Khrushchev Letters Urged Detente

Former Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev, referring often to the thermonuclear war that had just been averted, urged President John F. Kennedy to join him in taking advantage of the end of the Cuban missile crisis to solve all remaining U.S.-Soviet problems, especially the status of Berlin, newly declassified letters indicated Monday.

The State Department and Russia jointly made public 12 previously secret communications between Kennedy and Khrushchev in the aftermath of the October, 1962, missile crisis. The exchanges included memos on two conversations found in Soviet, but not American, archives.

The letters, dated between Oct. 30, 1962, and Dec. 19, 1962, all were written after the now famous exchanges in which Kennedy demanded, and Khrushchev ultimately accepted, removal of medium-range nuclear missiles from Cuba. The earlier letters were mostly made public in 1973.

The latest communications contain no dramatic revelations. Most of them concerned a U.S. demand for removal of aging Soviet IL-28 bombers from Cuba. Although Khrushchev insisted that the 12-year-old aircraft posed no danger to the United States, he agreed to take them out.

But, in the aftermath of the disintegration of the nuclear superpower that Khrushchev once commanded, the letters give some insight into the earliest discussion of U.S.-Soviet detente. It was a wary courtship with each side accusing the other of failing to carry out fully the obligations accepted to end the crisis.