October 27 ought to be a world holiday, a celebration of the triumph of humanity, and the saving of civilization. Children ought to sing in school about Vasili Arkhipov. Children ought to sing in school about Vasili Arkhipov. We already have some international peace holidays like the U.N.’s International Day of Peace (September 21) and the International Day of Non-violence (October 2), established by the U.N. General Assembly to mark Gandhi’s birthday. We ought to mark October 27 as well, as a model of disobedience, cautiousness and humanity.

On October 27, 1962, Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov was the one person who refused to start a devastating nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States.

In order to understand the significance of this date, we need to roll back to the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In the U.S. version of events, the crisis starts on October 15 with photographic confirmation that the Soviet Union had secretly built sites for medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles away from the continental USA. U.S. president John F Kennedy presented this to the world as a shocking escalation of the nuclear arms race, and a major destabilizing move. Because of secret taping of White House conversations, later declassified, we know what was said in private.

In a top-level meeting on October 16, Kennedy wondered why the Soviet Union had deployed medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) so close to the U.S. mainland. He asked: “But what is the advantage of that? It’s just as if we suddenly began to put a major number of MRBMs in Turkey. Now that’d be goddamn dangerous, I would think.”

Kennedy’s National Security Advisor, McGeorge Bundy replied: “But we did, Mr President.”

Kennedy came back: “Yeah, but that was five years ago.”

A State Department official, Alexis Johnson, added: “We did it. We did it in England. That’s when we were short. We gave England [unclear] when we were short of ICBMs [inter-continental ballistic missiles.” (This exchange can be found in Ernest R. May & Philip D. Zelikow eds., The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Harvard University Press, 1997, p. 100.)

Bundy was referring to medium-range Jupiter nuclear missiles in Turkey, on the border of the Soviet Union – the US had announced their deployment in 1957, but they actually placed in Turkey in 1961-62. Contrary to Kennedy’s “that was five years ago” remark, the US Jupiter base in Turkey was declared operational by the US Air Force in April 1962, during Kennedy’s presidency, and just six months before the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Alexis Johnson, on the other hand, was referring to the deployment in 1959 of 60 U.S. Thor intermediate-range ballistic missiles in England.

Earlier on October 16, at another high-level meeting, McGeorge Bundy noted that Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev “honestly believes, or at least affects to believe, that we have nuclear weapons in Japan … They may mean Okinawa.” (The Kennedy Tapes, p. 61)

Khrushchev had complained to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, on September 5, 1962, that Soviet moves to defend Cuba were not treated the same as similar U.S. moves in Japan. He added: “Just recently I was reading that you have placed atomic warheads on Japanese territory, and surely this is not something the Japanese need.”

It was only revealed in July 2012, 50 years after the event, that the United States had indeed done this on a Japanese island just off China exactly what the Soviet Union did on a Caribbean island just off the continental USA. The United States secretly moved medium-range TM-76 Mace nuclear missiles to Okinawa island in 1961, with its first nuclear missile site became operational at Bolo Point, Yomitan, in early 1962. The missiles, with a range of only 1,250 miles were clearly pointed over the sea at non-nuclear China (then very publicly splitting from the Soviet Union). No part of the Soviet Union, with the possible exception of Vladivostok, was in range of the Okinawa missiles.

In his October 22, 1962 speech publicising the existence of Soviet missiles in Cuba, Kennedy accused Cuban President Fidel Castro of turning Cuba “into the first Latin American country to become a target for nuclear war – the first Latin American country to have these weapons on its soil.” Kennedy told “the captive people of Cuba”: “These new weapons are not in your interest. They contribute nothing to your peace and well-being. They can only undermine it. But this country [the United States] has no wish to cause you to suffer or to impose any system upon you.”

Kennedy never took the time to explain to the people of Okinawa why he had turned their island into the first Asian territory to become a target for nuclear war, the first Asian territory to have these weapons on its soil. He never took the time to explain how these new weapons were in the interests of the people of Okinawa, or how the missiles contributed to their peace and well-being. The U.S. president also never explained why he was imposing the nuclear system on Okinawa – without the knowledge or consent of the people of Okinawa or, indeed, the government of Japan.

In his October 22 speech, Kennedy stated: “Nuclear weapons are so destructive and ballistic missiles are so swift, that any substantially increased possibility of their use or any sudden change in their deployment may well be regarded as a definite threat to peace…. Our own strategic missiles have never been transferred to the territory of any other nation under a cloak of secrecy and deception.”

Kennedy also announced the actions his government was taking in response to the Soviet deployment of nuclear weapons to Cuba, including “a strict quarantine” on all military equipment being sent to Cuba. The term “quarantine” was a euphemism for a naval blockade, which the U.S. government was fully aware was legally an act of war.

One thing the U.S. government was not aware of, was the fact that the Khrushchev had already sent several nuclear-armed submarines towards Cuba. All these submarines were under orders to use their own judgement to launch nuclear torpedoes, if they lost contact with Moscow.

