> To the best of my knowledge the more hinged government of the USSR never actually contemplated nuking anyone.

The Suez Crisis was basically ended by Khruschchev threatening to nuke Britain, France, and Israel. Not a single of those countries could meaningfully retaliate at that point, of course. He bragged about it in his memoirs. [1]

The USSR almost fired a nuclear torpedo in the Cuban crisis. Clearly they had rules of engagement for when to start throwing nukes around, without even requiring direct orders or even a confirmation of war. [2]

Historian Petr Lunak in 2007 found a 17-page Warsaw Pact plan in Prague's archives for basically unrestricted nuclear war against all of Western Europe. Drafted 1964, in use until 1986, possibly nearly executed during 1983 NATO exercises. [3][4] French diplomat Therese Delpech reports the same from seeing Warsaw Pact documents in Germany, notwithstanding Brezhnev's conspicuous 1982 "No First Use" declaration. [5] Vaporize Italy, West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark, then conquer all the way into France. [6]

Ah. Kruschchev's famous 1956 "We will bury you" may have been a mistranslation. [7] But it is hard to see how his similar 1957 words could have been anything other than a thinly veiled nuclear death threat: "General Norstad will not be able to rush to Turkey’s aid and will not be able to be present in time for Turkey’s funeral". [8]

I'm sure there are others. The Cold War was crazy, and the Rocket Forces were (and are) held in some veneration. You don't spend an appreciable percentage of your GNP building and maintaining over 40,000 nuclear warheads plus delivery systems without "contemplating" using them.

> The whole Cuban missile crisis thing was over the unhinged US government placing its nukes in Turkey, right next to USSRs heartland

NAID:84786142 [9] in the US National Archives is a declassified CIA map showing the USSR didn't just have thousands of nuclear weapons and delivery systems "right next to" the heartlands of multiple countries like Germany, France, Finland, and Italy (which, again, they fully had prepared plans to nuke).

They also had thousands of nukes directly on the territory of multiple occupied hostile countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Hungary, and Poland.

Apparently the Czechs/Slovakians still don't even know how many warheads the USSR saw fit to store in their homeland. [10]

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And frankly, it's also rather imperialistic that you're just completely ignoring the sovereignty of Turkey and Cuba in that crisis: [11][12]

> …several consecutive Turkish governments, both before and after the coup of 1960, were eager to receive these weapons…

> …Turkey’s citizens regarded the Jupiter missiles as a symbol of the alliance’s determination to use atomic weapons in the case of a Soviet attack on Turkey.

> …Turkish authorities stated on more than one occasion that Jupiter missiles based on Turkish soil represented ‘firm proof of the U.S.’s commitment to Turkey’s security’…

> …aware of their limited defensive value, the missiles continued to be viewed as a symbol of Turkey’s importance within the Western security system, and also as a source of prestige.

> …placing Soviet intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Cuba, despite the misgivings of the Soviet Ambassador in Havana, Alexandr Ivanovich Alexeyev, who argued that Castro would not accept the deployment of the missiles.

> …Castro did not want the missiles, but Khrushchev pressured Castro to accept them.

> …Castro objected to the missiles' deployment as making him look like a Soviet puppet, but he was persuaded…

And:

> Throughout the crisis, Turkey had repeatedly stated that it would be upset if the Jupiter missiles were removed.

> …when the missiles were withdrawn, Castro was more angry with Khrushchev than with Kennedy because Khrushchev had not consulted Castro…

You know, cooperating with consent, instead of threatening, invading, and coercing both friend and foe alike when they try to tell you "no", then calling your opponent "unhinged" after jointly bringing the world to the brink of annihilation.

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1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis#Aftermath

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov

3: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1563692/Soviet-plan-...

4: http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/lory1.ethz.ch/collections/coll_wa...

5: https://www.nonproliferation.org/wp-content/uploads/npr/102f...

6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_to_the_River_Rhine

7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_will_bury_you

8: https://psi204.cankaya.edu.tr/uploads/files/Seydi%2C%20Turki...

9: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/84786142

10: https://english.radio.cz/soviet-nuclear-arsenal-czechoslovak...

11: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis

12: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0026320100366603...