D n nt V : v t th b l z t n nd thb n l r

Andrei Kozovoi

Journal of Cold War Studies, Volume 16, Number 3, Summer 2014,pp. 29-61 (Article)

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KozovoiDissonant Voices

Dissonant Voices

Soviet Youth Mobilization and the CubanMissile Crisis

✣ Andrei Kozovoi

In the event of war, the Soviet people would be as united against the UnitedStates and their allies as they were united in their ªght against Hitler.

Nikita Khrushchev, May 1960, to Charles de Gaulle1

A worker asks his local Communist Party secretary: “Comrade, what should wedo if the Americans launch a nuclear attack?” “Simple,” the secretary replies,“You wrap yourself in a sheet and make your way slowly to the cemetery.” “Whyslowly, Comrade?” the worker asks. “Simple again,” the party secretary replies,“so not to cause panic.”2

When interviewed recently by a U.S. historian, Russian poetEvgenii Evtushenko remembered the days of the 1962 missile crisis, when hewas a Pravda correspondent in Cuba. He cited an issue of the other authorita-tive Soviet newspaper, Izvestiya, which featured a front-page article citing aSoviet ofªcial who insisted that no Soviet missiles were present in Cuba, andanother article on an inside page describing the Soviet government’s proposalto the United States to dismantle their missiles in Turkey in exchange for theSoviet ones in Cuba. “It was [a] very difªcult situation. We [the Soviet jour-nalists] need[ed] [a] quick decision,” said the poet to justify the newspaper’sblunder.3

1. N. S. Khrushchev to French President Charles de Gaulle, 16 May 1960, Paris, cited in MikhailProzumenshchikov et al., eds., Venskii val’s kholodnoi voiny (Vokrug vstrechi N. S. Khrushcheva i J. F.Kennedi v 1961 godu v Vene): Dokumenty (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2011), p. 45. This book contains pre-viously classiªed documents from the “Khrushchev lichnyi fond” (Fond 52) of the Russian State Ar-chive of Recent History (RGANI).

2. This joke (anekdot) is mentioned in Lawrence J. Vale, The Limits of Civil Defense in the USA, Swit-zerland, Britain and the Soviet Union (London: Macmillan, 1987), p. 175.

3. Interview with Evtushenko in the second DVD of the recent edition of I Am Cuba (dir. Mikhail

Journal of Cold War StudiesVol. 16, No. 3, Summer 2014, pp. 29–61, doi:10.1162/JCWS_a_00470© 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology

The Soviet press was indeed under pressure during what was arguably thehottest period of the Cold War.4 But the Izvestiya incident involved more thanjust the effect of quickly unfolding events. In 1962 the Soviet Union was stilla “propaganda state” in which mass mobilization, as David Priestland puts it,was intended to “unify state and society into a single, fused body.”5 The freeºow of information, pertaining particularly to the outside world, was re-stricted, and when dealing with the events in Cuba, the Soviet “closed society”suffered from “sensory deprivation.”6 In the minds of the leaders of the Com-munist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the Soviet propaganda machinehad to function as a solid entity—a choir whose performers (agents of propa-ganda) sang a score offered by the composer (the CPSU), under the supervi-sion of the conductor (the local propaganda leadership), in front of an atten-tive and reactive audience (the Soviet public).7

Since the early stages of the mobilization state, the CPSU had troublewith the implementation of its propaganda. As this article demonstrates, theblunder Izvestiya made on the missile deployments was only the tip of the ice-berg. Many dissonant voices were out of tune with the composer’s designs. Bydissonant voices I mean explicit or implicit contradiction to the CPSU line

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Kalatozov, 1964; New Yorker Video / Milestone Cinémathèque, 2009). He refers to the 27 October1962 issue of Izvestiya, which on its front page featured Khrushchev’s letter to Kennedy dated that veryday offering an exchange of “means (sredstva, i.e. weapons) you consider offensive” in Cuba against“analogous means” deployed by the United States in Turkey. On page 2, under the title “Cuba and theAmerican Bases,” the Izvestiya political observer V. Matveev, stated that the Soviet base in Cuba andthe U.S. bases elsewhere in the world had nothing in common and that the United States should ac-cept the Soviet proposition of 23 October “to liquidate all their military bases on foreign soil.”

4. Whether a “clear and present danger” of nuclear war really existed in October 1962 or was just “me-dia hysteria” is still a matter of debate. See Vladislav Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in theCold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), p. 381n. 69.

5. David Priestland, Stalinism and the Politics of Mobilization: Ideas, Power and Terror in Inter-war Rus-sia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 35. Mobilization is understood here as a strategyoriented toward preparing individuals for the tasks they might be called on to fulªll in the future. Themobilization is ubiquitous, using all means necessary, including oral and written propaganda, simula-tions, and drills through all the media, including cinema. Propaganda and mobilization were the coreof the Soviet regime, from Vladimir Lenin to Mikhail Gorbachev, even if their magnitude variedgreatly over time. Under Khrushchev, the “Thaw” meant not the “liberalization” of the regime but thereinforcement of its contradictions. For the foundational years, see the seminal work by Peter Kenez,The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917–1929 (New York: Cam-bridge University Press, 1985), esp. pp. 8–9.

6. On the notion of “closed society,” see Sergei I. Zhuk, “Closing and Opening Soviet Society,” AbImperio, Vol. 2 (2011), pp. 123–158. On “sensory deprivation,” see Jonathan Haslam, Russia’s ColdWar: From the October Revolution to the Fall of the Wall (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), p. x.

7. The “choir” metaphor derives from the perception of Soviet propagandists as “intermediates” inter-preting the CPSU’s often opaque discourses through “ªlters.” See Karl Aimermacher, foreword toV. Yu. Aªani, ed., Ideologicheskie komissii TsK KPSS, 1958–1964: Dokumenty (Moscow: ROSSPEN,2000), p. 21. Voices of dissonance need to be distinguished from voices of dissent. The latter reºecteda conscious and explicit disagreement with the party dogma. Dissonances were more often than notdriven by inertia. Resistance to authority, if any, was largely implicit.

within the propaganda machine, and not mere echoes of a “social” or “cul-tural” dialogue between the party leaders and Soviet society or between differ-ent propaganda institutions, a dialogue reºecting the context of relative liber-alization of the Khrushchev era. Those dissonant voices could be heard notonly in the press but in all other media intended for adults as well as youth—the Pioneers and the members of the Soviet Communist Youth League(Komsomol).8 Those dissonances existed between the Komsomol leaders andthe party line, between the Komsomol “performers” and the Komsomol lead-ers, and between the audience’s reactions and the Komsomol’s wishes. As theIzvestiya example demonstrates, dissonances also arose inside the same media,especially in periodicals, which sometimes featured contradictory texts in thesame issue. Because such incongruities can be seen as the absence of conso-nance, silent voices were also considered dissonances of a sort, particularly inthe context of mobilization, which presupposed fusion of all the componentsof the propaganda machine. Komsomol leaders were aware of some of thesedissonances, but the Komsomol’s propagandists failed to adapt their tactics tothe Cuban crisis. As during the Stalinist period, youth mobilization was hin-dered by the contradictory signals sent to the public, whose consumption ofthese signals resulted in the sundry contradictions.9

To ferret out these dissonances and to understand their probable causes,it is not enough to study different voices during the crisis. Instead, thesevoices must be placed in a broader context. After all, from the Soviet JohnDoe’s point of view, this particular mode of mobilization began in 1961 withthe Berlin crisis (when the Soviet media launched a “war scare” campaign)and the publication of the Third Party Program.10 The “Cuban lesson” endedon a positive note with the signature of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty(LTBT) in 1963. The tragic demise of one of the main protagonists, John F.

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8. For an analysis of the concept of “youth” in the USSR after World War II and its importance forpropaganda, see Juliane Fürst, Stalin’s Last Generation: Soviet Post-war Youth and the Emergence of Ma-ture Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 7–14. In Komsomol discourses of thattime, “youth” (molodezh’) encompassed adolescents and young adults from 15 to 35 years of age, andOktyabryata (“children of October”; the 7-to-10-year-old age group) and Pionery, or Pioneers (10-to-15-year-olds), were commonly called “children” (deti). Modern legal deªnitions, however, acknowl-edge only two stages of development: childhood and adulthood (usually before and after 18). In thisarticle I deªne Soviet youth as individuals approximately age 7 to 30; they were seen as malleable bythe state and hence attracted particular attention. The fact that both the Oktyabryata and the Pioneerswere part of the youth league under the Komsomol’s direct supervision is another reason not to differ-entiate between the three categories.

9. See Sarah Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia: Terror, Propaganda and Dissent, 1934–1941(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 183–184. Davies was among the ªrst histo-rians to stress the necessity of studying the “consumption” of propaganda by Soviet citizens, looking atthe way they assimilated propaganda and made it their own.

10. On the “war scare” campaign, see N. S. Khrushchev, Vospominaniya: Vremya, lyudi, vlast’: Knigavtoraya (Moscow: Moskovskie Novosti, 1999), p. 500. The Soviet leader said, “there was a risk of aconfrontation over Berlin,” and the Soviet media prepared the population for that eventuality.

Kennedy, was linked to the Cuban crisis by the Soviet media and thus servedas an impromptu coda in a minor key. Looking at the issue from a broaderperspective also makes sense from the point of view of Komsomol agents—their tactics bespoke inertia both during and after the crisis, despite ofªcialefforts to sustain mobilization. Moreover, 1961–1963 is generally considereda transitional period for Soviet society and politics: from an optimistic to amore somber outlook, marked by the relative decline of the spirit associatedwith the “Khrushchev Thaw,” as well as tacit recognition of economic short-comings.11

The study of those dissonant voices is particularly important today, morethan 50 years after the Cuban missile crisis. Reºecting a general trend in ColdWar historiography in which international relations has usually matteredmore than domestic issues and in which U.S. policy has attracted the lion’sshare of scholarly research, the Soviet side of the story has usually been rele-gated to the margins. The social dimension of the Cold War on the Sovietside has often been ignored altogether, though some notable studies of thistopic have begun to appear in recent years.12

What is more or less accepted today, drawn from myriad opinions duringand after the crisis, is twofold. The ªrst assumption is that Soviet citizens were

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11. By “the spirit of the Thaw” I mean the possibility of publicly discussing (and criticizing) theStalinist past and, more broadly, the possibility of expressing oneself with greater freedom. The publi-cation of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in 1962 was an important event in that transition.Khrushchev’s visit to the Manezhnaya painting exhibition in December 1962 and his meeting withthe “creative intelligentsia” in March 1963 were manifest attempts to curtail the liberalization. As forthe economy, after the social protest against increasing prices in June 1961, and in the face of a badharvest, Khrushchev decided to import large quantities of grain from the West in 1963 and 1964. SeePhilip Hanson, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Economy: An Economic History of the USSR from 1945(London: Longman, 2003), pp. 84–85. The traditional Cold War narrative from the Soviet side seesthe Cuban missile crisis as Khrushchev’s “ultimate exercise in nuclear brinkmanship” after the secondBerlin crisis (1958–1961), which set a precedent. See Zubok, A Failed Empire, p. 143. In retrospect,some scholars have seen the LTBT as a Cold War “watershed.” See Vojtech Mastny, “The 1963 Nu-clear Test Ban Treaty: A Missed Opportunity for Détente?” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1(Winter 2008), p. 3.

