Khrushchev's Cold War

by Aleksandr Fursenko

  Just as he was contemplating a possible confrontation in Central Europe, John McCone, the CIA director, returned with reassuring news about the ships that the navy had spotted turning around: “These ships are all westbound, all inbound for Cuba.” When Kennedy asked for clarification, McCone added, “[T]hey either stopped them or reversed direction.” These ships were in the mid-Atlantic, west of the Azores. Not all Soviet ships turned, but among those that did were all those with seven-foot hatches, which U.S. intelligence associated with missile cargoes.

  The news brought some relief and may have been the moment when Dean Rusk turned to McGeorge Bundy and whispered, “We are eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked.” Kennedy reminded the group that the United States would not touch any ship that had stopped or reversed course.63 Soviet submarines, however, had not reversed course.

  The United States was also receiving good news on the diplomatic front. On October 23 the Organization of American States had unanimously passed a resolution supporting a quarantine of Cuba. At the United Nations the Kremlin’s decision to deny categorically that there were missiles in Cuba put Valerian Zorin into an increasingly untenable position. When the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson, asked Zorin on October 25 if Moscow had placed missiles in Cuba, the stage was set for what would be one of the most famous exchanges in the Cold War:

  ZORIN: I am not in an American courtroom, and therefore I do not wish to answer a question that is put to me in the fashion in which a prosecutor puts questions.

  STEVENSON: You are in the courtroom of world opinion right now, and you can answer yes or no.

  ZORIN: You will have your answer in due course.

  STEVENSON: I am prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over.64

  Stevenson then displayed overhead photography of the Soviet missile sites. The spectacle was carried live on American television.

  THE MOOD WAS sober in the Kremlin on Thursday, October 25. A day earlier Khrushchev had sent a strong letter to Kennedy that described the U.S. naval blockade as illegal and suggested that the only way for the United States to avoid a military confrontation was to back down. “Naturally,” he had written, “we will not simply be bystanders with regard to piratical acts by American ships on the high seas.”65 This day, however, Khrushchev viewed the situation around Cuba differently. He had become convinced that he should take the initiative before events spiraled out of control. Zorin’s humiliation at the UN had not yet happened when Khrushchev reconvened the Presidium to propose a way out of this crisis. The Soviet leader believed the time had come for tactical flexibility, and he suggested a straight trade.66 If Kennedy would offer a pledge not to invade Cuba, Khrushchev would order the removal of the ballistic missiles.

  Khrushchev tried to explain the retreat as a Soviet success. “There is no doubt the Americans have turned into cowards,” he said.67 Referring to an old Russian proverb, he added, “Apparently Kennedy slept with a wooden knife.” His reference was too obscure even for wily old Mikoyan. “Why a wooden knife?” Mikoyan asked. “When a person goes bear hunting for the first time,” Khrushchev explained, “he brings a wooden knife with him, so that cleaning his [soiled] trousers will be easier.” The tension in the room broke with this exchange.

  The joke was really on Khrushchev. It was he who was afraid at this point in the crisis and needed the protection of a fake weapon. But there was an element of truth to his hopefulness that Kennedy might take the trade. Although Khrushchev had started out with a much broader agenda than saving Fidel Castro, if Kennedy took the deal, it could be said that at least the missile scheme had prevented a future U.S. attack on Cuba. Khrushchev tried to convince his listeners that removing the R-12s from Cuba would also come at no cost to Soviet security. “We can [still] defeat the USA from USSR territory,” he said without fully believing it. About the consequences for his dream of starting a crisis over Berlin in the fall, he made only one vague, passing reference: “[We] have succeeded in some things and not in others.” Afterward discussion of the Berlin tie-in immediately became taboo.

  Khrushchev found it hard to sustain his bravado. As he continued talking, he came to admit the terror that he and the others had felt since Kennedy’s October 22 speech. “The initiative is in our hands; there is no need to be afraid. We started out and then we got afraid.

