CUBA:
Separating the Wheat
from the Chaff -
Studying the Soviet
Legacy
By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, (IPS) -
Although Cuba survived
the demise of its
communist allies in the
early 1990s, the legacy
of its close
relationship with the
Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe may still have a
bearing on the future of
socialism on this
Caribbean island nation.
Cuba’s ties with the now
defunct socialist bloc
from the 1960s onwards
heavily influenced the
ways of doing politics,
the teaching of
Marxist-Leninist
doctrine, the
functioning of
institutions, the
structure of the
economy, the management
of national culture, and
even what people wore
and how they decorated
their homes.
"The greatest harm this
legacy has caused is the
formation of citizens
who lack independent
judgement and
revolutionary creativity
that would enable them
to pass on their
individuality and
knowledge," Professor
Julio Antonio Fernández,
of the University of
Havana faculty of law,
told IPS.
In Fernández’s view,
"the worst political
practices at the worst
time of the Soviet
state, which was not a
revolutionary time, have
influenced the way some
state policies are
determined" on the
island.
But some characteristics
of Cuban political
culture do not
necessarily originate
from the former Union of
Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR).
"The revolution began
with a strong component
of authoritarianism
because of the need to
defend itself, and to
adopt a vertical
structure in order to
survive," said Alexander
Correa, a researcher at
the state Juan Marinello
Centre for Research and
Development of Cuban
Culture.
Correa maintains that
mass military
preparedness, organised
shortly after the
triumph of the Cuban
Revolution in 1959 to
defend the country
against U.S. harassment,
and the teaching of
Marxism-Leninism to the
armed forces and
militias, led to the
spread of authoritarian
social structures and
ideological practices in
society.
Fernández and Correa
belong to a group of
intellectuals who have
organised an ongoing
workshop, "Bolshevik
Revolution, the History
of the USSR and Cuba:
21st century critical
socialist analysis," at
the Juan Marinello
Centre with the support
of the Ministry of
Culture.
The workshop attempts to
"reconstruct the history
of the Bolshevik
revolution, as the
world’s largest
historical project to
challenge the system of
class domination, and at
the same time to
reconstruct the
relations between Cuba
and the USSR as they
have been inherited and
survive into the
present," said professor
and writer Julio César
Guanche.
The workshop organisers
give public lectures,
and a Working Group made
up of 40 people from
different disciplines
meets in private to
pursue the analysis,
using methods for the
collective construction
of knowledge, similar to
those used in popular
education.
"The idea is to uproot
what has been introduced
in the name of socialism
into the ideology we
defend, but which really
contradicts its very
essence," Guanche said.
"Our goal is to
contribute to the
victory of socialist
ideas in Cuban society,"
he said.
"Cuba had various
relationships with the
USSR, but there was
always conflict between
the revolutionary
project and its autonomy
to exist as an
independent entity,"
said historian Ariel
Dacal, of the
non-governmental Martin
Luther King Jr. Memorial
Centre.
From 1960, when Moscow
bought Cuba’s sugar
harvest after Washington
turned it down, the USSR
took on the role of the
island’s protector
within the geopolitical
context of the Cold War.
And after Cuba’s failure
to make an economic leap
forward with the 1970
harvest, Soviet
influence on Cuban
socialism became
decisive.
By the early 1990s, the
USSR was Cuba’s main
trading partner, buying
80 percent of its sugar,
70 percent of its nickel
and 40 percent of its
citrus production.
Moscow also supplied the
energy demands of its
Caribbean ally,
providing 12 million
tons of oil a year.
Analysing the mistakes
that led to the collapse
of the USSR is an urgent
task, according to the
intellectuals who
organise the workshop.
"It would be foolish not
to consider these
problems, as if they had
nothing to do with us
here in Cuba, or as if
history could not repeat
itself," said Fernández,
32.
Among the erroneous
practices still current
in Cuba, the academic
listed "bureaucratic
practices in the single
party system,
‘verticalism’ (top-down
hierarchies), lack of
popular participation
and irreverence for the
institutions of
participatory
government," including
those created by the
revolution, like the
National Assembly of
People’s Power, the
country’s parliament.
"Today much more needs
to be done, especially
on the ideological
plane, if socialism is
to continue to be a
viable prospect. It’s no
longer just about not
repeating the mistakes
of the USSR and of
‘real’ socialism," said
Fernández, who is
convinced that his
generation faces "an
uphill task" in this
respect.
University professor
Hiran Hernández, the
editor of the quarterly
publication Temas, said
that the major problems
facing Cuba today, "as a
nation and as a
revolution, are the
emigration of young
people, the ageing of
the population, the
future of the
revolutionary project,
and the future of
socialism as both
project and dream."
In Hernández’s view,
young people have
generally been used "as
shock troops, or simply
as mouthpieces to repeat
slogans. A more creative
and active attitude,
with fresh ideas, is
needed. The Revolution
needs this in order to
continue, and socialism
needs it in order to be
possible," he said.
Thus the future of
socialism on the island
would appear to depend,
to a large extent, on
reconstructing the
social consensus about
the system, which has
without a doubt been
eroded in the last 15
years by the
introduction of
capitalist elements into
the economy, and their
effects on society.
"Socialism isn’t just
for one sector, like the
poor, black people or
women, say, but should
be understood as a
system that embraces the
whole of society and all
people, not replacing
some people by others,
but liberating all of
them, which was
originally the purest
emancipatory idea of
Marxism," Guanche said.
"We are part of a
process that is going on
in other parts of Cuban
society and that will
continue to develop in
the medium term; part of
a current that, for the
Revolution’s sake,
should broaden and
deepen in the near
future," he said.
|