12. To quote just one example, the Soviet angle is absent from an overview of domestic and interna-tional public reaction in Don Munton and David A. Welch, The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Concise His-tory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 93–94. At the same time, the impact of the crisisin the United States is well known. The best account is Alice L. George, Awaiting Armageddon: HowAmericans Faced the Cuban Missile Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), esp.pp. xx–xxi, 98. See also Chris O’Brien, “Mama, Are We Going to Die? American Children Confrontthe Cuban Missile Crisis,” in James Marten, ed., Children at War: A Historical Anthology (New York:New York University Press, 2002), pp. 75–86. For publications focused on the social impact of theCold War in the Soviet Union during the Khrushchev era, see Rosa Magnusdottir, “‘Be Careful inAmerica, Premier Khrushchev!’ Soviet Perceptions of Peaceful Coexistence with the United Statesin 1959,” Cahiers du monde russe, Vol. 47, Nos. 1–2 (January–April 2006), pp. 109–130; and Susan E.Reid, “Who Will Beat Whom? Soviet Popular Reception of the American National Exhibition inMoscow, 1959,” Kritika, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Fall 2008), pp. 855–904. See also Margaret Peacock, InnocentWeapons: The Soviet and American Politics of Childhood in the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 2014).

kept in the dark and, consequently, that the “anxiety level” was considerablylower than in the United States. In the words of a contemporary who was aschoolboy at the time, “We didn’t realize that we had been on the verge ofwar.”13 The second assumption partly derives from the ªrst. Before the crisis,Cuba had a positive image among the Soviet citizenry, not least because of theCPSU’s insistence that the Cuban Revolution had “rejuvenated” the RussianOctober Revolution. This “romantic” perception of Cuba was reinforced by thepoetry of Evtushenko, who was Fidel Castro’s personal friend. However, afterthe standoff of 1962, the “love affair” with Cuba began to falter, and the “free-dom island” (ostrov svobody, as it was called in the Soviet media) came to be seenas a burden and a laughingstock. In many ways, the Cuban crisis alienated alarge part of Soviet society from the CPSU’s message and dictates.14

This article assesses the impact of the Cuban missile crisis on Sovietyouth, both Pioneers and Komsomol members, as a prime category forSoviet propaganda in the context of political mobilization from 1961 to1963. The article is, and must be, selective. The evidence presented here re-lates only to a part of the mobilization campaign, offering a glimpse into thereactions of geographically and sociologically heterogeneous Soviet youth.15

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13. The Soviet media, according to Khrushchev’s memoir (Vospominaniya, p. 517), did inform thepopulation about the crisis, but “took into consideration the fear inspired in the Soviet people bythe prospect of a nuclear confrontation.” This was a way of mentioning the censorship surround-ing the events. On the “low anxiety level” in the Soviet Union, see Yurii Aksyutin, Khrushchevskaya“ottepel’” i obshchestvennye nastroeniya v SSSR v 1953–1964, 2nd ed. (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2010),pp. 378, 381. According to Aksyutin, 38.5 percent and 52.5 percent of the persons polled in 1998 and1999 felt the world had been on the brink of a new world war. Although Aksyutin’s book is invaluablefor the study of public opinion under Khrushchev, the poll is difªcult to interpret because it does not,among other things, distinguish between generations. See also the memoir of a diplomat and adviserto Khrushchev, Oleg Troyanovsky, Cherez gody i rasstoyaniya: Istoriya odnoi sem’i (Moscow: Vagrius,1997), p. 253. On the absence of fear, see Donald J. Raleigh, Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History ofRussia’s Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 152. Conversely, on the fear of nu-clear war during and after the crisis, see Donald J. Raleigh, ed., Russia’s Sputnik Generation: Soviet BabyBoomers Talk about Their Lives (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), p. 132.

14. For a testimony of the “love affair” with Cuba, see Raleigh, Soviet Baby Boomers, p. 150. The ideathat the October crisis marked the end of the Soviet-Cuban “honeymoon” was developed by James G.Blight and Philip A. Brenner, Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba’s Struggle with the Superpowers after theMissile Crisis (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littleªeld, 2002). However, to other historians, this tensionwas only momentary. According to Mervyn J. Bain, “Soviet support for the Cuban revolution contin-ued and expanded” in the 1970s. See Mervyn J. Bain, “Havana and Moscow, 1959–2009: The En-during Relationship?” Cuban Studies, Vol. 41, No. 1 (2010), p. 129. The Soviet audience, however,did not consider this “divorce” momentary, as Russian journalists Petr Vail and Aleksandr Genis afªrmin their much-cited work 60-e: Mir sovetskogo cheloveka (1988; Moscow: Novoe LiteraturnoeObozrenie, 2001), pp. 56–59. See also Michael Dobbs’s lively narrative in One Minute to Midnight:Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War (London: Hutchinson, 2008), pp. 202–203.

15. For a sociological portrait of Soviet youth (teenage and young adult readers of Komsomolskayapravda) at the beginning of the 1960s, see Boris Grushin, Chetyre zhizni Rossii v zerkale obshchestv-ennogo mneniya: Zhizn’ pervaya: Epokha Khrushcheva (Moscow: Progress-Traditsiya, 2001), pp. 518–549.

The revealed dissonances explain why the Cuban missile crisis had the impactit did in Soviet society, and more broadly they enrich our understanding ofSoviet Cold War culture.

Komsomol Leaders and the Party Line

What was the party line concerning youth before and after the October 1962crisis, and how was it implemented by the Komsomol? The most obviousway to answer the ªrst part of the question is to look at the Third Party Pro-gram, published after the 22nd CPSU Congress in October 1961. Thisprogrammatic document, which was binding on all Communist organiza-tions, presented two relevant goals: Soviet society had to remain mobilized fordefense of the country against “imperialists” who were preparing a new war,and all the country’s resources were to be marshaled for the construction ofCommunism. Iosif Stalin’s embalmed corpse was removed from the RedSquare mausoleum, and his name was excised from the 1961 document, likesomething belonging to the past. Thus, the new CPSU program, presented asa “key landmark,” was announcing a “new beginning.”16

The talk of war and of the advancement of Communism was not new.Just as the “myth of hostile encirclement” in the 1920s had “helped create anenvironment conducive to Stalin’s plans for socialist building,” nurturingfears of a Third World War was initially intended to accelerate postwar recon-struction, as well as to redirect popular displeasure with dreadful economicconditions, focusing it instead on domestic and foreign “enemies.”17 The newprogram, despite proclamations to the contrary, followed the old strategy,with “peaceful coexistence” signifying concord among states. The “classstruggle” between societies was to continue, and the Soviet Union would aim

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16. Miriam Dobson, Khrushchev’s Cold Summer: Gulag Returnees, Crime and the Fate of Reform afterStalin (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), pp. 195–196. The party program was published asa pamphlet at the time and can now be found online at http://leftinmsu.narod.ru/polit_ªles/books/III_program_KPSS_ªles/III_program_KPSS.htm. The “personality cult” was mentioned only in ashort paragraph at the end of the document and was described as “incompatible with Leninist princi-ples of Party life” (see Party Program, Part 2, VII, “The Party during the Active Construction of Com-munism”).

17. For the ªrst quotation and the use of “war scares” in propaganda before 1945, see Jeffrey Brooks,Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to The Cold War (Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 39. See also Priestland, Stalinism and the Politics of Mobilization,p. 174. For the postwar period, see Elena Zubkova, Russia after the War: Hopes, Illusions and Disap-pointments, 1945–1947 (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), pp. 83–86. For an example of such rhetoric,see Lavrentii Beria’s address to the Moscow Soviet on 6 November 1951 in commemoration of theanniversary of the October Revolution, published in all major national newspapers. As the war inKorea was raging on, Beria announced that “[t]hese are the facts, comrades. They say that the British-American bloc is preparing to launch a new war.” See Beria’s speech in Sovetskoe iskusstvo, 7 November1951, p. 3.

to “catch and overtake America.” Building “Communism,” something thatKhrushchev had been talking about since the early 1930s, was the ultimatejustiªcation for all the sacriªces Soviet society was making to attain that goal.It also served as an excuse for the many unpopular reforms Khrushchev wasimplementing at home.

The 22nd Party Congress was not the ªrst time Khrushchev had talkedabout the renewed effort to attain Communism. In 1959, during the 21stCPSU Congress, he had proclaimed that the USSR had completed the “fulland ªnal construction of socialism.”18 Two years later, the idea of the Com-munist utopia ªgured even more prominently against the backdrop ofmounting tension abroad. The failure of the U.S.-sponsored Bay of Pigs inva-sion of Cuba in April 1961 convinced Soviet leaders that Kennedy was a weakpresident easily inºuenced by hardliners. Bombarded with State Security(KGB) intelligence reports describing U.S. plans for a nuclear strike, Khrush-chev anticipated a severe reaction after the construction of the Berlin Wall andexpected another determined attempt to overthrow Castro. Hence, he in-creased the level of mobilization at home. On 7 August 1961, he publicly de-manded that surveillance of the USSR’s western borders be stepped up.19

Young generations were seen as key for the success of those plans—just asthey were for the campaign of the “Virgin Lands conquest” launched in 1954.Khrushchev in his report at the 22nd Congress insisted that “as long as thedanger of war exists, as long as the imperialist jungle is populated with preda-tors, we must educate all our people, our youth, in the spirit of love for theMotherland without reservations, [we must] have the capacity to defend it,sparing no effort and even life itself.”20 By “we,” Khrushchev meant the Kom-somol, an organization responsible for preparing young people to live underCommunism by educating them “in the spirit of a rigorous respect of theprinciples and norms of Communist imperatives.” Absolute dedication towork, ideological awareness, and physical ªtness were among the prime ele-ments of this program.21

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18. Gleb Tsipursky, “Citizenship, Deviance and Identity: Soviet Youth Newspapers as Agents of SocialControl in the Thaw-Era Leisure Campaign,” Cahiers du monde russe, Vol. 4, No. 49 (October 2008),p. 630.

19. On the general context, see William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York:W. W. Norton, 2003), pp. 508–509; Zubok, A Failed Empire, p. 139; Vladislav Zubok, Zhivago’sChildren: The Last Russian Intelligentsia (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard UniversityPress, 2009), p. 195; Haslam, Russia’s Cold War, p. 188; and Khrushchev, Vospominaniya, pp. 500–501.

20. See Kuznetsov, “Materials for the Report on Preparation of Youth for Military Service,” 10 June1963, in Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’no-Politicheskoi Istorii (RGASPI), Fond (F.) M-1s(hereinafter cited as just F. 1), Opis’ (Op.) 1, Delo (D.) 141, List (L.) 66.

21. Party Program, Part 2, III, 2, “Pursuit of the Reinforcement of the Role of Social Organizations:State and Communism.”

Youth mobilization was a long-standing tactic. Decision-makers’ fears of“losing” the younger generation were, in the words of Ann Livschiz, “a fairlyconsistent feature of both public and behind the-scenes discussions overchildhood matters throughout the Soviet era.” However, since the mid-1950s,this anxiety had been reinforced by a surge of juvenile crime.22 To counteryouth delinquency and, more generally, to bring back the Stakhanovite spiritof the 1930s, the regime introduced a school reform whose proclaimed pur-pose was “to bring the school closer to life,” not only by placing teenage “vol-unteers” in temporary jobs in industry and agriculture but also by sendingthem abroad to resuscitate their “revolutionary spirit.” After Castro pro-claimed his devotion to Marxism-Leninism, Cuba became a perfect destina-tion for such an exercise. In June 1962, Khrushchev urged Soviet youth to usetheir summer vacations to go to Cuba, share their knowledge with Cubanfriends, and work among the Cubans to be imbued with the revolutionaryspirit that had guided Cuba’s ªght for independence against tyrants—Fulgencio Batista and other “imperialist puppets.”23 With this strategyKhrushchev hoped to kill several birds with one stone: he would reassert hisand the Soviet state’s “ideological reputation” in the face of increasing criti-cism from China and would also quell mounting opposition inside his ownentourage.24 Thus, as William Taubman writes, the deployment of missiles inCuba was intended as a “cure-all.”25

The Komsomol, a traditionally conservative organization, eagerly echoedthe party’s voice. Since the end of the 1950s the Komsomol had expected totake a lead as the “youth’s main educator.”26 The head of the organization,Sergei Pavlov (1929–1993), was an anti-Thaw bureaucrat obsessed with the“penetration of Western inºuences” into Soviet culture. He saw Western in-ºuence as the main cause of young people’s “deviances.”27 Pavlov also saw aconstant military danger emanating from the West. On many occasions, he

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22. Ann Livschiz, “De-Stalinizing Soviet Childhood: The Quest for Moral Rebirth, 1953–1958,” inPolly Jones, ed., The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization: Negotiating Cultural and Social Change in theKhrushchev Era (New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 117–118.

