Taken by Alberto Díaz, better known as “Korda”, and bearing the stamp of his studio, this photograph shows a 36-year-old Fidel Castro addressing adoring crowds in Moscow on his April 1963 tour of the Soviet Union. Although conspicuously absent from the stage that day, Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev hosted Castro in order to heal the chasm in Soviet-Cuban relations created the year before. Then Kruschev and US President John F. Kennedy had ignored Castro in negotiations that ultimately resulted in the Soviets’ withdrawal of recently installed nuclear missiles from Cuba. As Soviet archives and Fidel himself revealed decades later, the decision had made him furious. He would have preferred a confrontation with the United States, even at risk of a nuclear war, rather than concede to the United States. Korda, a former fashion photographer whom the Communist state eventually sidelined, was the only Cuban photographer to accompany Fidel on the visit. Lillian Guerra Collection, Special Collections, University of Florida.
