Registration REQUIRED by 12pm on April 29, 2026 in order to attend this event.
Please join the Harriman Institute for a book talk by Geoffrey Roberts, editor of “Wartime Letters” by Kathleen Harriman. Moderated by Jack Snyder.
The extraordinary story of Kathleen Harriman, daughter of the US ambassador to the USSR, told through her wartime letters
Kathleen Harriman was the daughter of American businessman W. Averell Harriman. A journalist by background, she accompanied her father on his wartime postings to London and Moscow, where he served as FDR’s envoy and later as US ambassador to the Soviet Union.
She dined with Winston Churchill at Chequers, played bridge with General Eisenhower, and, in Moscow, banqueted with Stalin. She learned Russian and soon became one of the best-known American women in the USSR. In her work as a journalist, Kathy visited war-torn cities and sites of covered-up atrocities.
In more than two hundred letters, Harriman wrote all about these trips, people, and experiences. Deeply personal as well as highly political, her correspondence provides a fresh insight into the machinations of Second World War politics and diplomacy. In this fascinating account, Geoffrey Roberts brings together Harriman’s letters to tell the full story of her wartime life for the first time.
Geoffrey Roberts is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy and Emeritus Professor of History at University College Cork. A leading Soviet history expert, his publications include “Stalin’s Library: A Dictator and His Books,” “Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939-1953,” and the award-winning biography, “Stalin’s General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov.” Professor Roberts’s books have been published in 20 different languages. A Fulbright scholar at Harvard, his visiting fellowships include the Kennan Institute, NYU’s Jordan Center, the Nobel Peace Institute, the Aleksanteri Institute, the Helsinki Collegium of Advanced Studies, and Budapest and Warsaw Institutes for Advanced Study.
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