Ракета Р-12

An original Soviet R-12 medium-range ballistic missile stands as an outdoor monument in Kaluga, the city long associated with Russian space exploration. Deployed from the late 1950s onward, the single-stage liquid-fueled rocket carried a single nuclear warhead of up to 2.3 megatons and had a range of 2,000 kilometers. The R-12 gained particular notoriety during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when missiles of this exact type were secretly installed on Cuba, triggering thirteen days that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Standing beside the exhibit makes the scale of Cold War armament viscerally concrete in a way that archival photographs cannot.