In the 1950s we had become increasingly concerned about our navy, which consisted mostly of surface ships armed with outmoded artillery. Our military arranged for members of the leadership to inspect the Black Sea Fleet. I attended staff maneuvers on board a cruiser. One of our commanders gave a report on how "our" fleet had met and routed "the enemy" in the map exercises. He started rattling off how "our" fleet was sinking "enemy" ships right and left. He was terribly cocky. It made me sad to listen to him. Finally, I couldn't restrain myself any longer. I interrupted him and said: "Stop! Wait! You keep talking with such certainty about how you've made short work of the enemy, and now you're telling me there's nothing left to do but polish off the enemy. Have you really assessed the situation correctly? If this were a real war and not just a map exercise, your ships would all be lying on the bottom of the sea by now."
He looked at me with complete surprise.
I went on: "You haven't taken into account the missiles which the enemy would certainly be using against you from his shore defenses and from missile-launching planes. We have such a system ourselves, so surely the other side has it too. It's terribly dangerous to underestimate your enemy's capabilities."
The commander was obviously perplexed. "Comrade Khrushchev," he said, "I've never heard of missile-launching planes before. You're telling me something entirely new."
"Then it's our own fault," I told him. "All this information must be classified." I turned to the other members of the Presidium and suggested, "Comrades, let's interrupt our conference and take our naval officers ashore so that they can familiarize themselves with our missile system. It's important that our commanders know both what we have and what the enemy has. Otherwise, in the event of war, they'll make crude miscalculations and get into big trouble." Either then and there, or later when we returned to Moscow, we decided to stop keeping everything secret from our military commanders.
Khrushchev goes on to describe how the Russians developed their first rocket after Stalin's death in 1953. The project was supervised by Sergei Pavlovich Korolyov—"probably our most prominent and brilliant missile designer." Once, Khrushchev recalls, Korolyov reported to the leadership on his work.
I don't want to exaggerate, but I'd say we gawked at what he showed us as if we were a bunch of sheep seeing through a gate for the first time. When he showed us one of his rockets, we thought it looked like nothing but a huge cigar-shaped tube, and we didn't believe it could fly. Korolyov took us on a tour of a launching pad and tried to explain how the rocket worked. We were like peasants in a marketplace. We walked around and around the rocket, touching it, tapping it to see if it was sturdy enough. We did everything but lick it. Some people might say that we were technological ignoramuses.