The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in October 1962, during which the head of state of the Soviet Union was Nikita Khrushchev. As the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the chairman of the Council of Ministers, Khrushchev was effectively the leader of the Soviet Union during this critical period of the Cold War, when the installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear conflict.
