Introducing The Bomb: Kennedy and Khrushchev

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0:30to make those markets work for you. Follow Merrin Talks Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Hi, I'm Max Kennedy, co-host of The Bomb, Kennedy and Khrushchev. It's the story of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world came terrifyingly close to nuclear war. But this isn't just about the political history. It's personal, too. I'm the nephew of President John F. Kennedy, and my co-host is Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. You can listen to episode one right here. I hope you enjoy it.

1:11Moscow's Kyivsky railway station. A crowd of thousands wave as Premier Nikita Khrushchev leaves on board a dark green steam train. He's heading for Vienna. It's a journey of more than a thousand miles. In Kiev, his arms are filled with flowers. In a sunny Prague, more clapping crowds. As his train passes through the countryside of the communist world, he is waved on enthusiastically.

1:52President John F. Kennedy soaks in a large gold-plated bath. He's staying in the king's chamber. in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a 19th century palace overlooking the River Seine. The deep steaming waters are easing his back pain, which is worse than ever. He's been touring Paris all day in an open-topped French limousine. Huge crowds line the streets waving to him, everyone wanting to catch a glimpse of the young and handsome President Kennedy and his elegant and sophisticated wife, Jackie. It's the 31st of May, 1961. In just three days, the world will be watching as he meets Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna.

2:35Khrushchev has heard reports of the huge crowds in Paris. The White House claims that a million people have lined the streets to catch sight of the American president. This is the Cold War, a time of great mutual suspicion. The Vienna meeting will be the first and only time that Kennedy and Khrushchev meet as world leaders. The youthful and charming American president and the fiery veteran Soviet leader. Between them, a gulf of mistrust, rivalry and ideological conflict. Kennedy flies into Vienna in the rain on June 3rd. Khrushchev arrives on his train later the same day. A new back medication is working, and President Kennedy nimbly descends the steps of the American ambassador's residence as Khrushchev climbs out of his limo.

3:31This is the story of two men in a crisis that was years in the making. It comes to a head over 13 days in October 1962. This government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military buildup on the island of Cuba. The rivalry between them culminates in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the most dangerous nuclear standoff the world has ever seen. My name is Nina Khrushcheva. I'm the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, who was the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. And in 1962, he was the man who initiated the Cuban Missile Crisis. My name is Maxwell Taylor Kennedy.

4:22My father, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was attorney general during his brother John F. Kennedy's presidential administration during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was really there at every key decision-making point and wrote probably the first book about the crisis that came out, which is still taught in college. It's called 13 Days. We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the course of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth. But neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced. Along with others who have studied the story, we're exploring what drove Kennedy and Khrushchev.

5:06To discover what they thought about each other, how close the world came to nuclear war, and what they had to do to pull it back from the brink. I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace and to stable relations between our two nations. He has an opportunity now to move the world back from the abyss of destruction. This is The Bomb from the BBC World Service, Season 3, Kennedy and Khrushchev. Episode 1, Opening Moves.

6:15Making this series is the first time Nina Khrushcheva and I have had the chance to meet. I was nervous to meet the descendant of a legendary adversary. but it's an opportunity to share stories that have been handed down to us about our relatives, Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy. So Nina, can you tell me some of your memories of Khrushchev from when you were little growing up? Thank you. Well, when I was a little kid, I didn't like going to his country house. Where was it? was it? It was about 30 kilometers from Moscow. And it was a small house and we would go there, but we were always made to collect tomatoes.

6:58And he had a beehive. And so we had to go there. And I more remember conversations about how we were misbehaving as children, because it was really boring to be there. And everybody was treating him as if he's God and sick because he was ousted, because Russian power is forever. And so suddenly you're ousted. What are you doing? Like you're planting pumpkins and doing beehives. That's unheard of. So it was a very weird environment there. But to us, he was the most fun person in the room. So that's how I remember. But you never met him, right? No. Of course, you wouldn't have. But I wonder if your father talked about him.

7:36My father died when I was a child. Okay, so he wouldn't be. So it would all be hearsay for me. So, where do we begin this story? Let's start in 1956. It's the end of February. Hidden behind high fences in a birch forest in the frozen countryside outside of Moscow is the Soviet Union's top-secret rocket research facility. My great-grandfather Nikita Khrushchev is being shown around the complex along with his colleagues in the Presidium, the ruling body of the Communist Party. The chief designer, Sergei Korolev, leads them through a large hangar. He is their guide to the past, present, and future of Soviet missiles.

