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Kennedy's stroke of [[genius ]] which was crucial for the [[resolution ]] of the Cuban missile crisis, was to pretend that a key [[letter ]] did NOT arrive at its destination, to act as if this letter didn't [[exist ]] - a stratagem which, of course, only worked because the sender (Khrushchev) participated in it. On Friday, October 26 1962, a letter from Khrushchev to Kennedy confirms the offer previously made through intermediaries: the missiles will be removed if the US issues a pledge not to invade Cuba. On Saturday, October 27, before a US answer, [[another]], harsher and more demanding, letter from Khrushchev arrives, adding the removal of missiles from [[Turkey ]] as a condition, and signalling a possible [[political ]] coup in the [[Soviet Union]]. At 8:05 PM the same day, Kennedy sends a response to Khrushchev, informing him that he is accepting his October 26 proposal, i.e., acting as if the October 27 letter doesn't exist. On Sunday, October 28, Kennedy receives a letter from Khrushchev in which he agrees to the deal... The lesson of this is that in such moments of crisis where the fate of everything hangs in the air, saving the appearances, politeness, the [[awareness ]] of "playing a [[game]]," matters more than ever. One can also [[claim ]] that what triggered the crisis was a symmetrical fact, a letter which also did not arrive at its addressee, but, this [[time]], because it was not sent. Soviet missiles were stationed in Cuba as the result of the [[secret ]] mutual security pact between Cuba and USSR; many observers (most notably Ted Sorensen) suggested that the US reaction would have been much less offensive if the mutual security pact had been made [[public ]] in advance (as Castro had wanted, incidentally!). It was this secrecy on which Soviets insisted that made the US [[think ]] that the missile emplacement could have no [[purpose ]] [[other ]] than to launch an attack upon the US: if the entire [[process ]] of signing the pact and installing the missiles were to be public and [[transparent]], it would have been perceived as something much less threatening: not as the preparation of a [[real ]] attack, but as demonstrative posturing which poses no real military [[threat]].<br><br>

This lesson was not learned by the US military establishment, which [[interpreted ]] the peaceful resolution of the crisis in a different way. <ref>[[James ]] g. Blight and Philip Brenner, <i>Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba's Secret Struggles with the Superpowers after the Cuban Missile Crisis</i>, New York: Rowman &#38; Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., 2002.</ref> Its opinion is best rendered by Raymond Garthoff, at the time an intelligence [[analyst ]] in the [[State ]] Department: "If we have learned anything from this [[experience]], it is that weakness, even only [[apparent ]] weakness, invites Soviet [[transgression]]. At the same time, firmness in the last [[analysis ]] will force the Soviets to back away from rash initiatives." The crisis is thus perceived as the eyeball to eyeball confrontation of two players, a macho game of "chicken," where the one with more toughness, inflexibility and resolve wins. (This view, of course, does not fit [[reality]]: a [[whole ]] series of details demonstrate Kennedy's flexibility and his to the Soviet [[need ]] to save face by way of salvaging something positive from the crisis. In [[order ]] to buy some time and avoid a direct confrontation, he permitted on October 25 a Soviet tanker to proceed through the quarantine; on October 28, he ordered no interview should be given and no [[statement ]] made which would claim any kind of victory; furthermore, he offered up removal of the US missiles in Turkey, as well as a [[guarantee ]] that the US will not invade Cuba, in [[exchange ]] for the [[withdrawal ]] of the Soviet missiles from Cuba.)<br><br>

The Soviet [[perception ]] of the crisis was different: for [[them]], it was not the threat of force that ended the crisis. The Soviet leadership believed the crisis ended because both Soviet and US officials realized they were at the brink and that the crisis was threatening to destroy humankind. They did not [[fear ]] only for their immediate safety and were not worried merely [[about ]] losing a battle in Cuba. Their fear was the fear of deciding the fate of millions of [[others]], even of [[civilization ]] itself. It was THIS fear, experienced by both sides at the peak of the crisis, which enabled them to reach a peaceful solution; and it was this fear which was at the very core of the famous exchange of letters between Khrushchev and Fidel Castro at the climax of the crisis. In a letter to Khrushchev from October 26, Castro wrote that

if the imperialists invade Cuba with the [[goal ]] of occupying it, the [[danger ]] that that [[aggressive ]] policy poses for humanity is so great that following that [[event ]] the Soviet Union must never allow the circumstances in which the imperialists could launch the first nuclear strike against it. / I tell you this because I believe that the imperialists' [[aggressiveness ]] is extremely dangerous and if they actually carry out the brutal act of invading Cuba in violation of [[international law ]] and [[morality]], that would be the [[moment ]] to eliminate such danger forever through an act of clear legitimate [[defense]], however harsh and terrible the solution would be, for there is no other.

