When was the hotline set up betwen the Russians and the Americans?

griffinj

"On June 20, 1963 in Geneva the spokesmen for the Soviet and American foreign ministries signed the Memorandum of Understanding Regarding the Establishment of a Direct Communications Line. "The Kremlin leader first used his Red Phone in 1967 during the six-day Arab-Israeli war to prevent possible misunderstanding between the naval groups of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet and the US 6th Fleet, which approached each other dangerously closely in the Mediterranean. "According to Viktor Sukhodrev, the Kremlin interpreter who had worked with Khrushchev and Brezhnev, at first 'there was no telephone; there were only simple teletypes, like at any common telegraph. The Soviet leaders had to wait while their words were translated into English and sent by operators to Washington. The teletypes were replaced with a telephone only in the early 1970s, under Leonid Brezhnev.'" http://www.cdi.org/russia/263-12.cfm Dec 16 03, 5:16 PM