The American aristocracy, or what passed for one after the turn of the century, gave mostly lip service to the ideal of noblesse oblige. At morning chapel, prep school boys were earnestly implored to serve God and country, but as grown men most followed Mammon instead, heading directly to Wall Street to make money.
Born almost embarrassingly rich, W. Averell Harriman (Groton '09, Yale '13) could easily have idled his life away as a dilettante without appreciably denting his family fortune. Yet Harriman, who died last week at 94, always heeded the command of his father, Railroad Magnate E.H. Harriman, to "be something and somebody."
President John F. Kennedy once said that with the possible exception of John Quincy Adams, Harriman held "as many important jobs as any American in our history." After migrating from Wall Street to Washington as one of the dollar-a-year "tame businessmen" supporting Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, he went on to become wartime Ambassador to Moscow, Secretary of Commerce, Ambassador to Britain, European administrator of the Marshall Plan, Governor of New York and, in his 70s, Under Secretary of State. The titles scarcely matter; at pivotal points in the nation's history, Harriman always seemed to be there, a wise man high in the councils of Government.
American Presidents liked to use Harriman as their ambassador plenipotentiary. For Roosevelt, he helped maintain the often uneasy alliance with Stalin and Churchill during World War II. For Truman, he dealt with a cantankerous collection of European nations being rebuilt under the Marshall Plan. For Kennedy, he negotiated the Laos neutrality accords and the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963. For Johnson, he served as emissary to the Paris peace talks on Viet Nam in 1968. As late as 1976, when Harriman was 84, Democratic Presidential Nominee Jimmy Carter sent him to Moscow to give assurances to Leonid Brezhnev on arms control.
President Kennedy referred to Harriman as a "separate sovereignty," and in truth he operated as a kind of independent fiefdom, communicating with other sovereigns on his own terms. He acquired friendships with powerful world leaders the way other men collect stamps.
His chief interest was the Soviet Union, and he had more experience dealing with that country than any other American in history. His first visit to Russia was in 1899, during the reign of Czar Nicholas II, when he accompanied his father on an expedition that reached Siberia. His last was in 1983, at the invitation of Soviet Leader Yuri Andropov. In between he negotiated his own private mineral concessions with Trotsky and spent more time with Stalin than any other American. Nikita Khrushchev liked the old capitalist so much that he jokingly offered him a job.