  “[But] this is not cowardice,” Khrushchev said defensively about the proposed deal; “it is a prudent move.” Cuba was not a good enough reason for the Soviet Union to wage war with the United States, he argued, because “the future does not depend on Cuba, but on our country.” Nevertheless, he was not suggesting that Moscow abandon Havana. He recommended that in return for a noninvasion pledge from the United States the Soviet Union offer only to remove the R-12 ballistic missiles—the R-14s had not yet arrived—but to leave “the other missiles,” presumably the nuclear-tipped Lunas and cruise missiles to protect the Cubans in the future. “This way we will strengthen Cuba and save it for two to three years. Then in a few years it will get even harder for [the United States] to deal with it.”

  Khrushchev’s colleagues voted unanimously that night to approve this diplomatic retreat. None of them, including Mikoyan, forced Khrushchev to take personal responsibility for this calamity. His call for prudence must have rung hollow to those who had watched how since Vienna he had repeatedly advocated brinkmanship—creating a meniscus—to achieve Soviet foreign policy goals. On this most difficult night, however, his colleagues left it to his judgment when to make the offer to Kennedy. They should “look around,” he said, and find the right time to suggest the trade.68 The offer would be made in a letter to the U.S. president that Khrushchev would dictate. In the meantime, to lessen the risk of war, he recommended that the last ship on the high seas carrying “special cargo,” a euphemism for nuclear materials, be returned to Soviet shores.

  In light of Khrushchev’s ambitious plans for the fall of 1962, the collapse of Anadyr represented a major personal defeat. The defense of Cuba had not been Khrushchev’s sole concern and certainly was not the principal reason why he had opted to send nuclear missiles to the island. Nevertheless, it was a good fallback position that in the eyes of the world and his Cuban allies the trade would be consistent with the ostensible goals of his policy toward the island regime. “The rockets have served a positive role,” he assured his colleagues, “[and] if need be, the rockets can appear there again.”

  That night, after the meeting, Khrushchev may have also asked that feelers be sent to the Americans in advance of his letter.69 Soviet intelligence had been reporting that Kennedy wanted some kind of diplomatic settlement. But all this was vague, and as yet the Kennedy administration had avoided talking directly to the GRU’s Bolshakov or Ambassador Dobrynin. Despite the Kremlin’s security precautions, Khrushchev’s interest in a diplomatic settlement may have reached the headquarters of the KGB. Vladimir Semichastny, the chairman of the KGB, had not been invited to the October 25 meeting.70 But his patron, Aleksandr Shelepin, the former chief of the KGB, who was now a full-fledged member of the Presidium, had been there. To the end of his days Semichastny denied receiving any special request that night to test the White House’s interest in a diplomatic settlement. Nevertheless, the next morning the KGB station chief in Washington did propose to an American journalist the very same deal discussed hours earlier in the Kremlin.

  Since his arrival in Washington in early 1962 on his current mission, Aleksandr Feklisov had considered ABC News’s John Scali a useful contact. “He came from Boston, and I thought he knew the Kennedys,” Feklisov later remembered.71 Feklisov was a legendary case officer in Soviet intelligence, having once handled the famous atomic bomb spy Julius Rosenberg. Scali, a balding spark plug, was among the generation of serious journalists who had made their start in print journalism before he became pioneer of television news. Scali was more accustomed to cultivating sources than being one himself, but after the FBI suggested it
was a good thing for the country that he get to know Feklisov, the two had started meeting regularly.72

  On October 26 Feklisov called to arrange an urgent meeting with Scali. They met for lunch at the Occidental, tucked beside the Willard Hotel. The restaurant was not the place for a secret rendezvous. It was the favorite hangout of many Washington political stars and even of those less known to newspaper readers. The high-level intelligence professional and future director of central intelligence Richard Helms had a designated table.

  The conversation between Scali and Feklisov that day became a source of controversy. Kremlin records suggest that the version later recounted by Scali was the more credible one.73 Feklisov asked Scali what he “thought” of a three-point approach to ending the crisis:

  The Soviet missile bases would be dismantled under UN supervision.

