The Crimean Conference

From the Editors:

The veracity of this journal can be neither verified nor vouched for. Russian Life received the leather-bound manuscript in a tattered, tea-stained condition, as payment for debts owed the magazine from an offshore publishing scheme gone wrong. The purveyor of the journal asserted that she had found it wedged under the foreshortened leg of a bedside table in a Crimean seaside cottage. By the looks of things, the journal had been in that location for quite some time.

It would be difficult to impossible to verify the identity of the author of this journal, who seems to be a well-placed NKGB officer, much less to validate much of what is written here. Nonetheless, most if not all of what is recounted rings true to events as we know them from extant historical documents. While the diarist obviously could not have been present at all the meetings and plenary sessions, the entries make clear that he was allegedly in a position to “listen in” to everything taking place in Yalta.