23. N. S. Khrushchev, Stroitel’stvo kommunizma v SSSR i razvitie sel’skogo khozyaistva, 7 vols. (Mos-cow: Politizdat, 1963), Vol. 7, p. 28.

24. Chinese leaders expressed displeasure with de-Stalinization as well as other aspects of Soviet con-temporary policy following the Twentieth Soviet Party Congress. On the origins of the Sino-Sovietsplit in the context of decolonization, see Cécile Marangé, “Une réinterprétation des origines de la dis-pute sino-soviétique d’après des témoignages de diplomates russes,” Relations internationales, Vol. 148,No. 4 (2011), pp. 17–32.

25. Taubman, Khrushchev, p. 532.

26. Hilary Pilkington, Russia’s Youth and Its Culture: A Nation’s Constructors and Constructed (London:Routledge, 1994), p. 122.

27. Zubok, Zhivago’s Children, pp. 205–206.

and his colleagues argued that Soviet society was being forced by “the aggres-sive policy of the United States and its allies” to prepare for nuclear war.28 “Wedo not have the right to forget the existence of imperialists who hate Commu-nism and prepare monstrous plans to destroy the socialist world,” asserted aspeaker at the 14th Komsomol Congress. He depicted the mobilization cam-paign as a mere response to the stirring up of “atomic hysteria” by “militarymaniacs.” The “youth militarization” in capitalist countries called for vigi-lance and a “permanent strengthening of [the Soviet Union’s] defense arse-nal.”29 Pavlov himself proclaimed that even though “North-American imperi-alism fell ºat on its face at the Bay of Pigs, it was still mounting an attack.”He exhorted young workers to go to Cuba to “win . . . the battle for produc-tion.”30

Did the Cuban missile crisis affect this general line in any way? At the toplevel, the effect was twofold. The tensions surrounding the crisis were quicklysucceeded by a détente. Kennedy’s address at American University on 10 June1963 proclaiming the necessity of nuclear disarmament was dubbed byKhrushchev as “the best speech by an American president since Roosevelt.”31

Ten days later an accord was signed to establish a direct phone line betweenthe Kremlin and the White House, the so-called Hot Line. On 5 August, rep-resentatives of the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdomconvened in Moscow to sign the LTBT amid speculation about a new summitin 1964.

However, the détente was fragile. After the standoff in October 1962, notonly did Khrushchev need “psychological compensation for [the] colossal lossof face vis-à-vis President Kennedy,” he also encountered accusations of cow-ardice from Communist China and increasing pressure from conservativeforces at home (in the CPSU Presidium and also from the KGB and the mili-tary), who requested and eventually obtained a rearmament program.32 On7 November, the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, Soviet Defense

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28. Speech (no author), 2 May 1962, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 47, D. 489, L. 113. See also Internal note(no author), 8 September 1962, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 47, D. 489, L. 128.

29. “Material for the Report on the Activities in the Area of Sport and Defense for the Masses for theFourteenth Komsomol (VLKSM) Congress,” 19 February 1962, in RGASPI, F.1, Op. 47, D. 489,Ll. 54, 56.

30. “Presidium of the Meeting of Soviet-Cuban Friendship,” 2 June 1962, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 1,D. 60b, L. 31.

31. See the Russian version of Anatolii Dobrynin’s memoir, Sugubo doveritel’no: Posol v Vashingtone prishesti presidentakh SShA (1962–1986) (Moscow: Avtor, 1997), p. 90.

32. Zubok, Zhivago’s Children, p. 208. A similar reaction could be observed in the United States,where the Cuban missile crisis induced many people to advocate further development of nuclearweapons and to carry on with nuclear tests. As a result, “fear of nuclear war won over fear of disastrousconsequences of the nuclear tests.” Dobrynin, Sugubo doveritel’no, p. 86.

Minister Rodion Malinovskii (who had overseen the secret Cuban operation)issued Order No. 271, which encapsulated the ofªcial interpretation of thecrisis: “The aggressive policy of imperialists against free Cuba has been a crudeviolation of elementary norms of international law and has generated a threatof thermonuclear war.” According to the directive, the “security interests” ofthe Soviet Union made it necessary for the armed forces to remain on con-stant alert (byt’ v postoyannoi boevoi gotovnosti) in order to strike a fatal blow incase of an attack.33 This led to the “re-militarization” of the Soviet regime.The military became more involved in state decision-making and in the youthmobilization campaign. The latter began in earnest in 1961 with the transferof Soviet Civil Defense Forces from the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Inter-nal Affairs to the Ministry of Defense—just as the U.S. government movedthe previously independent Ofªce of Civil Defense (the Ofªce of Civiland Defense Mobilization) under the command of the U.S. Department ofDefense.34

Soon thereafter, the Soviet military indirectly beneªted from Kennedy’sassassination. Facing a national drama and frustrated by the murder of theprincipal suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, Americans looked for a scapegoat andfound it in the Soviet Union. After all, Oswald had been a defector to theUSSR and had married a Russian woman. He was the leader of an activistgroup, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which supported the new Commu-nist regime in Cuba. Anti-Soviet feelings in the United States increased, andthis, in turn, fueled anti-Americanism in the Soviet media, which presentedKennedy as a victim of a “right-wing” conspiracy, with Oswald being a meretool, murdered to cover up the tracks.35 Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon John-son, quickly adopted a ªrm stance regarding Moscow and refused anythingthat would smack of appeasement, thus indirectly conªrming the KGB’sstatements that Kennedy’s assassination signaled “reaction and aggressivenessin U.S. policy.”36 As the year 1963 drew to a close, Soviet Foreign Minister

38

Kozovoi

33. “Order No. 271,” Sovetskaya kul’tura, 7 November 1962, p. 3.

34. David Monteyne, Fallout Shelter: Designing for Civil Defense in the Cold War (Minneapolis: Uni-versity of Minnesota Press, 2011), p. 47; and Vale, The Limits of Civil Defense, p. 160.

35. Anti-Americanism in the USSR, as in other countries, was a complex phenomenon rooted in theTsarist past and reinforced by Cold War antagonism affecting political, social, and cultural issues. Foran overview of anti-Americanism during Khrushchev’s time, see Eric Shiraev and Vladislav Zubok,Anti-Americanism in Russia: From Stalin to Putin (New York: Palgrave, 2000), pp. 13–24. By “anti-Americanism” I mean the public images and discourses that denigrated U.S. foreign policy, U.S.policymakers, and American culture and values. On the surge of anti-Americanism in the USSR, seeDobrynin, Sugubo doveritel’no, p. 96. For a typical Soviet media interpretation of Kennedy’s assassina-tion, see “The Assassins Hide Their Traces,” Pravda, 26 November 1963, pp. 1, 3.

36. John Dumbrell, President Lyndon Johnson and Soviet Communism (Manchester, UK: ManchesterUniversity Press, 2004), p. 11; and Dobrynin, Sugubo doveritel’no, p. 99.

Andrei Gromyko concluded that the USSR had to pursue “the struggleagainst the menace of war.”37 The political wind was blowing cold.

In the wake of the Cuban crisis, the Soviet “intellectual” media expressedambivalence about U.S. foreign policy, appraising Kennedy as the peacemaker(accolades were especially loud after his assassination) and depicting the hard-liners in his administration as increasingly inºuential. But in the statements ofKomsomol leaders, no such nuance was present. The youth organization wasamong those urging Khrushchev to take a ªrmer political stance in line withthe 1961 Party Program to prepare young people for the defense of the coun-try. Contrary to a general perception of the Cuban missile crisis as a “lesson”for the superpowers, the Komsomol, like the military, used the crisis to instillfear of more ominous things to come. Thus a June 1963 programmatic docu-ment asserts:

The U.S. government prepares its citizens for the inevitability of thermonuclearwar with the Soviet Union. As recent events in the Caribbean have shown,American imperialists and their partners from the aggressive blocs continue tobuild up tensions on the international scene and push the world to the brink ofnuclear war.38

During meetings and conferences organized to “reinforce the militaryand patriotic education of youth,” Komsomol agitators constantly remindedtheir audiences of the threat from the United States. Military preparedness,they argued, was the key to counter a threat that could come from anywhere,including from space. They reported that 44 of the 54 U.S. satellites sent intoorbit in 1962 were “serving military purposes exclusively.”39 (This claim mayhave been partly inspired by the fact that the USSR itself at the time was de-veloping a space missile program called the Fractional Orbital BombardmentSystem, or FOBS, which could strike U.S. territory from the south and re-main undetected by radar.)

During one such meeting, a Komsomol speaker quoted prominent Sovietofªcials who supported the military-ideological imperatives of the youthleague. To the chief of the CPSU Propaganda Department, Leonid Il’ichev,“contemporary imperialism did not change [after the Cuban missile crisis]and its military machine can at any time endanger the peaceful constructionof socialism.” Defense Minister Malinovskii, for his part, mocked Secretary ofDefense Robert McNamara’s declaration that “the United States has the nu-clear capacity to destroy the Soviet Union without risking a counterstrike”

39

Dissonant Voices

37. Viktor Israelyan, Na frontakh kholodnoi voiny: Zapiski sovetskogo posla (Moscow: Mir, 2003), p. 86.

38. “Materials for the Report on the Youth Preparation for Military Service,” 10 June 1963.

39. Ibid.

with an old Russian saying: “Don’t brag on your way to a battle, but brag re-turning from the battle.”40 In this case, however, Malinovskii was the onedoing the empty bragging. Soviet strategic nuclear forces were still markedlyinferior to the U.S. arsenal, a source of humiliation for Soviet military com-manders, who pressured Khrushchev to ªnance a rapid buildup.41

When discussing the possibility of nuclear war, Komsomol ideologues in-voked the Clausewitzian idea of war as an “instrument of policy,” adapting itto new circumstances.42 They adduced Vladimir Lenin, himself an avid readerof Carl von Clausewitz, who insisted that although “socialists condemn warsbetween peoples, . . . our attitude toward war is fundamentally different fromthat of the bourgeois paciªsts.” For Lenin, the activists said, war was a meansof “social justice.” In the nuclear age, war would be much more destructivethan in the past, but to some it remained a key option because nuclearweapons allowed the swift annihilation of the enemy and the attainment of“decisive political goals.”43 According to hardline ideologues, the SecondWorld War validated the claim that war was a “heroic moment.” Hence, theKomsomol must urge young people to be “vigorous and courageous.”44 Asimperialists pushed for war against the socialist camp, the Soviet Union had toaccelerate its defense measures. “The stronger our defense capabilities, themore capable we will be of overcoming our adversary’s deadly plans, andthe fewer the opportunities for the enemies of peace to launch a new war,” anactivist name Gromov stated at a Komsomol conference. Another speaker,Vasil’ev, a commanding ofªcer from the Cheboksary region, quoted thewords (obviously inspired by Sun Tzu) of the head of the Soviet Army’s MainPolitical Directorate (GlavPUR), Aleksei Epishev: “To prevent war, oneshould prepare for war.” To fulªll this mission, the Soviet Army had to be-come “the strongest and the most powerful in the world.”45 Eventually, as

40

Kozovoi

40. Minutes of the meeting “On the Reinforcement of Military and Patriotic Education of Youth,”23 September 1963, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 1, D. 141b, L. 49. In Russian, the proverb is “Ne khvalis’educhi na rat’, a khvalis’ educhi s rati.” Mirroring the U.S. fears of a Soviet military buildup, the Sovietideologues misinterpreted McNamara’s “assured destruction” theory calling for reinforcement capaci-ties, as laid out in his “No cities” speech of 9 June 1962 at Ann Arbor.

41. Haslam, Russia’s Cold War, pp. 196–199.

42. See further, Azar Gat, “Clausewitz and the Marxist: Yet Another Look,” Journal of ContemporaryHistory, Vol. 27, No. 3 (July 1992), pp. 363–382.

43. “Materials for the Report on Youth Preparation for Military Service,” 10 June 1963, Ll. 42, 52,55. The exact source of Lenin’s citation is not speciªed, though similar ideas can be found in his “TheWar Program of the Proletarian Revolution” (originally written in German in 1916 and published inRussian only in 1929).

