Volume 45, Number 1 · January 15, 1998
On the Brink
By Tony Judt
'One Hell of a Gamble': Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964
by Aleksandr Fursenko, by Timothy Naftali
Norton, 420 pp., $27.50
The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis
edited by Ernest R. May, by Philip D. Zelikow
Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 728 pp., $35.00
The Other Missiles of October: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Jupiters, 1957-1963
by Philip Nash
University of North Carolina Press, 231 pp., $18.95 (paper)
The story of the Cuban missiles begins in April 1962, when the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev decided to increase very substantially the limited military support hitherto provided by the USSR to the government of Fidel Castro in Cuba. At his urging the Soviet Presidium duly assented to a military build-up on the island which, in its final form, was to include some 50,000 Soviet military personnel, organized in five nuclear missile regiments, four motorized regiments, two tank battalions, one MIG-21 fighter wing, forty-two IL-28 light bombers, two cruise missile regiments, twelve SA-2 anti- aircraft units with 144 launchers, and a squadron of eleven submarines, seven of them equipped with nuclear missiles.
Review, 9247 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |