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# Fidel Castro and the ballerina Maya Plisetskaya after a performance of Swan Lake
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/fidel-kastro-i-balerina-maiia-plisetskaia-posle-spektaklia-lebedinoe-ozero/
- Published: 2026-04-29T09:28:25.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:26:12.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Archive, Moscow, Society, People

On 27 April 1963 Castro flew secretly to Murmansk in a Tu-114 and spent forty days in the USSR, the first visit by the Cuban leader to the Soviet Union. Khrushchev needed to mend relations after the Cuban Missile Crisis: six months earlier Moscow had withdrawn its missiles from Cuba without consulting Havana, and Castro had protested publicly.

The programme was a demonstrative one: the parade of 1 May from the Mausoleum, a rally at Luzhniki for 125,000 people, the Gold Star of Hero of the Soviet Union on 23 May, and tours of the country from the Northern Fleet to Pitsunda. Behind closed doors Khrushchev showed Castro the documents of his correspondence with Kennedy and explained that the withdrawal of the missiles had included the removal of the American Jupiters from Turkey, something the Cuban had not been told before. Castro would come to the USSR twice more, in 1964 and 1972, but that first visit remained the longest.

Besides Swan Lake, Castro was entertained with a demonstration of the R-16 intercontinental missile; he even signed its casing, so that the American imperialists, should the need arise, would know who it was that sent his regards.