The Soviet Communists almost launched a Mutually Assured Destruction missile attack on the West the month prior to this event (September 1983).
The Russians had a false signal that we'd launched. The man who was supposed to launch the MAD attack refused the order, nothing in the geopolitical situation indicated that we were at war. He was punished. He was later celebrated I think in the 1990s.
Communism kills. And the Red Dupes of the 1980s don't like to admit they were wrong.
Had they launched a nuclear attack on the US, the Soviets would have been out to win it. They had no use for Western concepts like mutual assured destruction (MAD)
MAD was developed by American "defense intellectuals" beginning in the late 1950's. At first, John F. Kennedy's Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara rejected the concept. In a commencement address at the University of Michigan in 1962, he called for a nuclear war strategy that avoided targeting cities. However, he eventually bought into MAD. The best expression of his views on the subject are found in his Sentinel Statement of September 18, 1967.
Incidentally, the armed forces never adopted MAD as a military strategy, as is commonly believed. It was used by the Pentagon as a budgeting strategy.
In any case, the Soviets never accepted MAD. They believed that a nuclear war could be won and planned accordingly. For more information, read Richard Pipes' article "Why the Soviet Union Thinks it can Fight and Win a Nuclear War" (Commentary, July, 1977).
A Soviet nuclear attack on the US would not be aimed primarily at population centers, as called for by MAD. Rather, it would first target our command, control, communication and intelligence (C3I) capabilities, then our intercontinental nuclear forces--missile silos, B-52 bases, nuclear ballistic missile submarines, etc., then theater and conventional forces.