Distribute the ciphered telegram from Anatoly Dobrynin to the Soviet Foreign Ministry and have each student compare it to the accounts. Based on the different accounts, students should write their own account of what happened at that meeting. By comparing the accounts with each other and with the series, students will see the complexities of historiography. Multiple Perspectives Hand out quotations from various individuals involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis. You may want to give each group one set of quotations and ask the students to arrange them according to common elements.
Students decide how to do the arranging-there are no right or wrong answers.
This activity helps students think, read, and understand the quotations in a more interesting way than just handing the quotations out and reading them. Multiple Perspectives on the Events of the Cuban Missile Crisis . The transcript of the interview with Fidel Castro is quite long but it provides a fascinating account of Castro's perspectives on the United States, the Soviet Union and the crisis in general. You can distribute segments of this interview to students and have them piece Castro's story together. As students read these accounts they should look for specific references and words that illustrate the U.S., Cuban and Soviet perspectives.