The American press is full jabbering by threatening hot bloods. They want Kennedy to attack Cuba, invade Cuba, occupy Cuba, change the regime in Cuba, and kill Fidel and his associates. What a bunch of crazies! Some of them actually think that if Kennedy caves in to the pressure and goes to war with Cuba—we Soviets will just stand aside, recognizing that Cuba is in the U.S. “sphere of influence,” and that the U.S., as we have known since a year ago, has a lot more nuclear weapons than we have. Even though we have fewer weapons (it is true!), we have more than enough to destroy the United States. Marx and Lenin forbid, of course, because we would also be destroyed. But still, the American hotheads worry me. What if Kennedy can’t hold out? Well, as soon as our nuclear missiles are fully operational sometime this month, the Americans won’t dare attack Cuba, for fear that we might destroy some American cities.

Meanwhile, we have a lot of agricultural problems. Saving Cuba isn’t my only job, after all. Our people don’t have enough to eat. I don’t understand why our people aren’t like the American farmers I met during my 1959 tour of the U.S. The Americans work like dogs. Our Soviet farmers sleep like dogs. Ha ha ha ha, I like that one. But we mustn’t let the sleeping Soviet dogs lie. Ha ha ha ha! The critics say that the Soviet system operates like this: the farmers pretend to work, and we (the government) pretend to pay them. As a result, little or nothing gets done on our collective farms. Socialism is such a beautiful idea—far more beautiful than the capitalist, dog-eat-dog system in America. There I go with the dogs, again.

I will, as the farmers say, “go to the dogs” myself, if the Americans attack Cuba before our weapons are ready to fire. On days like this, I think I am too old for this job. Yet who can take my place? That disgusting Leonid Brezhnev, whose face looks like that of a droopy blood-hound?

Woof!

NK