8:25First, they admire a full-scale model of the R2. Khrushchev and his colleagues have seen this one before, three years earlier. It was after the death of Joseph Stalin, and in Khrushchev's memoirs he describes the impact it made on them. We were like peasants in the marketplace, he writes. We walked around and around the rocket, touching it, tapping it to see if it was sturdy enough. We did everything but lick it to see how it tasted. But since then, Soviet missile technology has evolved. In the vast hangar, Korolev moves on to the R-5. Khrushchev is impressed. It can carry an 80-kiloton nuclear warhead, the equivalent of six Hiroshima bombs, for over 800 miles.

9:17Khrushchev learned to love the bomb. How did this happen? The Soviet atomic project began from August 1945. It became what the Soviets at that time called problem number one. Stalin understood the tremendous psychological importance of the bomb. And Khrushchev has picked up what Stalin started. the Soviet atomic project. This is Sergei Ratchenko. He is the author of To Run the World, the Kremlin's Cold War bid for global power. The idea was to create a bomb, which was important not as a weapon per se, but as a symbol of superpower, of great power. A lot of money was being spent on R &D, research and development, and particularly on the space race.

10:03Hrushchev recounts how he was given a report written by the head of the Soviet atomic program, which talked about the absolute devastation of nuclear war. And he says that after reading this report, he could not sleep. And then he spoke to the scientists and asked them, is this the reality or are you exaggerating? And the scientists told him, if anything, we actually understated the impact of nuclear war. So Huchot was horrified by them. Khrushchev often recounted this story. When I learned all the facts about nuclear power, I couldn't sleep for several days. But then I became convinced that we could never possibly use these weapons.

10:48And when I realized that, I was able to sleep again. He was convinced that nobody would be crazy enough to use the bomb.

11:04Stepping into a vast, shiny atrium made of glass, Korolev reveals what he calls the future of Soviet rockets. The R-7, it towers above them. At 35 meters tall, the gigantic missile hasn't been tested yet. It is 10 times the size of the R-5 and should be able to travel 5 ,000 miles. But what Korolev really wants to show Khrushchev that day is a satellite. He wants to get his approval to launch it into space using their latest missile. Khrushchev agrees, but doesn't think it should be a priority. The following year, he will see it differently. You are hearing the actual signals transmitted by the Earth-circling satellite, one of the great scientific feats of the age.

12:00October 4, 1957. The Sputnik satellite has been carried into space by the R-7 missile. It is the first man-made object to orbit the Earth. All over the world, people are tuning into the bleep, bleep of the satellite which carries aboard the highly complicated mechanism necessary to transmit secrets of the universe. The impact of Sputnik at one level was rather benign. You know, here was this communist shiny basketball orbiting the earth. You know, millions of people went to their backyards to watch this little dot crossing the sky. This is Jim Hershberg. He is a professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University.

12:47What alarmed the military was the fear that the rocket that launched Sputnik into space could also be used as an intercontinental ballistic missile, ICBM as it later became known, to deliver nuclear weapons over the North Pole from the Soviet Union to targets in the United States. It's a great triumph for Khrushchev and a huge blow to American prestige. The Soviet Union can reach American skies. Our Sputniks circle the globe and await the group of American and other Sputniks and the establishment of a commonwealth of Sputniks.

13:35And so when the Soviets beat the Americans to the pole, i.e. they were able to launch the first man-made object into the skies, Of course it was seen as vindication of that Soviet claim of being the superior system. And for that reason, it also scares a lot of people in the West. You know, if the Soviets are able to do that, what does that tell us about our own system? Somebody's falling down on a job badly. Oh, well, we're ahead of them right now. They're trying to scare us. We don't give them all our secrets, why should we? Khrushchev revels in the immense achievement. The new missiles signify great power, superpower status for the Soviet Union, and most importantly, equality with the United States.

14:23Parity.

