Vasily Arkhipov
Vasily Aleksandrovich Arkhipov (, 30 January 1926 – 19 August 1998) was a Soviet Navy officer credited with preventing a Soviet nuclear launch (and, potentially, all-out nuclear war) during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Such an attack likely would have caused a major global thermonuclear response. As flotilla chief of staff and second-in-command of the diesel powered submarine , Arkhipov refused to authorize the captain's use of nuclear torpedoes against the United States Navy, a decision requiring the agreement of all three senior officers aboard. In 2002, Thomas S. Blanton, the director of the U.S. National Security Archive  since 1992, said that Arkhipov "saved the world". Early life. Arkhipov was born into a peasant family in the town of Staraya Kupavna, near Moscow. He was educated in the Pacific Higher Naval School and participated in the Soviet–Japanese War in August 1945, serving aboard a minesweeper. He transferred to the Caspian Higher Naval School and graduated in 1947. Early career. After graduating in 1947, Arkhipov served in the submarine service aboard boats in the Black Sea, Northern and Baltic Fleets. Section::::"K-19" accident. In July 1961, Arkhipov was appointed deputy commander and therefore executive officer of the new ballistic  missile submarine "K-19". After a few days of conducting exercises off the south-east coast of Greenland, the submarine developed an extreme leak in its reactor coolant system. This leak led to failure of the cooling system. Radio communications were also affected, and the crew was unable to make contact with Moscow. With no backup systems, Captain Nikolai Zateyev ordered the seven members of the engineer crew to come up with a solution to avoid nuclear meltdown. This required the men to work in high radiation levels for extended periods. They eventually came up with a secondary coolant system and  were able to prevent a reactor meltdown. Although they were able to save themselves from a nuclear meltdown, the entire crew, including Arkhipov, were irradiated. All members of the engineer crew and their divisional officer died within a month due to the high levels of radiation they were exposed to. Over the course of two years, 15 more sailors died from the after-effects. Involvement in Cuban Missile Crisis. On 27 October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a group of 11 United States Navy destroyers and the aircraft carrier located the diesel-powered, nuclear-armed near Cuba. (The B-59  was one of four Foxtrot submarines sent by the USSR to the area around Cuba.) Despite being in international waters, the United States Navy started dropping signaling depth charges, explosives intended to force the submarine to come to the surface for identification. There had been no contact from Moscow for a number of days and, although the submarine's crew had earlier been picking up U.S. civilian radio broadcasts, once "B-59" began attempting to hide from its U.S. Navy pursuers, it was too deep to monitor any radio traffic. Those on board did not know whether war had broken out  or not. The captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, decided that a war might already have started and wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo. Unlike the other submarines in the flotilla, three officers on board "B-59" had to agree unanimously to authorize a nuclear launch: Captain Savitsky, the political officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov, and the chief of staff of the flotilla (and executive officer of B-59) Arkhipov. Typically, Soviet submarines armed with the "Special Weapon" only required the captain to get authorization from the political officer to launch a nuclear torpedo, but due to Arkhipov's position as chief  of staff, "B-59"s captain was also required to gain Arkhipov's approval. An argument broke out, with only Arkhipov against the launch. Even though Arkhipov was second-in-command of the submarine "B-59", he was in fact chief of staff of the submarine flotilla, including "B-4", "B-36" and "B-130". According to author Edward Wilson, the reputation Arkhipov had gained from his courageous conduct in the previous year's "K-19" incident also helped him prevail. Arkhipov eventually persuaded Savitsky to surface and await orders from Moscow. This may have effectively averted a nuclear war which probably would have ensued if the  nuclear weapon had been fired. The submarine's batteries had run very low and the air conditioning had failed, causing extreme heat and high levels of carbon dioxide inside the submarine. They were forced to surface amid the American pursuers and to return to the Soviet Union as a result. Aftermath. Immediately upon return to Russia, many crew members were faced with disgrace from their superiors. One admiral told them "It would have been better if you'd gone down with your ship." Olga, Arkhipov's wife, even said "he didn't like talking about it, he felt they had n't appreciated what they had gone through." Each captain was required to present a report of events during the mission to Marshal Andrei Grechko, who substituted for the ill Soviet defense minister. Grechko was infuriated with the crew's failure to follow the strict orders of secrecy after finding out they had been discovered by the Americans. One officer even noted Grechko's reaction, stating that he "upon learning that it was the diesel submarines that went to Cuba, removed his glasses and hit them against the table in fury, breaking them into small pieces and abruptly leaving the room  after that." In 2002, retired Commander Vadim Pavlovich Orlov, a participant in the events, held a press conference revealing the submarines were armed with nuclear torpedoes and that Arkhipov was the reason those devices had not been fired. Orlov presented the events less dramatically, saying that Captain Savitsky lost his temper, but eventually calmed down. Robert McNamara, U.S. Secretary of Defense at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, stated in 2002 that "We came very close" to nuclear war, "closer than we knew at the time." Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., an advisor for the John F. Kennedy administration and  a historian, continued this thought by stating "This was not only the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. It was the most dangerous moment in human history." Later life and death. Arkhipov continued in Soviet Navy service, commanding submarines and later submarine squadrons. He was promoted to rear admiral in 1975, and became head of the Kirov Naval Academy. Arkhipov was promoted to vice admiral in 1981 and retired in the mid-1980s. He subsequently settled in Kupavna (which was incorporated into Zheleznodorozhny, Moscow Oblast, in 2004), where he died on 19 August 1998. The radiation to which Arkhipov had  been exposed in 1961 may have contributed to his kidney cancer, like many others who served with him in the "K-19" accident. Nikolai Vladimirovich Zateyev, the commander of the submarine "K-19" at the time of its onboard nuclear accident, died on 28 August 1998. Both Arkhipov and Zateyev were 72 at the time of their deaths. Personal life. Arkhipov was married to Olga Arkhipova until his death in 1998. They had a daughter named Yelena. Arkhipov was known to be a shy and humble man. In a 2012 PBS documentary titled "The Man Who Saved the World", his wife described  him as intelligent, polite and very calm. Much of what is known about his personality comes from her. According to her, he enjoyed searching for newspapers during their vacations and tried to stay up-to-date with the modern world as much as possible. In this same interview, Olga alludes to her husband's possible superstitious beliefs as well. She recalls walking in on Vasily burning a bundle of their love letters inside their house, claiming that keeping the letters would mean "bad luck". In popular culture. The character of Captain Mikhail Polenin, portrayed by Liam Neeson, in the 2002  film "" was closely based on Arkhipov's tenure on Soviet submarine K-19. In a fictional but similar plot, Denzel Washington's character in "Crimson Tide" (1995) was an officer who refused to affirm the launch orders of a submarine captain. Leon Ockenden portrayed his character in "Secrets of the Dead" Season 12 Episode 1 The Man Who Saved the World aired 23 October 2012 on the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The 2021 novel "Red Traitor" by Owen Matthews includes Arkhipov as a major viewpoint character, and is dedicated to him. Awards and honors. In recognition of his  actions onboard B-59, Arkhipov received the first "Future of Life Award," which was presented posthumously to his family in 2017. Offered by the Future of Life Institute, this award recognizes exceptional measures, often performed despite personal risk and without obvious reward, to safeguard the collective future of humanity. The Future of Life Institute is headed by physicist and machine learning researcher Max Tegmark, and its advisory board includes names such as business magnate Elon Musk, royal professor Martin Rees, and actor Morgan Freeman.