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The John Batchelor Show

HEADLINE: "The Other Guy Blinked": Soviets Reverse Ships to Avoid Quarantine GUEST NAME: Professor Serhii Plokhy BOOK TITLE: Nuclear Folly TOPIC: Accidental War Warning SUMMARY: The experienced diplomat Anastas Mikoyan served as a calming influence in the

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Books, Arts, News, Society & Culture

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2025

⏱️ 13 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

      HEADLINE: "The Other Guy Blinked": Soviets Reverse Ships to Avoid Quarantine GUEST NAME: Professor Serhii Plokhy BOOK TITLE: Nuclear Folly TOPIC: Accidental War Warning SUMMARY: The experienced diplomat Anastas Mikoyan served as a calming influence in the Presidium, having opposed the missile deployment from the start. Following Kennedy's speech, the Soviets ordered missile ships to turn back to avoid the quarantine. This news reached the White House hours later, minutes after Kennedy authorized an attack. Dean Rusk described the tense situation with the famous "eyeball to eyeball" metaphor.
1962

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:30.1

This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchelor.

0:41.2

The Cuban missile crisis. The crisis is at hand. It is October 22nd, 23rd in Moscow. The Presidium meeting in the Kremlin.

0:48.8

Nikita Khrushchev is the first secretary. The others at the table are critical. I turn to Serhi Ploki, his new book, Nuclear Folly, a history of the Cuban Missile Crisis, using transcripts from the tape recordings that President Kennedy made of his meetings in the White House,

1:00.7

using notes that were made at the Presidium meeting in Moscow.

1:04.8

These two leaders of nuclear-tipped-powered countries are unaware what each other is saying, and their information's out of date and it's often misunderstood by both sides.

1:15.5

So we go now to the Presidium meeting late on the 22nd in Moscow.

1:20.2

It's eight hours ahead of Washington.

1:22.0

They take a break in the middle of the evening.

1:25.5

At this point, Professor, Khrushchev doesn't know what's going to happen,

1:29.7

but there's a man at the table who has an alternative all the way through these discussions

1:35.1

about deploying missiles. His name is McCoyan. He has a great deal of authority on his own because

1:41.6

he's one of the original revolutionaries. Who is he? What do we need to know about him at this point?

1:47.1

Anastas Mikoyan is a very, very interesting figure.

...

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