Journalist who had Khrushchev’s ear as nuclear war loomed says Putin wouldn’t have caved to US
When 94-year-old veteran foreign correspondent Marvin Kalb speaks, world leaders should pay attention. His new memoir, ‘A Different Russia,’ serves as both warning and plea
Veteran CBS and NBC News correspondent Marvin Kalb’s latest book, “A Different Russia: Khrushchev and Kennedy on a Collision Course,” explores a perilous chapter of US-Soviet relations, culminating in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
His riveting 500-page memoir — Kalb’s third in a series chronicling his nearly seven-decade journalism career and 17th book overall — serves as both warning and plea. And when America’s most respected foreign and diplomatic correspondent, now 94, speaks, world leaders would do well to listen.
“We are living in an extremely dangerous time made more dangerous by ignorance, by the failure of the Russian government to open itself to the rest of the world, [with] the exception of a number of their satellites,” Kalb told The Times of Israel in a recent interview from Washington, DC. “In the United States, the American people and the American government are making decisions based on instinct, based on history — but not based on current information and insight into what is happening in the Kremlin. And that ignorance could be devastating.”
The “different Russia” to which Kalb arrived as a press attaché at the US embassy in Moscow in 1956 “was just emerging from a long night of Stalinist oppression,” writes Kalb. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev launched his effort to dismantle Stalin’s dictatorship, which removed “the heavy blanket of fear” among Russians. He “scrapped” Stalin’s belief in the “inevitability of war” for his own policy of “peaceful co-existence,” favoring “summitry over confrontation,” while encouraging openness toward the West.
Asked to contrast Khrushchev with Russia today, Kalb pulled no punches.
“The leader of Russia today is someone who has turned his back on the West, who has used every opportunity to discourage contact between the Russian people and the American people,” said Kalb. “During Khrushchev’s time, there was a constant interplay of Russian scientists coming to the United States, American scientists going to Russia, athletes, scholars, and writers going back and forth. None of that exists today.”
Kalb was introduced to Khrushchev at a July 4, 1956, embassy reception. The chemistry of that encounter shaped his reporting from Moscow for CBS News from 1960 until shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
“Because of our disproportionate heights — I was six-foot-three to Khrushchev’s five-foot-six — he was always looking up at me and ended up calling me ‘Peter the Great,’” Kalb recalled with a smile. “If he wanted to say something to the Western world, he could spot me, ‘Peter the Great,’ call me over, and I had my CBS mic ready to put near his mouth to get every single word. He would get his story out, which is what he wanted, and I, as a journalist, obviously was thrilled to have a story directly from the leader of the Soviet Union.”
Behind the Iron Curtain
The New York-born son of Jewish immigrants from Poland and Ukraine, Kalb leveraged his Russian studies at City College and Harvard to analyze the Soviet press and officials’ speeches. Legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, impressed by Kalb’s deep understanding of the Soviet Union, recruited him to CBS News in 1957 after their scheduled half-hour meeting continued for three hours.
Kalb’s exchanges with Khrushchev, his diplomatic scoops, and his appearances with CBS anchor Walter Cronkite reached millions of Americans — and a Kennedy administration — preoccupied with the prospect of nuclear war. Kalb’s post-Cuban Missile Crisis interview broadcasting prominent Soviet physicist Igor Tamm’s dramatic call for disarmament set the stage for Kennedy’s “Strategy for Peace” speech at American University and the Partial Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty in 1963.
“As a journalist, you were contributing toward something meaningful,” said Kalb, who was forced to craft his copy in ways that evaded Soviet censors. “It helped diplomats and scientists in those days advance toward better understanding between the two sides.”
Kalb chronicles a series of events and miscalculations that set the stage for the Cuban Missile Crisis, drawing upon CBS News reports he filed — preserved by his wife of more than 60 years and trusted adviser, Mady, a PhD student in Soviet-African relations at the time. “She was a central figure,” Kalb said.
Kalb depicts “a nervous, anxious period” — stoked by events such as the rise of the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961.
“That sent a shockwave through the Western world because it demonstrated that Khrushchev was prepared openly to violate the rules ending World War II and push a change in those rules to his advantage,” he said.
Four months after the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit meeting in Vienna, tensions escalated on October 30, 1961, when the Soviets tested a 50-megaton nuclear bomb in the Arctic.
“Khrushchev was eager to take advantage of a president he regarded as inexperienced and weak,” said Kalb. “He figured that he could continue to build up his strategic strength by exploding nuclear bombs so large that anyone with any knowledge of nuclear war would realize they could never be used. People on both sides kept asking, why would Khrushchev do this?
“But they did not know for certain what was on his mind,” Kalb continued. “They could only guess, and the guesswork took place in an environment of increasing daily tension, fear of miscalculation on either side, and anxiety among the American community in Moscow, as well as many ordinary Russians who understood what was happening.”
In March 1962, upon learning that US Jupiter medium-range missiles in Turkey had become operational and were aimed at the Soviet Union, Khrushchev erupted in fury.
“He screamed, yelled, and then, an ugly, dangerous, reckless brainstorm,” recalled Kalb. “Khrushchev asked, ‘What if we throw a hedgehog down Uncle Sam’s pants?’ The ‘hedgehog’ was, as implemented, the dangerous plan to put Russian missiles into Cuba, supported by 50,000 Soviet troops, in an effort to change the balance of power from an American advantage to a Soviet advantage.”
Kalb joined Mady at the Bolshoi Theater as the 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded. To their surprise, they saw Khrushchev, who led multiple standing ovations for visiting American opera star Jerome Hines. Sensing a diplomatic message to Kennedy, Kalb put a question to Khrushchev in a dramatic backstage encounter that is one of the book’s highlights.
‘He just caved!’
Kalb maintained that Kennedy initially misread the Soviet military buildup in Cuba, believing it to be purely defensive until October 22, 1962, when he finally recognized the threat.
“He then instituted a [naval] quarantine of Cuba, which could have been interpreted as an act of war, but was not,” Kalb said.
The crisis peaked on Sunday, October 28, when Soviet broadcaster Yuri Levitan read Khrushchev’s letter to Kennedy, announcing the withdrawal of Russian missiles.
“I had an open line broadcast to New York,” Kalb recalled. “And when I heard the words ‘crate and return,’ I knew immediately that they were crating the missiles and returning them to the Soviet Union, and I screamed on air, ‘He just caved! He caved! It’s over!’”
“It was an incredible story,” continued Kalb, “but far more important, a huge moment in East-West relations. If Khrushchev had not backed off, Kennedy was almost obliged on Monday to attack Cuba. The Russians would have had to respond. To think about a decision so close to nuclear war — one resting on just two people, Kennedy or Khrushchev. If either had made the wrong decision, we would have been in a nuclear war.”
Decades later, Kalb draws a stark comparison to today’s geopolitical landscape, as Russia continues the invasion and occupation of Ukraine that it launched in 2022.
“Suppose Putin were in Khrushchev’s position,” said Kalb. “At that time, in October 1962, would Putin have made the decision that Khrushchev had made? No, he would not. And if he had not, we would have had a war that could have devastated the world. That is why I am, in a sense, appealing to both sides to open their minds and hearts to better understanding. Without that, we could slip into an even more dangerous pit.”
The Times of Israel Community.