A bit surprised this doesn’t seem to have been addressed before in GQ… at a wedding reception this weekend we were debating how much the average Russian knew about the Cuban Missile Crisis, while it was happening… and after it happened.
My suspicion is that the military knew the details during the event, there were some rumors and wild stories for a few years after the event, but your average Soviet citizen didn’t have the straight dope until about 1972.
Anybody actually know?
I believe that this was widely covered during this time by Radio Free Europe, etc. broadcasts, which were generally able to be heard by people in Communist countries. (Jamming was apparently not that effective, and too expensive to do on a continuous basis, I guess.)
So many Soviet citizens would have been able to hear this semi-official US Government view of what was happening. Whether they believed what they heard via Radio Free Europe is another question.
Here’s a CNN site, which includes an editorial from the Oct. 24, 1962 edition of Pravda.
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/10/1st.draft/pravda.html
It starts:
Rather convenient that the Pravda fails to mention why the naval blockade was present 
Good heavens… at least it’s an “editorial” and didn’t pretend to be a statement of fact…
Right?
Right. Although, Pravda in general wasn’t known for it’s objective and investigative journalism.
Well, to be fair, neither was Radio Free Europe.
I’m told that Pravda’s team of crack investigative reporters went on to work for the mainstream US press and had the responsibility of analyzing the situation vis a vis Iraq in the months before the recent war.