(Part III of the Cuban triptych.)
…So far, it had looked like Fidel had to be dragged kicking and screaming into any kind of deal beneficial to Soviet interests. But in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, the impulsive Barbudo suddenly erupted with this shocking double dare: Would the Russians like to build a military base on Cuba, and put nuclear weapons on Cuban territory?
...Defense Minister Raúl had no desire to become Refugee Raúl. He seemed genuinely scared now that his brother’s recklessness might just result in a direct military invasion of Cuba by the United States.
His outrage was, however, grievously misplaced, because this was not how the situation was being viewed by Comrade Khrushchev. He and Fidel were birds of a feather, which should explain a certain unmistakable chemistry between them. But sentimental attraction alone was not enough to do the trick. It so happened that some time prior to Fidel’s brave offer, Khrushchev had been struck by an exceptionally bright idea of his own. For some time now, whenever he visited his Black Sea dacha in the Crimea, Khrushchev was by no means a happy man. He liked to sit on the beach in his comfortable folding chair, looking at the sea. While thus reclining he would now frequently sit up, hit his thigh with his fist, and start complaining, muttering the same thing over and over again, pointing his finger to the sea, toward the horizon, in what, to him, would be the approximate direction of the country of Turkey:
“Them *** rockets, like, always look at me across the water, and make me sleep bad at night!”
He was complaining about the American nuclear missiles, recently deployed in Turkey under the NATO accord. Anybody who knew him well enough, also knew that it was not some clever metaphor on his part, but the real thing. He was genuinely upset at such an invasion of his privacy, and particularly concerned about the possibility of an accidental nuclear launch over the Black Sea.
Aside from Turkey, there were, of course, other American missiles, deployed in Western Europe, but those did not concern Khrushchev so much. After all, Russia was nicely padded from them by a belt of foreign tissue: the Socialist satellites of Eastern Europe. There was a time, not long ago, when young Russian lads had been spilling their blood defeating Hitler and liberating his captives. Khrushchev’s own son Leonid had been killed in that war. So, should Eastern Europe be slightly nuked today by the West, in a freak accident, no sweat! It would be their time to return the favor.
But Turkey was different. There was no padding between the American rockets and the Russian soil here, except for a stretch of water and Comrade Khrushchev’s semi-naked body reclining in a chaise longue on the deceptively peaceful beach. For this reason, he could no longer enjoy his Black Sea vacations, and was always dreaming of devising something special to put an end to this distressing situation. And now, yes, he did have an idea!
...During Khrushchev’s “glorious decade” of ruling over Russia, there was a very popular joke about Nikita Sergeyevich rising from his drunken stupor and mumbling, “Idea!” which in drunken Russian is virtually indistinguishable from “Where the hell am I?” Wherever his famous pearls were coming from, the idea of using Cuba to make Washington shut down its missile installations in Turkey, was certainly Khrushchev’s historic masterpiece. This is how he presented its essence:
So, our Barbudo Fidel is offering Cuba as a Soviet military base? Wonderful. Let’s now hit the Americans straight between the eyes! No, not on the battlefield, God forbid!, but at the negotiating table. Now, if we tell Kennedy “Get the hell out of Turkey!” he will ask “What’s in it for me?” and we have nothing to give him in exchange. All we’ve got is neatly tied up in a package, and we don’t want that package to unravel, should we start pulling something out of it, for Mr. Kennedy’s pleasure.
But if we accept Fidel’s invitation, here’s some quick loose change for you, Mr. Kennedy, “You get out of Turkey, and we get out of Cuba, and everybody is happy!”
When Raúl heard of Moscow’s decision to send missiles to Cuba, he was in disbelief. Yes, Raúl knew the cover story: Khrushchev was ostensibly giving his bearded friend deterrence against a repeat of the Bay of Pigs. What he could not understand was why Moscow was ready to oblige Fidel to such an incredible and dangerous extent.