In your cable of October 27 you proposed that we be the first to launch a nuclear strike against the territory of the [[enemy]]. You, of course, realize where that would have led. Rather than a simple strike, it would have been the start of a thermonuclear [[world ]] war. / Dear Comrade Fidel Castro, I consider this proposal of yours incorrect, although I [[understand ]] your motivation. / We have lived through the most serious moment when a nuclear world war could have broken out. Obviously, in that [[case]], the [[United States ]] would have sustained huge losses, but the Soviet Union and the whole socialist camp would have also suffered greatly. As far as Cuba is concerned, it would be difficult to say even in general [[terms ]] what this would have meant for them. In the first [[place]], Cuba would have been burned in the fire of war. There's no [[doubt ]] that the Cuban [[people ]] would have fought courageously or that they would have died heroically. But we are not struggling against [[imperialism ]] in order to die, but to take advantage of all our possibilities, to lose less in the [[struggle ]] and win more to overcome and achieve the victory of [[communism]].

The [[essence ]] of Khrushchev's argument can be best summoned by Neil Kinnock's anti-war argument, when he was the Labour candidate in the UK elections: "I am ready to die for my country, but I am not ready to let my country die for me." It is significant to note that, in spite of the "totalitarian" [[character ]] of the Soviet [[regime]], THIS fear was much more predominant in the Soviet leadership than in the US leadership - so, perhaps, the time has come to rehabilitate Khrushchev, not Kennedy, as the real hero of the Cuban missile crisis. - Castro answered Khrushchev on October 31:

I realized when I wrote them that the [[words ]] contained in my letter could be misinterpreted by you and that was what happened, perhaps because you didn't read them carefully, perhaps because of the [[translation]], perhaps because I meant to say so much in too few lines. However, I didn't hesitate to do it. Do you believe, Comrade Khrushchev, that we were selfishly [[thinking ]] of ourselves, of our generous people willing to sacrifice themselves, and not at all in an [[unconscious ]] manner but fully assured of the risk they ran? No, Comrade Khrushchev. Few [[times ]] in [[history]], and it could even be said that never before, because no people had ever faced such a tremendous danger, was a people so willing to fight and die with such a [[universal ]] [[sense ]] of [[duty]]. /.../ We knew, and do not presume that we ignored it, that we would have been annihilated, as you insinuate in your letter, in the event of nuclear war. However, that didn't prompt us to ask you to withdraw the missiles, that didn't prompt us to ask you to yield. Do you believe that we wanted that war? But how could we prevent it if the invasion finally took place? /.../ And if war had broken out, what could we do with the insane people who unleashed the war? You yourself have said that under current [[conditions ]] such a war would inevitably have escalated quickly into a nuclear war. / I understand that once [[aggression ]] is unleashed, one shouldn't concede to the aggressor the privilege of deciding, moreover, when to use nuclear weapons. The destructive [[power ]] of this weaponry is so great and the speed of its delivery so great that the aggressor would have a considerable initial advantage. / And I did not [[suggest ]] to you, Comrade Khrushchev, that the USSR should be the aggressor, because that would be more than incorrect, it would be immoral and contemptible on my part. But from the instant the imperialists attack Cuba and while there are Soviet armed forces stationed in Cuba to [[help ]] in our defense in case of an attack from abroad, the imperialists would by this act become aggressors against Cuba and against the USSR, and we would respond with a strike that would annihilate them. /.../ I did not suggest, Comrade Khrushchev, that in the midst of this crisis the Soviet Union should attack, which is what your letter seems to say; rather, that following an imperialist attack, the USSR should act without vacillation and should never make the mistake of allowing circumstances to develop in which the enemy makes the first nuclear strike against the USSR. And in this sense, Comrade Khrushchev, I maintain my point of view, because I understand it to be a [[true ]] and just evaluation of a specific [[situation]]. You may be able to convince me that I am wrong, but you can't tell me that I am wrong without convincing me.

