Thirteen days that changed the world

The Cuban obsession has long been present in the US. Under the pretext of protecting 8000 American civilians, America invaded the island in 1898 and expelled the Spanish. That war was popular in the US and encouraged by the media. From that period, Hirst's message to his war illustrator is remembered: "You finish the picture, and I will finish the war!" In the first Constitution of independent Cuba, which was adopted in 1901, the so-called "Platt Amendment" was introduced, which defined the American right to intervene in Cuba whenever they judge that independence, property rights and individual freedoms are threatened... For this purpose, in 1903, the Americans formed the Guantanamo base in the southeast of Cuba, which is also today in their hands.

For decades, Cuba was an amusement park for the rich, but also for Americans with a criminal past who built hotels, villas and the gambling industry on the island when Fulgencio Batista ruled there, who left the army in 1940 and was elected the leader of the so-called Socialist People's Coalitions. On March 10, 1952, with a military coup, he suspended the constitution and dissolved all political parties in the country.

A young lawyer from Havana, Fidel Castro, with his brother Raul and a hundred comrades, unsuccessfully attacked the Moncada barracks in July 1953 in an attempt to topple Batista. He narrowly escapes death and is arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was amnestied after two years, fled to Mexico, where he founded the Movement "26. July", he meets a left-wing doctor from Argentina, Ernesto Guevara, known as Che, Friend. On the famous yacht "Granma" they return to Cuba, they fight for three years... After Che entered Santa Clara on December 29, 1958, on the night between December 31, 1958 and January 1, 1959, Batista signed the decree with which he resigns and flees from Cuba, and Castro comes to power.

After the victory of the revolution, Fidel first visited the USA and asked for a loan, but they refused him. The economic war began when the telephone and electric companies, oil refineries, 36 largest companies for sugar production, branches of North American banks were nationalized in Cuba... In response, the USA during Eisenhower's time stopped supplying Cuba with oil and stopped buying its sugar. And they did some more.

BAY OF COCKS: CIA sends American-trained Cubans to armed invasion in Bay of Pigs (Bay of pigs), which experienced a debacle on April 17, 1961. In America, the invasion was planned under President Dwight Eisenhower, and the decision was made in the first months of the Kennedy administration.

After the failure of the Bay of Pigs operation in 1961, the US launches the failed Operation Mungos (Operation Mongoose) in 1962, which involved the infiltration of agents to organize terrorist actions and sabotage aimed at destabilizing Cuba. American General Edward Lansdale is mentioned among the writers of the memorandum on the sabotage campaign that the Americans wanted to overthrow Fidel Castro by October 1962, and according to the recently declassified documents, the president's brother Bobby Kennedy.

During his struggle with Fulgencio Batista's regime in the fifties of the last century, Castro turned to Moscow several times for military assistance, but was refused there as well. The USSR recognized Castro's new government relatively early, already on January 10, 1959, only ten days after Batista left the country, but Moscow was skeptical of the leader of the Cuban revolutionaries, the Barbudos, among whom the Communists were not the dominant force, and even of the prospects themselves of the revolution in Cuba, due to the assessment that the influence of the USA there is large.

An anti-imperialist Cuban nationalist in his youth, Fidel first characterized his revolution as socialist on April 18, 1961. Then he signed a trade agreement with the USSR.

Moscow decides to buy 425.000 tons of sugar that remained unsold due to the American embargo and undertakes to buy a million tons each year. During the first visit to Moscow by Che Guevara, then the Cuban Minister of Industry, Havana was given a loan and promised help in building industrial complexes, and sending vital goods that Cuba is unable to import due to the blockade, such as oil and oil derivatives and others.

Fidel Castro's political relations with Moscow, however, were not simple. Castro advocated active support for revolutions throughout the world, and opposed peaceful coexistence with the West. At one point, he even sent members of the pro-Soviet faction of his party to the dock.

ON THE BLACK SEA COAST: In his memoirs, the then General Secretary of the CPSU Nikita Khrushchev writes that the idea of ​​deploying missiles in Cuba came to him in 1962 because of Turkey. During his visit to Bulgaria, one of his associates pointed to the Black Sea and said that on the opposite coast in Turkey there are missiles capable of striking the main economic centers of the USSR within fifteen minutes. In 1959, the Americans deployed 15 medium-range "Jupiter" and "Tor" missiles with a radius of 2400 km near Izmir, Turkey, which threatened the European part of the Soviet Union, including Moscow, and reduced the time for the Soviet response. Similar rockets were also installed in Italy.

