Remembering the Cuban Missile Crisis: Should We Swallow Oral History? Author(S): Mark Kramer, Bruce J
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Remembering the Cuban Missile Crisis: Should We Swallow Oral History? Author(s): Mark Kramer, Bruce J. Allyn, James G. Blight and David A. Welch Reviewed work(s): Source: International Security, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Summer, 1990), pp. 212-218 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2538987 . Accessed: 18/09/2012 11:15 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to International Security. http://www.jstor.org Correspondence MarkKramer Remembering the Cuban Missile Crisis: BruceJ. Allyn, Should We Swallow Oral History? JamesG. Blight,and DavidA. Welch To the Editors: Bruce Allyn, James Blight, and David Welch should be congratulatedfor a splendid review of some of the most importantfindings from their joint researchon the Cuban missile crisis, including the conferences they helped organize in Hawk's Cay, Cam- bridge, and Moscow.' They have performed an invaluable service for both historians and political scientists. Nevertheless, the research methodology that Allyn, Blight, and Welch (henceforth AB&W)have used is not without its drawbacks.Although their work has given us a much better understanding of the Americanside of the Cuban missile crisis, I am not sure we yet have a better understanding of the Soviet side. Indeed, our "knowledge" of certain aspects of the Soviet role may, if anything, be more confused than before. The reservations I express below, though applied to the AB&Warticle, are intended as general notes of caution. MarkKramer teaches international relations at BrownUniversity and is a researchfellow at the Center for ForeignPolicy Development at Brown.He is also a fellowof HarvardUniversity's Russian Research Center. BruceAllyn is AssociateDirector of theJohn F. KennedySchool-Soviet Joint Study, Center for Science and InternationalAffairs (CSIA), Harvard University. James G. Blight,formerly with CSIA, is Senior ResearchFellow, Center for ForeignPolicy Development, Brown University. David A. Welchhas beena CSIAResearch Fellow; in fall 1990 hejoins thefaculty of politicalscience at the Universityof Toronto. 1. "Essenceof Revision:Moscow, Havana, and the Cuban Missile Crisis,"International Security, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Winter 1989/90),pp. 136-172. (Subsequentreferences appear in parentheses in the text.) This article stands well on its own, but is best read in conjunctionwith two earlier products of the Cuban missile crisis project:James G. Blight, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., and David A. Welch, "The Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited,"Foreign Affairs, Vol. 66, No. 1 (Fall1987), pp. 170- 188;and James G. Blight and David A. Welch, On the Brink:Americans and SovietsReexamine the CubanMissile Crisis (New York:Hill and Wang, 1989).On theBrink contains, among other things, abridged transcriptsof the Hawk's Cay and Cambridgeconferences, with detailed annotation by the authors. The unabridged transcriptsof the two conferences (which are reconstructed from notes, since the meetings were not tape-recorded)are availableas WorkingPapers from Harvard'sCenter for Science and InternationalAffairs (CSIA). The transcriptof the Moscow Conference(which was taped) will be availablelater this year from UniversityPress of America as CSIA OccasionalPaper No. 9. InternationalSecurity, Summer 1990 (Vol. 15, No. 1) ? 1990by the Presidentand Fellows of HarvardCollege and of the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology. 212 Correspondence| 213 Limitsof OralHistory The AB&Warticle relies heavily on "oralhistory," that is, the recollectionsof officials in the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba who either participated in the Cuban missile crisis or knew the participants. The authors briefly allude to the 11weaknesses"and "inherent limitations"of oral history; but these problems do not deter AB&Wfrom concluding that recent contributionsof Soviet officials"have greatly improved the understanding of the causes, conduct, and implications of the Cuban missile crisis (pp. 171,172)." Can the limits of oral history really be overcome so easily? In the case of the Cuban missile crisis, the failings and selectivity of memory are especially acute because the events transpirednearly 30 years ago and almost all of those who played any part in the crisis (and are still alive) are now elderly. Thereare bound to be honest divergences in the way aging men recall events of nearly three decades ago. Along with inevitable