The Year I Was Peter the Great: 1956 - Khrushchev, Stalin's Ghost, and a Young American in Russia

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“Write a memoir, Marvin!”

The advice would come from family and friends, at first gently but then, after a while, with growing insistence. “You’ve broadcast from everywhere. You’ve written books about Russia, China, Egypt and Israel, the Vietnam War, and Ukraine. You’ve lectured on presidents from Truman to Trump. And at dinners and classrooms, you’ve told fascinating personal stories about your coverage of the Cold War.” And, then, with a knowing nod, they’d add, “It’s time for a memoir.”

Until recently I had resisted. Journalists, I would argue, do not write memoirs; they write “the first draft of history,” the stories they cover. At their best, they are observers of history. They cover major events, such as presidential campaigns, wars, summits, legislative battles on Capitol Hill. They interview presidents, senators, secretaries of state. But they are not actors in a story, or shouldn’t be; they stand on the sidelines, or should, always attempting with an air of detachment to be fair and objective. Only then do they add their analysis, opinion, and perspective. They are the scribes of our time.

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