"This is like if the Soviets installed their missiles in Mexico or Cuba," said then US President Dwight Eisenhower in 1959 on the occasion of their installation.

Immediately after his return from Bulgaria, Khrushchev discussed the need to deploy Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyk, Deputy Prime Minister Anastas Mikoyan, and Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky, a former commander in the Battle of Stalingrad, in the Kremlin.

Already on May 21, 1962, at a meeting of the Soviet Defense Council, he put the issue on the agenda, and on May 28, a Soviet delegation flew from Moscow to Havana, including the commander-in-chief of the strategic missile units, Marshal Sergey Biryuzov. On May 29, they met with Raúl and Fidel Castro and presented to them the proposal of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Fidel asked for a break to consult with his associates, especially on May 30 with Ernesto Che Guevara. Castro quickly gave a positive response to the Soviet delegates. Raúl Castro visited Moscow in July to refine the details and it was negotiated until the end of that month.

THE INDECIENT KENNEDY: Khrushchev said at the time that he would defend Cuba "not only with words." That meant - rockets. He explained that the USSR was able to paralyze the British and French aggression in the Suez Canal in 1956 when they invaded Egypt, because Soviet missiles could be launched at Great Britain. Khrushchev believed that when the bases in Cuba were established, Kennedy would accept it as a fait accompli - fait accompli. He told his son Sergei that Kennedy would make a fuss about Cuba, then more fuss, and then agree.

Khrushchev, as one of his advisers wrote, got the impression that Kennedy was too young, unprepared for difficult decisions in crisis situations, too indecisive, too intelligent and too weak. Khrushchev got that impression from Kennedy's soft response during the 1961 Berlin Wall crisis.

In May 1962, the USSR began an operation under the code name Operation Anadyr. This is the name of the river that flows into the Bering Sea and the capital of the Chukotka region and a bomber base in the Soviet Far East. Stalin allegedly planned to station a million soldiers in that area in case of a nuclear confrontation with the USA.

During the Anadyr operation, 85 Soviet ships made 185 trips: the USSR secretly transfers from Ukraine to Cuba 40 missiles with nuclear warheads of one megaton, of which 24 R-12 medium-range missiles (and 16 R-14 NATO SS -4 and SS-5) which doubles the number of missiles that can reach the US territory.

The Soviets send to Cuba squadrons of Migo 21, then 42 Il-28 light bombers, two units of tactical "cruise missiles" with nuclear warheads of 12 kilotons with a radius of action of 160 km that fly under the radar, several anti-aircraft batteries, a helicopter regiment of Mi-4, two battalions of T-55 tanks, a Polish bread bakery, three hospitals (with 600 beds). The cruisers "Mikhail Kutuzov" and "Sverdlov", torpedo boats, 11 submarines (including 7 with missiles with atomic warheads) are being sent there... It was planned to send 50.874 soldiers to Cuba.

The first Soviet ships arrived in Cuba in August 1962, and on the night of September 8, the Soviet cargo ship "Omsk" arrived in Havana with medium-range missiles. The second shipment of rockets arrived on September 16. The headquarters was located in Havana, and the ballistic missile divisions were taken to the west of the island, near the village of San Cristobal and to central Cuba in the port of Casilda.

Maskirovka: Marshal Sergei Biryuzov, the commander of the Soviet missile units, explained to Khrushchev after the inspection that the missiles would be camouflaged with palm leaves. The Russians call it maskirovka. Preparations were made in secret, and only a few knew the purpose and nature of the mission. The soldiers were told that they would be sent to cold regions and were equipped with boots, boots, and fur coats. Missile specialists came to Cuba under the names of "machine operators", "irrigation specialists" and "agricultural specialists".

While the weapons were being transported to Cuba that summer, Khrushchev traveled everywhere to divert attention: he was in Petrozavodsk, in Murmansk, from Murmansk he flew to Arkhangelsk, then to Tulsk and Orlovsk, then to the Kursk region, and then to his native Kalinovka, then to Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan... In that series, his meeting with Che Guevara and Aragones should not have caught the eye.

