From the CWIHP Director he Cold War International History and digitization project funded by the Leon Levy Foundation Project is pleased to present this (New York), H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest and the Blavatnik Family issue of the CWIHP Bulletin on Foundation (New York), as a result of which CWIHP’s newly T“The Global Cuban Missile Crisis.” Timed digitized collections will be accessible through a new, visually for publication on the 50th anniversary of dynamic and user-friendly website. this most dangerous Cold War crisis this As part of the Wilson Center’s History & Public Policy October, the issue continues the Project’s Program, CWIHP continues to be joined at the hip with mission to enrich scholarship and pub- the Korea Foundation-funded North Korea International lic policy debate through new archival Documentation Project (NKIDP) in exploring former evidence from inaccessible (or less easily Communist-world archives on North Korea’s politics and accessible) archives around the world. foreign policy. Similarly, CWIHP is expanding is “collec- This issue features sources on the Cuban Missile Crisis tion scope” with a focus on the international history of from more than twenty countries: Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, nuclear proliferation through a Carnegie Corporation-funded China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Germany Nuclear Proliferation International History Project (NPIHP). (East and West), Hungary, Italy, Israel, Mexico, Mongolia, As all CWIHP productions, this issue is a collaborative the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, Switzerland, enterprise. As editor, my particular thanks go to Jim Hershberg and North Vietnam. In toto they will, we hope, contribute who returned to CWIHP as a guest editor for this issue with his to internationalizing the history of the crisis—with respect boundless enthusiasm, expertise and energy for the subject; and to decision-making drama during the crisis centered in Tom Blanton and Malcolm Byrne and their team at the National Moscow, Washington and Havana, as well as its near global Security Archive who helped to obtain many of the documents ripples and reverberations that made themselves felt in such featured in this issue for a path-breaking set of critical oral his- distant corners as Pyongyang and Hanoi. Three major tory conferences in Havana in 2001-2002. I am grateful to the introductions set the historiographic scene for these materi- contributors, translators and researchers of this issue, including als. Shorter introductions and editorial notes provide first Alex Barrow, Pierre Asselin, Jordan Baev, Csaba Bekes, Bastiaan analytic cracks at the sources. Bouwman, Phil Brenner, Christopher Dunlap, Piero Gleijeses, A centerpiece of the issue—“Sino-Cuban Relations and Malgorzata Gnoinska, Peer Henrik Hansen, Tanya Harmer, the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1960-62”—grows out of the Hans-Herman Hertle, Adolf Kotlik, Mark Kramer, Guy Laron, remarkable archival opening at Foreign Ministry Archive of Garret Martin, Hirata Masaki, Tim Naftali, Leopoldo Nuti, the People’s Republic of China in recent years. Since 2004, Silvio Pons, Stephanie Popp, Sergey Radchenko, Svetozar Rajak, CWIHP has supported this process in cooperation with Bernd Schaefer, Regina Schmidt-Ott, Marty Sherwin, Rimko Chinese scholars (centered especially around the Cold War van der Maar, Ruud van Dijk, Oldrich Tuma, David Wolff, Studies Center at East China Normal University). Based on Qian Zhang, Shen Zhihua, and Vlad Zubok. We greatly appre- agreements with the Foreign Ministry since 2005, CWIHP ciate the support of the Karl and Martha Mautner Fund. has been releasing and will continue to release major new At the Center, my work as CWIHP director has benefit- tranches of documentation on China’s Cold War era foreign ted from the support of The Hon. Jane Harman, President, policy. In August 2011, CWIHP and East China Normal Director and CEO of the Wilson Center, Michael Van University launched the Wilson Center-ECNU Cold War Dusen, Rob Litwak, Peter Reid and his wonderful design Studies Initiative designed to bring junior and senior team, in particular Diana Micheli. Last but not least, I owe Chinese scholars to Washington for archival and other thanks to my talented and dedicated staff at the Project: James research. A special China portal on CWIHP’s website at Person, Tim McDonnell, Laura Deal, Allison Lyalikov, Pieter www.cwihp.org will feature many of these collections. Biersteker, Charles Kraus, and Kristina Terzieva. All of them The documents in this issue will also be available through have played critical roles in assuring that this issue came out CWIHP’s new state-of-the-art Digital Archive database, in time and in good shape. They in turn have been supported content management system and website which—once by an