The Kennedy-Khrushchev Letters: 1961-1963

Sixty-sixth Chapter in a Series Chronicling the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962

Khrushchev Proposes “Confidential” Correspondence

On September 5, 1961, Premier Khrushchev sent President Kennedy a confidential message suggesting that “it might be useful in a purely informal and personal way to approach you and share some of my ideas.…only in a confidential correspondence can you say what you think, without a backward glance at…the journalists.”

JFK Agrees

On October 16, 1961, President Kennedy responded: “Certainly you are correct in emphasizing that this correspondence must be kept wholly private…For my part the contents and even the existence of our letters will be known only to the Secretary of State and a few others of my closest associates in the government.…”

What Kennedy and Khrushchev Wrote About

The letters between the two leaders, not all of them private or confidential, touched on the controversial topics of the time, some of them quite dangerous. Berlin and Germany were the unifying themes of the letters, as they were for the entire Cold War. The two leaders also discussed the Bay of Pigs debacle (April 1961), Laos, Vietnam, arms control, nuclear weapons testing, the exploration of space, and Cuba.

Some of these letters convey the emotional highs and lows of these exchanges:

• The two world leaders sent each other cordial New Year’s greetings at the end of 1961. A few days later they exchanged gloomy reflections tinged with accusations about the disappointing start of negotiations over Berlin.
• On February 21, 1962, Khrushchev sent Kennedy snide congratulations on Col. John Glenn’s orbital flight: “…a citizen of America [has] been added to the family of astronauts.” The original astronaut in space was, of course, Yuri Gagarin, a citizen of the USSR.
• On March 7, 1962, Kennedy wrote Khrushchev a letter containing five proposals for joint U.S.-USSR exploration of space—suggestions that came to fruition decades later.
• That July 4th Khrushchev and his side-kick, Leonid Brezhnev, sent Kennedy best wishes on the occasion of America’s Independence Day. On the 12th Kennedy thanked them for their good wishes.
• In the 56th letter, dated September 28, seventeen days before CIA photo analysts spotted Soviet missiles in Cuba, Khrushchev peevishly raised one of his pet beefs: the buzzing of Soviet ships by U.S. aircraft.  

Some if not many of Khrushchev’s non-ceremonial communications are querulously critical of the American penchant (as Khrushchev saw it) for publicly proclaiming peaceful intentions and then scurrilously betraying those intentions. In the 56th letter, Khrushchev wrote,

“What is going on, for example, in the U.S. Congress? How can one, for example, fail to notice the decision of the House of Representatives to stop giving U.S. aid to any country that trades with Cuba or whose ships are used for trading with Cuba. Isn't that an act of an unpermissible [sic] arbitrariness against freedom of international trade, an act of crude interference into domestic affairs of other countries?”

The Two Leaders’ Styles

Khrushchev obviously dictated off the cuff. His letters are rambling, discursive, poorly organized streams of consciousness. One can almost see him stumping about his cavernous Kremlin office, blurting out whatever rose to the surface, pausing, then starting again as something else dawned. He loved asking Kennedy rhetorical questions, like the one in letter 56, then shaming the President with his answers (or so he thought). He repeated often, with variations, the familiar Soviet rhetorical device, “It is well known that …”, following up with a truth well known to him if not to Kennedy.

Kennedy’s prose is controlled, well organized, reasonable—a pleasure to read after hacking one’s way through Khrushchev’s tangled syntax. Nowhere is the difference between the two leaders’ styles clearer than in their exchange of letters at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 26-28, 1962. Those crucial letters will be discussed close to their 50th anniversary next month.

Khrushchev’s Last Letter in this Series

The day after John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas (November 23, 1963), Premier Khrushchev wrote the newly sworn-in Lyndon B. Johnson:

“The villainous assassination of Head of the American State John F. Kennedy is a grievous, indeed a very grievous loss for your country. I want to say frankly that the gravity of this loss is felt by the whole world, including ourselves, the Soviet people.”

Jacqueline Kennedy’s Reply

On December 1st, 1963, “one of the last nights I will spend in the White House,” Jacqueline Kennedy thanked Khrushchev for sending Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan to represent him at her husband’s funeral (“he looked so upset when he came through the line, and I was very moved”).

Mrs. Kennedy then wrote,

“You and he were adversaries, but you were allied in a determination that the world should not be blown up. You respected each other and could deal with each other.…

“The danger which troubled my husband was that war might be started not so much by the big men as by the little ones.

“While big men know the needs for self-control and restraint--little men are sometimes moved more by fear and pride. If only in the future the big men can continue to make the little ones sit down and talk, before they start to fight.”

Mrs. Kennedy’s letter to Khrushchev is the last in this series.

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Sources and Notes

Khrushchev’s personal message to Kennedy in September 1961 was originally conveyed by Cyrus Sulzberger of the New York Times. What Sulzberger told Kennedy is printed verbatim in document 20 in Foreign Relations of the United States, Volume VI, Kennedy-Khrushchev Exchanges, (http://www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/volume_vi/volumevi.html).

Khrushchev’s proposal that he and Kennedy exchange private or secret communications is quoted in full in document 21 in FRUS VI (URL above). Kennedy’s response is printed as document 22 in the same volume of FRUS. Khrushchev’s letter to President Johnson is document 119 in this volume of FRUS. Jacqueline Kennedy’s letter to Khrushchev, the last in the series, is document 120.

The phrase “well known” occurs six times in Khrushchev’s letters in this series, “the world knows” twice. He also uses “everyone knows,” “clear to everyone,” or variants of those phrases at least seven times in these letters.