Skip to main content

Nikita Khrushchev and the Decision to Deploy

  • Chapter
The Cuban Missile Crisis
  • 225 Accesses

Abstract

For many years, historians had been forced to speculate on the motives behind Nikita Khrushchev’s decision in spring 1962 to deploy offensive, surface-to-surface missiles in Cuba. Apart from Khrushchev’s own memoirs, the evidence was scant. But with the advent of Mikhail Gorbachev and glasnost, all that appeared to change. Former Soviet officials, some who played a role in the events of 1962 and others who were intimate with those who participated, have recently furnished long-starved students of the missile crisis with their version of events. This has undoubtedly been helpful in reconstructing the Soviet side of the story.1

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes and References

  1. Dean G. Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York: Norton, 1969); James F. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly (New York: Harper, 1947), and All in One Lifetime (New York: Harper, 1958); Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, I and II (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955–56); Sorensen, Kennedy; Schlesinger, A Thousand Days; Pierre Salinger, With Kennedy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966); Bowles, Promises to Keep.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Blight and Welch, On the Brink, 229, 238; Bruce J. Allyn, James G. Blight, and David A. Welch, eds, Back to the Brink: Proceedings of the Moscow Conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis, January 27–28, 1989 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1992), 7; essays by Raymond L. Garthoff, Barton J. Bernstein, and Thomas G. Paterson in Diplomatic History 14 (Spring 1990): 225, 232, 249–56.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Edward Crankshaw, Khrushchev (London: Collins, 1966), 11–13; Fedor Burlatsky, Khrushchev and the First Russian Spring, trans. Daphne Sillen (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991), 161; memorandum of conversation, 30 October 1959, POF, box 126, JFKL; Beschloss, Crisis Years, 16.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Sergei Khrushchev, Khrushchev on Khrushchev: An Inside Account of the Man and His Era, ed. and trans. William Taubman (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990), 21–2; Raymond L. Garthoff, Soviet Strategy in the Nuclear Age, rev. ed. (New York: Praeger, 1962), 150–1; Michael P. Gehlen, The Politics of Coexistence: Soviet Methods and Motives (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967), 67–108; Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers (1970), 469–70.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Stephen S. Kaplan et al., Diplomacy of Power: Soviet Armed Forces as a Political Instrument (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1981), 163–4; Nikita S. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, ed. and trans. Strobe Talbott (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), 24–34.

    Google Scholar 

  6. George F. Minde II and Michael Hennessey, “Reform of the Soviet Military under Khrushchev and the Role of America’s Strategic Modernization,” in Robert O. Crummey, ed., Reform in Russia and the U.S.S.R.: Past and Prospects (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 182.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Robert C. Tucker, Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia: From Lenin to Gorbachev (NewYork: Norton, 1987), 121–5; Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers (1974), 12, 219–20; Garthoff, Soviet Strategy, 57; William T. Lee, The Estimation of Soviet Defense Expenditures, 1955–1975: An Unconventional Approach (New York: Praeger, 1977), 98.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Vasilii D. Sokolovskii, ed., Soviet Military Strategy, trans. and intro. Herbert S. Dinerstein, Leon Goure, and Thomas W. Wolfe (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963), 14–15.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Khrushchev, “Arms Budget Raised One-Third, Khrushchev Discloses,” Current Digest of the Soviet Press 13 (2 August 1961): 3–6; Norman Gelb, The Berlin Wall (London: Michael Joseph, 1986), 71; Sokolovskii, ed., Soviet Military Strategy, 19–20.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers (1974), 397; typescript of conversation between Khrushchev and Stevenson, 5 August 1958, in Johnson, ed., Papers of Adlai E. Stevenson, VII, 268, 270–1. The emphasis in the quotation is in the original memorandum.