44. Internal note, 24 September 1963, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 1, D. 141, Ll. 68–69. On 27–28 August1963, the VLKSM Central Committee, the Ministry of Defense, the Main Political Directorate of theSoviet Army, and the DOSAAF organized a conference “On the Current State and Measures for theImprovement of Military and Patriotic Education of Youth.”

45. Minutes of the meeting “On the Reinforcement of Military and Patriotic Education of Youth,”

with the military, the Komsomol’s uncompromising attitude clashed with“détente signals” sent by Khrushchev, magnifying the dissonances among theactivists whose mission was to adapt the main party line for a larger audience.

Spreading the Word: Komsomol Activists and theVoice of Authority

At ªrst glance, a consensus among Komsomol ofªcials prevailed before, dur-ing, and after the Cuban missile crisis. The league continued in its role as theprimary educator of youth, a detractor of imperialism, and an agent of soli-darity with Cuba. The Komsomol made sure the leaders of the CPSU knewthe party line was understood and correctly followed. For instance, in a De-cember 1962 report, the editor of the Kazakh children’s magazine Druzhnyerebyata (Friendly Children) declared,

for today’s Pioneers, the most important mission is to build Communismand live under Communism in the near future. Thus the inculcation of aworldview, of Communist values, of a deep understanding of our society’s needsis the fundamental goal of our work. In [this year’s] publications, our journal hasmade it clear that the Communist ethics are the most fair and the noblest in theworld.

The Kazakh periodical “tirelessly” denounced the “false freedom and falsedemocracy of the bourgeois world.” In particular, at the peak of the crisis, itfeatured an article titled “I Am Going to Tell You the Story of My Mother-land, Cuba,” apparently inspired by letters from Cuban children who praisedthe “unbiased help of the Soviet Union to heroic Cuba” and swore their “loy-alty to the socialist revolution and to Fidel Castro.”46

Druzhnye rebyata followed the Komsomol line to the letter, but in theglobal “battle for children’s empathy” it was only a small cog trying to catchup with such mammoths as Komsomol’skaya pravda and Pioner’skaya pravda.Before the crisis, these newspapers initiated a “battle for Cuba,” as childrenfrom around the country sent their letters to the “Soviet Committee for thePreservation of Peace” expressing their “shock” at U.S. “preparations to attackCuba.” Many children reportedly transferred their savings to a “Peace Fund”

41

Dissonant Voices

23 September 1963, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 1, D. 141v, Ll. 2, 44. As with Clausewitz, paraphrasing SunTzu was common in Soviet ofªcial discourse, a fact noted by U.S. military experts. “Khrushchev, likeevery doctrinaire Communist before him, is a slavish follower of Sun Tzu,” said a top U.S. Marinegeneral on 27 October 1962. See Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight, p. 266. David Holloway wrote inhis seminal work, The Soviet Union and the Arms Race, that “[to Soviet leaders] war can be preventedonly if the Soviet Union prepares to wage it” (cited in Vale, The Limits of Civil Defense, p. 153).

46. Internal note, 24 December 1962, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 32, D. 1089, Ll. 18–19.

set up to “strengthen friendship among peoples of the world.”47 Naturally, themobilization campaign encompassed all the media, and the press was notthe only information channel that tried to elicit support for Cuba and teachvigilance against the common enemy. Films were used for the same goals. Re-leased in July 1962 by the Lenªlm studio, Chernaya chaika (Black Seagull),directed by Grigorii Koltunov, told the story of a Cuban boy’s heroic opposi-tion against U.S. “subversive groups” who are assisted by local collaborators intheir quest to topple the Castro regime. The ªlm’s mobilization tactics har-kened back to the children’s “peace campaigns” that proliferated before WorldWar II.48

Komsomol ofªcials were also active in their role as “nuclear war whistleblowers.” The summer 1962 issue of the journal Sovetskii pogranichnik (SovietBorder Guard) warned young people about the “dark plans of American im-perialists” who had committed “enormous amounts of money on espionage”as a prelude to a nuclear strike.49 Soviet society had to be prepared for such awar, looking to the military to lend a helping hand. In the summer, manychildren also took part in “war games,” which sometimes involved hundredsof participants.50 The winning teams received a chance to spend their summerholidays in prestigious Pioneer camps where they were further trained in“anti-nuclear defense.”51 These games were a fruit of the Army-Komsomolsymbiosis, which had already produced a highly popular paramilitary societyknown as the Union of Societies to Assist in Defense and Aviation-ChemicalConstruction, established in 1927 and succeeded in 1951 by the VoluntarySociety for Assistance to the Army, Air Force, and Navy (DOSAAF).52 Everyschool child and student had to take lessons in civil defense in order to learnhow to defend the USSR “cleverly” (s umom).53

42

Kozovoi

47. “Kind Deeds of the Young,” Pioner’skaya pravda, 5 October 1962, p. 2.

48. On the mobilization of children, see Catriona Kelly, “Defending Children’s Rights, ‘In Defense ofPeace’: Children and Soviet Cultural Diplomacy,” Kritika, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Fall 2008), pp. 711–746.

49. “Enemies Are Active: Be Vigilant!” Sovetskii pogranichnik, 31 July 1962, p. 3, in RGASPI, F. 1,Op. 1, D. 34, L. 27.

50. “Letter to the VLKSM Central Committee,” 16 March 1962, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 1, D. 32,Ll. 10–13.

51. Internal note, 6 September 1962, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 1, D. 35, Ll. 1–7.

52. The history of DOSAAF and Soviet war games remains to be written. For earlier, succinct views,see Robert G. Wesson, “The Military in Soviet Society,” Russian Review, Vol. 30, No. 2 (April 1971),pp. 139–145; and Dimitri K. Simes, “The Military and Militarism in Soviet Society,” InternationalSociety, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Winter 1981–1982), pp. 123–143. At the end of the 1960s, new war games ap-peared, called “Zarnichka” (a game for smaller children), “Zarnitsa” (for Pioneers) and “Orlenok” (forKomsomolites). On the social and cultural impact of these games from 1975 to 1985, see AndreiKozovoi, Par-delà le Mur: La culture de guerre froide soviétique entre deux détentes (Paris: Complexe,2009), pp. 74, 76, 176, 245–246.

53. Internal note, 5 September 1962, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op 1, D. 33, L. 16.

“Defending the country cleverly” was a vague expression commonly usedby Komsomol agents working under the auspices of Komsomol’skaya pravdaand Pioner’skaya pravda. As was often the case with Soviet propaganda, wordswere adopted in parrot-like fashion both to satisfy the authorities—oftenthrough the widespread practices of ochkovtiratel’stvo (simulation of a success-ful performance) and pokazukha (window dressing)—and to obtain a per-sonal gain (perhaps a promotion for the editor).54 The problem was that themisuse of words often led to plagiarism. Performers “from the periphery” ofthe Soviet empire were apparently especially prone to this sin. A March 1963radio broadcast from Khabarovsk describing U.S. military bases in the Paciªcwas a verbatim repetition of an article that had appeared in the Far East Mili-tary District periodical Suvorovskii natisk (Suvorov’s Thrust).55 Another radiobroadcast, this time of Kyrgyz origin, “Vasya Reporterkin Travels across theWorld,” received poor reviews for its “naive” treatment of political issues andits “unoriginal” sources about the United States. Apparently, the broadcastunashamedly used The Americans, a travelogue published in 1960 by theCPSU favorite and Stalin Prize winner Nikolai Mikhailov.56 Central outletswere not immune, either. Secondary school textbooks dealing with post-1945world history were saturated with wording from Pravda.57

Although the extent of this “copy-pasting” is not always clear, the phe-nomenon should not be underestimated. It certainly had a dangerous side-effect for coverage of the Cuban crisis. Plagiarism, coupled with the secrecysurrounding the event, resulted in inertia. Unable and possibly unwilling toadapt their message to the radically new situation, Komsomol activists contin-ued to cultivate empathy and anti-American sentiment along the old patterns.Even Pioner’skaya pravda publications appeared dissonant with the new im-peratives. Although the Cuban missile crisis was an event without precedent,it got lost in the paper’s traditional anti-American rhetoric. Thus, its 19 Octo-ber issue told a story of two boys who lost their father in the Bay of Pigs oper-ation, and on 26 October it informed an imaginary Cuban child that the bay

43

Dissonant Voices

54. The deªnition of ochkovtiratel’stvo is mentioned in Ken Jowitt, New World Disorder: The LeninistExtinction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 79.

55. Broadcast on 10 March 1963 and cited in “The Role of Radio and Television in Military and Pa-triotic Education of Youth,” handwritten note of the Khabarovsk Krai radio committee, n.d. (afterJuly 1963), in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 32, D. 1114, L. 40.

56. “Information note (radio and television),” March–December 1962, inspection of the broadcastwritten by the Radio Committee of Kyrgyz youth, 17 January 1963, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 32,D. 1093, Ll. 119–122.

57. Igor I. Dolutskii, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The United States in Soviet and Russian History Text-books” in Victoria I. Zhuravleva and Ivan I. Kurilla, eds., Rossia i SShA na stranitsakh uchebnikov: Opytvzaimnykh representatsyi (Volgograd: Izdatel’stvo Volgogradskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta,2009), p. 239.

leaf (lavrovy list) sent by “his friend from Azerbaijan” went down with the shipsunk by Americans.58

The publications made no mention of the very real possibility of a newworld war. Instead, Pioner’skaya pravda inaugurated its “Cold War dictionary”with the phrase “American imperialists,” vaguely deªned as “people who fearthe light of knowledge, the light of truth,” as “barbarians and hypocrites” whowant “not only to starve Cuba, but also to drown its freedom in a pool ofblood.” Conspicuously absent was the “barbarians’” willingness to go to warwith the Soviet Union. This also meant that Soviet and Cuban youth solidar-ity during the crisis was given priority over world peace.

The press also often used the old pattern of comparing the two systems,U.S. and Soviet. Druzhnye rebyata juxtaposed “the advantages of the socialistregime” with “the beastly morals [zverinuyu moral’] of the bourgeois society.”59

The October 1962 issue of the journal Pioner featured an article entitled“Two Worlds, Two Destinies,” which depicted U.S. physicians testing newmedical drugs on children while their counterparts in the Third World werepoisoned by out-of-date U.S. goods. Such depictions were deemed “low inideological and political content” even by Komsomol inspectors.60

Despite the criticism, such manifestations of inertia, or “formalism” inthe agents’ parlance, were still accepted, sometimes even stimulated afterthe crisis. From January 1963 onward, the Komsomol Central Committeeplanned to increase the number of anti-Western publications, especially thosedealing with “American imperialism.” Seven books were to be published thatyear, including an edited volume titled Ideological Subversion by the UnitedStates against the Soviet Union and the novel Chekisty, depicting “clandes-tine operations by American secret agents and Soviet citizens’ vigilance andstruggle against them.” Other media—radio, television, cinema, oral propa-ganda, art, and even tourism—were to become part of this major propagandaeffort.61

Whereas “formalism” was impeding the party message in a relatively mildfashion, “paciªst” dissonance was much more of an obstacle to the Komsomol

44

Kozovoi

58. “Our Globe,” Pioner’skaya pravda, 19 October 1962, p. 2; and “Our Globe,” Pioner’skaya pravda,26 October 1962, p. 1. See also, “Our Globe,” Pioner’skaya pravda, 9 October 1962, p. 2; and “OurGlobe,” Pioner’skaya pravda, 12 October 1962, p. 2.

59. Internal note, 24 December 1962, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 32, D. 1089, Ll. 12, 18–19. Manichaeancomparisons between the “good” world of Communism and the “bad” world of capitalism had ap-peared before the war in the context of industrialization, but they became a prime staple of Stalin’sCold War propaganda.

60. Internal note on periodicals, January–December 1962: Report on Pioner issues 10 and 11 (1962),27 January 1963, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 32, D. 1091, Ll. 49–51.

