Vagabond LifeGeorge Kennan (1845 1924) was a pioneering explorer, writer, and lecturer on Russia in the nineteenth century, the author of classic works such as Tent Life in Siberia and Siberia and the Exile System, and great uncle of George Frost Kennan, the noted historian and diplomat of the Cold War. In 1870, Kennan became the first American to explore the highlands of Dagestan, a remote Muslim region of herders, silversmiths, carpet weavers, and other