World: The Story Behind the Story

Few modern publishing events have aroused more intense speculation than the appearance of Former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s reminiscences in LIFE, excerpted from a forthcoming book to be published by Little, Brown entitled Khrushchev Remembers. The story behind the story—how the book reached the West—has been the subject of hundreds of newspaper articles. Khrushchev himself denounced the reminiscences, though in curiously muffled style. LIFE’s confidence in their authenticity was backed up last week in two stories by the Moscow correspondents of the New York Times and the Washington Post. The Post story quoted “unofficial but exceptionally well-equipped Soviet sources” as saying that the reminiscences “are genuine.” The sources also claimed that Khrushchev was summoned by top authorities to Moscow and compelled to sign his denial.

The spy-story flavoring has included mention in the press of secret hotel meetings, coded Telex messages, smuggled transcripts, hidden political struggles and numbered Swiss-bank accounts. The BBC put together an 18-minute show, complete with maps showing certain points where portions of the manuscript were supposedly delivered from the Soviet Union, and an on-the-scene report from the Copenhagen hotel where the final deal is said to have been made.

Since LIFE felt that it could not disclose specific information about its acquisition, the question was how to prove its authenticity. Among other supporting evidence was the conviction of British Sovietologist Edward Crankshaw, who pronounced the manuscript “quite unmistakably” the former Premier’s work and agreed to write an introduction. To ensure that the work appeared for what it was—material that Khrushchev had compiled without the benefit of formal research—LIFE explained in a publisher’s note that the book came “from various sources at various times and in various circumstances.” It also insisted that the material be referred to as “reminiscences,” implying the informality of its preparation, rather than a “memoir.”

Most authorities preferred to wait until publication of the book before making judgments. A few, however, voiced immediate doubts. Harrison E. Salisbury, an associate managing editor of the New York Times and a longtime observer of the Soviet Union, complained in a bylined story after the first installment appeared that it was flawed by “basic historic and chronological errors, more, it would seem, than are plausible to attribute to an old man’s fading memory.”

Salisbury cited six inaccuracies. Stalin’s daughter Svetlana (who defected from the Soviet Union in 1967 and is now Mrs. William Peters of West Scottsdale, Ariz.) told Salisbury that Stalin almost always called her “Svetochka,” a very intimate variation of her name, rather than the affectionate but less intimate “Svetlanka,” as Khrushchev remembers. It is likely, however, that Khrushchev referred to her as he used to address her, “Svetlanka.”

Family Link. Mrs. Peters also disputed Khrushchev’s recollection that Stalin had developed a passion for cowboy movies; she admitted, though, that she saw little of her father during the last few years of his life, the period to which Khrushchev was referring.

The other errors involve mistaken dates of decades ago. Khrushchev remembers dinners hosted by Stalin and his second wife Nadezhda, which he dates at a time when she had already died. Crankshaw and Translator-Editor Strobe Talbott state in the forthcoming book that Khrushchev confused some facts. They debated whether to correct him, says Talbott, but decided to “allow him to speak in his own words,” even when he was “telescoping events”; in some cases, they point out errors in footnotes.

For all his reservations, Salisbury did not rule out the authenticity of the reminiscences. Indeed, he speculated that “one link” in the book’s appearance might be Khrushchev’s son-in-law, Aleksei Adzhubei, a former editor of the government newspaper Izvestia. The same hunch appeared in a story by the Times’s Moscow correspondent, Bernard Gwertzman: “It is not ruled out that some member of his family or a close friend had been taking notes of discussions with him or had tape recordings, and arranged to smuggle them out.”

Possible Boswells. The Khrushchev family abounds with possible Boswells. Adzhubei’s wife Rada, 40, one of Khrushchev’s four daughters, has worked as deputy editor of the monthly Science and Life. Granddaughter Yulia, whose father Leonid, the elder Khrushchev son, was killed during World War II, studied journalism at Moscow University and has worked for Trud, the trade union newspaper. Her husband Lev, who died in July, was an editor of the news agency Novosti and of the English-language magazine Soviet Weekly. With that many journalists in the Khrushchev household, it would not be surprising if the old man’s nostalgic story-telling sessions had been recorded.

As for how his words reached the West, one prevalent speculation is that they were brought to Denmark by Victor Louis, a Russian-born journalist (real name: Vitaly Lui) with close ties to the KGB, the Soviet secret police. It was Victor Louis who tried to beat Western publishers into print by offering European firms a version of Svetlana’s Twenty Letters to a Friend. Either Louis or other KGB men are known to have placed authentic manuscripts in the West, often to try to convict the authors of anti-Soviet propaganda. British Journalist Louis Herren speculated that any KGB involvement might reflect a split between the organization’s hard-liners and a more moderate faction that is anxious to counter the neo-Stalinist tendencies of the present leadership with Khrushchev’s anti-Stalinist views.*

Soviet sources told the Washington Post’s Anthony Astrachan that the authorities allowed release of the reminiscences, which cover a period ending shortly after the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, in the hope of preventing the appearance of a later, more comprehensive version—possibly including the story of his downfall in 1964. The authorities also hoped that errors in the unpolished reminiscences might discredit the document in the West.

According to sources quoted in both the Post and the Times, Khrushchev was unaware that any version of his reminiscences had reached the West when LIFE announced publication. Several days later, the informants said, he received a telephone call from Arvid Pelshe, a Politburo member and chairman of the Party Control Commission, which runs checks on party members. “We have business with you,” he said. Though ailing, Khrushchev was picked up at his dacha and driven to the Kremlin, where he was confronted with the news of publication and an already prepared statement of denial. Khrushchev, according to the reports, denied any personal part in the publishing arrangements and signed the statement after making a few changes in wording. A few days later, he was admitted to a hospital for prominent officials, reportedly for treatment of a recurring heart ailment, and he was still there last week.

* The KGB probably had no involvement in some of the more spectacular phonies foisted on the West. The so-called “memoir” by the late Maxim Litvinov, Stalin’s Foreign Commissar, was actually produced by a Soviet defector in Paris, while The Penkovsky Papers, purportedly the diaries of a spy in the upper echelon of the Soviet intelligence system who was caught and shot, were allegedly partly concocted by the CIA.