It is obviously Castro himself who (purposefully) misread Khrushchev here: Khrushchev [[understood ]] very well what Castro wanted the USSR to do - not to attack the US "out of nowhere," but, in the case of the US invasion on Cuba (still an act of conventional war, and a limited one, at that - attacking a [[recent ]] ally of the USSR, not the USSR itself), to retaliate with [[total ]] nuclear counter-attack. This is what the warning that the USSR "should never make the mistake of allowing circumstances to develop in which the enemy makes the first nuclear strike against the USSR" can only mean: that the USSR should be the first to deal a decisive nuclear strike - "once aggression is unleashed, one shouldn't concede to the aggressor the privilege of deciding, moreover, when to use nuclear weapons." To put it bluntly, Castro is demanding Khrushchev to choose the end of [[civilized ]] [[life ]] on earth over the [[loss ]] of Cuba... (Castro's premise, according to which "the destructive power of this /nuclear/ weaponry is so great and the speed of its delivery so great that the aggressor would have a considerable initial advantage," is very problematic: it is a safe bet - and the presupposition of the MAD [[logic ]] - that the surprise nuclear attack of one of the nuclear superpowers will fail to destroy all the opponent's [[nuclear arms]], i.e., that the opponent will have enough arms [[left ]] to fully strike back.) There is, nonetheless, a way to read Castro's [[demand ]] as a case of "[[rational]]" strategic reasoning - what if it was sustained by a ruthless and cynical calculation with the following scenario in view: the US [[army ]] will invade Cuba with conventional forces; then, the US and the USSR will destroy each other (and, perhaps, [[Europe ]] with it) with nuclear arms, making the US occupation of Cuba meaningless, so that Cuba (with most of the [[Third ]] World) will survive victorious?<br><br>

The standard characterization of the Stalinist regimes as Èbureaucratic socialismÇ is totally misleading and ([[self]])mystifying: it is the way the Stalinist regime itself perceives its problem, the [[cause ]] of its failures and troubles - if there are not enough products in the stores, if authorities do not respond to people's [[demands]], etc.etc., what is easier than to blame the ÈbureaucratricÇ attitude of indifference, petty arrogance, etc. No wonder that, from the late 1920s onwards, [[Stalin ]] was [[writing ]] attacks on [[bureaucracy]], on bureaucratic attitude. ÈBureaucratismÇ was [[nothing ]] but an effect of the functioning of Stalinist regimes, and the [[paradox ]] is that it is the ultimate misnomer: what Stalinist regimes really lacked was precisely an efficient ÈbureacracyÇ (depoliticized and competent administrative [[apparatus]]).<br><br>

It is precisely the paternal references of (some) "totalitarian" leaders (Stalin as the [[Father ]] of his people...) which testify to the underlying fact that the logic of this [[leader ]] is thoroughly anti-patriarchal, i.e., that it implies the radical disjunction between Father and Leader:

The liberation of the modern [[subject ]] from the [[figure ]] of the Patriarch as Fatherleader (<i>Perechef</i>) /.../ evidently opens up a large [[space ]] of [[freedom ]] with the [[multiplicity ]] of the [[objects ]] of [[identification ]] where anything is possible, including leaders who [[want ]] to be fathers, which is in no way the same as a father who is from the outset leader. It is because, in the modern crowd societies, there is no longer the Fatherleader, that the crowds can put a leader at the place of their Ego [[Ideal]]. <ref>Fethi Benslama, <i>La [[psychanalyse ]] &#224; l'&#233;preuve de l'[[Islam]]</i>, [[Paris]]: Aubier 2002, p. 102.</ref>

What did the [[trauma ]] of 1935 (the public campaign against his "Lady Macbeth" triggered by the Pravda article "Muddle instead of [[music]]") do to Shostakovich? Perhaps the clearest indicator of the break is the [[change ]] in the function of scherzo in Shostakovich's [[work ]] in 1940s and early 1950s. Prior to 1935, his scherzi can still be perceived as the explosive expression of new aggressive and grotesque vitality and joy of life - there is something of the liberating force of the carnival in them, of the [[madness ]] of the creative power that merrily sweeps away all obstacles and ignores or established rules and hierarchies. After 1935, however, his scherzi had clearly "lost their innocence": their explosive [[energy ]] acquires a brutal-threatening quality, there is something mechanic in their energy, like the [[forced ]] movements of a marionette. They either render the raw energy of [[social ]] [[violence]], of pogroms of [[helpless ]] victims, or, if they are meant as the explosion of the "joy of life," this is clearly intended in a sarcastic way, or as an impotent maniac [[outburst ]] of the [[aggressivity ]] of the helpless [[victim]]. The "carnival" is here no longer a liberating experience, but the explosion of thwarted and [[repressed ]] aggressivity - it is the "carnival" of racist pogroms and drunken gang rapes... (The outstanding cases are the Movements 2 and 3 of the 8th Symphony, the famous 2nd Movement of the 10th Symphony ("Portrait of Stalin"), and, among the String Quartets, the 3rd Movement of the Quartet no. 3 (which, today, almost sounds like Herrmann's score for [[Psycho]]) and the "furioso" Movement of the Quartet no. 10.) <ref>See Bernd Feuchtner, <i>Dimitri Schostakowitsch</i>, 125-126. Kassel, Stuttgart and Weimar: Barenreiter/ Metzler 2002.</ref><br><br>