14:34The Soviets may be winning in space, but on the ground in the summer of 1959, the United States brings its shiny symbols of prosperity to display in Moscow. My uncle, John F. Kennedy, is still Senator Kennedy. This is a year before he's voted in as president. Inside a huge dome in Sokolnyke Park, fashion, fast cars and even an American kitchen are on show to the public. More than two million Soviet visitors will file in to stare at the latest American consumer goods over that summer. On July 24th, just as the finishing touches are being put to the exhibits and before the American National Exhibition opens that evening, two important visitors are having a look around.

15:22the Republican Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. This, Mr. Khrushchev, is one of the most advanced developments in communication that we have, at least in our country. Video is one of the new technologies on display, and an operator sets a tape rolling, just as a spontaneous debate breaks out between the two men.

15:49Seven years from now, we will be on the same level of achievements as America. In the following years, we shall continue to surge ahead. And when we shall overtake you at the crossroads, we shall wave at you. The success of Sputnik still haunts America, and the competition between them, the Soviet Union and the United States. Khrushchev and Nixon is laid bare. There are some instances where you may be ahead of us. For example, in the thrust of your rockets for the investigation of outer space. There may be some instances, for example, color television, where we're ahead of you. Khrushchev, wearing a hat, does not look into the camera.

16:30He stares straight at Nixon instead. In what are they ahead of us? Wrong, wrong. We are ahead of you in rockets as well as in this technique. I do not capitulate. Khrushchev's a unique personality. You have to remember that he survived the terror of Stalin and he survived the Second World War. That's Michael Dobbs. He's the author of One Minute to Midnight, a fascinating hour-by-hour account of the Cuban Missile Crisis. And he rose to par from, you know, the poorest of backgrounds, a peasant family. So he really had plenty of hard knocks and he survived by being the toughest of all of them. He has a charismatic personality.

17:18He could bully at times, but he could also be very charming at other times. And I think he displays this quality that many Russian leaders display of a sense of superiority, a sense of pride in the Soviet Union's achievements, but also a sense of inferiority towards the United States.

17:48Later that summer, after the kitchen debate in Moscow Khrushchev is invited to visit President Eisenhower in America It's the first state visit by a Soviet premier And a shock to the rest of the world Given Cold War tensions Fifty minutes late because of Atlantic headwinds A Russian Tu-114 jetliner slides along the tarmac At Andrews Air Base near Washington But what's 50 minutes when all the world's been waiting for months to see what will happen when the leaders of these two great power blocks met face to face? The trip does not ease tensions. Khrushchev wants to visit Disneyland, but Los Angeles police say they can't guarantee his safety there, and the visit is cancelled.

18:31Khrushchev is furious. He ridicules the United States as an incompetent nation that cannot even protect a dignitary at an amusement park. Here in New York, Mr. Khrushchev is still stealing all the headlines. He travels around the country on an exhausting schedule. At a meatpacking plant, he enjoys his first American hot dog. No one tells him what's inside it. Yesterday, he was in the Middle West. Mr. K looks smarter than we've been used to seeing him. People at the Iowa meeting were just folks. I think the true chef's background sort of put him at ease there. But the American public are not at ease with the visit.

19:11Well, here in Washington, his original reception was a very chilly one. Some crowds greet him with silence, even though they've lined the streets to get a glimpse of him. For Americans, he is a communist and a threat. He's a born showman, and Americans appreciate a showman even when they distrust him. But if he wants to thaw the Cold War, he's got to thaw Washington first.

19:37Khrushchev will meet Senator John F. Kennedy, the presidential hopeful, for the first time on this trip. It's a brief encounter. Khrushchev tells him that he looks too young to be a senator. Khrushchev's wife, my great-grandmother Nina, accompanied him on his trip to the United States to visit Eisenhower. We had a special relationship. I was named after her, and she would often tell me about the experiences on the visit. I talked about it with historian Sergei Ratchenko. So Khrushchev always had a bit of inferiority complex vis-a-vis the West. He couldn't get rid of this feeling that the Americans were looking down on him.

20:21But they did. Well, in the... No, but I mean, if I may interrupt, though, because it is. In 1959, they go to the Lincoln Memorial, and there's a wonderful picture of they all sort of tiny little people standing in this sitting Lincoln. And Khrushchev takes off his hat and he bows in front of Lincoln. And then everybody starts discussing how even Soviets understand that we Americans are the greatest thing that happened to humanity. And I know that story from my grandmother, from Nina. She said, well, we were just being polite. They brought us to the god of democracy, the god of capitalism. So we're being polite.

