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A few months after his death, additional tapes came into the hands of Time Inc. Like the tapes that were the basis for Khrushchev Remembers, these were also authenticated by voice-print analysis; transcripts of the recordings were again translated and edited by Correspondent Talbott. British Kremlinologist and Khrushchev Biographer Edward Crankshaw, who introduced and annotated the first volume of his memoirs, has provided a preface for the sequel. He writes: "The chief value of the memoirs (and they have, it seems to me, a very great historical value) lies not in the facts they offer but in the state of mind they reveal, more often than not unconsciously, and the attitude not only of Khrushchev himself but also of the whole Soviet leadership to the world. In this respect I found the present volume even more fascinating than the first, though in a different way."
In March, Time Inc. gave all 180 hours of tape recordings and nearly 800,000 words of transcripts to the Oral History Collection of Columbia University. In announcing the acquisition of the material, Director Louis Starr said that the Khrushchev archive "is the most voluminous body of material by a foreign memoirist" in the collection. A team of experts at Columbia is now cataloguing the tapes and indexing the transcripts, which will be available for scholarly research.
Memories of a Free Cossack
I'm a free cossack. A pensioner's lot is simply to exist from one day to the next—and to wait for the end. An idle old age isn't easy for anyone. It's especially difficult for someone who's lived through as tumultuous a career as mine. Now, after a lifetime of weathering countless storms, I've run aground. But I'm not grumbling. There comes a time when every man, no matter how important, gets old and feeble; his faculties begin to break down. I realize that I'm luckier than many people of my age. I haven't seen them, but I hear they just sit around opening and shutting their mouths like fish out of water; their eyes have dimmed; their memories have completely deserted them; they mumble incoherently.
I'm grateful my own memory is still intact. I'm thankful that I have an opportunity to look back and speak out, to express my views openly, to point out our deficiencies, to suggest how we could organize our society in a more harmonious way. I'm glad that I have a chance to make a few observations which might make it possible for people younger than I to enjoy their lives a bit more than people of my generation have been able to enjoy theirs. Now that I'm back dictating my reminiscences, I should explain that for almost half a year I've been in the hospital. During that time many people asked me if it were true that I was writing my memoirs. When I answered, "No," they would look at me with surprise and disappointment and say, "That's too bad because it would be interesting if you were to leave your memoirs to posterity." I agree.