  Fidel Castro would promise never to accept offensive weapons of any kind, ever.

  In return for the above, the United States would pledge not to invade Cuba.

  This was almost word for word the scheme that Khrushchev had proposed to his colleagues in Moscow the night before. Scali rushed the plan to his contact in the State Department.74

  Whatever the Kremlin’s role in this feeler, Khrushchev had already decided not to wait for any further word from Kennedy before sending his letter. He had a green light from his colleagues to concede whenever the time was right. That moment came the next day. Early on Friday, October 26, Khrushchev received a stream of information indicating the likelihood that the Americans were readying an attack for October 27. None of this was hard evidence. The best was some barroom gossip that a Russian émigré who worked as a bartender picked up at the National Press Club. Late on October 25 the New York Herald Tribune’s Warren Rogers and his editor Robert Donovan were blowing off some steam after a tense day. Rogers had just been selected for the Pentagon’s pool for any invasion of the island and thought he might be called down to Florida the next day. The Reuters correspondent in Washington, P. Heffernan, and an agent code-named Gam told the GRU and the KGB roughly the same thing.75 Finally, Osvaldo Dorticós, the Cuban president, shared his anxieties with Soviet military intelligence at about the same time.76 Swayed by these shards of information about the thinking in the White House, Khrushchev decided it was time to seek his diplomatic out.

  The U.S. Embassy received Khrushchev’s long personal letter to Kennedy just before 5:00 P.M., Moscow time, on October 26. Khrushchev offered to remove the missiles in return for a U.S. pledge not to invade the island. “We, for our part, will declare that our ships, bound for Cuba, will not carry any kind of armaments. You would declare that the United States will not invade Cuba with its forces and will not support any sort of forces which might intend to carry out an invasion of Cuba. Then the necessity for the presence of our military specialists in Cuba would disappear.”77 To make sure Kennedy understood that he meant removing the missiles, Khrushchev wrote, “[I]f there is no threat, then armaments are a burden for every people. Then, too, the question of the destruction, not only of the armaments which you call offensive, but of all other armaments as well, would look different.”78

  A VERY NOISY tin can armed with a nuclear torpedo posed a threat to Khrushchev’s efforts to get out of the Cuban mess without a catastrophe. By October 26 the batteries on Nikolai Shumkov’s submarine were running low. A submarine could stay underwater only three or four days before the batteries had to be recharged. Shumkov had not been able to recharge for days, and two of his motors did not have enough power to work. It would take a whole day on the surface, running the diesel engines on a mixture of oil and air, to recharge the batteries. He knew he was not going to get anywhere near twenty-four hours of peace on the surface to recharge, but he had to try to get some recharging done. He prepared to take his chances whenever he had the cover of night. An attempt late on October 25 had failed when he had seen a U.S. ship, so he tried again at about 10:00 P.M. East Coast time (2:25 A.M., Zulu time) on October 26. “We went up and managed to recharge for about two or three hours. [Then] I was told that from four directions U.S. antisubmarine warfare ships were approaching me.”79 Neither the submarine nor its pursuers were using floodlights, a violation of the rules of international navigation, but this was a moment of possible combat, not commerce.

  The Americans had detected the surfaced submarine with night vision goggles and radar. C-18 was a sitting duck. “When I heard that they had detected us,” Shumkov recalled, “I ordered the recharging to stop and for the submarine to submerge.” Sluggish because of its weakened power plant, C-18 began its dive only just in time to miss an onrushing U.S. destroyer that sliced the water above its conning tower. “That night nearly became catastrophic for us.” To alert the Soviet sub that it had been caught in this game of high-stakes tag, the U.S. ship dropped three grenades on C-18. “When they blew up those grenades,” Shumkov said, “I thought they were bombing us.”