In mid-August 1962, the US received signals from the Germans, the English, the defecting agent Penkovsky, and from its aerial scouts about the unusual activity of the Russian merchant fleet, about deliveries of weapons and, possibly, ballistic missiles. In August 1962, the director of the CIA warned President Kennedy about the possibility of missiles arriving in Cuba, but there was no evidence.

The Americans flew spy planes over Cuba, but with pauses, which were made due to several incidents that caused great anxiety in the atmosphere of the Cold War: on August 30, 1962, an American U-2 mistakenly flew over Sakhalin Island, the Soviets protested, and the Americans apologized. Nine days later a Taiwanese U-2 was lost over the western part of China... A new incident over Cuba would be too much at that point. The Kennedy administration decided to test the new Corona spy satellite.

THE RED DOG IS DIGGING IN THE YARD: Americans finally got a record of Soviet missiles when U-2 pilot Major Richard Heiser took 14 photographs on October 1962, 928 of what turned out to be a construction site for SS-4 missile launch pads in the fishing village of San Cristobal in western Cuba. At the CIA's National Photo Interpretation Center on October 15, they reviewed photographs taken from the U-2 and identified 16 to 32 missiles (SS-4 and SS-5 types) and Ilyushin IL-28 bombers.

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was briefed at midnight. The next morning, the adviser shows Kennedy the photos and briefs him on the CIA analysis. At 6.30:XNUMX p.m., Kennedy convenes a meeting of the nine members of the National Security Council and five of his special advisers, a group called the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EXCOMM).

The top of the military is unanimously in favor of a total attack and invasion of Cuba as the only solution. US Air Force General Curtis LeMay insists on the attack: "The red dog is digging in the back yard of the US, and it must be punished for that." There was a majority in favor of a harsher course, including US Vice President Lyndon Johnson.

First, Kennedy incorrectly concluded that an air attack on Cuba would give the Soviets a reason to occupy Berlin, and that in that case the Allies would think of the Americans as cowboys who are easy on the trigger and are not capable of solving the Cuban situation peacefully. On October 18, Kennedy only discussed the demilitarization of Berlin with the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Gromyk. He did not tell him that he already knew that silos for ballistic missiles were being built in Cuba.

American generals claimed that Soviet missiles in Cuba would seriously disturb the military balance, but the American Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara disagreed with that, reminding that the USA had 5000 strategic warheads at the time, while the USSR had 300, so whether the Soviets will have 340 rockets, it doesn't change anything. In 1990, McNamara reiterated: “The military balance had not been changed. I didn't believe them then, I don't believe them now either."

Despite military pressure, Kennedy decided on a naval blockade as a strong but limited military action. The very term "blockade" was problematic, because under international law, a blockade is an act of war. That is why the term "quarantine" was used, and the legal basis was sought in the Rio agreement of the Organization of American States (OAS) on the defense of the Western Hemisphere against the influence of European colonial powers. This ties in with the Monroe Doctrine of "America for the Americans". In those days, the OAS met and voted against Cuba. Two Argentine destroyers, one Argentine submarine, two Venezuelan destroyers and one submarine subordinated to the American commander in Trinidad were also included in the blockade. The country of Trinidad and Tobago offers a naval base, the Dominican Republic one warship...

INCREASED COMBAT READINESS: Having received a free hand from the Senate to act on the Cuban crisis, Kennedy mobilizes 150.000 reservists. The US armed forces have been put on high alert. New military forces are being moved to Florida. 200 ships are brought to positions around Cuba. The US Tactical Air Command (TAC) has placed 511 aircraft on standby for a flight to Cuba. Twenty-three B-52 bombers armed with atomic bombs were sent into orbit at points from which they could target the USSR.

On Tuesday, October 23, Khrushchev announces that he does not accept the blockade and threatens that, in the event of an American invasion of Cuba, the USSR will retaliate with nuclear missiles. The degree of preparedness of the Red Army has been raised, and at that moment, it is continuing to build bases with launch pads at an accelerated pace. 25 Soviet ships are heading for Cuba.

At ten o'clock in the morning on October 24, the Soviet ships "Gagarin" and "Komiles", accompanied by submarines, approached the American aircraft carrier "Essex" with accompanying warships. McNamara notes that the Soviets were not informed of the blockade line. At 10.32:20 a.m. a report arrived in Washington that XNUMX Soviet ships had stopped or changed course. The Russians remained calm.

