Supportive Pragmatism: The USSR and Revolutionaries
ON NEW YEAR'S DAY 1959 FIDEL CASTRO'S 26th of July Movement guerrillas entered Havana amid an outpouring of public euphoria. Only hours ear- lier Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista had joined his...
...And once installed, the missiles could provide leverage in other hotspots around the world...
...2 Two months after the fall of Khrushchev a conference of Latin American CPs was held in Havana...
...A MONG THAT "LER WITH DIFFERENT shades" were Nicaragua's Sandinistas (FSLN) who had been waging guerrilla war against the Somoza dictatorship since the early 1960s...
...Dominant in the Popular Unity (UP) coalition was Allende's Socialist Party, but the CP-the strongest in Latin America and historically the most loyal to the USSR-was also an important political force.52 Communists headed the ministries of labor, finance and public works (and, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 25 The Other Super Power after December 1972, economy...
...4 2 In 1969 the Cubans received several high-level Soviet visitors, as well as a squadron of eight Soviet battleships that docked in Havana for the July 26 celebrations...
...Blasier, Hovering Giant, p.188...
...H. Michael Erisman, Cuba's international Relations: The Anatomy of a Nationalistic Foreign Policy (Boulder: Westview, 1985), p.35...
...Even the Colombian CP's FARC guerrillas were criticized for practicing local "armed self-defense" rather than "revolutionary guerrilla warfare" or "total war...
...Edward Gonzalez, "Relationship with the Soviet Union," in Carmelo Mesa-Lago, ed., Revolutionary Change in Cuba (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971), p.94...
...As in Ethiopia two years later, Cuba's role was indicative of a building convergence between Soviet and Cuban policies in Africa that mirrored growing understanding in other areas...
...This is because the pro-Moscow party of former Prime Minister Cheddi Jagan is the principal opposition force and because Hoyte's predecessor, Forbes Burnham, originally took power in a CIAsupported coup that overthrew Jagan...
...In October 1962, Kennedy's "quarantine" of Cuba forced the withdrawal of the Soviet missiles in return for a U.S...
...l-11...
...Within little more than a week of the coup in Lima, the Panamanian National Guard-including officers trained in Peru-took power and promised a series of reforms...
...3 In June 1967 Soviet Premier Kosygin received an icy JANUARY/FEBRUARY 23 The Other ASuper Power The Other Super Power welcome when he stopped in Cuba on his way back from a New Jersey summit with Lyndon Johnson...
...At the 1976 CPSU Congress, Brezhnev, alluding to Chile, recalled Lenin on the necessity of the revolution knowing how to defend itself...
...8 8 Nor did he attend Konstantin Chernenko's funeral in 1985 and-reportedly dissatisfied with Soviet support for Nicaragua--failed to sign the condolence book at the Soviet Embassy in Havana...
...The victory of the Cuban revolution and its rapid shift leftward created at once new opportunities and new problems for the Soviet Union in Latin Ameri- ca...
...Esso, Shell and Texaco had increased their refining capacity in Cuba sevenfold between 1954 and 1957...
...Levesque, pp.71, 97...
...Batista police tried and some executed...
...during the UP period these were broadened to include East Germany, China, Albania, North Korea and North Vietnam...
...Even before U.S.-Cuban relations deteriorated in late 1960, defense considerations figured in Cuba's approach to the USSR...
...Especially after the failure of a conservative counter-coup in 1969 and the emergence of General Omar Torrijos as undisputed leader, the actions and rhetoric of the Panamanian government became increasingly radical...
...8 7 In July 1984, Castro boycotted a Moscow session of the CMEA, apparently expressing displeasure over economic matters...
...6 It was not until December 1972 that Allende made "a major effort to secure Soviet assistance" during a visit to Moscow...
...While this optimism may have encouraged the Cubans to view the USSR as a potential shield, the Soviets were at first cautious...
