Ousted from power in 1964, Nikita Khrushchev became a nonperson, living out his last seven years under virtual house arrest in the village of Petrovo- Dalneye, on the outskirts of Moscow. To keep himself going but also to make sure that his side of the story survived, Khrushchev dictated hundreds of hours of reminiscences. Many of the tapes were smuggled to the West, and Little, Brown published two volumes of memoirs: Khrushchev Remembers in 1970 and Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament in 1974.
Khrushchev's relatives and friends feared, however, that the former Kremlin ruler had sometimes gone too far in fulminating against the shortcomings of the Soviet system, denouncing political figures who were still alive and exposing what the authorities would consider state secrets. So, to avert reprisals, they held back some of the tapes.
Last year -- with the Soviet Union officially willing as never before to hear the often ugly truth about its past, with Mikhail Gorbachev emulating some of Khrushchev's reforms and with the "special pensioner" of Petrovo- Dalneye undergoing a posthumous rehabilitation -- TIME acquired the missing tapes. It was no wonder they had been kept secret: in them, Khrushchev sheds startling new light on Stalin's complicity in the murder that launched the savage purges of the 1930s; on a secret overture to Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime during World War II; and on Fidel Castro's apocalyptic recklessness during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
What follows is excerpted from Khrushchev Remembers: The Glasnost Tapes, to be published in October by Little, Brown.
My time has passed. I'm very tired. I'm at the age when I have nothing before me but the past. My future is only to go to my grave. I am not afraid of death. In fact, I want to die. My situation is so dull and boring. But I do want this opportunity to express my opinion one last time.
My generation has lived through revolution, civil war, the transition from capitalism to socialism, the Great Patriotic War, the development and strengthening of socialism. I was lucky enough to be part of the process, from the smallest cell of our party organization right on up to the Politburo, and to have been involved in our country's social and political reconstruction ((he uses the word perestroika)).
Based on the most progressive of theories, Marxism-Leninism, we followed a complicated path that included mistakes and outrages -- some deliberate, some innocent. For those, let our descendants forgive us.
I'm not suggesting that what I have to say is the final truth. No, let history be the judge. Let the people decide.
Death in Leningrad
The story of Sergei Kirov's murder helps draw back the curtain on how the meat grinder of the purges got started. First, though, I must describe the atmosphere of those times -- the early days, before a petty bourgeois mentality began to take over the party. Those were romantic times. We gave no thought to dachas and fancy clothes. All our time was spent on work.
When I attended the 17th Party Congress in 1934, we were told that only six people at the congress ((out of 1,966)) had cast votes against Stalin. Years later, it emerged that actually the figure was more like 260, which is incredible if you take into account Stalin's position and his vanity.