Vasili Arkhipov. It sounds like a Wifi password, but it's actually the name of the person who probably made it possible for you to read this sentence today.
It's 1962, and the Cold War is at one of its highest peaks, also known as the Cuban Missile Crisis—a confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union initiated by Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba. This dispute is often considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war.
As you probably guessed, the story I'll tell you today unfolds in Cuba. What you may not know, though, is that it happens underwater.
It all started when three Soviet submarines in the Caribbean were spotted by the American Navy.
Naturally, having spotted the subs, the Americans started attacking, dropping depth charges from every side. What eludes them, though, is that one of these Soviet submarines is equipped with a fully-functional nuclear torpedo and that the Soviet captain himself is asking for instructions on whether or not he should fire the missile.
The thing is, this submarine was out of contact with the Soviet Union for days, so the decision of blasting a Hiroshima-sized bomb in some American submarines was in the hands of an exhausted and nervous submarine commander. He decided to do it, and so did his second in command.
The Soviet submarine was reaching temperatures above 50 degrees and the air-conditioning system was broken. The captain felt doomed. Vadim Orlov, an intelligence officer who was there, remembers a particularly loud blast: “The Americans hit us with something stronger than the grenades—apparently with a practice depth bomb,” he wrote later. “We thought, That’s it, the end.” And that’s when, he says, the Soviet captain shouted, “Maybe the war has already started up there … We’re gonna blast them now! We will die, but we will sink them all—we will not become the shame of the fleet.”
This is when Vasili Arkhipov shows up. He was the flotilla commander responsible for three Russian subs on this secret mission to Cuba. What he said to the general was never known, but, says Thomas Blanton, the former director of the nongovernmental National Security Archive, this “guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world.”
The official Soviet reports are still secret, but the way the story is most commonly told is as follows:
Each of the three Soviet submarine captains in the ocean around Cuba had the power to launch a nuclear torpedo if—and only if—he had the consent of all three senior officers on board. Two generals gave a supporting vote, but Vasili Arkhipov said no. He thought, with an enviable calmness, that the supposed bombs the Americans were launching at them were all detonating a little further from the submarines than was expected. Maybe, just maybe, they weren't under attack at all. Maybe the American troops were asking them to resurface so they can identify themselves.
We'll probably never know whether this is what actually happened, but we do know that Vasili Arkhipov was right. They were not under attack.
Let's take a moment to appreciate Vasili Arkhipov. Just acknowledge that, if it weren't for this man's cold temper, the Americans on the surface would have met a nuke (instead of the submarines they actually met), an event that would undoubtedly have made Washington retaliate on the Soviet Union, and start a nuclear war. If it weren't for Vasili Arkhipov, you, me, your parents, your grandparents, and even your dog, would all be dead (or not born at all).
The world is very, very lucky that at one critical moment, someone calm enough, careful enough, and cool enough was there to say no.
Vasili Arkhipov