Nor did Raúl or his brother know the little secret that the Soviet missiles sent to Cuba would not be... well, operational. Should an American armed aggression against Cuba suddenly occur, none of these ‘sausages’ would be capable of being fired back, to cause an escalation. Besides, calling them nuclear also stretched the point. Khrushchev sincerely counted on the Americans to figure it out easily by themselves. After all, they were spending billions on defense. They surely had the equipment to tell a nuke from a dummy!
By the same token, the Cubans were never explicitly informed about the Presidium’s decision on complete Soviet neutrality in case of any armed conflict between Cuba and the United States. Such information was available only on the “need to know” basis, and Havana did not need to know.
On Soviet side, the secret of Khrushchev’s bargaining ploy was concealed beyond all reasonable measure. Very few people including those directly involved in the missile operation had any knowledge of what was going on, and why. Not that many of those left in the dark couldn’t find out, but they rather preferred it that way. This was strictly Khrushchev’s baby: if the bluff succeeds, more power to him, but if it flops, then let him alone be left to blame.
One of the many incredible features of this operation was that Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko had been completely left out of the loop. (Incredible, as it may sound, he wasn’t a member of the Presidium/Politburo until 1973!) No question, of course, that he was one of those who “did not want to know,” anyway. But that was already after the fact. Ever since his dealings with the Castro regime had begun, Khrushchev never really bothered to consult his Foreign Minister on what would be the best course of action. Soviet Ambassador to Havana Alexander Ivanovich Alexeev (his real name was Shitov, but it was changed for the obvious reason) was Khrushchev’s hand-picked man, and he reported directly to him, bypassing the regular channels. Either unintentionally or by design, Gromyko found himself looking like a fool...
Andrei Andreevich Gromyko was an intensely sensitive man hiding his shyness behind that proverbial stony façade. He was also one of the most decent men in the Soviet leadership. No matter what opinion others had of Gromyko, this was my mother’s personal impression of him, and it was also mine.
A man like Gromyko could never forgive Khrushchev a humiliation of such magnitude as he had suffered in the Cuban Missile Crisis. And he had very good reasons to be upset. Not only was he an authority on Cuba, where, as I have mentioned, he had served as the Soviet Ambassador just ten years before. Gromyko also had a brilliant mind. He had shown his exceptional abilities from an early age. Stalin ipse had appreciated his talents and had carved for him a niche as a major player. And now this erstwhile Stalin’s clown had put a dunce cap on the head of the prodigy!
Khrushchev had made himself many enemies. From now on, Gromyko was second to none...
The Soviet weapons flotilla slowly heading across the Atlantic in the direction of Cuba, was like an insane fire-belly frog, camouflaging her back against its own home base in Moscow, yet deliberately exposing her you-can’t-miss-me belly to its adversaries in Washington.
General Anatoly Ivanovich Gribkov, who had been given the command of the Soviet missile shipments to Cuba, could not comprehend the glaring breaches of secrecy, like the lack of elementary camouflage both for the cargo, and for the ground installations in Cuba, in the course of the otherwise super-secret operation. Privately venting his angry bewilderment on a friend of his, General Gribkov was, nevertheless, a man of military discipline. Throughout the whole affair he remained resolved to obey his orders, even when they made no sense. In spite of all the irregularities of his mission, he was still patriotically committed to following his specific doomsday instructions that, in case of an American attack, he would do nothing. Nothing at all... These instructions were of course standard Soviet Cold War practice. It was better to lose a few good men than risk an escalation of a single hostile incident into a real military conflict.
So here was the gist of Khrushchev’s ploy. Any day now he was expecting an angry call from the American Ambassador. Soviet Ambassador in Washington Dobrynin had already been instructed, over Gromyko’s head, to raise the issue of the American missiles in Turkey at the first sound of alarm.
But the angry call was not coming, and Ambassador Dobrynin was reporting business-as-usual to a baffled Khrushchev. He could not help asking whether the American side knew precisely what was going on. It was confirmed to him that the Americans could have no doubts about it. They had certainly known what was going on since the weapons shipments had begun in July 1962. Their low-flying military planes had been seen overhead, obviously taking pictures, and signaling to the Russians, in the unmistakable sign language of the pilots, “Yes, we know what you guys are doing, and we are going to make you sweat!”
