The most important person in modern Russia.
It isn’t Alexei Navalny whose body Russian authorities still aren’t serving up, even though they announced his death on Feb. 16. It’s another Russian.
He was not a prisoner or a leader of the opposition, but a 36-year-old second-in-command of a Soviet submarine parked below international waters off Cuba on October 27, 1962.
VasilyArkhipov was one of three officers onboard the “B-59” who knew the sub not only carried a 10-kiloton nuclear torpedo, but that it could be fired without direct permission from Moscow. This was the height of the Cuban missile crisis, and on that day the B-59 was cornered by 11 US destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Randolph. They started dropping depth charges. Their goal wasn’t to sink the sub but to force it to surface, as US officials had already told Moscow.