One flotilla of four Foxtrot diesel submarines, sent from its Arctic base on October 1, 1962, was composed of a flagship, B-59, and three sister ships, B-36, B-4 and B-130. The commander of the flotilla was Captain Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov, travelling on the B-59 but not commanding it. The captain of the B-59 was Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky. On each Soviet submarine, it required the agreement of the commander and the political officer to launch the “special weapon” (almost none of the crew were aware they were carrying a nuclear torpedo). On the B-59, however, it needed the consent of the captain, the political officer, and the “second captain,” Arkhipov.

On October 27, 1962, out in international waters, a U.S. taskforce of destroyers and patrol aircraft detected submarine B-59 and began harassing it, seeking to “hunt to exhaustion,” to force it to the surface where it would be vulnerable and they could drive it away from Cuba. The destroyers used their sonar to focus extreme sound attacks on the B-59. After hours of this torture, the U.S. ships dropped five practice depth charges next to the B-59, as a signal that they wanted the submarine to surface.

The U.S. had publicly explained its signalling system three days earlier on October 24, sending a “Submarine Surfacing and Identification Procedures” document to the Soviet Forces. In later years, Soviet submarine commanders reported that they never received this information – the B-59 had lost contact with Moscow for over a week. The Soviets are used to three warning depth charges being used to signal an order to surface, not five. In the end, it appears that the USS Beale and USS Cony dropped 10 ‘concussive grenades’ on the B-59.

Vadim Pavlovich Orlov, a communications intelligence officer on board the B-59, later described the depth charges exploding right next to the hull in these terms: “It felt like you were sitting in a metal barrel, which somebody is constantly blasting with a sledgehammer.” After five hours of torture, running out of oxygen, Captain Savitsky concluded that global war had started, and ordered the use of a nuclear torpedo against the USS Randolph, the huge aircraft carrier leading the U.S. task force.

It’s important to understand the conditions on board the B-59 at this point. The submarine was designed for use in the chill of the Arctic, and had suffered serious overheating operating in the Atlantic, as the air conditioning could not operate when the outside temperature was above 30C (86F). The temperature throughout the submarine was, according to Orlov, above 45C (113F), rising to 60C (140F) in the engine area. The humidity was also a serious problem, with one crewman reporting in his diary, “It’s getting harder and harder to breathe.” On top of this, the submarine was overpopulated, with staff destined to set up a military base in Cuba. Rations were cut and people were restricted to a single glass of water a day. With the air conditioning failing, CO2 levels had become dangerous, with officers fainting on duty.

During this period, B-59 crew member Anatoly Petrovich Andreyev wrote in his diary: “here, inside the sub, the situation is very serious. The men are feeling notably worse, a lot of them are ill, people are fainting, many have swollen feet, no one can sleep in this monstrous heat and stuffy air, even though everyone is very tired and weak. Everyone’s skin is covered with rash, some look like Indians.” He added: “in such a situation, when you’d think all this was bad enough, the commander’s nerves start fraying around the edge. Thus I became an enemy of the nation, a criminal.”

A few days later, Andreyev wrote of Captain Savitsky: “The worst thing is that the commander’s nerves are shot to hell, he’s yelling at everyone and torturing himself. You can tell he’s never before been on independent voyages: he doesn’t realize he should be saving his own strength and the men’s, too, otherwise we are not going to last long. He is already becoming paranoid, scared of his own shadow. He’s hard to deal with. I feel sorry for him and at the same time angry with him for his rash actions.”

Moving forward to the October 27, Orlov records that after a particularly powerful depth charge explosion next to the cornered submarine, the “totally exhausted” Captain Savitsky “became furious” after failing to make contact with Moscow. Savitsky screamed: “Maybe the war has already started up there, while we are doing somersaults here! We’re going to blast them now! We will die, but we will sink them all – we will not disgrace our Navy!” He ordered the “special weapon” to be readied for use.

Political officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov gave his consent to the torpedo being fired, and it was left to Second Captain Arkhipov to refuse his consent. He halted the firing of a nuclear weapon that would almost certainly have triggered U.S. retaliation against Cuba and the Soviet Union that would have led to a devastating global nuclear war. (Unknown to the U.S., there were 100 tactical nuclear missiles on Cuba which could have been used by local commanders to repel a U.S. invasion, so that even a conventional assault on Cuba would have triggered a nuclear war.)

On October 27, 1962, at Arkhipov’s insistence, the B-59 surfaced, refused assistance from U.S. destroyers, and made its way slowly home to Russia, where it was given an ignominious welcome. Arkhipov’s role in saving the world remained a secret until shortly before his death in 1998.

Author Edward Wilson has written: “The decision not to start world war three was not taken in the Kremlin or the White House, but in the sweltering control room of a submarine … The lesson from this is that a guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world,” said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a U.S. non-governmental organisation, in 2002. Arkhipov refused to obey the commander of his submarine; he refused to give up on the possibility of a peaceful outcome; he refused to despair. We should celebrate his disobedience and his humanity.

October 27 should be Arkhipov Day.