The Cuban Missile Crisis (Part 2)

At first, we didn’t understand what was happening, but then we saw. An American plane, having silently approached the ship, suddenly turned on its engines and spotlight. A tropical night, the sharpest military-political situation in the world, and overhead, an enemy military aircraft was circling. There was reason to be scared. About an hour and a half later, the plane left, and we went to sleep. The next day, September 20, had even more unpleasant surprises in store for us. Waking up in the morning, I looked out the porthole and saw land. I was pleased, thinking we had arrived at our destination. But the joy was short-lived. To the right of the ship, I saw a small vessel. I thought the Cubans were greeting us. But looking closer, my brothers, I saw guns aimed at our ship. Something was wrong. I went up to the captain’s bridge, where the command was all gathered. Around our “Physicist Vavilov,” there were 13 American warships. The captain contacted Moscow and reported the alarming situation. The Americans asked for our “port of registry” and “destination port.” The captain responded. The Americans suggested we turn right, as they were conducting firing exercises at sea targets directly on our course. Moscow did not allow us to change course. The Americans wanted to drive us into their naval base at Guantanamo. We kept moving forward. Our speed was 18 knots. Ahead on our course, some military vessel was approaching us. I don’t know their classification, maybe a destroyer. Our ship was 30,000 tons displacement. So, if it hadn’t turned, we would have simply crushed that little ship. I still see it as if it were real. The Americans escorted us for another two hours, then, wishing us a safe journey, fell behind.

At 12 o’clock, the ship approached the bay of the port of Santiago and anchored in anticipation of permission to enter the port. The day was overcast. I was interestedly examining the entrance to the bay. On the right side of the bay, the Morro fortress rises. The base of the fortress starts almost at sea level. The bottom of the fortress is clad with huge concrete slabs. Somewhere around 50–60 meters from the bottom begins the masonry of large stones. The height of the fortress wall, in my opinion, is about 150 meters. The wall is topped with battlements. Later, when I served in Santiago, I specifically went on a tour of the Morro castle. Inside the castle was a well for drinking water. I looked at the firearms and cannons from the 18th century. For me, as a future historian, it was very interesting to see a medieval fortress in real life.

But let’s return to the ship. We were allowed to enter the bay. The entrance to the bay is not very wide and is covered by mountain ranges on both sides. Our “Physicist Vavilov” slowly and majestically moved through this narrow and long bay towards the dock. I couldn’t take my eyes off the shores of the bay. The beauty was indescribable. Greenery, a variety of flowers, cozy, beautiful houses, a corner of paradise. The ship slowly approached the dock and began unloading. The port did not have its own cranes for unloading, so the ship was unloaded with its own cranes. The regiment’s headquarters, where we were supposed to arrive, was located northwest of the city of Santiago and three kilometers from the city. Here I would like to note the selflessness and readiness of our personnel to perform any task. In difficult climatic conditions, they worked around the clock without rest. A huge amount of cargo had to be delivered to the place, living conditions had to be arranged, and combat readiness had to be achieved in the shortest possible time. And all this was done by our soldiers and sergeants in a very short time. By the evening of September 20, I arrived at the location of the regiment’s headquarters. Overall, the place was not bad. Previously, it was a cattle yard. However, by the time we arrived, everything had been cleaned up so that there was no smell of livestock. In Cuba, they do not build cowsheds like ours. For cattle in Cuba, they simply put up shelters, with a roof of palm leaves on top, and a fence about 60–70 cm high at the bottom. And no walls or doors. Under these shelters, cots were set up, and soldiers and sergeants were accommodated. Slightly higher up, on a hill, stood the villa of the former owner of the cattle yard. Now, the regiment’s headquarters and command post were located there.