At 7.15:25 a.m. on October XNUMX, the American ships "Essex" and "Goering" tried to intercept the Russian ship "Bucharest", but they missed it, quite convinced that the tanker was not carrying military material. Later, they intercept the Lebanese ship "Marukla" which was chartered by the Soviets and allow it to continue sailing after inspecting the cargo and finding agricultural machinery.

BLACK SATURDAY: At one o'clock in the afternoon on October 26, John Scalia, the editor of ABC News, was invited to lunch by Alexander Fomin (spy Alexander Feklisov) and said over lunch, "It looks like there's going to be a war!" He advised Scalia to use his contacts and talk to his friends at the top in the State Department to see if the US was interested in a diplomatic solution. On that day, October 26, the eminent American journalist Walter Lippmann proposed that the Americans withdraw from Turkey and the Soviets from Cuba.

On the evening of October 26, a personal message from Khrushchev arrived at Kennedy's address with a proposal: "we will not send new weapons, and we will withdraw or destroy those in Cuba, if you remove the blockade and promise not to invade Cuba." The message has not been edited. Khrushchev later said that the haste to send the letter was increased by the knowledge that the American military command intended to begin bombing on October 29 or 30.

Events on the ground, however, threatened to ruin everything. Saturday, October 27, was called "Black Saturday" in the White House: an American U-22.000 spy plane was shot down by a Soviet missile at an altitude of 2 meters over Cuba. The Soviet Air Force commander, knowing about Fidel Castro's order to shoot at planes entering Cuban airspace, did not have time to exchange information with the higher command and the plane was shot down by the first S-75 Dvina missile (NATO designation SA-2). and pilot Anderson was killed.

The American generals are looking for an immediate counterstrike - the bombing of anti-aircraft batteries. Kennedy postpones the decision for a day, orders the case to be thoroughly investigated, because the Cubans, not the Russians, may have fired the shots. In order to prevent new provocations, reconnaissance flights are suspended. And Khrushchev orders his anti-aircraft batteries not to open fire.

On the same day, the American spy plane U-2 mistakenly monitored the territory of the USSR for fifteen minutes without authorization. The Soviets responded by raising MiG fighters from Wrangel Island, and the Americans raised F-102 aircraft armed with air-to-air nuclear missiles.

The U.S. Navy dropped a series of depth charges (the size of a hand grenade) that day near a Soviet submarine B-59 on the blockade line, not knowing that it was equipped with a torpedo with a nuclear warhead. The message was supposed to mean: come to the surface, but it caused tension in the submarine. The decision to launch a torpedo could be made by the three chief officers. The commander, submarine captain Valentin Savitsky, who wore an activation key on a lanyard around his neck, lost his temper and ordered the nuclear-tipped torpedo to be readied for combat use. "We will all perish but they will also pay..." The warhead torpedo was intended for coastal facilities that were too far for aircraft carriers. Submarine officer Vasiliy Arkhipov objected, demanding that radio contact with Moscow be established first. From the submarine they sent a message to the Americans "Stop the provocations". There is no evidence that radio contact with Moscow was established. The submarine surfaced later when its batteries ran out. Arkhipov was later praised at meetings about the Cuban crisis as the man who saved the world from nuclear confrontation.

While the State Department was preparing to respond, in the morning hours of October 27, a new message, this time public, arrived from the Kremlin: the exchange between Cuba and Turkey. To make sure that the letter would reach Kennedy on time, the Soviets broadcast it over Radio Moscow at nine o'clock in the morning Moscow time. The Soviet man in Washington had previously told his American colleague to tell the bosses to be sure to listen to the next Radio Moscow broadcast.

CUBA FOR TURKEY: Kennedy immediately (October 27) publicly responded to Khrushchev's first letter concerning the Russian withdrawal from Cuba, ignoring the second which mentioned the American withdrawal from Turkey. Unbeknownst to the Excom members, the president's brother Robert Kennedy met with the Soviet ambassador in Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin, in the Yenching Palace Chinese restaurant in Cleveland Park in Washington DC on the evening of October 27 and assured the president's word of honor that the missiles in Turkey would be removed after the end of the crisis.

