The GRU officer who ran the secret backchannel between Khrushchev and the Kennedys
In his memoir of the crisis, Robert Kennedy recalled the assurances of 'defensive weapons' Bolshakov had conveyed from Khrushchev: '[we] realized that it had all been one gigantic fabric of lies.'
A GRU officer from Moscow. First posted to the US in 1951 as a TASS correspondent, he returned to Washington in 1959 as deputy editor of the English-language magazine Soviet Life. In May 1961, journalist Frank Holeman arranged his introduction to Robert Kennedy, and over the next year and a half Bolshakov met privately with the attorney general some fifty times, becoming the critical backchannel between Khrushchev and the Kennedy White House through the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and into the Cuban Missile Crisis. During the missile crisis, following orders from Moscow, he repeatedly assured the Kennedys that Soviet military aid to Cuba was strictly defensive; when the launch sites were discovered, the backchannel collapsed in recrimination, and Bolshakov was recalled to Moscow in December 1962.
Career Timeline
- 1941–1943Military interpreter and assistant to the intelligence chief of a rifle division, Karelian and Northwestern fronts
- 1943–1950Trained at the Higher Intelligence School and the Military-Diplomatic Academy
- 1951–1955Posted to New York and Washington as a TASS correspondent (first US tour)
- 1955–1957Officer for special assignments under Defence Minister Zhukov
- 1957–1959Senior officer, GRU central apparatus
- 1959–1962Posted to Washington as deputy editor of Soviet Life magazine; held ~50 secret meetings with Robert Kennedy
- 1962–1989Worked at Novosti Press Agency; editor-in-chief of Soviet Union magazine