Sandals from Dnipro: Ukraine and the Cuban Missile Crisis

Required for HUSI scholarship recipients. Open to the public.
Serhii Plokhii, Director, Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard

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Abstract

How did Ukraine contribute to, and participate in, the nuclear arms race of the Cold War era? This lecture will explore Ukraine's involvement, focusing specifically on the Cuban Missile crisis. All of the ballistic missiles delivered to Cuba were made in Ukraine and most of the missile units dispatched to Cuba were shipped to the island from Ukraine and through Ukrainian ports. The lecture will discuss the KGB reports on the shipment of the missiles and troops, now being held in the SBU archive in Kyiv, and will draw from Plokhii's latest book, Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Read an interview with Serhii Plokhii about Nuclear Folly.

About the Speaker

Serhii Plokhii is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History and the director of the Ukrainian Research Institute. His interests include intellectual, cultural and international history of Eastern Europe, with emphases on Ukraine. He is the author of The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine (2015), and most recently, Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis (2021). His books have won numerous awards, including the Ballie Gifford Prize and the Shevchenko National Prize (2018).

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