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When Khrushchev left New York in mid-October 1960, the U.S. was nearing its presidential election. Publicly, Khrushchev claimed to be indifferent to the outcome. He had called Richard Nixon and John Kennedy "a pair of boots," explaining: "You can't say which is better, the left or the right." In private he had a different attitude. At a luncheon before his departure, he became angry at the mention of Nixon's name: "He's a typical product of McCarthyism, a puppet of the most reactionary circles in the U.S. We'll never be able to find a common language with him." He said that "we can influence the American presidential election." He related how he saw through the Americans when the Eisenhower Administration asked us to release U-2 Pilot Powers. "We would never give Nixon such a present!" he exclaimed.
Khrushchev and Kennedy met in Vienna in June 1961. Leonid Zamyatin, deputy chief of the Department of the U.S. in the Foreign Ministry, told me about it. Zamyatin's amazing aplomb and self-assurance helped compensate for a lack of talent and enabled him to promote himself. He later became director-general of TASS and eventually chief of the Central Committee's International Information Department. With Georgi Arbatov and Vadim Zagladin, he was part of a troika of the most familiar Soviet faces appearing in the West when the Kremlin needed to influence public opinion.
Zamyatin told me that the Vienna meeting had amounted to no more than the two heads of state taking each other's measure. The Premier, Zamyatin said, had concluded that Kennedy was a mere "boy," who would be vulnerable to pressure. "At present," he continued, "Nikita Sergeyevich is thinking about what we can do in our interest and at the same time subject Kennedy to a test of strength."
Khrushchev figured that Kennedy would accept almost anything to avoid nuclear war. The lack of confidence the President displayed during both the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 and the Berlin Wall crisis four months later further confirmed this view. At the end of 1961 I attended a meeting in the office of Khrushchev's personal assistants. Someone remarked that Khrushchev, to put it mildly, didn't think very highly of Kennedy. At that moment, the Premier entered the room and immediately began to lecture us about Kennedy's "wishy-washy" behavior, saying: "I know for certain that Kennedy doesn't have a strong backbone, nor, generally speaking, does he have the courage to stand up to a serious challenge."
By installing several dozen medium-range missiles in Cuba, Khrushchev aimed to create a nuclear "fist" close to the U.S. The Soviet Union could get a "cheap" nuclear deterrent that would threaten New York, Washington and other vital centers along the East Coast, accomplishing much with very little.