It must have dawned upon Khrushchev then what Washington was up to. The good news was that America was feeling safe and secure, in the knowledge that the Russians were not going to start any silliness, like a World War Three. The bad news was that Khrushchev’s bluff had been recognized as such, and called.
On October 22, 1962 Khrushchev finally got his confirmation that President Kennedy intended to play the Cuban missile show in the theater of world public opinion. At the same time, as a little token of American generosity, Khrushchev was privately informed through Ambassador Dobrynin that the American missiles would be withdrawn from Turkey!!!
...So, shame on those ignoramuses who say that substance is more important than form!!! Why was nobody applauding Comrade Khrushchev, the big winner on substance in the Cuban Missile Crisis? His ploy had worked! Russia was getting her dream deal on Turkey at the price of loose change.
Alas, in the real world of spins and reflections nobody gives a damn about “substance.” Only impressions are real. In the story of the Cuban missiles, Khrushchev suffered such a public relations fiasco that all his Turkish success was put to shame. The whole world saw Khrushchev succumb under President Kennedy’s pressure, and did not pay the slightest attention to the small print.
America taught Khrushchev a lesson he would never forget. There was a big mess in Moscow. Everybody blamed him for the harebrained scheme, which had succeeded like a classic Pyrrhic victory. Fidel, furious, was now in a hurry to show the world that he was a leader, not a puppet of Moscow. He contributed to the general humiliation of Khrushchev by overruling him in the very public matter of UN inspections in Cuba to which Khrushchev had hastily agreed, forgetting for the moment that he, Khrushchev, had never been the real man in Havana.
…No, except for the Turkish missiles, Khrushchev’s loose change didn’t buy anything nice at all! Ironically, it was probably the best Soviet purchase of the whole Cold War, comparable only to his sale of a seemingly doomed West Berlin back to the West just in the previous year, 1961, with the reluctant construction of the Berlin Wall... (See my earlier posted Berlin Wall entries.)
…So far, it had looked like Fidel had to be dragged kicking and screaming into any kind of deal beneficial to Soviet interests. But in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, the impulsive Barbudo suddenly erupted with this shocking double dare: Would the Russians like to build a military base on Cuba, and put nuclear weapons on Cuban territory?
...Defense Minister Raúl had no desire to become Refugee Raúl. He seemed genuinely scared now that his brother’s recklessness might just result in a direct military invasion of Cuba by the United States.
His outrage was, however, grievously misplaced, because this was not how the situation was being viewed by Comrade Khrushchev. He and Fidel were birds of a feather, which should explain a certain unmistakable chemistry between them. But sentimental attraction alone was not enough to do the trick. It so happened that some time prior to Fidel’s brave offer, Khrushchev had been struck by an exceptionally bright idea of his own. For some time now, whenever he visited his Black Sea dacha in the Crimea, Khrushchev was by no means a happy man. He liked to sit on the beach in his comfortable folding chair, looking at the sea. While thus reclining he would now frequently sit up, hit his thigh with his fist, and start complaining, muttering the same thing over and over again, pointing his finger to the sea, toward the horizon, in what, to him, would be the approximate direction of the country of Turkey:
“Them *** rockets, like, always look at me across the water, and make me sleep bad at night!”
He was complaining about the American nuclear missiles, recently deployed in Turkey under the NATO accord. Anybody who knew him well enough, also knew that it was not some clever metaphor on his part, but the real thing. He was genuinely upset at such an invasion of his privacy, and particularly concerned about the possibility of an accidental nuclear launch over the Black Sea.
Aside from Turkey, there were, of course, other American missiles, deployed in Western Europe, but those did not concern Khrushchev so much. After all, Russia was nicely padded from them by a belt of foreign tissue: the Socialist satellites of Eastern Europe. There was a time, not long ago, when young Russian lads had been spilling their blood defeating Hitler and liberating his captives. Khrushchev’s own son Leonid had been killed in that war. So, should Eastern Europe be slightly nuked today by the West, in a freak accident, no sweat! It would be their time to return the favor.