  Refusing to surface, Shumkov ordered the dive to continue, but soon there was another emergency. He received word that a leak had developed in one of the submarine’s compartments. The textbook answer to this kind of problem was to surface. If too much water leaked in, the submarine might sink uncontrollably. Shumkov knew surfacing was no option with U.S. ships still prowling above. Fortunately it turned out to be a microfracture that his crew was able to repair. Shumkov nearly died twice in one day. It is not known if the Kremlin ever learned of this encounter before the crisis was over.

  WHEN THEY MET in Vienna, John Kennedy had teased Khrushchev for having enough time for long visits with American columnists like Walter Lippmann.80 Although he never learned English—his wife and his children did learn the language—Khrushchev always made time to read in translation what the prominent U.S. columnists were saying about him. To the extent he could approve of any bourgeois views, he appreciated Lippmann’s realism. The columnist, who had known the famous American Bolshevik John Reed at Harvard, seemed to understand what was and was not possible in international relations. Often his knowledge seemed to indicate some inside information.

  At some point late Friday, October 26, or early Saturday, October 27, Khrushchev was given Lippmann’s October 25 column. The writer recommended a different variation on the diplomatic deal to end the crisis from that which Khrushchev had just sent to Kennedy. Equating the Soviet missile base in Cuba with the U.S. Jupiter missile base in Turkey, Lippmann suggested that the superpowers dismantle both to end the missile crisis.

  Lippmann’s idea hit Khrushchev just as he was beginning to doubt his own fears about what Kennedy would do.81 It had been more than four days since Kennedy had given his quarantine speech, and nothing had happened. The U.S. president probably knew that some of the Soviet ships had turned around, but Khrushchev in protest of the blockade continued to send to Cuba innocuous freighters and tankers, which were about to be boarded. Why had the White House not used force by now? Then there were the shards of intelligence information about an invasion that he had received. According to Rogers and the others, the attack should be occurring. Yet it hadn’t.

  Could it be that Kennedy was making him an offer through Lippmann? That was a new idea for Khrushchev. But even if Lippmann’s proposal was solely the product of his creative mind, the fact that the administration seemed paralyzed meant that Khrushchev could probably get a better deal to end the whole affair. Flush with the most confidence he had felt since the dreadful night of October 22, Khrushchev decided to up the ante.

  In the Presidium he recommended sending yet another letter to Kennedy. This one demanded that Kennedy promise the withdrawal of the Jupiter missiles in addition to the conditions outlined in the letter of October 26. Thus the famous second letter of the missile crisis was born. “If we did this,” Khrushchev said enthusiastically, “we could win.”82

  Excited about the prospects suggested by this new offer, Khrushchev wanted it sent immediately. Kennedy had yet to respond to his October 26 proposal; perhaps this could forestall his acceptin
g the less advantageous offer. Instead of using a confidential channel, as he had done with his previous letters, Khrushchev instructed that this one be read by Radio Moscow. That was how Fidel Castro learned that Moscow was trying to negotiate away its Cuban nuclear base.

  PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S Excomm met continuously throughout the crisis, and the appearance of the two letters from Khrushchev confused him and his advisers. First, Khrushchev seemed to be prepared to remove the missiles with merely a noninvasion pledge in turn. Then on the morning of Saturday, October 27, the Excomm received Khrushchev’s public letter calling for the removal of the Jupiters from Turkey. Opinions differed on why the change had occurred. There was some thought that perhaps the hard-liners around Khrushchev had forced him to demand a higher price for removing the missiles from Cuba. No one near Kennedy could imagine that it was Khrushchev himself who was desperately trying to save face by achieving at least a small shift in the nuclear balance of power.

  The news later on October 27 that a U-2 piloted by Major Rudolf Anderson had been shot down on a photographic mission over Cuba increased the tension. For many in Washington this seemed to be a deliberate ploy by Moscow to keep the heat on Kennedy as he wrestled with the two letters. Ultimately the president chose to send a formal response only to the first letter. He and his advisers differed on how to finesse Khrushchev’s Jupiter demand in the second letter. Accepting it would require the participation of the Turks, who were already signaling that they did not want the Jupiters to be part of any trade, and many in the Excomm were solidly against giving Khrushchev this concession.