...In February 1960 the second Soviet trade exhibit was installed in Havana's Fine Arts Museum and Mikoyan came for a ten-day trip that marked the first high-level contact between Cuban and Soviet leaders...
...The 26th of July Movement was ideologically diverse and many of its leaders-including Castro-had roots in the nationalist Ortodoxo Party that had been expected to win the 1952 elections, ultimately aborted by a Batista-led coup...
...This new climate in part reflected Cuban and Soviet hope in the radical military junta that seized power in Peru in 1968...
...The second question bound to rile Washington was Cuba's support for revolutionaries...
...For example, I.M...
...The Soviets and their traditional Communist Party supporters had re- mained largely on the sidelines as the Sandinistas seized power and the Salvadorean insurgency grew...
...planes engaged in suspicious overflights were downed and anti-Castro armed bands were reported in Guantinamo and the Escambray mountains...
...Sputnik was launched in 1957, and in 1961 the first manned space flight...
...The following year brought two more visits by Soviet naval forces, including-in September-a nuclear-capable submarine...
...intervention was Reagan's little-noticed 1985 claim that "the government of Grenada requested help, military help.' ' The October 1983 U.S...
...4 5 Soviet-Cuban divergences over revolutionary strategy in the 1960s were not without benefits for the USSR's Latin America diplomacy...
...3 4 " Che then dropped from sight...
...Cuba's military presence in Africa-which included significant aid missions in a dozen other countries-provided the USSR with important entree and increased prestige in a region where many leaders had long been concerned that closer ties to Moscow would jeopardize their non-aligned status...
...portrayal of the USSR as a major revolutionary actor on the Latin American scene is only partially sustainable...
...Castro was reportedly furious at Khrushchev's "rocket-rattling," particularly after Rail Castro was unable to win a military agreement during a Moscow visit the same month...
...These and other direct challenges appeared to have provoked Soviet measures to bring Castro into line...
...Ambassador Philip Bonsal, who had urged Washington to be more cautious, wrote that "the Cuban Revolution had won a great victory and a powerful ally [was] thrust into its arms...
...GUERRILLA MOVEMENTS WERE AT THEIR height in 1964...
...invasion of the Dominican Republic and the bombing of North Vietnam signalled Washington's new determination to use force to assert its will...
...The island's promi- nence in the Non-Aligned Movement coupled with proximity to the United States made it an attractive Castro and Guevara with Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, 1961 RThe Other Super Power The Other Super Power friend in the Caribbean...
...In the early 1960s...
...Only in Guatemala did there seem to be even the slightest chance of a guerrilla victory...
...A radical nationalist military regime seized power in Peru in 1968...
...25...
...Prompted by South Africa's invasion in late 1975, some 18,000-36,000 Cuban troops entered the Angolan Civil War on the side of the Marxist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA...
...Mikoyan and Castro signed a trade agreement and began talks that culminated three months later with renewed diplomatic relations, broken by Batista in 1952...
...Railing against the CPs' "narrow-mindedness," he declared that "we belong not to a small group within the revolutionary movement, but to an organization which comprises all true revolutionaries...
...Declaring a political "opening," he legalized the CP and established relations with the USSR...
...Che Guevara's death in Bolivia also deprived the Cubans of important leverage...
...Following the U.S...
...G RENADA'S REVOLUTIONARY GOVERN- ment experienced an uneasy closeness with the USSR throughout its brief existence...
...Ibid., pp.21-22...
...See M.F...
...Lvesque, p.135...
...In May, an agrarian reform expropriated large holdings, among them those of the United Fruit Company...
...invasion began in late 1980, with most dating to 1982-1983...
...Robert Evanson, "Soviet Political Uses of Trade with Latin America," Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs (Miami), Vol.27, no.2 (Summer 1985), p.141...
...Although the United States applied strong pressure on European allies not to sell weaponry to Cuba, Belgium supplied some small arms...
...George Black, "Mare Nostrum: U.S...
...They followed up by unveiling a new organization, OLAS, uniting the region's guerrilla groups in what many viewed as "a new International...
