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Nikita S. Khrushchev speaking to a survivor of the after the city'sSovfoto liberation in 1943. Life article describes part of his role during World War H. Excerpts Depict West's Wartime Aid

Following are excerpts terial aid we received in the cans. Just imagine how we from reminiscences attributed past from our adversaries of would have advanced from by Life magazine to Nikita the present doesn't have any Stalingrad to Berlin without S. Khrushchev concerning bearing on the situation of them! the Western allies' contribu- today. We shouldn't boast In addition we received tion in World War II. that we vanquished the Ger- steel, aluminum and food We must still give credit mans all by ourselves and products in great quantities. to the allies for their contri- that the allies moved in I can't give you the figures bution to the common cause. only for the kill. The English because they're all locked In order to avoid excessive helped us tenaciously and at away in Mikoyan's memory. haughtiness, the people and great peril to themselves. There were many jokes in the party of the They shipped cargo to Mur- the army, some of them off- must be properly informed. mansk and suffered huge color, about American Spam. Unfortunately our histor- losses. German submarines It tasted good nonetheless. ical works about World War lurked all along the way. I repeat, the allies gave us II have , perpetrated an illu- As Mikoyan confirmed to this help neither out of com- sion. They have been written me after the war, we re- passion for our people, nor out of a false sense of pride ceived military equipment, out of respect for our poli- ships and many supplies tical system, nor out of hope and out of a fear to tell the from the Americans. After for the victory of socialism. truth about our allies' con- Stalin's death, it seemed all They were facing a matter of tribution—all because Stalin our artillery [still] was their own life or death. They himself held an incorrect mounted on American equip- helped us so that our Soviet unrealistic position. He knew ment. I remember proposing, Army would not fail and so "Let's turn all the automo- that, supplied with modern the truth, but he admitted it tive equipment we're produc- weapons, we would pulverize only to himself in the toilet. ing over to the military the enemy and weaken our- Telling the truth needn't because all the tractor selves at the same time. have been a humiliation. Rec- mounts in our parade are ognizing the merits of our American-made." Almost all partners in the war need not the artillery in the G.D.R.. : have diminished our own [East Germany] was mount- merits. On the contrary, an ed on American Studebakers. objective statement would I wanted only to stress have raised us still higher how many cars and trucks in the eyes of all people, and, we received from the Ameri- it would not in the least have diminished our dignity. But in this case truthful- ness was unthinkable for Stalin. He tried to cover up our weaknesses. This was stupid. The enemy can al- ways see for himself and an- alyze on his own. It's also possible that Stalin feared openness about the history of the war might have back- fired on him personally. That's a different matter. I don't think it's ever too late for a new generation, which will soon replace the current leadership of our country, to cast objective light on the beginning of the war. We must study the past in order not to permit in our own time those mistakes which were permitted earlier. To acknowledge the ma-