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Then we received a telegram from our ambassador in Cuba. He said Castro claimed to have reliable information that the Americans were preparing within a certain number of hours to strike Cuba. Our own intelligence also informed us that an invasion would probably be unavoidable unless we came to an agreement with the President quickly. Castro suggested that to prevent our nuclear missiles from being destroyed, we should launch a pre-emptive strike against the U.S.
My comrades in the leadership and I realized that our friend Fidel totally failed to understand our purpose. We had installed the missiles not for the purpose of attacking the U.S. but to keep the U.S. from attacking Cuba.
Then we received a message from President Kennedy through our ambassador in Washington, Anatoli Dobrynin. It was somewhere between threat and prayer; he both demanded and begged that we remove the missiles.
We agreed to remove the rockets and warheads if the President would publicly give assurances, in his own name and that of his allies, that their armed forces would not invade Cuba. We sent a message to that effect to Washington, and the talks continued. Robert Kennedy was the basic intermediary. He showed a great deal of fortitude and sincerity in the way he helped to prevent an even worse conflict. President Kennedy assured us that there would be no invasion.
Castro was hotheaded. He thought we were retreating -- worse, capitulating. He did not understand that our action was necessary to prevent a military confrontation. He also thought that America would not keep its word and that once we had removed the missiles, the U.S. would invade Cuba. He was very angry with us, but we accepted this with understanding. We believed this came from his being young and inexperienced as a statesman. He had been deceived many times, so he had the right not to believe the word of the President. So we did not take offense, although we felt sorrow and pain to hear his words of disappointment in our Cuban policy.
Later, when I met Castro in the Soviet Union, I told him, "You wanted to start a war with the U.S. If the war had started, we would somehow have survived, but Cuba no doubt would have ceased to exist. It would have been crushed into powder. Yet you suggested a nuclear strike!"
"No, I did not," replied Castro.
"How can you say that?" I asked Fidel.
The interpreter added, "Fidel, Fidel, you yourself told me that."
"No!" insisted Castro.
We checked the documents. The interpreter said, "Here is the word war; here is the word blow."
Fidel was embarrassed. He had failed to think through the obvious consequences of a proposal that placed the planet on the brink of extinction. The experience taught him a good lesson, and he later began to consider his behavior more thoroughly.
Pride and Regret
In 1958 there was a terrific commotion in Moscow about Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago. Suslov, who was in charge of the Central Committee's Department of Agitation and Propaganda, told the Politburo the book was of poor quality and un-Soviet in tone; therefore it would be harmful to let it be published. I don't think anyone had read the book, and Suslov probably hadn't read it either; more likely he was given at most a three-page summary by an aide.