A Quote by George F. Kennan

The best thing we can do if we want the Russians to let us be Americans is to let the Russians be Russian. — © George F. Kennan
The best thing we can do if we want the Russians to let us be Americans is to let the Russians be Russian.
Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoievsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist.
I understand why Vladimir Putin is very popular in Russia - he's probably the first Russian leader to not apologize for being Russian. People always pin it down to one man, but there's hundreds of millions of Russians of various sorts. Putin does seem to be very popular in Russia, if only because he stands up for Russians wherever they are, which is exactly what Americans do with Americans, of course.
There is no such thing as Russian fascism. You won't find a single Russian who considers Russians to be a superior race and who advocate expulsion of aliens.
The Russians haven't helped us at all in the fight against ISIS. When you total up the numbers of sorties that have been going into Syria, aircraft attacks, if you will, going into Syria, when the Russians said they were going to assist, we got a very small number of Russian sorties.
The Russians didn't invent partisan divides. The Russians haven't invented racism in the United States. But the Russians understand a lot of those divisions and they understand how to exploit them.
The same people the Americans sent over - that we sent over to advise the Russians, we also sent over to advise the Poles about how to build a post-communist economy. Same people, same advice, with radically different results, which leads to suspicion it's not our advice which was the crucial variable. It was the Poles, on one hand, and the Russians on the other. The Poles succeeded; the Russians didn't. Don't blame us.
As far as I know, Russians are the first among tourists going to Turkey; last year three million Russians visited that country, although its climate zone is almost the same as the one of the Black sea region. Therefore, we have had an important task to develop an infrastructure in this region of the Russian Federation.
The effect of sanctions on the Russian economy are clear to everybody, first to the Russians and to the Russian leadership, and the surroundings of the Russian leadership, the circle that is close to the Russian political leadership.
The one thing that I remember from all of my intelligence briefings and my dealings with the Russians is that when you deal with the Russians, you have to deal with them from strength, not from weakness.
If I was drunk, I wouldn’t be here at all. And really, this is pretty good for four White Russians.” “White what?” I almost sat down but was afraid the chair might dematerialize beneath me. “It’s a drink,” he said. “You’d think I wouldn’t be into something named that—you know, considering my own personal experience with Russians. But they’re surprisingly delicious. The drinks, not real Russians.
There was a lot of prejudice towards Russians in Latvia. When I went to school, often Latvians didn't like me, and Russians and Latvians didn't like Americans, so that was a whole other prejudice.
We want to work with the Russians. But we also have every right to expect the Russians to behave in a fashion and keeping with a - with a - with a country who respects international boundaries and the norms of international behavior.
Hillary Clinton's top priority when she became secretary of state was the Russian reset. The Russian reset. After the Russian reset, the Russians invaded Ukraine and took over Crimea.
There was obviously never any help from the Russians. I don't even know what the Russians would have done.
I think the Russians basically don't think the North Koreans and the Iranians have the capabilities to get weapon systems that can threaten them, or that if they do the Russians know how to handle them and that that's the reason that it's all the more important that Russians be involved in the sale of high-end conventional weapons, the Bushehr nuclear reactor in the case of Russia and Iran, and similar kinds of relationships.
But take the Russia issue. You open up the convention, and you have got a report that the Democratic Party has been hacked by the Russians, e-mails, the e-mails of the Democratic Party, which is a headline and words that you don't want, if you're Hillary Clinton's campaign.And Donald Trump immediately takes the story and basically steps on the advantage he has and say, well, the Russians, who am I to tell [Vladimir] Putin? You know, the Russians ought to come in and continue to hack our - and find out where the e-mails are.
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