61. “Counterpropaganda plan of the VLKSM Central Committee,” 25 January 1963, in RGASPI,F. 1, Op. 32, D. 1114, Ll. 159–163.

line. Frequently, media coverage of the Cuban missile crisis negated the ideaof a “holy war” with statements that thermonuclear war had to be avoided atall costs. Komsomol instructors complained that many television and radioprograms did not place a strong enough emphasis on the idea that “in order tobuild peace, one must prepare for war,” and that “self-sacriªce” was necessaryto preserve this peace. “Without this key element [preparing for war], peacepropaganda turns into paciªsm, which hinders the military and patriotic edu-cation of our youth,” military ideologues complained.62 The Latvian journalLiesma was singled out for stinging condemnation after it published severalpoems describing “the horrors of nuclear war.” Even though the situationfrom the Komsomol’s perspective “improved” somewhat in 1963, youth ac-tivists remained cautious, insisting that to speak of any “real change” was stillpremature for the journal.63

Komsomol ideologues also found traces of “paciªsm” in depictions of theUnited States, which were often too fuzzy to make the Americans seemthreatening and culpable in the Cuban missile crisis. For instance, Pioner at-tempted to run what turned out to be a controversial story called “A Manwithout a Motherland,” based on a letter from a Bashkir, MukhametsharifMakhmutov. Drafted into the Red Army in 1942, he had been captured bythe Germans, later freed by the Americans, and carried across the ocean. In1952, after seven years of silence, Makhmutov wrote from New York to com-plain about the “capitalist paradise.” Komsomol censors were unimpressed,particularly by the seven years the former Soviet prisoner of war had quietlyspent outside the Soviet Union, not to mention the U.S. involvement in hisliberation. To them, the man’s story had too many “blank spots” to be usedwithout caution.64

Whereas in the case of Makhmutov’s story, Komsomol ideologues couldcensor the text before its publication, on other occasions they had to accept afait accompli. Such was the case of Noch’ bez miloserdiya (A Night withoutMercy), a motion picture adapted from a 1958 novel by the German scienceªction writer Kurt Sandner and directed by Stalin Prize recipient AlexanderFainzimmer. Despite being produced in 1961, it was not premiered until17 March 1962 and was not actually released until 22 October 1962, the daybefore the Cuban missile crisis hit the Soviet press. The ªlm’s protagonist,

45

Dissonant Voices

62. “The Role of Radio and Television in Military and Patriotic Education of Youth,” handwrittennote of the radio committee of the Khabarovsk Krai, n.d. (after July 1963), in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 32,D. 1114, Ll. 35–37

63. “On Serious Deªciencies in Political-Social and Literary-Artistic Work of the Latvian KomsomolJournal Liesma,” 8 April 1963, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 32, D. 1125, Ll. 6–7.

64. Internal notes on journals, January–December 1962: Report on Pioner issues 10 and 11 (1962),27 January 1963, Ll. 49–51.

U.S. Air Force pilot Henry Davis, falls victim to U.S. militarism when hiscommanders compel him to violate Soviet airspace to undertake reconnais-sance. The story’s Manichaean representation of the United States—a friendlymajority (“the people”) pitted against the aggressive minority (“capitalists,”“spies,” and “warmongers”)—was a staple feature of Soviet anti-Americanpropaganda, but some ofªcial critics were not happy.65 In 1963, during aKomsomol conference, a speaker denounced the ªlm for its “concessions tobourgeois bad taste” (a reference to the ªlm’s love story) and dubbed it an ex-ample of deceptive propaganda because it depicted U.S. pilots not as a threatbut as “nice people, almost like freedom ªghters.” Erroneously assuming theªlm was made during the “memorable Cuban events,” the critic declared thatthe release of such a “paciªst” feature—during a crisis that, in the context of“a savage arms race and a propaganda campaign against the socialist camp,”warranted a much more demonizing representation of the enemy—was amistake.66

Another deadly threat to Komsomol ideologues, perhaps even more thaninertia and “paciªsm,” was silence. Komsomol activists were supposed tospeak, to express their rage at U.S. actions, to plead for solidarity with theCubans, to inspire Soviet youth in the ªght against “imperialism.” The rea-sons for these “sounds of silence” are difªcult to determine—especially if oneexcludes lack of available information as the main reason for the silence—because each agent was probably acting at the behest of his or her institutionor even for personal motives. For instance, Soviet youth periodicals mighthave been reluctant to sacriªce their entertainment value to fulªll the regime’sideological objectives. In any case, censors were aware of the dangers of suchsilence. Murzilka, a magazine aimed at the youngest cohort of schoolchildren,the Oktobristy, had been the target of criticism not only for its inertia, or “dullform,” but also for its “lack of educational texts.” For instance, in 1962, therewas almost no trace of the Cold War in Murzilka. In July, the journal pub-lished a “traditional” anti-American poem, and its October issue (printed inNovember) said nothing about the crisis: only one text depicted the work ofBorder Troops protecting the country from “a spy cross[ing] the border.”67 In1963, things had reportedly improved, and the magazine even published aspecial issue on “revolutionary Cuba.” But Komsomol critics remained cau-

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Kozovoi

65. See A. V. Fateev, Obraz vraga v sovetskoi propagande, 1945–1954 (Moscow: Institut rossiiskoiistorii, 1999), now available online at http://psyfactor.org/lib/fateev0.htm#1.

66. Theses of the speech at the sixth plenum of the Soviet Committee of the Union of CinemaWorkers, 1963, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 32, D. 1135, L. 58.

67. “The Little Girl Kate Is Looking for a Job,” Murzilka, No. 7 (July 1962), n.p.; and “A Dream,”Murzilka, No. 10 (October 1962), p. 18.

tious, for apparently no space was devoted to “civic education.”68 For the samereasons, the previously active Druzhnye rebyata was criticized for its noticeableshortage of material intended to inspire a collective letter from Soviet childrento the U.S. president or to organize an exhibition on “Cuba today.”69

Silence, if it was the consequence of self-censorship, might also be as-cribed to a feeling of embarrassment with the ªnale of the crisis, ofªcially por-trayed as the Soviet government’s “wise move” that saved the world “from anuclear catastrophe,” as well as implicit disagreement with the ofªcial line.70

The Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MID) was particularly annoyed aboutthe resolution of the crisis. MID’s new Diplomatic Dictionary, as well as theofªcial course on Soviet diplomatic history, allotted less than a page to the cri-sis, reducing its impact on Soviet foreign policy to the absolute minimum.71

Judging from Gromyko’s ambivalent position on the question, this was ratherpredictable.72 “Don’t ask, don’t tell” could be the motto of many Komsomolagents. Silence was a way to avoid explaining sensitive issues to the audience;it was also the best way to erase Soviet humiliation from popular memory.The strategy, however, stirred up unwanted reactions from the youth, as didother dissonances.

Voices from the Crowd

Ofªcial reports eagerly described Soviet society acting in unison with theparty, seeming to vindicate the slogan “The people and the Party are one.”73

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Dissonant Voices

68. Note on Murzilka, 15 October 1963, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 32, D. 1126, L. 74–77. Several 1963issues of this publication featured a story by Vitalii Korzhikov (1931–2007) about Soviet merchantsailors visiting Cuba.

69. Note on Druzhnye rebyata, 1 February 1963, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 32, D. 1126, L. 136.

70. See, for example, the commentary in Pravda, 30 October 1962, cited in Taubman, Khrushchev,p. 578.

71. Israelyan, Na frontakh kholodnoi voiny, pp. 83–84.

72. On the one hand, there is no evidence that Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko opposed the Cubanoperation. See Munton and Welch, The Cuban Missile Crisis, p. 27. Indeed, in his memoirs published26 years later, Gromyko reafªrms that the Soviet missiles in Cuba were “strictly defensive.” On theother hand, he does not mention Khrushchev’s name when recalling the conclusion of the crisis. SeeAndrei Gromyko, Pamyatnoe, 2 vols. (Moscow: Politizdat, 1988), Vol. 1, pp. 390, 398. Defendingagainst all odds the ofªcial “missiles for protection only” line while eschewing praise of Khrushchev’s“wise policy” ªnds its reºection in the editorial line of the dictionary.

73. Sometimes translated as “The People and the Party Are United.” See for example the editorial“Narod i partiya—ediny,” Ogoniok, 12 February 1956, p. 2. Although slogans about the unity of“workers and the party” existed during Stalin’s time, they disappeared after 1947. This slogan was in away typical of the de-Stalinization process, as “the party” now replaced the traditional presence ofStalin. See Daniel N. Jacobs, “Slogans and Soviet Politics,” American Slavic and East European Review,Vol. 16, No. 3 (October 1957), p. 299. For “personality cult” slogans on political posters during the

According to this consensual narrative, the union was manifested in publicgatherings, and in oaths as well as reproaches, and was always expressed with“justiªed anger.” On 28 October 1962, a picture appearing on the front pageof Pravda depicted “angry workers” carrying the well-known slogan “Cuba SI,Yanki HO” (the mixing of Russian letters into what should have been Spanishmay have stemmed from ignorance, but an alternative explanation is that itwas intended to help those who did not know English to identify with themessage and disseminate it among their friends and colleagues).

Komsomol activists were supposed to elicit the same reaction of angerfrom youth. A typical report, written in early 1963, reads,

When Cuba was once again threatened, Soviet people and our youth stood up insolidarity with the Cuban people. During those tragic days, Cuba became espe-cially close to every Soviet citizen. Thousands of men and women across thecountry gathered in demonstrations and rallies in support of the Cuban repub-lic. Soviet youth swore to remain entirely on the side of the Cuban people andthe Cuban revolutionary government; it covered with shame the adventurism ofAmerican imperialists.74

The effect of the mobilization effort on the young builders of Commu-nism was apparent. Since the summer of 1961 some 300 young “kolkhozniki,agronomists and technicians” had been working in Cuba.75 During the crisis, asilk factory worker and member of the Kyrgyz Komsomol, MamodzhanMirzadzhanov, felt “deeply scandalized by the shameful aggression of theUnited States” and pledged that his brigade would “double its efforts to pro-duce silk of high quality.” Similar resolutions to “counter the imperialists’ plot”came from the builders of the hydroelectric power plant at Uch-Kurgansk. ALabor Hero, Rakhmat Aly Sartabaev, concluded his speech with a vow: “I’llstrengthen world peace with my zealous work. I solemnly promise to shear upto ªve kilograms of wool from each of my 600 sheep.”76 (How all this woolwould help Cuba to resist American invaders remained undisclosed.) Even asthe working youth were taking public oaths, the younger audience expressedtheir feelings in written form. The December 1962 article on Cuban childrenpublished by Druzhnye rebyata reportedly stirred a “ºow of responses” fromyoung readers. According to the editor, this “ºow” reºected “the feelings ofpride for our motherland.”77

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postwar period, see Victoria E. Bonnell, Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters under Lenin andStalin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 253–255.

74. Material for reports, 1 February 1963, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 32, D. 1008, L. 49.

75. Ibid., L. 46.

76. Internal note, January–December 1962, “Report on a phone conversation,” 26 October 1962, inRGASPI, F. 1, Op. 32, D. 1070, Ll. 247–248.

77. Report, 24 December 1962, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 32, D. 1089, L. 19.

The sincerity of these reactions is difªcult to ascertain because many ofthe reports found in the archives omit not only the actual letters but even ap-propriate citations. From a structural point of view, the reactions appear sin-cere but are lacking in genuine motivation. Oath-taking and letter-writinghad become common rituals in the Soviet Union long before the nuclearstandoff over Cuba. Nor did these rituals belong to Soviet civilization alone.In another, non-Soviet context, oath-taking was, in Albert Pionke’s words, a“conduit through which individuals, their society and the divine unite[d] ina sacred unbreakable system.”78 This deªnition is applicable to the Sovietregime as well. The CPSU and its representatives were invested with “divine”functions through a complex ensemble of rituals, such as the mass celebra-tions on Red Square. Letter-writing to authorities was a ritual less codiªedthan an oath, and its purposes varied, ranging from expressions of allegianceand praise to requests for personal favors, denunciations, and complaints.Both rites were maintaining and simultaneously creating an order. For theparty organs, these actions were instruments of social control that would bothmeasure the degree of allegiance to the system and facilitate the emergence ofthe “New Man” through the uniªcation of various cultures.79

Even if such letters were genuine, they were not representative of the en-tire Soviet youth of the 1960s. Only a minority took up the pen and wrote tothe press, and many of those who did were motivated more by a desire to es-cape “boredom” and reach out to Cuban exotics, whom they had never seenin real life.80 Moreover, not all Komsomol members were factory workers orkolkhozniki. Some were university students, who had rather different mentali-ties. Some belonged to the intelligentsia and strove for cultural and intellec-

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Dissonant Voices

78. For a comparative view of oath-taking, see Albert D. Pionke, “‘I Do Swear’: Oath-Taking amongthe Elite Public in Victorian England,” Victorian Studies, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Summer 2007), pp. 611–633, esp. 615.

