title: Kennedy and Khrushchev: 1. Opening moves
author: BBC World Service
contenttype: article
publication: The Bomb
published: 2025-12-01T01:30:00+00:00
sourceurl: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct8vby
word_count: 126
As the USA and Soviet Union race for supremacy in the 1960s, Premier Khrushchev sizes up his rival, President John F Kennedy. Hosts Max Kennedy and Nina Khrushcheva, relatives of the superpower leaders, explore their rise to power - one wealthy, smooth-talking and Harvard educated, the other a hardened Soviet war leader from a peasant family. As they prepare to meet for the first and only time as world leaders, the stakes couldn't be higher: they are fierce rivals in the race to build ever more devastating missiles. This is the personal and political history of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nina Khrushcheva is the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev and Max Kennedy is the nephew of President John F Kennedy, and the son of Robert F Kennedy.