In the summer of 1962, American Thor and Jupiter nuclear missiles in Turkey, frustrating the Russians, were ready for use, but it was easy for Kennedy to give them up because he seemed to judge that they could only be used for the first atomic attack, that they were not protected, that they had limited strategic importance, due to the fact that they had hidden missiles that could be launched from submarines.

On October 27, Khrushchev also received a letter from Castro - later described as the Armageddon letter - in which Fidel urges the USSR to use nuclear force in the event of an attack on Cuba, says that he believes that the imperialist aggressors are extremely dangerous, that their brutal act of invading Cuba it is a violation of international law and morality and that it is time to remove such danger forever.

Khrushchev deliberated with his associates in his dacha in Novo Ogarevo and spent the whole night in the Kremlin.

Relief came on Sunday, October 28 when the Soviet government finally agreed to dismantle the offensive weapons in Cuba and return them to the Soviet Union. US President Kennedy and UN Secretary General U Thant reached a public and secret agreement with Khrushchev. Publicly, the Soviets will dismantle the offensive missiles in Cuba under the supervision of the United Nations, and in return the US will issue a declaration that it will never attack Cuba. Secretly, the US agreed to withdraw Jupiter and Torn missiles from Turkey and Italy. In Turkey, they expressed concern about this. The Italians agreed earlier.

At the news that the Soviets would withdraw, Castro, who was not involved in the Soviet-American negotiations, presented his list of five demands, among which were the lifting of the embargo against Cuba and the return of the Guantanamo base to Cuban possession.

The deputy prime minister, Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan, an old Bolshevik who survived all of me in Soviet politics, was sent to Cuba. In New York, he met with the US representative to the UN, Adlai Stevenson, and the former US high commissioner in occupied Germany.

At first, the Russians told Castro that the tactical missiles would remain in Cuba. Later it turned out that they were withdrawing everything.

After negotiations with U Tanta, Fidel Castro declared on Cuban television on November 1, 1962: "We have not in any way violated the law, we have not committed any aggression against anyone." That is why the inspection is another attempt to humiliate our country. That is why we will not implement it."

Since Castro refused any international inspection on Cuban soil to verify the withdrawal of the weapons, the dismantling of the facility was monitored from the air. Two weeks later the Soviets dismantled the missile systems and loaded them onto eight ships. A month later, Soviet Il-28 bombers were loaded onto three Soviet ships.

At the news that the Soviets were withdrawing, Castro became enraged, broke a wardrobe, threw his glasses and called Khrushchev a scoundrel, a son of a whore, and an ass.

The Americans kept to the agreement not to attack Cuba, but it is not certain that they did nothing against Castro.

Eleven months after the agreement with Kennedy Khrushchev (until September 1963), American atomic weapons in Turkey were deactivated. An agreement was reached on the establishment of a hotline (the so-called red telephone) between Moscow and Washington.

The biggest crisis of the Cold War produced something called détente, the relaxation of relations between the US and the USSR, along with the reduction of the atomic arsenal. The SALT I, Helsinki documents, and SALT II treaties were signed (which the US never ratified, while US President Reagan led an anti-detente campaign after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan). This was followed by the treaty on the partial prohibition of nuclear bomb tests, and then the treaty on the prohibition of the spread of atomic weapons. After the collapse of the USSR, the end of the Cold War was announced, so the resetting of relations was mentioned. The agreement on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons was reached in connection with the denuclearization of Ukraine in the 1990s, but it is being seriously tested in recent years during the tensions over Iran and North Korea, and also over the deployment of ballistic missile defense systems in Eastern Europe, which angers the Russians.

Each of the major powers continued to install thousands of nuclear warheads on intercontinental ballistic missiles and to develop satellite reconnaissance techniques. After the Cuban crisis, the confrontation between the great powers took place through war and "non-war" means through conventional local wars from Vietnam to Iraq, through Afghanistan to Libya and Syria...

...and US reconnaissance footage of launchers, rockets, tanks, etc. in Cuba

MAIN PROTAGONISTS: Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy in the residence of the American ambassador in Vienna one year before the outbreak of the crisis...

...and Che Guevara with Fidel Castro

PREPARATION FOR WAR: Anti-aircraft missiles placed in Florida, October 27, 1962. photo: ap

photo: reuters