Journalist and author Jerrold Schecter dies

Jerrold L. Schecter, a journalist and author who as Time magazine’s Moscow bureau chief helped spirit the memoirs of former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev into publication in the West, and who later co-wrote a book with a Soviet spymaster who alleged — without evidence, according to the FBI — that architects of the American atomic program had spied for Moscow, died Feb. 6 at his home in Washington. He was 90.

His son Barnet Schecter confirmed his death but did not cite a cause.

Schecter joined Time magazine in the late 1950s and reported from across Asia, with postings in Hong Kong and Tokyo, before becoming Moscow bureau chief in 1968. He became perhaps best known for his role in the publication of a multivolume set of Khrushchev’s memoirs, which offered a rare glimpse into the Soviet Union and the experiences of the leader who had led the Communist power for more than a decade during the Cold War.

After his ouster in 1964, Khrushchev lived in a compound near Moscow, where, with the assistance of his son Sergei Khrushchev, he recorded hundreds of hours of recollections.

Khrushchev’s “family and friends insisted that no details be revealed on how the memoirs were created,” Schecter wrote years later in a publication of the Nieman Foundation, recalling that he had set about “acquiring and secretly validating the authenticity of Khrushchev’s terrifying revelations of how Stalin’s excesses led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.”

Jerrold Leonard Schecter was born in New York City on Nov. 27, 1932. His father was an insurance executive, and his mother was an interior designer.

Besides his wife, survivors include five children, 10 grandchildren and three great-granddaughters.