Conversations with Stalin [antikvár]

Foreword I t is in the nature of the human memory to rid itself of the superfluous, to retain only what has proved to be most important in the light of later events. Yet that is also its weak side. Being biased it cannot help adjusting past reality to fit present needs and future hopes. Aware of this, I have endeavored to present the facts as exactly as possible. If this book is still not exempt from my views of today, this should be attributed neither to ill will nor to the partisanship of a protagonist, but rather to the nature of memory itself and to my effort to elucidate past encounters and events on the basis of my present insights. There is not much in this book that the well-versed reader will not already know from published memoirs and other literature. However, since an event becomes more comprehensible and tangible if explained in greater detail and from several vantage points, I have considered it not unuseful if I, too, had my say. I hold that humans and human relationships are more important than dry facts, and so I have paid greater attention to the former. And if the book contains anything that might be called literary, this too should be ascribed less to my style of expression than to my desire to make the subject all the more engaging, clear, and true. While working on my autobiography, the idea oc-