79. For a general approach to letters as sources of Soviet public opinion, see Aleksandr Livshin andIgor’ Orlov, Vlast’ i obshchestvo: Dialog v pis’makh (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002), pp. 5–26. For a semi-nal paper on letter-writing during the Stalin period, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Supplicants and Citizens:Public Letter-Writing in the Soviet Union in the 1930s,” Slavic Review, Vol. 55, No. 1 (Spring 1996),pp. 79–105. For children’s public letter-writing in a Cold War context, see Andrei Kozovoi, “Pour oucontre l’Amérique. Le courrier des jeunes Soviétiques et la propagande de Guerre froide,” La revuerusse, No. 32 (2009), pp. 153–161. On letters to Khrushchev, see Magnusdottir, “Be Careful in Amer-ica.” For letter-writing as denunciation, see François-Xavier Nérard, 5 % de vérité: La dénonciationdans l’URSS de Staline (Paris: Tallandier, 2004). The practice of oath-taking, despite its evident lack ofpossible improvisation, remains a fascinating subject, and Catriona Kelly only scratches the surface inher “Defending Children’s Rights,” p. 723. On the ideological function of mass celebrations, seeMalte Rolf, Sovetskie massovye prazdniki (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2009), pp. 252–267.

80. Even if Western travelogues must be used with caution, they are nevertheless a precious source onSoviet attitudes of that time. On children’s “boredom” associated with ofªcial propaganda, see Harri-son E. Salisbury, A New Russia? (London: Secker & Warburg, 1962), pp. 14, 31. (Salisbury was TheNew York Times correspondent to Moscow in the fall of 1961.) On Soviet youth mistaking Africansfor Cubans, see the memoir of a student from Ghana who lived in Moscow in 1960 and 1961, Wil-liam Anti-Taylor, Moscow Diary (London: Robert Hale, 1967), p. 105.

tual emancipation. These shestidesyatniki, or “people of the sixties” as theywould call themselves, were different from previous generations in that, asVladislav Zubok argues, they “would not be deceived again by lofty slogansand would not march in lockstep at the state’s behest.”81 As early as 1961, asurvey conducted by Komsomol’skaya pravda indicated that Soviet youth hadmany faces, some less pleasant than propaganda suggested: Alongside thehard-working believers in Communist values were semi-deviant meshchane(“petty bourgeois,” and among them the stilyagi, “hipsters”), who were moreinterested in Western clothing and music than in reading Komsomolskayapravda. Even the different categories of “deviances” had been created by theauthorities themselves in order to enforce social control, the very existence ofcategories such as meshchane and hooligans underscores the broad spectrumof attitudes toward politics among youth.82

Nevertheless, a signiªcant correlation obtained between the way the mo-bilization was handled—or rather mishandled—and the reactions from the“crowd.” On this issue, concrete evidence is still scarce and scattered, whichmakes generalizations problematic. As is often the case with the study of pub-lic opinion in a Soviet context, the historian must become an interpreter of si-lences. For example, judging from the letters received by the Komsomol in1962, the effect of the Cuban missile crisis campaign was nowhere near asstrong as Druzhnye rebyata’s editor suggested. According to summary reports,not a single one of the 17,000 total letters received made any mention ofCuba. Only 957 letters were received in October, whereas up to 2,300 arrivedin April (the lowest number, 800, came in August, a traditionally quietmonth).83 Attempts to sustain the fervor (such as it was) failed miserably in1963. Of almost 13,000 letters received that year, only 11.5 percent werefrom volunteers eager to enroll in new building projects (novostroiki) or askingto be sent abroad, including to Cuba, in order to fulªll the party’s mission.The other letters were reportedly full of “personal demands.”84 All in all, thiswas a strikingly weak reaction from a social category thought to be particu-

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Kozovoi

81. Zubok, Zhivago’s Children, pp. 162–163.

82. For the survey, see Grushin, Chetyre zhizni Rossii, pp. 159–222. More than 19,000 letters were re-ceived by Komsomol’skaya pravda for this survey, from January to March—far more than the total re-ceived by Pioner’skaya pravda for the same year. On stilyagi, see Fürst, Stalin’s Last Generation, pp. 217–235. On hooliganism and social control, see Brian Lapierre, “Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale:The Campaign against Petty Hooliganism in the Soviet Union, 1956–1964,” Cahiers du monde russe,Vol. 47, No. 1 (January–February 2006), p. 373. See also Brian Lapierre, Hooligans in Khrushchev’sRussia: Deªning, Policing and Producing Deviance during the Thaw (Madison: University of WisconsinPress, 2012).

83. Internal note, 21 January 1963, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 1, D. 23, Ll. 70–90.

84. Report on the Activities of the VLKSM General Department for 1963, 19 February 1964, inRGASPI, F. 1, Op. 1, D. 124, Ll. 7–8.

larly receptive to mobilization—even when one takes into consideration the“corrosive effect” of propaganda, in this case youths’ possible skepticism andtiredness after the Virgin Lands campaign.

Scattered evidence pertaining to army draftees in 1962 gives some insightinto the unenthusiastic youth reaction. Being on the front line, young service-men were supposed to be particularly aware of the risk of war. During the cri-sis, they were even put on a stand-by regime in large cities such as Moscowand Leningrad.85 But it is likely that some servicemen had no idea why theywere being mobilized, either because they were largely uneducated or becausethey were from Central Asia and did not know Russian well.86 According toreports from the Leningrad military district, only 37.4 percent of the con-scripts had a full secondary education (an improvement compared to 1961),and every ªfth soldier failed to complete his eight mandatory grades. An in-creasing number of enlisted youngsters came from the southeastern peripheryof the Soviet Union, notably the Caucasus and Central Asia. According to themilitary instructors, conditions of life in the northern regions were hardlyconducive to the conscripts’ “combat readiness” (boevaya gotovnost’) and moti-vation. Some categorically refused to carry weapons.87

In ofªcial accounts, the soldiers’ voices are very weak or difªcult to inter-pret, and the only letters worthy of reporting are those revealing “deviances.”One of these, from a private to his parents, describes a drill but does not men-tion the general context of mobilization—that is, the risk of war. The youngsoldier was forced to run with a machine gun, wearing a gas mask and bearinga heavy load on his back. The youth had a heart condition, which his com-manders apparently ignored, so health issues were more important to himthan the risk of a U.S. attack. “I’ll die from suffering and cold if you don’t

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85. See the testimony of U.S. ballet dancers touring the USSR during the crisis, cited in Clare Croft,“The New York City Ballet’s 1962 U.S.-Department-Sponsored Tour of the Soviet Union,” TheatreJournal, Vol. 61 (2009), pp. 437–438. On 24 October 1962, Pravda published an order given by De-fense Minister Malinovskii concerning “the reinforcement of military preparedness,” “the reinforcementof combat capacity,” and the cancellation of leave for certain categories of servicemen. In his memoirs,Khrushchev acknowledges having “mobilized the armed forces to the best of their capacity,” but heclaims “from the bottom of [his] heart,” that it was only a “propaganda trick” intended for the “Americanaggressors,” insofar as he did not believe war would break out. See Khrushchev, Vospominaniya, p. 518.

86. Low literacy levels were an old problem for a largely peasant and multiethnic Soviet army. SeeRoger R. Reese, The Soviet Military Experience: A History of the Soviet Army, 1917–1991 (London:Routledge, 2002), pp. 55, 153. As Reese notes elsewhere, contrary to the Imperial Army, “the RedArmy needed to teach its men to read and write.” See Roger R. Reese, Stalin’s Reluctant Soldiers: A So-cial History of the Red Army, 1925–1941 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1996), p. 82.However, he does not mention one key reason for the army literacy campaign; namely, ideological in-doctrination.

87. Note of the Soviet Army’s Main Political Directorate, “On Certain Questions of Work with YoungRecruits in 1962,” 18 February 1963, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 1, D. 141, Ll. 9–13; and “Materials forthe Report on Preparation of Youth for Military Service” (see note 20 supra).

come and rescue me,” he pleaded with his parents.88 To the Soviet John Doe,immediate and personal problems (e.g., health issues) often were far more im-portant than distant and impersonal ones (e.g., the risk of war), thus revealingthe inefªciency of a youth campaign aimed at the revival of anti-Americanismamong the masses. Among the much more carefully selected KGB BorderTroops from the Caucasus region, who were supposedly wholeheartedlydevoted to the Communist cause, the risk of war was seen as possible, but theonly reason some wanted war to begin is so that they “could surrender tothe enemy” or “escape to Turkey” while on sentry duty.89

Although such accounts must be taken with a pinch of salt, the preemi-nence of personal issues over collective ones, manifestations of defeatist feel-ings, and the desire for desertion were not new among the Border Troops.90

To some historians, they reºect the absence of “morale-building factors” andthe presence of “morale-destroying factors,” a conclusion that is impossible toconªrm for lack of evidence, unless one takes into account the hardships ofservice, such as those described in the young private’s letter, or cases of severeviolent hazing (dedovshchina).91 The mention of war by the KGB BorderTroops in the context of 1962 could account for a belief in the probability of anuclear strike (one marvels, however, at the naïveté of elite troops thinkingthat such a conºict would involve conventional combat and that they mightbe able to “surrender” or “escape” unscathed across the border amid nuclearannihilation. Their naïveté is explainable only by the “war culture” of thattime, a direct heritage of the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945).

More revealing in the testimonies—on the assumption they were at leastpartly representative—is the absence of words that could be interpreted astraces of a “war scare” or traces of the fear of thermonuclear war. This does notmean that no fear existed: war itself was certainly perceived as a tragedy, andthis idea was cultivated by propaganda, but in a “conventional” way. The sol-diers’ main cultural reference was the Great Patriotic War, which had had aprofound impact on Soviet society. The youth of 1962 were often fatherless,and the war had had a profound psychological and physical impact on theirkith and kin.92 If the Great Patriotic War was a common reference point for

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Kozovoi

88. Letter from Private S. Grachan, 15 December 1963, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 1, D. 141, L. 14.

89. Note to the VLKSM Central Committee by the Chief of the Political Department of KGB BorderTroops, 4 March 1963, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 1, D. 141, Ll. 20–21.

90. Reese, Why Stalin’s Soldiers Fought, p. 249. During World War II, “most desertions occurred in theproximity of the front, where the danger was real” (p. 229).

91. According to military literature, these factors contributed to the absenteeism and desertion duringWorld War II See ibid., p. 231. On dedovshchina in the Soviet army, see Reese, The Soviet Military Ex-perience, pp. 153 passim.