Upon arriving at the regiment’s headquarters, I met with my supervisor, the head of the political department. It was Major Gevorkyan Nikolai Lazarevich. I also got acquainted with my colleagues. They were the instructor for organizational-party work, Buryak Vasily Ivanovich, the assistant for the Komsomol, and the head of the club. That was the entire political department, including myself. Since I had no time during the transition from the USSR to Cuba, it was only here that I began to think more concretely about my duties. In short, my main responsibility was the political education of all categories of military personnel and volunteers. In the Soviet Army, Marxist-Leninist training was introduced for the officer corps. Its program corresponded to the curriculum of non-humanitarian university students. For soldiers and sergeants, political education was conducted twice a week for two hours. I had to prepare the leaders of Marxist-Leninist training and instruct the leaders of political classes on how to conduct the sessions. Besides these main duties, I worked with the party-Komsomol activists of the units, planned the themes for political information, and assisted in the arrangement of Lenin rooms in the units. Of course, organizing and conducting all these forms of ideological education under normal conditions would not have been a great effort for me. But what about here, in Cuba? There was no literature, no notebooks for recording sessions. There was nowhere to conduct the sessions. Officers, soldiers, and sergeants worked under tremendous stress to fulfill the order and achieve combat readiness. And I received an order from the Political Administration in Havana to immediately organize all forms of political education and ideological work. Accordingly, I began to fulfill the order of the Political Administration, that is, my duties. Yes, a regiment is not a division. I received no help from the chief, and frankly, I did not ask for it. The work of a political officer has its peculiarities. The main thing that ensures success in the work of a political officer is the ability to persuade. And to be able to persuade, one must be much better prepared than the one you are persuading. Therefore, I attached primary importance to personal professional preparation. In this regard, it helped me a lot that in my childhood and youth I read a lot, mainly Russian and foreign classics. My university studies also helped me in practical work. I want to say that a propagandist, in order to work properly, had to have a fairly decent level of political and general education. Having figured out my official duties, I gradually established all forms of political education in the regiment. The regiment was located in the eastern province of Cuba. The divisions were deployed near Guantanamo, Bayamo, and Manzanillo. Another division was stationed right above the port of Santiago. Thus, I had the opportunity to get well acquainted with the eastern province of Cuba, as I regularly traveled to the divisions. From the political administration, I received instructions on what themes to conduct political classes and how many hours to allocate for each theme. About a month after we arrived in Cuba, quite unexpectedly, two colonels from the political administration of the troop group arrived. Most importantly, my direct chief, Colonel Plaksin, the head of the propaganda and agitation department, came. They arrived after lunch and, of course, began to talk with us. I, a captain barely a year in the position, and he, Plaksin, a colonel and quite high up in my line of duty. We talked for a long time. Understandably, the situation was complicated, and the political administration needed to know how people were behaving in this environment. Plaksin talked with me for a long time and suddenly, the devil made me blurt out that I had a seminar tomorrow. Plaksin immediately expressed a desire to attend my seminar. And what is a seminar? I had to gather the leaders of political classes and give instructions on how to conduct the sessions on the given topic, what directions to take, how to cover it, what literature to use, etc.

The first thing I did was to ask the unit commanders to ensure the attendance of the session leaders at the seminar. This was the most important issue. I gave the task to the club manager to prepare the room for the sessions. There were no tables, so we decided to put boards on stools. I must give credit to the unit commanders; they understood my request and ensured 100% attendance. But that was not all. I had to prepare for the report myself. Since the inspectors kept us late, I had to prepare for the briefing until three in the morning. The report’s topic: The CPSU — the leading and guiding force of society. The topic was handed down from the political administration. Two hours were allocated for covering the topic in the political education sessions. And now, 8 o’clock in the morning. Everyone gathered. I reported to Plaksin and asked for permission to start the session. I don’t know where the inspiration came from. I spoke for more than an hour. I argued that the CPSU truly is the leading and guiding force of our society. Plaksin listened. He never once interrupted my report. The seminar ended. I silently looked at Plaksin and waited for the debriefing. The only remark he made was why I had given only two hours to the leaders to cover the topic? I replied that such a schedule was given by the political administration. Plaksin told me that for the volume of the report I had given, officers should have been given four hours. It was a complete victory. Being in the position for only two months, receiving such an assessment of my instructional report from such a high-ranking chief meant a lot to me. I have already noted that the military-political situation around Cuba was heating up every day. In these conditions, conveying the real military-political situation to the personnel was the most important task. It was not enough just to inform people about political events; a deep and comprehensive analysis was necessary. Some information about the situation was provided by the information sheet issued by the Political Administration. But this information was insufficient. Soon, the press from Moscow began to arrive once a week, but in very limited quantities. I, as they say, studied this press and traveled to the divisions to convey the international situation, the situation in Cuba, and in the Union. I don’t want to boast, but I will say that the personnel of the divisions always awaited my arrival and listened to my lectures with great interest. Probably because, with the practical absence of newspapers and magazines in the divisions, I was the person who could more or less explain the unfolding international situation. Moscow was very poorly received. To allow the management units to listen to the latest news from Moscow, I did the following. The latest news from Moscow was broadcast late in the evening, and it was poorly heard. The head of the soldiers’ club and I listened and recorded them on a tape recorder. Then I edited the recording, and we recorded the latest news on the tape recorder. It might seem like nothing special. Just think, the transmission of the latest news. But in the extreme conditions in which we all found ourselves, listening to the anthem of the Soviet Union in the morning, then the latest news, created an atmosphere of confidence and calm. But still, I loved working in the units. Officers, soldiers, sergeants were on combat duty. They performed the main task, covering the airspace of Cuba. Maybe because in the recent past I myself was a deputy political officer of a division, I was drawn to them. I understood how difficult it was for the deputies of the division commanders for political affairs to maintain high morale among the personnel in these conditions. Therefore, as a worker of the political department, I helped in their practical work. The situation was very complicated. The regiment’s headquarters, our divisions, were located 70–100 km from the American naval base at Guantanamo. In October 1962, there were 100,000 units of marines in Guantanamo. The living force of our regiment was about 800 people, and of course, they were not marines.

