(4 of 4)
I know that my recollections won't be of any use to those scholars who are covering up the true history of our party and whitewashing Stalin. Perhaps the people for whom I'm recording my memories aren't even born yet. Then again, maybe they are. Maybe they're the generation that's just coming into bloom. I hope so. I'm convinced that if this record of my long life and considerable political experience comes into the hands of objective, courageous scholars, they will find more than a few grains of truth in what I have to say.
I'm not denying that progress has been made. After Statin's death and [Police Chief Lavrenty] Beria's arrest, our people began to feel freer. For the first time they received an opportunity to exercise their right to express their desires and their dissatisfactions. It is essential that people enjoy their inalienable rights here in the Soviet Union as in every other state. It was for these rights that ten million or more of our citizens paid with their lives in Stalin's jails and camps.
But the progress we achieved after Stalin's death has been slowed down, and my viewpoint runs counter to the line being pushed by our historians at the moment. I don't care. As they say, I'm no longer on my way to the fair; I started my journey home a long time ago. Who knows how many years my ticker has left to run.
Everything I've said in my memoirs I say as a Communist who wants a more enlightened Communist society—not for myself, because my time has already come and gone, but for my friends and for my people in the future.