20:58And then she said, well, but if we bring them to, say, to pay tribute to our Lenin, nobody, none of them would have taken the hat on him. Well, exactly, exactly. So I think it's quite understandable. But you can see this. He's almost boiling with this resentment. He certainly felt that the Americans were looking down on him. But now that he had the bomb, he felt that this could compensate for all other problems. And the Soviet Union was a true superpower. And that's why so much of Soviet obsession with greatness really comes down to nuclear weapons.

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22:15The next four years are going to be difficult and challenging years for us all. The election may have been a close one. But I think that there is general agreement that a supreme national effort will be needed to move this country safely through the 1960s. That's the voice of President John F. Kennedy, known as Jack, or JFK. My uncle, though I never met him. In November 1960, he wins the election for the Democrats, beating Richard Nixon in the race to be president. So now my wife and I prepare for a new administration. And for a new baby. Thank you. President Kennedy grew up in a well-to-do Irish Catholic family from Boston.

23:02He was raised in enormous privilege. He embodies America's great youthful promise at the beginning of the 1960s. And he represents the generation of Americans who fought in World War II. He became a war hero when he saved the lives of his crew after his patrol boat was sunk by the Japanese. That heroism becomes an important part of his political story. Max, I wanted to ask you, how was JFK influenced by the war? Because America was less involved in World War II than the Soviet Union. Well, President Kennedy served in the Pacific during World War II, and he fought in the Solomon Islands. He was the captain of a small motor torpedo boat, and the boat was struck by a Japanese destroyer.

23:51Two of the crewmen were killed. One of them was severely burned. President Kennedy swam over to him and then took his life jacket, the fellow's life jacket, and his teeth and they swam about two and a half miles. He swam through the night to a very small island about the size of the front courtyard of this hotel, just a few hundred feet long. And within eyesight of that island was the Japanese military base. So they could see the Japanese soldiers walking on the base when they woke up in the morning. And they all lay down in the bushes expecting rescue, but the rescue didn't come. So President Kennedy, the second night, went out alone with a handgun and a flashlight.

24:37And he swam about three miles to a strait where he expected to see PT boats. and his plan was to fire the gun, flash the light. And I asked a PT Bill captain what would have happened if he had seen a gun flash in the night and he said we would have shot it to pieces and then we would have gone to investigate. And President Kennedy's idea was that he would be killed but they would find the body and they would know the crew was alive. This was an extremely brave thing to do. So how did they get out of it? So President Kennedy each night would swim to another island. And after a week, he swam across a long straight, which I swam across to see what it would be like.

25:21Oh, wow. And then swam to an island and he saw two young boys. And he got them to calm down because they thought he might be Japanese and the Japanese would have killed them. Right. And then he wrote a message on a coconut and sent that with one person. and then he climbed into a canoe, and they covered him up with coconuts, and they paddled him about 70 miles through the Japanese lines to an American base. But in the meanwhile, the coconut with the message was handed along and given, and a rescue was sent. Wow, that was... So all the people who survived the sinking survived the war because of that.

26:00Because of him. That was very heroic. Well, they asked him, how did you become a hero in World War II? And he said it was involuntary. They sunk my boat. That was also modest. The war impacts President Kennedy in other ways. He comes out of it gravely concerned about military decision-making, the potential devastation of nuclear war, and the threat of radioactive fallout. At the Harvard Kennedy School, I meet Frederick Logevall, who is a professor of international affairs there. He's also President Kennedy's biographer. There's this remarkable speech in October 1945. Think about this. 28-year-old scrawny kid back from the service, getting ready to maybe run for office.

26:53He gives a little notice speech in which he's already concerned about the implications of the atomic weapon, which had just been used on Japan, what, two months before. And he says, basically, I hope our officials' political skill will match our scientific skill in the years and decades to come. If not, we could be looking at Armageddon. And I think if we then go forward 15 years, now he's running for president, 1960, it's clear that he's concerned about nuclear proliferation and is anxious to make sure that the nuclear club remains small and that especially the two superpowers keep a lid on this nuclear arms race.

27:42That anxiety does not stop him from calling for more and better missiles during the election campaign. There's a perception that the United States is way behind the Soviet Union in missile production. President Kennedy wants America to catch up.