influential American diplomat and scholar.
1:19.3	He made his name in the 40s when he outlined an idea that is still with us today, containment.
1:25.8	His thinking was that the West should use mostly political means to limit
1:30.7	the international expansion of Soviet Russia, the USSR. But when the US government took up the
1:36.8	idea, it decided to use military methods too. The result was the arms race and Kenan was horrified.
1:44.2	In his 1957 series of wreath lectures, he called for restraint.
1:49.3	We must get over this obsession that the Russians are yearning to attack and occupy Western Europe,
	...

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