92. In a survey conducted in May 1960 by Komsomol’skaya pravda on the question “Do you thinkthere is going to be a war?” sociologist Boris Grushin detected among answers a “bleeding memory of

Soviet society, the signiªcance of it was reinforced for the draftees by the se-nior ofªcers’ discourses, read and heard on a daily basis. When the head of thecivil defense program, Marshal Vasilii Chuikov, published “Finding Innova-tive Solutions to Problems of Civil Defense,” an article in the May 1962 issueof the military periodical Grazhdanskaya oborona (Civil Defense), he statedthat insofar as “Kennedy’s United States [was] preparing to launch nuclearwar [raketno-yadernuyu voynu],” the old defense system, based on bomb shel-ters, had to be jettisoned to survive the attack. To Chuikov, whose wartimerole at Stalingrad earned him lasting respect, the bomb shelters were a heavyburden for the economy. In order to save resources, he proposed the “dis-persal” or conversion of civil infrastructure to defense needs, a tactic he saidwas inspired by World War II.93

Beyond the “obsolete” cultural references (“obsolete” in the sense that theWord War II experience was not especially relevant to the new context), otherarchival evidence conªrms the lack of awareness of nuclear issues amongyouth and adults. Both Soviet and Western societies had a parochial view ofpolitics. International relations concerned them less than domestic issues inwhich they had a greater stake and over which they could exercise greaterinºuence.94 This compartmentalization of internal and external issues was re-inforced by the climate of secrecy surrounding civil defense measures. In theUnited States, public debates pertaining to the possibility of surviving nuclearwar and the respective utility of urban dispersal and bomb shelters had beenunder way since the 1950s, but in the Soviet Union any debates about suchmatters were strictly censored. Chuikov’s article on civil defense was for pro-fessionals’ eyes only. The same shroud of secrecy hung over the constructionof fallout shelters, in contrast to the publicity the program received underPresident Johnson in the United States.95

The cinema is even more helpful in understanding this lack of awareness.Although ªlms about the Great Patriotic War were not yet as numerous asthey became under Leonid Brezhnev, they nevertheless were contributing tothe “cultural dialogue” and inºuencing imaginations.96 Conversely, other thanthe traditional anti-American spy ªlms, Soviet cinematographers produced noªlms representing the dangers of nuclear war—a topic that, judging from the

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Dissonant Voices

the last war—a memory of all the generations, personally acquainted with inconsolable tragedy.” SeeGrushin, Chetyre zhizni Rossii, p. 91.

93. Chuikov’s article was reissued as a pamphlet, 8 May 1962, in RGASPI, F. 1, Op. 1, D. 19, Ll. 1–16.

94. Grushin, Chetyre zhizni Rossii, p. 90.

95. Monteyne, Fallout Shelter, pp. 148, 168.

96. Denise J. Youngblood, Russian War Films: On the Cinema Front, 1914–2005 (Lawrence, KS: Uni-versity Press of Kansas, 2007), p. 108.

impact such cinematic representation had on the American public, wouldhave been much more effective than any written word.97 Seen only by a privi-leged few in the Soviet Union, U.S. post-apocalyptic ªlms such as StanleyKramer’s On the Beach (1959) and Ray Milland’s Panic in Year Zero! (1962),were never shown to Soviet mass audiences.98 Soviet viewers had to wait until1986 for their own cinematic version of a thermonuclear apocalypse, Letters ofa Dead Man (directed by Konstantin Lopushanskii), 24 years after the releaseof Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (and the lesser-known Fail-Safe directedby Sidney Lumet).99 The absence of “nuclear ªlms” was a missing voice in thechorus of mobilization, because it meant that no “images” were available tosupport the Komsomol argument on the probability of a U.S. nuclear attack.

To assess the social impact of the October 1962 campaign, one shouldalso consider the capacity of propaganda to sustain its effect after the crisis. InNovember 1962, Pioner’skaya pravda celebrated the “anniversary” of the crisisby reminding its young readers how close the world had come to thermonu-clear war.100 A year later, other things were preoccupying Soviet youth (at leastthose who worked). Domestically, the economic situation had considerablydeteriorated, with bread shortages gripping even Moscow. Internationally, af-ter the Sino-Soviet split, the risk of war seemed mainly to be from China, atleast in the near term.101 Confronted with an outburst of anti-Khrushchev

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97. On the impact of nuclear weapons and warfare on American culture, see Robert A. Jacobs, TheDragon’s Tail: Americans Face the Atomic Age (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010); andMargot A. Henriksen, Dr. Strangelove America: Society and Culture in the Atomic Age (Berkeley: Uni-versity of California Press, 1997). On the impact of civil defense, see Melvin E. Matthews Jr., Duckand Cover: Civil Defense Images in Film and Television from The Cold War to 9/11 (Jefferson, NC:McFarland & Company, 2011). For cinematic representations as projections of fear, see Toni A.Perrine, Film and the Nuclear Age: Representing Cultural Anxiety (New York: Garland Publishing,1998). For the impact on youth, see Michael Scheibach, Atomic Narratives and American Youth: Com-ing of Age with the Atom, 1945–1955 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2003).

98. “Report of a conversation with foreign journalists after a ‘private’ viewing of On the Beach in theCentral Cinema house,” 19 December 1959, in Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Literatury iIskusstva, F. 2918, Op. 4, D. 358, Ll. 75–76. For the impact of the ªlm on Soviet scientists who werereportedly “struck” by it, see Robert D. English, Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals,and the End of The Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 106. On the creationand impact of On the Beach in the United States, see Tony Shaw, Hollywood’s Cold War (Edinburgh:Edinburgh University Press, 2007), pp. 152–158. For an assessment of Panic in Year Zero! seeMatthews, Duck and Cover, pp. 138–143. Panic in Year Zero! was released on 5 July 1962 in theUnited States, before the Cuban crisis.

99. On Lopushanskii’s ªlm, see Raleigh, Soviet Baby Boomers, p. 4. For Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove as“nightmarish scenarios,” see Henriksen, Dr. Strangelove America, p. 332. The closest example of a sim-ilar Soviet ªlm prior to Lopushanskii’s movie is Molchanie Doktora Ivensa (dir. Budimir Metal’nikov,1973), a product of the “détente” era, in which aliens come to Earth to save humanity from nucleardestruction (the ªrst Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty was signed in May 1972).

100. Editorial, Pioner’skaya pravda, November 23, 1962, p. 2. This was the ªrst item about Cuba tohave appeared since late October 1962.

101. Fifty-two percent of the group polled in 1999 said they had suffered from food supply problemsin 1963. See Aksyutin, Khrushchevskaya “ottepel,’” pp. 528–541, esp. 530. On the social impact of the

sentiment, the CPSU quickly launched a “communication campaign” in or-der to prevent social unrest, which the authorities wanted to avoid at all costsafter the deadly suppression of the Novocherkassk riots in June 1962.102

In this difªcult context, the Komsomol decided to conduct an opinionpoll in October and November 1963. Such surveys were becoming more fre-quent in the Soviet Union as sociology was progressively rehabilitated. Kom-somolskaya pravda had even taken the initiative to create an “Institute of Pub-lic Opinion” in May 1960. However, the main objective of these surveys wasnot to study youth as an independent social group but to improve propagandaefªciency.103 The late-1963 survey was more of a lecture-survey mission, as67 agitators embarked on a two-week trip around 62 regions and republics togive lectures to almost 100,000 people.104

Judging from the audience’s responses, Cuba was no longer (assumingit ever had been) at the center of popular attention. A total of 726 ques-tions were raised during the lectures, but only a small percentage mentionedthis “forefront of Communism.” Some young adults were concerned aboutthe possibility of “Americans attacking Cuba again.” This can be interpretedas adherence to the ofªcial version of events, which described the Cubanmissile crisis as one in a series of American encroachments on Cuban inde-pendence.105 But then, one wonders why these people did not believe Ken-nedy’s promise not to invade Cuba, clearly mentioned in ofªcial propagandaas Khrushchev’s achievement. Was this the inºuence of traditional anti-Americanism, which bred intrinsic distrust of “imperialism”? Even more curi-ous were expressions of concern that Cuba “did not sign the Moscow nuclearban treaty.” Although Cuba (like all other states) was eligible to sign the treatyand declined to do so, the lack of its signature was not all that meaningful.

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Sino-Soviet split (traditionally dated from the June 1963 Party Plenum, conªrmed by the DecemberPlenum), see ibid., pp. 402–404.

102. Even though the Soviet authorities tried to keep the Novocherkassk massacre secret, rumorsquickly began to spread, fueled in part by foreign radio broadcasts. See Samuel H. Baron, Bloody Sat-urday in the Soviet Union: Novocherkassk, 1962 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001),pp. 106–127.

103. Grushin, Chetyre zhizni Rossii, pp. 47–48, 50; and Pilkington, Russia’s Youth, p. 51.

104. “On the results of the visits of the groups of Komsomol speakers,” 10 December 1963, inRGASPI, F. 1, Op. 1, D. 134, Ll. 2–13, and the appended “Questions asked,” end of October–November 1963, Ll. 14–17.

105. Anti-American poems of Yevtushenko contributed to this opinion. As a Pravda correspondent toCuba, he published several poems about the island that were widely read. See, for example, “The Cu-ban Mother,” about a widow who lost her son in battle against “people from beyond the seas,” “the seawhere murderers come from / I know—they still can reappear.” published in Pravda, 14 October1962, p. 4. Soviet propaganda might also have positioned the 1961 failed invasion as part of a linearhistorical perspective, as did one historian of Kennedy’s role in the Cuban crisis: “The United Stateshad sent marines to Cuba in 1898, 1906, 1912, and 1917.” See Robert Weisbrot, Maximum Danger:Kennedy, the Missiles and the Crisis of American Conªdence (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001), p. 45.

Contrary to what some in the audience believed, Cuba possessed no nuclearweapons of its own. This misconception probably originated from rumors, adirect consequence of the secrecy surrounding the deployment of Soviet mis-siles on the island.106 The Soviet media had warned about a risk of war, so therumor was that the missiles were actually Cuban, and Khrushchev had simplyconvinced Castro not to use them. Now, a part of the Soviet population im-plicitly blamed Cuba for bringing the world to the brink of war and for en-gendering another crisis by refusing to sign the LTBT. Another rumor thatcast Cuba in a less-than-positive light held that bread shortages were directlyrelated to grain shipments to Cuba in exchange for its sugar.107

Finally, the survey revealed that Soviet youth perceived the United Statesnot as an enemy but as an object of great interest. Although this was not sur-prising for the older generations, who remembered the wartime alliance andhoped for peaceful coexistence, the youth’s preoccupation with the UnitedStates was of a different quality.108 They were more interested in the Americanway of life and how it compared with their own. According to the reports, thiswas particularly the case in the provinces. Listeners in Tselinograd (Kazakh-stan) asked, “Why is it that in America every worker has a car and in the So-viet Union only a few people do?” or “Why do American workers live betterthan we do?” Forced to address these embarrassing questions, the agitatorsblamed the inºuence of foreign radio stations, arguing that jamming was tra-ditionally less effective near the borders and that foreign broadcasters fre-quently used such “comparisons.”109 The Komsomol activists, however, hadonly themselves to blame. After all, they were the ones who had encouragedsuch comparative perspectives—before, during, and after the Cuban missile

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106. Rumors had been carefully studied by the Soviet secret police since the 1920s to ferret out “nega-tive tendencies” among the populace and to take suitable “prophylactic” measures. See Nicolas Werth,“Rumeurs apocalyptiques et défaitistes dans l’URSS des années 1920 et 1930,” Vingtième siècle: Revued’histoire, July–September 2001, pp. 25–35, esp. 25. Others spoke about the “importance and perva-siveness of informal, unofªcial communications in the Soviet Union.” See Raymond A. Bauer and Da-vid B. Gleicher, “Word-of-Mouth Communications in the Soviet Union,” Public Opinion Quarterly,Vol. 3, No. 17 (Autumn 1953), pp. 298–299.

107. See Vail and Genis, 60-e., p. 59.

108. See Magnusdottir, “Be Careful in America,” p. 130.

109. On the necessity of presenting factual material for Radio Liberty broadcasts to gain trust, seeGene Sosin’s memoir, Sparks of Liberty: An Insider’s Memoir of Radio Liberty (College Park, PA: Penn-sylvania State University Press, 1999), p. 75. According to the testimony of Vladimir Pribylovskii, inA. V. Shubin, Ot “zastoya” k reformam: SSSR v 1917–1985 gg. (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000), pp. 462–463, the Soviet people were much more trusting of foreign radio when the broadcasts featured straightnews rather than interpretation. CPSU agitators knew about the broadcasts not only from listening tothe radios themselves but also from seeing KGB digests. See Andrei Kozovoi, “La dernière bataillede Guerre froide sur les ondes: les Soviétiques et l’information radiophonique sur les États-Unis,” Bul-letin de l’Institut Pierre Renouvin, No. 26 (2007), available online at http://ipr.univ-paris1.fr/spip.php?article360.

crisis. Why, then, should their audiences refrain from looking for additionalinformation on their own, even if that meant listening to the foreign radio?The observers also blamed the “indifference exhibited by local Komsomol au-thorities,” which was just another name for their inertia and their use of tradi-tional tactics.