extraordinary group of research assistants and junior launched later this year—will transform and improve the scholars this past spring and summer: Kian Byrne, Daniel storage, description, and searchability of our online collec- Chardell, Chandler Grigg, Jordan Harms, Yuree Kim, David tions. CWIHP is in the final year of a three-year development Najmi, Phan Ngoc, Emily Olsen, and Benjamin Venable. Christian F. Ostermann is the director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s History and Public Policy Program and has headed CWIHP since 1997/98. Contents INTRODUCTIONS The Global Cuban Missile Crisis, by James G. Hershberg 7 The Cuban Missile Crisis Just Isn’t What It Used to Be, by Thomas S. Blanton 11 Back to the Archives, by Martin J. Sherwin 19 SECTION 1: ASIA Sino-Cuban Relations and the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1960-62: New Chinese 21 Evidence (Obtained by Shen Zhihua and Sergey Radchenko, translated by Zhang Qian, and introduced by James G. Hershberg and Sergey Radchenko) Japan and the Cuban Missile Crisis (Documents obtained, translated and introduced by Masaki Hirata) 117 The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Origins of North Korea’s Policy of Self-Reliance in National Defense (Documents introduced by James F. Person) 121 North Vietnam and the Cuban Missile Crisis (By Pierre Asselin) 130 Mongolia and the Cuban Missile Crisis—A Glimpse Inside the Ulaanbaatar Archives 132 (Document introduced and translated by Sergey Radchenko) SECTION 2: L ATIN AMERICA The Final Frontier: Cuban Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis 135 (Introduced by James G. Hershberg) Chatting with Che: Conversations in 1961 between Cuban Revolutionary 157 Ernesto Guevara and the Soviet Ambassador in Havana, and a Brazilian Record of his Meeting in Punta del Este with JFK Aide Richard Goodwin (Introduced by James G. Hershberg) Before the Bay of Pigs—What Did the Cubans Know? Cuban Intelligence Reports, 168 January-May 1961 (Introduced by James G. Hershberg) Mexican Diplomacy and the Cuban Missile Crisis: Documents from the 191 Foreign Ministry Archives in Mexico City (Introduced by Tanya Harmer) The Anti-Castro Cuban Émigré Forces: Mexican Documents, 1961-1963 217 (Obtained by Jorge Mendoza Castro and translated by Tanya Harmer) Brazil and the Cuban Missile Crisis: Documents from the Foreign Ministry Archives in Brasília 229 (Obtained, translated, and introduced by James G. Hershberg) Brazilian Foreign Policy toward the Cuban Issue—A Secret Foreign Ministry Conclave, 283 26-27 December 1961 (Documents obtained and introduced by James G. Hershberg) Chile and Brazilian Mediation during the Cuban Missile Crisis: Documents 295 from the Foreign Ministry Archives in Santiago (Obtained and translated by Eduardo Baudet and Tanya Harmer) SECTION 3: SOVIET UNION The Malin Notes: Glimpses Inside the Kremlin during the Cuban Missile Crisis (Introduced by 299 Timothy Naftali and translated and annotated by Mark Kramer with assistance from Naftali) A Trigger for Khrushchev’s Deployment? Alexei Adzhubei’s Report on His 316 Conversation with John F. Kennedy, 30 January 1962 (Introduced by James G. Hershberg) The Polyansky Report on Khrushchev’s Mistakes in Foreign Policy, 324 October 1964—Excerpt on The Cuban Missile Crisis (Translated by Svetlana Savranskaya) Fidel Castro, Nuclear War, and the Missile Crisis—Three Missing Soviet Cables 325 (Obtained by the National Security Archive and introduced by James Hershberg) The Soviet Cuban Missile Crisis: Documents on Anastas Mikoyan’s November 1962 331 Trip to Cuba (Introduced by Svetlana Savranskaya) SECTION 4: C OMMUNIST EUROPE Czechoslovakia-Cuba Relations and the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1959-1962: Evidence from the 349 Prague Archives (Introduced by James G. Hershberg) We Were Truly on the Verge of War—A Conversation with Nikita Khrushchev, 400 30 October 1962 (Obtained by Oldřich Tůma) Czechoslovakia and Cuba, 1963 (Introduced by James G. Hershberg) 404 Hungary and the Cuban Missile Crisis: Selected Documents, 1961-63 410 (Introduced by Csaba Békés and Melinda Kalmár) Poland, Cuba, and the Missile Crisis, 1962: Ciphered Telegrams from the Foreign Ministry 463 Cold War International History Project Bulletin, Issue 17/18 Archives in Warsaw (Obtained and introduced by James G. Hershberg and translated by Margaret K. Gnoinska) Polish-Soviet Exchanges on Cuba, 1963-1965 (Introduced by James G. Hershberg) 507 Gomulka on the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Danger of War (Obtained by Vladislav Zubok and introduced by James G. Hershberg) 512 Romania and the Cuban Missile Crisis: Soviet Nuclear Warheads for Romania? 514 (Documents obtained, translated, and introduced by Petre Opriş) Bulgaria and the Cuban Missile Crisis: Documents from the Sofia Archives 522 (Obtained and introduced by Jordan Baev) Documents on Bulgarian-Cuban