How Close We Came

In their excellent new history of the Kennedy-Khrushchev confrontation over Cuba, Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali provide perhaps the most comprehensive narrative of the perilous moment yet to appear in print. It is also an exciting tale, reading at times like good spy fiction. The authors have used materials from every conceivable American and Soviet source, successfully integrating recent scholarship, interviews with key participants, and documents from the full range of Soviet departments and agencies, including KGB, GRU, and Politburo records previously unavailable. The only thing lacking is the Cuban piece of the puzzle, which must await a more open climate in Havana.

But while the book is clearly valuable and a major contribution to the field, it also reflects a somewhat disturbing trend. Fursenko, the chairman of the history department at the Russian Academy of Sciences, had exclusive access to many of the most important documents cited in the book. Although the authors' judgments seem sound enough, until other scholars are able to consult the same source materials, one must take it on faith that Fursenko's reading of the record is accurate and comprehensive and that the authorities did not feed him documents selected for political reasons. In any event, the current situation, with Moscow granting exclusive access to some Russian scholars while barring others, raises uncomfortable questions about state favoritism and the manipulation of historical truth.

REVELATIONS

Nevertheless, Fursenko and Naftali, a scholar at Yale University, have constructed a superb narrative, providing answers to some persistent questions. Among other revelations, the new Soviet materials demonstrate that Moscow's interest in the Cuban revolutionary movement began much earlier, and ran much deeper, than is commonly believed. Indeed, after the fall of Fulgencio Batista the Soviets were prepared to offer more military assistance to the Cubans than a cautious Fidel Castro, afraid of being seen as a Soviet puppet, was at first willing to accept. Even as Castro visited the United States in the spring of 1959, Moscow had already undertaken a covert program to arm Havana. Castro's brother, Raul, and Ernesto "Che" Guevara were committed communists who advocated an alliance with the Soviet Union from as early as 1957; they negotiated the military assistance. Fidel himself remains enigmatic. He undoubtedly took American hostility for granted, and each new American measure served only to confirm his worst suspicions about Washington's intentions. His real sympathies, however, remained unclear. In November 1960 he told Aleksandr Alexeev, the KGB rezident in Havana, "I have been a Marxist from my student days." But the Soviets did not entirely trust Castro; the new Soviet information reveals just how concerned Moscow was that he might opt for a heretical brand of communism like Mao's or even Albania's.

The authors also convincingly demonstrate that the world was much closer to nuclear war than was realized at the time or in the years since. In particular, the Soviet Union's provision of warheads for its "tactical" missiles in Cuba added a dangerous dimension to the crisis. Washington always believed that the missiles were armed with conventional warheads. Not only were the missiles armed with nuclear warheads, but Moscow came very close to granting authority to the Soviet commander in Cuba to use them at his discretion. Had President Kennedy chosen to invade the island, as a majority of his advisers at one point counseled, it could well have resulted in a nuclear attack on American warships, with incalculable consequences.

One of the study's more significant findings concerns the limitations of intelligence. The American government knew very little about decision-making in the Kremlin. But Soviet intelligence gathering also had its shortcomings. Despite the relatively open nature of American society, Moscow consistently misread signals from the United States, at times overestimating the threat of a U.S. invasion of Cuba, yet overlooking the preparations for the Bay of Pigs attack when it finally came. Perhaps even more surprising, both the Soviets and the Cubans failed to penetrate the Miami émigré community until after the Bay of Pigs. That, at least, is the authors' conclusion based on their study of Soviet documentation. The Cubans, however, may have known more than they were willing to share with their Soviet patrons.

While short, "One Hell of a Gamble" contains more meat than other glossier and less disciplined studies of the same era. Fursenko and Naftali restrict themselves to a terse narrative, only interrupting the flow for a few paragraphs of analysis at the end of each chapter. But their single-minded focus on recounting the course of events is in some ways unfortunate. They never pause to address some of the larger questions their study raises, including the effectiveness of deterrence in the nuclear era, the issue of great-power patronage for client states, the problems of superpower communication in an era of rapidly changing communications and weapons technology, and the complexities of the ideological motivations on both sides.

OF ONE MIND

This last omission is most regrettable. In public comments since the book's appearance, Naftali has argued that Soviet records from the period demonstrate that Marxist ideology -- if defined as any rigid, preconceived program for action -- played little role in Soviet decision-making. He argues that the upper echelons of the Soviet hierarchy were far more concerned with classical questions of power.