Former Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev, who died in 1971 at the age of 77, once warned a Kremlin colleague that he might some day rise from the grave and tell his tale, despite the silence imposed on him by the men who had forced him into retirement. This week TIME presents the first of two sets of excerpts from a forthcoming volume of memoirs in which Khrushchev makes good on his prophecy. He emerges as a candid, pungent and uniquely qualified commentator on recent Soviet history.
During the last four years of his life, Khrushchev dictated his reminiscences into a tape recorder. Transcriptions of the tapes, translated and edited by TIME Correspondent Strobe Talbott, formed the basis of Khrushchev Remembers, which was published by Little, Brown & Co. in 1970. TIME's new excerpts, from a sequel called Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, a Little, Brown book that will go on sale in June, are also taken from tape recordings made by Khrushchev.
The Last Testament deals primarily with the period from Stalin's death in 1953, when Khrushchev became First Secretary of the Communist Party, until his own ouster from power in 1964. Although an important record of the past, the former Soviet leader's freewheeling reminiscences bear directly on many contemporary issues. He discusses hitherto unknown incidents that contributed to the present Moscow-Peking conflict. He provides insights into the Soviet missile buildup, and the mutual suspicions that prevented any Russian-U.S. arms limitations accord. Khrushchev also presents typically blunt assessments of contemporary world political figures he dealt with, including Mao Tse-tung, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Richard Nixon.
Khrushchev resented his role in retirement as a "special pensioner"—or, as he put it, "a free cossack." One of the few compensations left to him was the freedom to talk about his years in power. This he did at great length and with obvious relish when anyone asked his views on past and present events. His family and friends did more than just listen; they prodded him with questions, and in 1967 urged him to begin tape-recording his stories.
Throughout the 180 hours of tapes that he is known to have made, Khrushchev stressed his concern that his version of events be told, so that future generations of Soviet historians, Communist theoreticians and ordinary Russian citizens would treat his memory with respect. Khrushchev and his family hoped that the memoirs might some day be published in the U.S.S.R., but they also feared that if the reminiscences did not reach the West before he died they might never appear anywhere. They would be impounded after his death by the authorities, and either locked up in party archives or destroyed.
Khrushchev was too shrewd and too proud to accept such a fate for what he called "the substance of my viewpoint." Though publicly powerless, he believed that as a loyal Soviet citizen he could dictate his reminiscences without provoking direct interference from the regime. His family, associates and friends screened the tapes for details of security matters and potentially compromising material. These they removed.