failings of memory, there is the more nettlesome issue of ulterior motives. AB&Wpoint out that "currentinterests and objectives color recol- lections of historical events." Thus, many officials will "recall"events (p. 171) in a way that puts the best gloss on their own role or that supports causes they have come to promote. On the American side, this is perhaps best evident with Robert McNamara,who, having become an antinuclearcrusader in recent years, now stren- uously denies that U.S. strategic nuclear superiority in 1962 had even the slightest effect on the outcome of the crisis. On the Soviet side, the question of ulterior motives is far more intractable.Blight and Welch "were told by the Soviets at the Cambridge meeting that Gorbachev is intensely interested in the Cuban missile crisis."2More recently, BruceAllyn acknowl- edged that one of the main reasons Soviet officials were willing to participateis that "'scrutinyof the Cuban missile crisis fits in with the theme of 'inadvertentwar' that is a central part of Gorbachev's'new political thinking'."3 This desire to emphasize the dangers of inadvertent war is fine; but it immediately raises the question of whether the Soviet participantswere unduly motivated to portraythe Cuban missile crisis as an extremely dangerous event-perhaps more dangerous than it actually was. By fostering an impression that the two sides actually were "on the brink" of nuclearwar in 1962, the Soviet attendees may have hoped that the conferenceswould lend a sense of urgency to Gorbachev's proposal for the elimination of nuclear weapons.4 ArchivalAccess and CriticalOral History These weaknesses of oral history-both the lapses of memory and the attempts to slant things or mislead-can be compensated for if adequate documentary evidence 2. Blight and Welch, On the Brink,p. 322. 3. Seminarat Brown University, February13, 1990. 4. On this point, see Ray S. Cline, "Commentary:The Cuban Missile Crisis," ForeignAffairs, Vol. 68, No. 4 (Fall 1989), pp. 190-196. International Security 15:1 | 214 is available. On the American side, that is certainly possible. An enormous amount of declassified material is already available to cross-checkthe recollectionsof former officials, and more will be released over the next several years.5Such documents can enrich, and be enriched by, oral history. In combination, the American documents and recollections of American officials provide keen insights into the Kennedy ad- ministration'shandling of the Cuban missile crisis. This is the essence of what Blight and Welch term "criticaloral history."6 On the Soviet side, however, the ability to cross-checkand verify the recollections of former officials is impossible. As the AB&Warticle acknowledges, "Westernstu- dents of the [Cuban missile] crisis have not seen a single Soviet or Cuban document against which to check the recollections of Soviet and Cuban participantsand schol- ars." Nor are we likely to get access to such documents anytime soon, for, as AB&W also note, "Cuba and the Soviet Union have no history of declassifying diplomatic documents for historicaluses, and no procedures for doing so (p. 171)." Even a top- level Soviet military historian such as General Dmitrii Volkogonov, the head of the Defense Ministry's Institute of Military History, has often complained about being denied access to archives.7The problem is so pervasive, according to Volkogonov, that it is even hindering the preparationof a new officialhistory of the Soviet Union's role in World War II: Our institute, which deals with the militaryproblems of history, possesses quite large possibilities, although I must say straight away that, as before, many archives are closed. In particular,in the party archives, and even in the militaryarchives, which it might seem should belong to us, there are still stocks to which they do not give us access.8 If the most trusted and highest-rankingSoviet army officerscannot gain access to the documents they want about the distant events of the Second World War, what hope is there for Westerners to get archival materials concerning a much more recent episode like the Cuban missile crisis? GeneralVolkogonov's statement is especially importantbecause it implies that well- stocked Soviet archives do exist and that the problemis simply getting access to them. Indeed, at the Moscow conference, Volkogonov read aloud from documents that he claimed had come from the archives. It is a shame that Western scholars have not been allowed to examine such materialsin this age of "glasnost." Furthermore,even if, as AB&W allege (p. 171), the Soviet archives on the 1962 crisis are "sparse"(something I find hard