Regarding the Armed Forces of Cuba, they totaled only 50,000 people and were in a nascent state. Had hostilities begun, they would have crushed us in an instant. We, the officers, were issued service weapons which we carried with us around the clock. We walked around in civilian trousers and shirts. But we were dressed in such a way that one could spot a Soviet comrade from a kilometer away. The trousers were woolen, heavy. The shoes had thick rubber soles. The shirts were checkered like a chessboard. That’s how we strutted around in the tropics. I later bought myself several light Cuban trousers and shirts.

Undoubtedly, the transfer of such a large number of people from the Soviet Union to Cuba could not go unnoticed by American intelligence. We did not quite resemble agricultural workers, and our equipment did not look like combines for harvesting sugar cane. Kennedy, the President of the USA, did not believe that medium-range missiles had been delivered to Cuba. But when photographs of our missiles were laid before him, everything became clear to him.

On the night of October 19, I was in the second division in Bayamo. At 9 pm, a telegram came from the regiment’s headquarters. It stated that a group of counter-revolutionaries had landed in the division’s area. The division commander was ordered to organize ground defense of the combat position and bring the equipment to combat readiness. I was ordered to return to the regiment’s headquarters in the morning. The division commander, with the combat crew, brought the equipment to combat readiness, and I, along with the deputy for political affairs of the division commander, organized the ground defense of the division. The night was very dark, moonless. And around the firing position, there was thick, tall grass and sugar cane. We placed sentries around the firing position and instructed them on what to do in case of an attack.

The danger was that the sentries, 18–19-year-old kids, under such strong tension, could shoot each other out of fear in the dark of night. In the morning, a car came for me, and I left for the regiment. Since I was well acquainted with our combat equipment, the regiment commander appointed me as the operational duty officer at the regiment’s command post. The regiment’s CP was equipped with a tablet that displayed the air situation based on data from the radar station, and a decision was made to destroy any attacking air target. American aviation flew over Cuba from all sides but was wary of entering the firing zone of the anti-aircraft missile divisions. At the same time, we did not have permission to open fire. Around Cuba, 180 military ships, American, were concentrated. Considering the combat capabilities of the American naval base at Guantanamo, located 70 km from us, the superiority of American offensive forces was immeasurably greater compared to our defensive capabilities. Undoubtedly, if hostilities had begun, the defenders of Cuba would have been destroyed. But, along with Cuba, millions of people would have disappeared. This would have been the last war on Earth. Kennedy, the President of America, understood such a danger, unlike the military, who literally demanded that the President strike Cuba. The fact is that on October 19, photographs of our medium-range missiles installed in Cuba by agronomists from the USSR were laid before Kennedy. Kennedy invited our ambassador and demanded an explanation of what was in the photographs? Missiles or combines? Our ambassador had nothing to cover up with. Kennedy announced a blockade. All ships heading to Cuba were to be inspected to ensure they were not carrying military equipment or weapons to Cuba. The military-political situation in the world was heating up to the limit.

To be continued...