Grace Kennan Recalls Hardships in Moscow

Soviet demands for the recall of Ambassador George Kennan came as "a complete surprise" to his daughter, Grace Kennan '54.

The Radcliffe junior, who worked in the American embassy in Moscow this summer, said she had "felt tension in the air" all through her stay, but had no idea it would result in the Russian government's blackball of her father as diplomatically a "personna non grate."

According to Miss Kennan, who studied Russian at the University in order to work in the embassy, her father was guarded almost constantly. "He couldn't even go out to get his hair cut unless five Russians went with him." She said any American in Moscow these days was in "a most uncomfortable situation."

She thus backed up her father's statement to reporters that life in Moscow for American diplomats is like being interned by the Nazis in 1941 except that they can walk about the streets. It was this statement that caused the Russians to demand Kennan's ouster.