The Soviet Cuban Missile Crisis: Castro, Mikoyan, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Missiles of November by Sergo Mikoyan (review)

The history of the Cuban missile crisis has always attracted a great deal of attention in the 50-odd years that have passed since the Soviet Union deployed its missiles in Cuba only to withdraw them after a brief but intense confrontation with the United States in October 1962. Even though vast quantities of new documents about the period have helped make our understanding of the events more precise, plenty of unanswered questions remain and many aspects of the crisis are not yet fully understood.

The documentary evidence is still rather spotty on the Soviet side. Some documents remain inaccessible; others may be missing. As a result, this posthumously published account of the crisis by Sergo Mikoyan (who died in 2010) is particularly valuable. A well-known historian in his own right and close aide to his father, Anastas Mikoyan, who was a member of the Soviet Communist Party’s Presidium and deputy prime minister in 1962, Sergo Mikoyan bases his account on an extensive analysis of existing sources and scholarly works, conversations with his father, and documents from his personal archive.

In his description of the crisis itself, Mikoyan largely follows the general narrative line in most scholarly accounts available today. He provides some important details about the decision-making process in Moscow and paints a rather critical picture of the decision to deploy missiles in Cuba and of the way Moscow handled the crisis that followed. His critical attitude is not surprising, considering that Anastas Mikoyan consistently objected to the idea of missiles in Cuba and was chosen by Nikita Khrushchev to deal with the consequences of the mistakes that were made during the crisis.

The most valuable part of the book is a set of documents that provide details about very difficult conversations between Anastas Mikoyan and the Cuban leaders during his mission to Cuba in November 1962. The goal of the mission was to mend a serious rift in Soviet-Cuban relations that had arisen after Khrushchev agreed to pull the missiles out of Cuba. Having learned about the Soviet decision from a radio broadcast, the Cuban leader Fidel Castro was furious and openly expressed his dismay. The Soviet Union needed Cuba’s cooperation in many aspects of the weapons withdrawal process that would bring the crisis to an end. The situation was serious enough for Khrushchev to send Anastas Mikoyan, one of his closest advisers, to Cuba to deal with the disagreements and to handle the final stages of the crisis.

Anastas Mikoyan faced the unenviable task of explaining the decisions made at the height of the crisis to his Cuban counterparts and assuring them of Moscow’s unwavering support of the Cuban revolution. Meanwhile, he also had to find common ground regarding practical issues of the missile withdrawal process. U.S. reconnaissance overflights and the prospect of inspections on Cuban territory emerged as the most contentious issues. At one of the first meetings, on 5 November, Castro even suggested that rather than agree with the Soviet proposal to allow overflights and inspections, the “more correct” option might be “to consider the Soviet side free of its obligations” and allow the Cubans to defend their country themselves (p. 346).

As Anastas Mikoyan was working to resolve the crisis over inspection, he was confronted with a more serious problem. On 11 November 1962, Khrushchev informed him that he had accepted the U.S. demand to remove all Il-28 bombers from Cuba. The United States took advantage of Khrushchev’s offer to withdraw “the arms that you describe as offensive” and insisted that the bombers should be considered offensive weapons. Now the resolution of the crisis hinged on the bombers issue, so Mikoyan had to explain to the Cubans why this new concession made by Moscow was necessary to protect their country, even though he had assured them just a few days...