The 1963 survey made no mention of Kennedy’s assassination: it proba-bly was conducted before that tragic event (the survey’s conclusions were sub-mitted on 10 December 1963). Judging from what we know today, Kennedy’smurder undoubtedly increased the ambivalent feelings in the Soviet Uniontoward the United States and further weakened the message the Komsomolwanted to convey about the Cuban missile crisis. Upon seeing their parentsgrieve, children certainly asked questions, and young adults were saddenedby the loss of a ªgure who looked like their “ideal” leader—young, good-looking, even Russian-like. According to several eyewitness accounts, “mourn-ing” on such a scale for a foreign leader had not happened in the USSR sinceFranklin Roosevelt’s death in April 1945. But in 1963 it would have beenmore spontaneous: the adults and youth (at least the young adults) seemed toshare a view that Kennedy’s policies were “kindly disposed toward Russia,”and the standoff over Cuba was dismissed altogether. Somewhat dissonantpropaganda contributed to this reaction. Having been exposed to Soviet me-dia theories of a “reactionary” plot involving Cuban maªa (who supposedly“did not forgive [the president] for his promise not to invade Cuba” again),many Soviet citizens came to believed that Kennedy’s assassination must haveresulted from a conspiracy.110

Conclusion

In November 1964 the Soviet-Cuban production Ya—Kuba (I Am Cuba) wasreleased on the Soviet big screen. The director, Mikhail Kalatozov, renownedin the West for The Cranes Are Flying (1957), worked once again with masterphotographer Sergei Urusevskii. Evtushenko co-wrote the script. The ªlm de-picts the revolutionary events on the island, gloriªes the barbudos, and implic-itly promotes the idea of “socialism with a human face.” Unimpressed, hard-line ideologues (Soviet and Cuban) panned it for its seductive depiction of the

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110. See the interviews with Natalia Altukhova and Natalia P. in Raleigh, Russia’s Sputnik Generation,pp. 76, 99. See also Raleigh, Soviet Baby Boomers, p. 162. Dobrynin mentions the “Kennedy myth” inSugobo doveritel’no, pp. 98–99. In his memoirs, Khrushchev mentions having read an article of thejournal Vokrug sveta (Around the world), explaining the “Cuban maªa plot.” Khrushchev, Vospomin-aniya, p. 531.

U.S. presence on the island under Batista. A scene in which young bikini-cladwomen dance on a rooftop to the sound of swing was deemed particularly dis-agreeable.111

I Am Cuba is a good illustration of the enduring legacy of the Khrushchev-era propaganda dissonances, with ambiguities and incoherence pertaining tothe Cuban missile crisis, which in many ways reºected the personality andpolicy of Khrushchev himself. The ªlm was initially intended as an ode to therevolutionary spirit of 1959 and an echo of 1917. It was also meant an acco-lade to the Castro regime, intended to boost Soviet-Cuban friendship from itslow point. Yet when I Am Cuba came out, its romantic depiction of the Cu-ban Revolution was already outdated, and its silence on the Cuban missile cri-sis was striking—especially when one considers the concurrent release in theUnited States of two features inºuenced by the crisis, Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe. For the I Am Cuba creators, it was a cinematographic tour de force, yet itwas full of simplistic and painfully familiar images of the American enemy.Pretending to offer a “truthful” version of history, the ªlm failed to addresspost-revolutionary events. The ªlmmakers omitted any mention of the newregime’s systematic use of violence against its opponents as well as its strongbacking of the Soviet missile deployments.112

Critics berated the ªlm for its ambiguous representation of Americansbut did not seem to mind the absence of explicit references to either Soviet-Cuban friendship or the “defensive missiles.” Neither did they praise the abil-ity of Soviet cinematographers to compete with their U.S. counterparts. Theªlm targeted a mass audience, yet it was shot in black and white and used aspecial ªlm, privileging images over dialogue and thus bearing the hallmarksof an auteur ªlm. The ªlm’s creators preferred cinematic form to ideologicalcontent. The ambiguities of I Am Cuba reºected the ªlmmakers’ (and theSoviet public’s) dissonant or ambivalent attitudes toward the Cuban revolu-tion and the United States. As a result, the ªlm was panned not only byideologues but also by cinemagoers and was ranked among the worst dozenªlms of the year according to a survey conducted by the “artsy” cinema jour-nal Iskusstvo kino.113

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111. Anne Gorsuch, All This Is Your World: Soviet Tourism at Home and Abroad after Stalin (New York:Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 183–184. The ªlm premiered on 26 October 1964 in Havanaand on 2 November in Moscow, possibly to mark the anniversary of the crisis.

112. The ªlm received a prize for cinematographic achievement in Milan in 1964, and, thirty yearslater, with the blessing of Martin Scorsese, it was remastered for DVD in the United States as a “classicof political cinema.” See the description online at http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-new-cult-canon-i-am-cuba,2282/. In his interview, Evtushenko admits that the creators did not want to depict“current politics” because they wanted to present the only indisputable thing—the rebellion againstBatista’s regime. The Cubans criticized the ªlm’s stereotypical representation of their country.

113. Josephine Woll, Real Images: Soviet Cinema and the Thaw (London: IB Tauris, 2000), p. 185.

The Komsomol leaders intended the Cuban missile crisis to be engrainedin young people’s memories and to facilitate their mobilization. The Kom-somol wanted youth to believe the United States had put the world at risk ofnuclear annihilation in October 1962 and that only the heroism of Sovietleaders had averted war. They needed young people to remain vigilant. Butthe Soviet pied piper failed. Even though members of the younger generationwere proud of their country’s achievements in various spheres (includingworld peace), the combination of secrecy and improvisation from above withinertia and the desire for personal gain from below trivialized the crisis in theireyes. Oktyabryata and Pionery might have felt sorry for their Cuban peers, butthey had no reason to be afraid for their own safety. They did not understandwhy there could have been a global war, and why it might have happened atthat particular time. After all, rumors of war had been circulating for almostas far back as they could remember. Although curiosity got the better of themand they later asked their teachers to explain the situation, they most likelyhad to seek truthful information themselves. By the 1970s, the crisis had be-come a veritable “blank spot” in Soviet history. Some history textbooks con-tinued to present the ofªcial version of events, whereas others remainedconspicuously silent.114

By that time, recent school graduates, university students, young work-ers, and military servicemen were more preoccupied with their own problemsand often saw the world through their parents’ eyes. Those who passively ac-cepted the ofªcial line, or were too “busy with other stuff,” generally dis-played a low level of understanding of the issues involved in the crisis and for-eign policy in general.115 They were largely indifferent to the dangers of thenuclear age. Even though they could recite what “imperialism” was, they ig-nored basic features of nuclear warfare and took for granted what the CPSU,the military, and the Komsomol told them. In fact, there was no real dialoguebetween the Komsomol and young people, who perceived the eventuality of anuclear war through the lens of the Great Patriotic War—a testimony to themagnitude of that war’s impact on the Soviet mindset. The absence of visualrepresentation of the new, much more destructive kind of war did not helpmatters either. As early as 1963, memory of the “October days” faded away,and two radical metamorphoses confused things further. The onetime Sovietally Mao Zedong became the USSR’s main enemy, and the once-menacingfoe, Kennedy, became a friend. Eventually, with a little help from false ru-mors, the dissonant voices backªred and Castro came to be seen as the culprit

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114. Dolutskii, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” p. 240.

115. Aksyutin, Khrushchevskaya “ottepel’,” p. 381 (testimony of a 24-year-old nurse from Yaroslavl).

who had brought the world to the brink of a nuclear war and was now refus-ing to choose the path of peace.

The more curious youth challenged authority, feeling that something wasnot right, that “defensive” missiles could also be “offensive.” They instinc-tively sensed the absurdity of civil defense education, as suggested by the sec-ond epigraph of this article. They listened to foreign radio as an alternative tothe regime’s paternalism, but even without them the dissonances of the mobi-lization campaign were so important that they eclipsed the “Cuban myth.”For this category of youth, the relative failure of the mobilization campaignduring the Cuban missile crisis had the potential to weaken the CommunistParty’s credibility. Insofar as these youngsters had no concrete reference orgoal to attain, they knew what they were “against” and played with the contra-dictions of propaganda, but they did not necessarily know where their alle-giances lay.116

For the Soviet regime, the situation was certainly not lost, and the mis-handling of the Cuban missile crisis served a purpose: It was presented as oneof the reasons for Khrushchev’s downfall in October 1964 and thus becamean argument used by the opposition for his removal.117 Some ten years later,having learned from experience, Brezhnev and the Soviet propaganda ma-chine better understood the beneªts of consonance in the implementation offoreign policy propaganda, as the public campaign for détente and the instru-mentalization of Nixon’s visit to Moscow in 1972 aptly demonstrated. In this

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116. Harrison E. Salisbury made this conclusion in A New Russia? p. 31. In another travelogue, TheSoviet Family (London: Hutchinson, 1963), p. 23, David Mace and Vera Mace observed that “behindtheir personal grouses and their political jokes, they [the children] were obviously devoted to ComradeKhrushchev, proud of their country’s achievements, and full of conªdence and hope concerning thefuture.” On young people toying with the propaganda contradictions, see Salisbury, A New Russia?p. 22: “The urgent recommendations of Young Communists for use of a razor and lather met the in-surmountable argument: ‘Sorry, but Fidel Castro is my hero. Surely, you do not want to give offense toour Cuban comrade.’”

117. Revealingly, in Aksyutin’s account of the popular reaction to Khrushchev’s dismissal, Khrush-chevskaya “ottepel’,” p. 583, only one person mentions the Cuban operation in a positive light. A taxidriver from Moscow says it exempliªed the leader’s capacity to be “menacing” (grozny) “when it wasneeded.” Conversely, a Russian university textbook published nearly 50 years after the crisis assertsthat “after the Cuban crisis, Khrushchev’s ouster was only a matter of time.” See A. B. Zubova et al.,Istoriya Rossii. XX vek: 1939–2007 (Moscow: Astrel’, 2010), p. 376. See also Dobrynin, Sugubodoveritel’no, p. 78. Aleksandr Shelepin, one of the speakers at the CPSU Presidium meeting on 13 Oc-tober 1964, said Khrushchev “juggled with people’s lives” during the crisis. Quoted in Aksyutin,Khrushchevskaya “ottepel’,” p. 566. See also this famous anekdot: “Why was Khrushchev ousted?—Because of the seven ‘k’s’: kul’t [personality cult], kommunizm [communism], kukuruza [grain short-falls], Kitai [China], krasnobaistvo [smooth-talking], Karibskii krizis [the Cuban missile crisis] andkuz’kinu mat’ [a mild expletive, My vam pokazhem kuz’kinu mat’, used by Khrushchev on several occa-sions; it could be translated as “We’ll show you, so you’ll crap your pants”].” For the political jokes assources for the study of opinion in the Soviet Union, see Andrei Kozovoi, “Eux et nous: La guerrefroide dans les histoires drôles soviétiques,” Cahiers du monde russe, Vol. 47, No. 1 (January–April2007), pp. 137–152.

case, too, the campaign eventually failed to achieve its promises, but the fail-ure was far less devastating for the CPSU leader’s reputation.118

Acknowledgments

An early version of this article was presented in November 2011 at the annualconvention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and EurasianStudies, held in Washington, DC, and dealt with the impact of the Cubanmissile crisis on the whole Soviet society. The anonymous reviewers for thisjournal, to whom I am grateful, convinced me to focus on Soviet youth. Iwould also like to express my deepest gratitude to Olga Kucherenko for stylis-tic suggestions, as well as to Cambridge University library for offering a su-perb array of resources.

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118. See Andrei Kozovoi, “La rencontre Brejnev-Nixon de 1972 et la culture de guerre froidesoviétique,” Revue historique, No. 652 (October 2009), pp. 897–914.