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Father told me what he had said to Kirilenko and Pelshe: "As a citizen of the U.S.S.R., I have the right to write my memoirs, and you don't have the power to deny me that right. I want what I write about to be of use to the Soviet people, to our Soviet leaders and to our nation. The events I have witnessed should serve as a lesson for our future."
I tried to reassure him but couldn't stop worrying myself. I had to find a way to store the material safely until better times came. But there was no absolutely safe place for the tapes and transcripts inside the country. As the conversation with Kirilenko had shown, Khrushchev's name provided only so much protection. Even before the confrontation at the Central Committee, it had occurred to us to look for a safe place abroad. At first Father had hesitated, out of fear that we'd lose control over the manuscript and that it might be distorted and used against our state. But after carefully weighing the pros and cons, he asked me to find a way to get the material out of the country.
I didn't have the foggiest idea of how to carry out this plan. But after Father's encounter with Kirilenko and Pelshe, we came back to the idea of finding a safe hiding place abroad. It was at this time that we first discussed publishing the memoirs as retaliation if they were seized, or in some other extraordinary situation. Publication would solve once and for all the problem of preserving the memoirs and might also reduce the Central Committee's incentive to seize and destroy them in the Soviet Union. Why should they try to search for them if the book was available? What were they going to do? Buy up all the copies?
Aside from the physical problem of getting the memoirs out of the country, there was a moral consideration. It was no longer 1958, but it wasn't yet 1988 either. Only ten years before, Boris Pasternak had drawn thunder and lightning down upon himself by giving his manuscript to an Italian publisher.
Father was bolder than I. His were the memoirs of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he insisted, the confessions of a man who had devoted his entire life to fighting for Soviet power, for a communist society. The memoirs contained truth, words of warning and facts; they should be read by the people. Let them come out first abroad and at home later. The reverse would have been better, but would we live long enough to see such a possibility?
In deciding to take this step, we crossed the threshold from legal to illegal activity. I felt uneasy. Where would it end? Arrest? Internal exile? It was no time to ponder the consequences; it was important to act. Many of those who took part in the effort are still alive, and I can't reveal the details or the names of those who offered their assistance. Many of them asked me not to, and I'm not about to violate their confidence; not everyone wants to become a hero of this book. I would like only to express my sincere thanks to those who helped.
Once the tapes and transcripts had crossed several borders and found a safe haven behind the steel doors of a vault, they were still a highly perishable item and not suitable for lengthy storage. What they had to say would be of use if people read them now, in today's circumstances.