Problems of provenance
The publication of the Khrushchev 'memoirs' raises a number of fundamental questions. Is the book authentic, and if so, to what degree? Is it what it purports to be, namely the reminiscences of Nikita Khrushchev, composed by himself, in his own words? How, when, under what circum- stances and in what form was it composed? In what measure and by whom was it edited?
One must begin by studying the proven- ance of the'memoirs'.Some critics have raised the possibility that the book was composed in the West by a skilful team of professional forgers. This idea can be rejected. Gigantic sums of money are involved. Time Inc allegedly bought the material for more than one million dollars—which they recouped, with a handsome profit. Clearly, the pub- lishers had good reason not merely for con- fidence but for absolute certitude regarding the source of the 'memoirs'. Therefore even the slightest hint of the possibility of a Western forgery must have been excluded from the outset. Why?
Could the Khrushchev `memoirs' have been smuggled out by the same illegal means as hundreds of other Soviet manuscripts whose authenticity has never been in doubt : the works of Solzhenitsyn, Ginsburg, Amalrik, Marchenko, Medvedev, Dzyuba and others. Almost certainly not. The exist- ence of every one of these manuscripts was known in the West long before they came out; they had a wide illegal circulation in- side Russia, and were all acknowledged by their authors.
The Khrushchev 'memoirs' are thus un- doubtedly unique: the only book for whose existence we have no independent con- firmation from the USSR, and which has been specifically disavowed by its author.
Only one possibility remains open; only one explanation for the publishers' otherwise inexplicable million-dollar 'complete con- fidence', namely that they acquired the material through official Soviet channels.
And there is only one organisation in the USSR which has the right, tke power and the resources to conduct a secret operation of this type: the KGB.
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