One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War

On Friday afternoon, Jerry arrived at the safe house to announce that the infiltration operation had been unexpectedly put 'on hold.'

CHAPTER SEVEN Nukes

6:00 P.M. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26 (5:00 P.M. HAVANA)

Although he had been in power for nearly four years, Fidel Castro still maintained many of his old revolutionary habits. He had no fixed schedule. He was on the move constantly, visiting military units, mingling with students, chatting with workers. He slept and ate at irregular intervals. The Soviet leader who knew him best, Anastas Mikoyan, was impressed by the 'religious' intensity of Fidel's beliefs, but complained that he would often 'forget his role as host.' Like most Soviet politicians, Mikoyan was accustomed to three well-lubricated meals a day. But the man known to Cubans as el caballo frequently skipped lunch and had no use for alcohol. 'The horse' seemed to sleep best in a moving car, rushing from one meeting to the next.

By Friday afternoon, Castro had decided he could no longer tolerate the U.S. overflights of Cuba. He had seen the jets roaring over the outskirts of Havana and shared the rage and impotence of his troops. After meeting with his general staff, he drafted a communique to the secretary-general of the United Nations: 'Cuba does not accept the vandalistic and piratical privilege of any warplane to violate our airspace, as this threatens Cuba's security and prepares the way for an attack on its territory. Such a legitimate right of self-defense cannot be renounced. Therefore, any warplane that invades Cuban airspace does so at the risk of meeting our defensive fire.'

Castro went to the Soviet military command post at El Chico, twelve miles southwest of Havana, to inform his allies about his decision. The Soviet commander in chief, General Pliyev, was listening to reports from his subordinates on the state of readiness of their units. Castro listened as each officer stood to attention as he delivered his report.

'Motorized rifle units in combat readiness.'

'Air force regiment in combat readiness.'

'Antiaircraft units ready.'

Finally, it was the turn of Igor Statsenko, the commander of the missile troops. Five out of six R-12 batteries had reached full combat readiness, and could unleash a barrage of twenty warheads against cities and military bases across the United States. The last remaining battery had an 'emergency operational capability,' meaning that at least some of its missiles could be launched, perhaps not very accurately.

'Missile units ready for combat.'

Castro complained that the low-level planes were demoralizing Cuban and Soviet troops. The Americans were in effect conducting daily practice sessions for the destruction of Cuba's military defenses.

'We cannot tolerate these low-level overflights under these conditions,' Castro told Pliyev. 'Any day at dawn they're going to destroy all these units.'

Castro wanted the Soviets to switch on their air defense radars so they would be able to detect incoming American planes. The radars had been inactive most of the time to avoid giving away details of the network. Castro was now convinced that an American air raid was imminent. 'Turn on the radars,' he insisted. 'You can't stay blind!'

He had two other recommendations for the Soviet commanders. He urged them to move at least some of their missiles to reserve positions to make it impossible for the Americans to destroy them all in a single raid. And he wanted the forty-three thousand Soviet troops on the island to take off their checkered sports shirts ? and put on military uniforms.

If the yanquis dared attack Cuba, they should be given a worthy reception.

All day, crowds had been gathering on the waterfront in old Havana to cheer the first Soviet ship to pass through the American blockade. The skipper of the Vinnitsa entertained them with stories of the armada of U.S. warships, helicopters, and planes that had failed to stop his little ship. Clutching a Cuban flag and a portrait of Castro, Captain 'Pedro' Romanov described how he had braved gale-force winds and the imperialists to deliver oil to 'freedom-loving Cuba.'

'Fidel, Khru'cho', estamo' con lo do'' ('Fidel, Khrushchev, we are with you both'), shouted the demonstrators, swallowing many of the words in the Cuban manner.

Another popular chant celebrated the ideological alliance between Cubans and Russians, and the powerlessness of the United States to do anything about it. In Spanish, the words had an insolent rhyme that made them easier to chant.

Somos socialistas pa'lante y pa'lante
Y al que no le guste que tome purgante.

We are socialists forward, forward
If you don't like it, swallow a laxative.

It was the zenith of the Cuban love affair with the Soviet Union. Cuban parents were naming their sons after Yuri Gagarin, watching Soviet movies, reading Yevtushenko's poems, and lining up to buy tickets for the Moscow Circus. But the admiration for the distant superpower was tinged with condescension. Even as they cheered the arrival of Soviet ships and hugged Soviet soldiers, Cubans could not help noticing the smell that the Russians brought with them ? an amalgam of noxious gasoline fumes, cheap cigarettes, thick leather boots, and body odor. They even had a name for this strange aroma, 'the grease of the bear.'

And then there was the drunkenness. Even Castro complained about the wildness of the Russian soldiers when they were drunk, and the need for 'stronger discipline.' The thirst for alcohol led to a huge barter business. Poorly paid Russian soldiers would trade anything ? food, clothes, even an army truck ? for beer and rum. Military police tried to keep order as best they could, rounding up drunken soldiers and beating them to a pulp.

Many Cubans detected a curious contradiction between the sophistication of Soviet weaponry and the backwardness of ordinary Russians. When the writer Edmundo Desnoes visited a Soviet military airfield outside of Havana with a delegation of Cuban intellectuals, he was struck by the 'primitiveness' of the living conditions. While the pilots waited for the order to scramble their modern MiG-21 jets, their wives washed clothes by hand in wooden tubs. The intellectuals were provided beds for the night in the infirmary alongside gurneys already tagged with little tabs for the corpses that were expected shortly.

Carlos Franqui, the editor of Revolucion, was amazed by how poorly the Russians dressed.

They were years out of style; their clothes were ugly and badly cut; and their shoes! The man on the street began to wonder why, if socialism is in fact superior to capitalism, everything these Russians had was so shoddy. The women didn't even know how to walk in high heels. And there seemed to be great differences between various groups of Russians: the leaders, technicians, and officers had one style, and the soldiers and ordinary laborers had another ? much inferior. People began to wonder about the question of equality under socialism.

The Russians were less 'overbearing' than the Americans, Franqui thought, and 'pleasant' even when drunk, but they gave the impression of 'the most absolute poverty.'

The alliance with Moscow had coincided with the sovietization of Cuban society. The revolution was losing its carnival spirit; the bureaucrats were taking over. Most Cubans still supported the goals of the revolution, but their revolutionary ardor had cooled. Communist Party functionaries now occupied key positions in the government. Cuba was turning into a police state, with informers and neighborhood watchdog committees cropping up everywhere. One of the last bastions of intellectual freedom, a weekly literary supplement called Lunes de