But Turkey was different. There was no padding between the American rockets and the Russian soil here, except for a stretch of water and Comrade Khrushchev’s semi-naked body reclining in a chaise longue on the deceptively peaceful beach. For this reason, he could no longer enjoy his Black Sea vacations, and was always dreaming of devising something special to put an end to this distressing situation. And now, yes, he did have an idea!
...During Khrushchev’s “glorious decade” of ruling over Russia, there was a very popular joke about Nikita Sergeyevich rising from his drunken stupor and mumbling, “Idea!” which in drunken Russian is virtually indistinguishable from “Where the hell am I?” Wherever his famous pearls were coming from, the idea of using Cuba to make Washington shut down its missile installations in Turkey, was certainly Khrushchev’s historic masterpiece. This is how he presented its essence:
So, our Barbudo Fidel is offering Cuba as a Soviet military base? Wonderful. Let’s now hit the Americans straight between the eyes! No, not on the battlefield, God forbid!, but at the negotiating table. Now, if we tell Kennedy “Get the hell out of Turkey!” he will ask “What’s in it for me?” and we have nothing to give him in exchange. All we’ve got is neatly tied up in a package, and we don’t want that package to unravel, should we start pulling something out of it, for Mr. Kennedy’s pleasure.
But if we accept Fidel’s invitation, here’s some quick loose change for you, Mr. Kennedy, “You get out of Turkey, and we get out of Cuba, and everybody is happy!”
When Raúl heard of Moscow’s decision to send missiles to Cuba, he was in disbelief. Yes, Raúl knew the cover story: Khrushchev was ostensibly giving his bearded friend deterrence against a repeat of the Bay of Pigs. What he could not understand was why Moscow was ready to oblige Fidel to such an incredible and dangerous extent.
Nor did Raúl or his brother know the little secret that the Soviet missiles sent to Cuba would not be... well, operational. Should an American armed aggression against Cuba suddenly occur, none of these ‘sausages’ would be capable of being fired back, to cause an escalation. Besides, calling them nuclear also stretched the point. Khrushchev sincerely counted on the Americans to figure it out easily by themselves. After all, they were spending billions on defense. They surely had the equipment to tell a nuke from a dummy!
By the same token, the Cubans were never explicitly informed about the Presidium’s decision on complete Soviet neutrality in case of any armed conflict between Cuba and the United States. Such information was available only on the “need to know” basis, and Havana did not need to know.
On Soviet side, the secret of Khrushchev’s bargaining ploy was concealed beyond all reasonable measure. Very few people including those directly involved in the missile operation had any knowledge of what was going on, and why. Not that many of those left in the dark couldn’t find out, but they rather preferred it that way. This was strictly Khrushchev’s baby: if the bluff succeeds, more power to him, but if it flops, then let him alone be left to blame.
One of the many incredible features of this operation was that Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko had been completely left out of the loop. (Incredible, as it may sound, he wasn’t a member of the Presidium/Politburo until 1973!) No question, of course, that he was one of those who “did not want to know,” anyway. But that was already after the fact. Ever since his dealings with the Castro regime had begun, Khrushchev never really bothered to consult his Foreign Minister on what would be the best course of action. Soviet Ambassador to Havana Alexander Ivanovich Alexeev (his real name was Shitov, but it was changed for the obvious reason) was Khrushchev’s hand-picked man, and he reported directly to him, bypassing the regular channels. Either unintentionally or by design, Gromyko found himself looking like a fool...
Andrei Andreevich Gromyko was an intensely sensitive man hiding his shyness behind that proverbial stony façade. He was also one of the most decent men in the Soviet leadership. No matter what opinion others had of Gromyko, this was my mother’s personal impression of him, and it was also mine.
