''For a list of other people named Robert Kelley see Robert Kelley (disambiguation)''
Robert F. Kelley (1894 February 13,

Somerville, Massachusetts Somerville ( ) is a city located directly to the northwest of Boston, and north of Cambridge, in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2020 United States Census, the city had a total population of 81,045 people. With an area o ...

– 1976) was an adamantly

anticommunist Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and the ...

official of the

US State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other nati ...

who influenced a generation of Russian specialists such as

George F. Kennan George Frost Kennan (February 16, 1904 – March 17, 2005) was an American diplomat and historian. He was best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly hist ...

and

Charles Bohlen Charles "Chip" Eustis Bohlen (August 30, 1904 – January 1, 1974) was an American diplomat, ambassador, and expert on the Soviet Union. He helped shape US foreign policy during World War II and the Cold War and helped develop the Marshall Plan ...

. He received a BA from Harvard in 1915 and a MA in 1917 and continued with postgraduate work at the

University of Paris , image_name = Coat of arms of the University of Paris.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of Arms , latin_name = Universitas magistrorum et scholarium Parisiensis , motto = ''Hic et ubique terrarum'' (Latin) , mottoeng = Here and a ...

(Sorbonne). Kelley served in the

US Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

during World War I. In 1922 he joined the State Department and, in 1926, became the head of the newly created Division of Eastern European Affairs. Kelley was responsible for the hard-line anti-Soviet attitude of the State Department before and after the recognition of Russia in 1933. Kelley was concerned about the speed with which nonrecognition ended and urged Secretary of State Cordell Hull and President Franklin Roosevelt not to trust Soviet promises about resolving outstanding issues. None of his concerns were ever resolved. Kelley came under scrutiny and was eventually removed from his position after proponents of a more conciliatory line towards Russia moved against him and the Eastern European Division. Kelley left the State Department in 1945 to join a private organization that eventually sponsored

Radio Liberty Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...

, an anti-

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

broadcasting service.

References

* DeSantis, Hugh. ''Diplomacy of Silence. The American Foreign Service, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War, 1933-1947'' (1980), pp 11-26. * Nolan, Cathal J., ed. ''Notable US Ambassadors Since 1775: A Biographical Dictionary'' (Greenwood, 1997). pp 205-210. * Peterson, Jody L. ‘‘Ideology and Influence: Robert F. Kelley and the State Department.’’ Ph.D. diss., Washington State University, 1996. * Propas, Frederic L. ‘‘The State Department, Bureaucratic Politics, and Soviet-American Relations, 1918–1938.’’ Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1982. * Richman, John. ''The United States and the Soviet Union: The Decision to Recognize'' (Camberleigh and Hall, 1980) *Schulzinger, Robert D. ''The Making of the Diplomatic Mind: The Training, Outlook, and Style of United States Foreign Service Officers, 1908-1931'' (Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1975). * Weil, Martin. ''A Pretty Good Club: The Founding Fathers of the United States Foreign Service'' (W.W> Norton, 1978), pp 46-63. {{DEFAULTSORT:Kelley, Robert F 1894 births 1976 deaths Harvard University alumni University of Paris alumni People from Somerville, Massachusetts United States Department of State officials

References

Further reading