Forty-five years ago the world seemed to be on the verge of nuclear holocaust. In October 1962 President Kennedy got word from U.S. intelligence that the Soviet Union had placed missiles on the island of Cuba. The events have come to define political brin

For two weeks the world held its breath – the nuclear threat suddenly seemed real.

But for the powers involved it all started earlier.

Cuba was recovering from revolution. From 1961 Soviet aid gave it an economic boost, refuelling national pride among Cubans.

Even after the U.S. sponsored attack on the Bay of Pigs the same year they felt ready for anything, even war.

“On the school bus we were always singing songs with revolutionary messages. There was a sense of romanticism. The kind of mood where we felt we were prepared to resist any aggression,” Omar Gudinez, a Cuban artist, recalled.

But among the Cold War superpowers Cuba was a cause for growing concern.

The U.S. was desperate to overthrow Fidel Castro, driven by its horror of the far left. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev saw a fellow socialist state under threat and wanted to protect it.

This combined with U.S. arms expansion – the Jupiter missiles recently deployed on the Turkish border with the Soviet Union and America’s tenfold nuclear advantage over its greatest rival – meant that the Soviet authorities felt cornered. Philip Brenner, Professor of International Relations from the American University thinks they surmised that what the United States really wanted to do was to launch a first strike, an offensive attack.

“It’s the worst kind of signal to send to an opposing side because it frightens them in a way that they maybe are they going to react irrationally”, Mr Brenner noted.

Mr Khrushchev could have warned John F. Kennedy he wished to give missiles to Cuba – but he chose not to.

Sergo Mikoyan, the son of Anastas Mikoyan, Khrushchev’s Deputy Prime Minister and envoy in Cuba at the time, sees this as his most controversial step.

“The decision to place the missiles was a mistake because it was doomed to failure. No American president could allow it, especially when it was done through deception,” Sergo Mikoyan from the Institute of World Economy and International Relations believes.

With the Soviet missiles came troops. Forty-two thousand soldiers were a force of wartime potential. Even these soldiers were kept in the dark until the last minute.

Aleksandr Voropaev, conscript in Cuba in 1962, recalls how he woke up in the morning and saw the sun was at the stern of the boat – so he realised they were going west. “Only when we passed Gibraltar, only then did they tell us we were going to Cuba to defend the Cuban revolution,” he said.

U2 reconnaissance flights pinpointed the missiles on October 14. Kennedy declared a naval quarantine on Cuba eight days later. 

On October 24, two Soviet ships approached the blockade, but at the last moment turned back. In the words of U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk, they blinked.

Fearing Armageddon more than humiliation, the sides moved towards public compromise. Missiles would be removed if the U.S. guaranteed it would not invade Cuba. Privately the U.S. also agreed to recall its Jupiters from Turkey.

But amid the superpower wrangling, the voice of Cuba went unheard. Fidel Castro was furious at how little he was consulted about the missiles, reportedly once telling Nikita Khrushchev to “use ‘em or lose ‘em”. When they were eventually removed, Cuba lost faith in the Soviet leader. Castro felt he had been deceived.

Philip Brenner thinks that Cuba didn’t want missiles, but what it did want was a Soviet military guarantee. “And by taking missiles it injected itself into a superpower confrontation. It became automatically the front line of a nuclear war,” he said.

Cuba was the frontline, but now – a globally-feared political hotspot.

“After the crisis Cuba’s international prestige grew somehow. It may be small – but because of it the world nearly collapsed and this gave it significance,” believes Sergo Mikoyan.

Just as compromises were being reached, Deputy Prime Minister Anastas Mikoyan’s wife died. He was not sent home from Cuba to bury her –such was the scale of the emergency.

Forty-five years on, disputes over the nuclear question continue between Russia and the United States. But around the world people remember the fortnight they cancelled all their plans, waiting for the ultimate disaster to strike.