The Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars was founded in 1974 to carry out studies of the Soviet Union (sovietology), and subsequently of post-Soviet Russia and other post-Soviet states.
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In addition to its main office in Washington, D.C., the Kennan Institute operates centers in Moscow, Russia and Kiev, Ukraine: the Kennan Moscow Project and Kennan Kyiv Project .
The institute is named after George Kennan, American explorer of Russia, twice removed older cousin of Ambassador George F. Kennan, best known as the author of The Long Telegram and the X Article, and by extension the author of America’s containment policy toward the Soviet Union. Ambassador Kennan, together with Wilson Center Director James Billington and historian S. Frederick Starr, initiated the establishment of the institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
Activities
The Institute offers residential research scholarships in the humanities and social sciences to academic scholars and specialists from government, the media, and the private sector. The Institute also administers an active program of public lectures featuring scholars and public figures, disseminating the results of its activities and research through a variety of publications.
Research areas
Most recent research topics include
Cooperation
The Kennan Institute is a partner of the Russian and Eurasian Security Specialized Network (RES) of the international Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
The Kennan Institute has recently concluded its cooperation with the ISE Center (Information. Scholarship. Education.), Moscow, in administering the Centers for Advanced Study and Education (CASE) program. The CASE program, launched with support from Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, established nine thematic research centers at regional Russian universities in order to foster scholarship in the social sciences and humanities. These Centers are now administered directly by their home universities and the Russian Ministry of Education.