In this conversation between Khrushchev and Novotny, Khrushchev used exceptionally candid language to defend his handling of the superpower confrontation, what he described as “six days which shook the world.” While well aware that many fellow communists (including the Chinese and Cubans) regarded his agreement under pressure from US President John F. Kennedy to remove the missiles as a surrender to the imperialists, Khrushchev stoutly defended his action as not only a necessary measure to avoid a catastrophic nuclear war, but actually a victory. Khrushchev bluntly criticized Fidel Castro for failing to comprehend the true nature of war in the thermonuclear age and, that at the height of the crisis, he had suggested in a letter to Khrushchev that the Soviets should be the first to use nuclear weapons, striking the United States should it attack Cuba, even though this would lead promptly to a global war.

In response to President Kennedy's letter protesting the placement of missiles in Cuba, Khrushchev proposes a resolution to the crisis. When the time seemed right he would offer to dismantle the missiles already on the island (the MRBMs or R-12s) if Kennedy pledged not to invade Cuba.

Alexei Adzhubei, Khrushchev’s son-in-law and the editor-in-chief of Izvestia, reports on his meetings with US journalists and officials in Washington, DC. Especially significant was his 30 January meeting with President John F. Kennedy in which Kennedy compared the communist revolution in Cuba with the 1956 Hungarian Revolution suppressed by the Soviet Union. Adzhubei also described Kennedy's comments on German reunification.

Excerpt from a report prepared by Politiburo member Dmitry Polyansky on Khrushchev's foreign policy mistakes, presented at 14 October 1964 CPSU Central Committee plenum. Polyansky included a scathing denunciation of Khrushchev’s “adventurism” in sending the missiles to Cuba, causing the “deepest of crises [that] brought the world to the brink of a nuclear war.” Ridiculing Khrushchev’s claims of having achieved a successful “penetration” of Latin America, Polyansky dismissed his contention that the crisis had in fact ended with a Soviet victory.

The conversation takes place soon after the IL-28 crisis, which gives Mikoyan a chance to patch up the relationship with trade agreements and promises of future aid and industrial cooperation. Near the end of the conversation, Guevara and Mikoyan discuss the theory of revolutionary struggle. Guevara shares his vision that “further development of the revolutions in Latin America must follow the line of simultaneous explosions in all countries.” Mikoyan cautions him, pointing to the Soviet experience and using the metaphor of the rebellion on the battleship “Potemkin.” Hinting at further disagreement ahead, he gently registers his disagreement with the Cuban leader’s drive to ignite revolution in the hemisphere.

The conversation was recorded after the Cuban leader refused to see the Soviet envoy for three days in a reaction to the new demand. Castro starts by declaring his disagreement with the decision to remove the IL-28s but, assures Mikoyan that the revolutionary leadership discussed the issue and agreed to the removal. Mikoyan presents all his arguments to show that the withdrawal of the planes would end the crisis and make the US non-invasion pledge more credible. He acknowledges the “negative psychological effect” of the decision and reiterates that all the rest of the weapons would stay in Cuba so its security would be guaranteed without the obsolete planes. They also agree on the rules of verification of the withdrawal.

This telegram, written in Khrushchev's stream-of-consciousness style, outlines the rationale behind the decision to remove the missiles from Cuba that caused the crisis: It was much better to end the crisis by giving up planes that were already obsolete—to show that the Soviet Union and Cuba had fulfilled all the promises Khrushchev had given Kennedy—and consequently to expect, and demand, full compliance with the non-invasion pledge on the part of the United States, than to retain the planes and give the Americans a justification to violate their pledge. The telegram also spells out, in Khrushchev’s words, of the reasons why the weapons were deployed to Cuba in the first place.

Protocol 71 gives details to the immediate fallout of the Cuban Missile Crisis from the Soviet perspective. Thanks to Castro’s so-called Armageddon letter and his five points, by December 1962 (date of this protocol), Khrushchev was calling the Cubans “unreliable allies.”

Protocol 66 is the first Malin note dated after the Cuban Missile Crisis, on 11 November. The tone of the protocol indicates that Castro is not pleased with Khrushchev's handling of the crisis, and there is a growing sense of distance between Cuba and the Soviet Union.

According to Protocol 63, Khrushchev probably assumed that Kennedy’s patience was at an end and the Cuban Missile Crisis might either be resolved or spin out of control, and the Kremlin again considered how it might respond to a US attack. If anyone suggested a preemptive strike, or even a retaliatory strike, against a target outside of the Caribbean, Malin did not note it for the official record.