Source: Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997), pp. 240-43.
Chapter 13, "Missile Crisis"
"This May End in a Big War": Moscow, October 22, 1962
Hours before Americans switched on their radio and television sets to see what
their president had to say, Nikita Khrushchev received word that John F. Kennedy
was about to make a major public declaration regarding the Soviet threat. Khrushchev's
sources did not indicate exactly what John Kennedy would say, but the Soviet
leader feared the worst. As Kennedy prepared to receive the congressional leaders
at the White House, Khrushchev assembled the members of the Presidium to discuss
the likelihood of war.
Pessimism reigned in the Kremlin. The sole agenda item listed for the session
was "determining further measures in connection with Cuba and Berlin," a reflection
of the bureaucracy's confusion over which Cold War volcano was about to erupt.
But Khrushchev and his inner circle were convinced that Kennedy's speech would
have something to do with Cuba. Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky, whose GRU
in recent days had been reporting unusual U.S. military activity in the Caribbean,
tried to calm Khrushchev and the others. "I don't think they can undertake anything
at once," he said. As the trademark limousines of the Soviet elite had rushed
to the Kremlin, a feeling of impending doom hung in the air. But Malinovsky,
at least, believed that Moscow would have time to prepare an adequate response.
"Apparently," he continued, "the radio address is a preelection trick." Nevertheless,
the dozen or so men around him were tight-lipped and grim. The news of Kennedy's
forthcoming speech had cut through the growing complacency about the Anadyr
operation like a knife through butter.
Malinovsky wanted the solemn group to understand that there was no need for
panic, the Kremlin would have some time to prepare itself. "If they declare
the invasion of Cuba," he explained, "they will need 24 hours more for final
preparations." Obviously, the Soviet armed forces expected that the Americans
would stage an airborne assault. An amphibious landing, even from Florida, would
require more than twenty-four hours to execute. At this point in the crisis,
Malinovsky did not want to do too much, too soon.
Khrushchev, though he accepted Malinovsky's assessment of the situation, was
in a state of disbelief. "The thing is we were not going to unleash war," he
lamented angrily in front of his colleagues. "We just wanted to intimidate them,
to deter the anti-Cuban forces." Without specifically blaming himself, Khrushchev
acknowledged that mistakes had been made. He mentioned two "difficulties." "We
didn't deploy everything that we wanted to," he began, "and we didn't publish
the treaty." Khrushchev was now thinking that things might have worked out differently
had he gone along with Castro's request to disclose the existence of a Soviet-Cuban
defense agreement in late August. He had resisted, fearing that this might elicit
a violent reaction from Kennedy. Now Moscow was getting the violent reaction
without the treaty.
Khrushchev let the frustration of the moment show. To the men in front of him,
most of whom had experienced the Russian civil war and all of whom had endured
the Second World War and survived Stalin, Khrushchev bared his soul. "It is
tragic," he said. They had come so close to having a deterrent force in Cuba,
so close to making this kind of nightmare unimaginable. Now not only was a U.S.
invasion of Cuba possible; but so was a nuclear exchange involving the Soviet
Union. Nevertheless, Khrushchev was determined to show resolve. "They can attack
us," he said, "and we shall respond." Articulating what was on everyone's mind
in the hall, he added, "This may end in a big war."
No one in the hall doubted that the United States was contemplating
a real war in Cuba. This was not October 1960, January 1961, or even April 1961.
This time a U.S. president was going to spill American blood to destroy Fidel
Castro. How many times, and in how many ways, had Khrushchev tried to avert
this occurrence?
Thinking aloud, Khrushchev started talking about what the United States might
do and how the Soviet Union should respond. "There is a possibility they will
begin with actions against Cuba." In that case, Khrushchev suggested, the Soviets
could announce publicly their obligation to defend the island. On the other
hand, Kennedy might choose some form of nonviolent sanction to force removal
of the weapons. "They may declare a blockade," offered Khrushchev, "and then
do nothing." But he doubted that this was how Kennedy would act. His mind kept
returning to what the Soviet Union would have to do if the United States attacked
Cuba. As "another possibility ...in case of attack," said Khrushchev, the Kremlin
could declare that "all of the equipment belonged to the Cubans and the Cubans
would announce that they will respond." He assured his colleagues that he did
not envision letting Castro threaten the use of the medium-range ballistic missiles
against a U.S. invasion, but as a way of deterring the United States the Cubans
could declare that they would "use the tactical ones."
Khrushchev's musings were not debated. On the assumption that
a U.S. invasion was more likely than a blockade, the Presidium worked out a
set of instructions for the Soviet commander in Cuba, General Pliyev. The group's
first reaction was to take steps to avoid an accidental nuclear exchange. A
cable was drafted that ordered Pliyev to "put all of his forces on alert" but
not to contemplate using any of the nuclear weapons deployed at his command.