    Google Scholar 

  11. “Message from N.S. Khrushchev, Chairman of the U.S.S.R. Council of Ministers, to U.S. President J. Kennedy,” Current Digest of the Soviet Press 13 (17 May 1961): 4–5, 7–9; Minde and Hennessey, “Reform of the Soviet Military,” 195–6.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Joseph L. Nogee and Robert H. Donaldson, SovietForeignPolicy sinceWorldWarII (New York: Pergamon, 1981), 110–11.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Bryant Wedge, “Khrushchev at a Distance — A Study of Public Personality,” Trans-Action 5 (October 1968): 27; Walter Lippmann, “Today and Tomorrow,” Washington Post, 19 April 1961, in POF, box 126, JFKL.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984), 502–4, 516–21, 525–6.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Richard Lowenthal, “After Cuba, Berlin?” Encounter 19 (December 1962): 49; Burlatsky, Khrushchev and the First Russian Spring, 174.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Adam B. Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence: The History of Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1967 (New York: Praeger, 1968), v; Burlatsky, Khrushchev and the First Russian Spring, 156.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Nogee and Donaldson, Soviet Foreign Policy, 208–13; Lowell Dittmer, Sino-Soviet Normalization and Its International Implications, 1945–1990 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1992), 5–7, 23, 29–32.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Hugh Thomas, Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1971), 1263–6, 1279, 1289–91.

    Google Scholar 

  19. William Taubman is one of the few scholars to suggest that Khrushchev may have put missiles in Cuba for reasons other than just wishing to repair the strategic gap and to protect Cuba. See Allyn et al., eds., Back to the Brink, 121–2.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Blight and Welch, On the Brink, 332; Allyn et al., eds., Back to the Brink, 29, 50–1, 54–5, 151; Tad Szulc, Fidel: A Critical Portrait (New York: William Morrow, 1986), 578–9, 582; Blight, Allyn, and Welch, Cuba on the Brink, 198.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Roy A. Medvedev, Khrushchev, trans. Brian Pearce (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), 184; Raymond L. Garthoff, “Cuban Missile Crisis: The Soviet Story,” Foreign Policy 72 (Fall 1988): 66.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Allyn et al., eds., Back to the Brink, 51–2, 71, 123; ‘Draft Agreement between Cuba and the USSR on Military Cooperation and Mutual Defense‘, August 1962, in Laurence Chang and Peter Kornbluh, eds, The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: A Documents Reader (New York: New Press, 1992), 54–6.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Bernd Greiner, “The Soviet View: An Interview with Sergo Mikoyan,” Diplomatic History 14 (Spring 1990): 213–14.

    Google Scholar 

  24. Garthoff, “Cuban Missile Crisis,” 67; Raymond L. Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1989), 18; Martin Tolchin, “U.S. Underestimated Soviet Force in Cuba during ‘62 Missile Crisis,”’ New York Times, 15 January 1992; Anatoli I. Gribkov and William Y. Smith, Operation ANADYR: U.S. and Soviet Generals Recount the Cuban Missile Crisis (Chicago: Edition Q, 1994), 28.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Garthoff, Reflections, 20; Gribkov and Smith, Operation ANADYR, 2627. There is some confusion over the precise number of medium and intermediate-range missiles that were to be deployed. See the previous Gribkov citation for somewhat different figures.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., “Four Days with Fidel: A Havana Diary,” New York Review of Books, 26 March 1992, 23; Malinovsky to Pliyev, quoted in Cold War International History Project Bulletin 2 (Fall 1992): 40; Mark Kramer, “Tactical Nuclear Weapons, Soviet Command Authority, and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” and James G. Blight, Bruce J. Allyn, and David A. Welch, “Kramer vs. Kramer: Or, How Can You Have Revisionism in the Absence of Orthodoxy?” Cold War International History Project Bulletin 3 (Fall 1993): 40–50; Gribkov and Smith, Operation ANADYR, 4–6, 27–28, 46, 62–63.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Greiner, “The Soviet View,” 214–15; Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: HarperCollins, 1971), 107–8.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Copyright information

© 1996 Mark J. White

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

White, M.J. (1996). Nikita Khrushchev and the Decision to Deploy. In: The Cuban Missile Crisis. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230374508_3

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230374508_3

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-39384-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-230-37450-8

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics