The Soviets would slink home from the Cuban Missile Crisis with tails and rockets between their legs. Two years later, the Politburo relieved Nikita Khrushchev of his job. For all that, although few would recognise his name, we can thank Oleg Konstantinovich Penkovsky.
On this day in 1962, October 26, Nikita Khrushchev blinked. Four days earlier, US President John F. Kennedy had informed Americans via a nationally televised address that the Soviet Union was placing missiles in Cuba and, as a consequence of this first-strike threat, he was ordering the US Navy to blockade the island until the weaponry was removed. As the superpowers faced off, the world held its breath and prepared for Armageddon.
In Moscow, meanwhile, Colonel Oleg Konstantinovich Penkovsky (above) of the GRU (Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noe Upravlenie, Chief Intelligence Directorate of Military Intelligence) was arrested and charged with the high treason. The world was not to know at the time that it was Penkovsky, much more than Khrushchev, Kennedy or their diplomats, who defused the crisis. The Soviets would slink home with tails and rockets between their legs and, two years later, the Politburo “relieved” Khrushchev of the leadership position. These were the unfolding consequence of Penkovsky’s actions, yet the man who saved the planet by supplying the Americans with top secret information that gave Washington the confidence to resist the Kremlin’s bluff and bluster has remained a largely obscure and overlooked player in the drama.
