Life During The Cold War

 

Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov  was a Soviet Navy officer who prevented a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Only Arkhipov, as Flotilla commander and second-in-command of the nuclear-armed submarine B-59, refused to authorize the captain’s use of nuclear torpedo against the United States Navy, a decision requiring the agreement of all three senior officers aboard. In 2002 Thomas Blanton, who was then director of the National Security Archive, said that “a guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world”.