CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS: CHE GUEVARA'S COVERT MISSION TO MOSCOW, AUGUST 1962.

Four return airline tickets on Compania Cubana de Aviacion SA, and Aeroflot CCCP, from Cuba via Prague to Moscow and back. Tickets stamped on arrival in Moscow on 25 Agust, 1962.

Four return airline tickets on Compania Cubana de Aviacion SA, and Aeroflot CCCP, from Cuba via Prague to Moscow and back. Tickets stamped on arrival in Moscow on 25 Agust, 1962. Four double airline tickets for four Cuban passengers to fly out from Havana to Prague on Cuban Airlines, and then to fly on to Moscow on Aeroflot, Oblong 8vo.;
Together with Che's excess baggage ticket voucher on the Moscow to Prague return leg on Aeroflot, with a charge for 88kg of overweight luggage (presumably some light tourist shopping).

These four airline tickets, provide us with the evidence of Che's covert mission to Moscow. Castro sent him to see Khrushchev in order to persuade him, to declare publicly, that he had sent the nuclear missiles to Cuba, in part as a reaction to the US deployment of missiles in Turkey. But Khrushchev would not be persuaded, and in fact it might have been Che's revolutionary insistence that encouraged the Soviet Premier to back down at the last moment. There were additional talks in Prague, but Guevara and Aragones returned to Cuba on the 6th September. The process for the missile deployment had started when Raul Castro had visited Khrushchev in July 3rd, and detailed arrangements were made. By mid July Soviet cargo vessels were moving out of the Black Sea towards Cuba. And as the pressure between the superpowers grew, taking both countries to a 13 day stand-off (October 16-28th, 1962), considered to be the closest that the world has come to a full-scale nuclear war

The Four Cubans named on the tickets are: Ernesto Che Guevara (Minister of Industries), Emilio Aragones Navarro (Che's close friend, and following the Revolution Head of Organisation and Mobilization of the Revolutionary Armed Forces), Hermes Pena Torres (Captain in Che's escort group), and Hector Garcia Vidal (a Cuban agent based in the Cuban Embassy in Mexico, who provided liaison with the Czech and Russian Embassies, and probably arranged the flights). In many respects, it was Che who was pushing to get the missiles to Cuba to threaten the US. After the USSR backed down, he grew equally critical of Moscow as of Washington, feeling that the Russians had used Cuba as a pawn in their global chess game.