The more the Soviet leaders thought about the restrictive language of this cable,
however, the less they liked it. If the Americans attacked, Pliyev and the 41,000-man
Soviet contingent in Cuba would be outnumbered. The nuclear-tipped Luna and
cruise missiles were his only potential salvation. Unwilling to sacrifice the
Soviet group, the Presidium tentatively came up with a different set of instructions.
Pliyev would be authorized to use the tactical nuclear weapons in the event
of a U.S. landing; but without a direct order from Moscow, he was not to fire
the 1,100-nautical-mile R-12s.
Soviet military doctrine in October 1962 provided for the use of nuclear weapons
on the battlefield. Malinovsky's predecessor as defense minister predicted in
1957, "Atomic weapons will be widely employed as organic weapons in the armies."
Articles in Soviet military publications argued that tactical nuclear weapons
would make amphibious landings difficult, if not impossible, and would equalize
U.S. and Soviet naval power. The nuclear torpedoes carried by the four Foxtrot
attack submarines, for example, could knock out an aircraft carrier.
And what would be the U.S. reaction to the first use of nuclear weapons by the
Soviet Union? A look at the blast effects of these weapons left little doubt
that if Pliyev used his battlefield nuclear weapons there would be enormous
pressure on President Kennedy to destroy Cuba, at the very least. Each Luna
had a range of 3l miles and a two-kiloton nuclear payload. It was estimated
that the plane over Hiroshima had a fourteen-kiloton payload. Although the Luna
was much less than one-seventh as powerful as "Fat Boy" (nuclear fire- power
increases or decreases exponentially, not arithmetically), each one would have
a devastating effect on the battlefield. Assuming that the Luna was aimed to
detonate in the air, at an optimal height of 600 feet above the ground, just
one of these missiles would produce a huge fireball about 31 miles from the
launch site. At the epicenter of the blast, there would be 100- mile-an-hour
winds and a crater 130 feet in diameter and 130 feet deep. Any tank or armored
personnel carrier within 500 yards would be destroyed. Un- protected human beings
1,000 yards from the blast site would probably die immediately as a result of
the dramatic increase in air pressure, but those un- fortunate enough to survive
the explosion and the winds would suffer a painful death by radiation poisoning
within two weeks. In addition, fallout would be a long-term problem for areas
of Cuba affected by the blast. In the 1950s, to give the ecosystem on Bikini
atoll in the Pacific any chance of reviving after using it as a nuclear testing
site, the U.S. government had to remove 10 feet of topsoil and replace all of
the palm trees.
These figures for nuclear tonnage are hard to grasp without concrete examples
of how the missiles could change a battlefield. Had Lunas been avail- able to
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who defended the Normandy coast of France from an
Allied invasion in 1944, the Nazis would probably have been able to obliterate
all five D-Day beachheads with no more than ten of these weapons. Moreover,
had the Soviets used Lunas in 1961, all of the Cuban emigres who landed at the
two beaches along the Bay of Pigs would have died. Now, in 1962, with the twelve
at his disposal the Soviet commander in Cuba could easily destroy any beachhead
established by U.S. marines in an invasion of Cuba and obliterate the U.S. base
at Guantanamo, at the south-eastern tip of the island.
The cruise missiles, the FKR, if used, would not have as dramatic an effect
on the battlefield but, as predicted by Soviet military journals, could inflict
heavy costs on the U.S. Navy task force participating in an attack. One FKR
cruise missile carried enough power, roughly twelve kilotons of TNT, to blow
a U.S. aircraft carrier group apart. Of the eighty missiles with nuclear war-
heads originally ordered to be shipped, the Kremlin had already sent thirty-six
to the island.
Concerned that Khrushchev and the Presidium were rushing to the brink of nuclear war prematurely, Malinovsky recommended to the group that it wait until 1 A.M., or 6 P.M. Washington time, to authorize Pliyev to fire the Lunas. Fearful that Washington would somehow learn about this delegation of authority, Malinovsky cautioned that they should not give the Americans "a pretext to use their own nuclear weapons" before this was absolutely necessary.
Persuaded by Malinovsky, the Kremlin decided to send the first
set of conservative instructions immediately, barring the use of any nuclear
weapons. The second set of instructions--the order prepared in September 1962
but not signed by Malinovsky--would be held pending developments in the Caribbean.
At nearly midnight, Khrushchev and his colleagues began a tense vigil--the worst
for Soviet leaders since the initial moments following the news of Hitler's
invasion in 1941. In a matter of hours, Kennedy might force them to order a
nuclear attack.
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