A man like Gromyko could never forgive Khrushchev a humiliation of such magnitude as he had suffered in the Cuban Missile Crisis. And he had very good reasons to be upset. Not only was he an authority on Cuba, where, as I have mentioned, he had served as the Soviet Ambassador just ten years before. Gromyko also had a brilliant mind. He had shown his exceptional abilities from an early age. Stalin ipse had appreciated his talents and had carved for him a niche as a major player. And now this erstwhile Stalin’s clown had put a dunce cap on the head of the prodigy!
Khrushchev had made himself many enemies. From now on, Gromyko was second to none...
The Soviet weapons flotilla slowly heading across the Atlantic in the direction of Cuba, was like an insane fire-belly frog, camouflaging her back against its own home base in Moscow, yet deliberately exposing her you-can’t-miss-me belly to its adversaries in Washington.
General Anatoly Ivanovich Gribkov, who had been given the command of the Soviet missile shipments to Cuba, could not comprehend the glaring breaches of secrecy, like the lack of elementary camouflage both for the cargo, and for the ground installations in Cuba, in the course of the otherwise super-secret operation. Privately venting his angry bewilderment on a friend of his, General Gribkov was, nevertheless, a man of military discipline. Throughout the whole affair he remained resolved to obey his orders, even when they made no sense. In spite of all the irregularities of his mission, he was still patriotically committed to following his specific doomsday instructions that, in case of an American attack, he would do nothing. Nothing at all... These instructions were of course standard Soviet Cold War practice. It was better to lose a few good men than risk an escalation of a single hostile incident into a real military conflict.
So here was the gist of Khrushchev’s ploy. Any day now he was expecting an angry call from the American Ambassador. Soviet Ambassador in Washington Dobrynin had already been instructed, over Gromyko’s head, to raise the issue of the American missiles in Turkey at the first sound of alarm.
But the angry call was not coming, and Ambassador Dobrynin was reporting business-as-usual to a baffled Khrushchev. He could not help asking whether the American side knew precisely what was going on. It was confirmed to him that the Americans could have no doubts about it. They had certainly known what was going on since the weapons shipments had begun in July 1962. Their low-flying military planes had been seen overhead, obviously taking pictures, and signaling to the Russians, in the unmistakable sign language of the pilots, “Yes, we know what you guys are doing, and we are going to make you sweat!”
It must have dawned upon Khrushchev then what Washington was up to. The good news was that America was feeling safe and secure, in the knowledge that the Russians were not going to start any silliness, like a World War Three. The bad news was that Khrushchev’s bluff had been recognized as such, and called.
On October 22, 1962 Khrushchev finally got his confirmation that President Kennedy intended to play the Cuban missile show in the theater of world public opinion. At the same time, as a little token of American generosity, Khrushchev was privately informed through Ambassador Dobrynin that the American missiles would be withdrawn from Turkey!!!
...So, shame on those ignoramuses who say that substance is more important than form!!! Why was nobody applauding Comrade Khrushchev, the big winner on substance in the Cuban Missile Crisis? His ploy had worked! Russia was getting her dream deal on Turkey at the price of loose change.
Alas, in the real world of spins and reflections nobody gives a damn about “substance.” Only impressions are real. In the story of the Cuban missiles, Khrushchev suffered such a public relations fiasco that all his Turkish success was put to shame. The whole world saw Khrushchev succumb under President Kennedy’s pressure, and did not pay the slightest attention to the small print.
America taught Khrushchev a lesson he would never forget. There was a big mess in Moscow. Everybody blamed him for the harebrained scheme, which had succeeded like a classic Pyrrhic victory. Fidel, furious, was now in a hurry to show the world that he was a leader, not a puppet of Moscow. He contributed to the general humiliation of Khrushchev by overruling him in the very public matter of UN inspections in Cuba to which Khrushchev had hastily agreed, forgetting for the moment that he, Khrushchev, had never been the real man in Havana.
…No, except for the Turkish missiles, Khrushchev’s loose change didn’t buy anything nice at all! Ironically, it was probably the best Soviet purchase of the whole Cold War, comparable only to his sale of a seemingly doomed West Berlin back to the West just in the previous year, 1961, with the reluctant construction of the Berlin Wall... (See my earlier posted Berlin Wall entries.)
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