Kuznetsov was First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Soviet Union from 1955 to 1977. During the missile crisis he proposed to counter the U.S. blockade with pressure against West Berlin, an idea Khrushchev rejected. On October 28 Khrushchev charged Kuznetsov to meet with UN Secretary General U Thant and the U.S. negotiating team of Adlai Stevenson and John McCloy to work out the details for the withdrawal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba and the settlement of the crisis.
Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center has created this site as a resource for the Cuban Missile Crisis. Designed to help policymakers, students, and interested citizens draw lessons from these critical events half a century ago, this site not only provides background on the crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster in October 1962 but also offers tools to understand how it can inform contemporary policy.