...interests...
...Nevertheless, in the years ahead such threats could have become a reality, at which time it would have been much more difficult to effect a reversal...
...82 Speculation was rife in the aftermath of Maurice Bishop's assassination and Bernard Coard's seizure of power...
...Clodomiro Almeyda Medina, "La politica exterior del Gobierno de la Unidad Popular en Chile," in Federico Gil, Ricardo Lagos and Henry Landsberger, eds., Chile 1970-1973 (Madrid: Tecnos, 1977), p. 106 . This article by the UP's foreign minister notes that "during the UP government no symptoms were observed that could have made it possible to foresee China's later friendly behavior toward the military junta...
...Smirnova, Nikaragua: vozrozhdenniia zemlia Sandino (Moscow: Politizdat, 1986), p.156...
...Those wishing to demonize Castro charge that he was always a "secret Communist" who intended from the outset to bring Cuba into the Soviet orbit...
...Edelman, "Lifelines," p.36...
...Some had Cuban backing...
...Bulychev, Nikaragua segodnia (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1983), pp.24, 40...
...Carlos Fonseca, Un nicaragiense en Moscow (Managua: FSLN, 1980 [orig...
...others were unjustly blamed on the new revolutionary government and protests were raised in the Organization of American States (OAS) against Cuban interference...
...19, no.3 (May-June 1985), p.41...
...7 6 Their efforts included frequent, adulatory communiques, as well as more ostentatious public displays, such as voting with the USSR on Afghanistan at the United Nations and offering to send 500 soldiers to Namibia.77 Beginning in 1982, the NJM established a series of party-to-party agreements providing cadre training in Havana, Moscow, East Berlin and Sofia...
...We are against all kinds of dictatorships," he said...
...Widely covered in the western press, it went completely unmentioned by the Soviets and Corvaldn, who preferred to portray the Chilean's release simply as a response to international solidarity...
...Glinkin, V.V...
...The coup that year by General Guillermo Rodriguez Lara, a progressive nationalist who governed for almost four years, led to greater state control over the oil industry, seizure of U.S...
...While diverse sources, including former junta member General Gustavo Leigh, expressed doubt about whether all the weapons had really belonged to the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front, even sources on the left recognize that at least some of the arms were smuggled in...
...businesses, tensions worsened...
...8 4 In Guatemala and El Salvador, the CPs opted to join broad fronts engaged in guerrilla struggle that were more effective in popular organizing and confronting government repression...
...John Gerassi, "A New International is Born," in Irving Louis Horowitz, Josu6 de Castro and John Gerassi, eds., Latin American Radicalism (New York: Vintage, 1969...
...The Soviets were totally silent on the question of armed struggle until 1963 and remained skeptical or even hostile until late 1964-even regarding Venezuela...
...The USSR denied it had violated the 1962 accord barring Soviet missiles from Cuba and apparently promised to keep nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (known as SSBNs) away from the island...
...W E HAD NO OTHER WAY OF HELPING [the Cubans] meet the American threat," Khrushchev declared in his memoirs, "except to install our missiles on the island, so as to confront the aggres- sive forces of the United States with a dilemma: if you invade Cuba, you'll have to face a nuclear missile at- tack against your own cities...
...In Algiers, Che Guevara, in his last public speech, accused the socialist countries of pursuing unjust trade policies that made them "accomplices of imperial exploitation...
...The Miami Herald, February 9, 1984...
...Quoted in Gonzilez, p.94...
...Cuba had begun to mend regional fences early in the decade and the OAS lifted sanctions in 1974, bringing increased trade...
...8 5 The capture in August 1986 of several large arms caches allegedly left by Cuban or Soviet fishing boats in remote northern Chile suggested that preparations could have been under way for a major acceleration of the battle against Pinochet...
...Tkachenko, Latinskaia Amerika: opyt narodnykh koalitsii i klassovaia bor'ba (Moscow: Politizdat, 1981), p. 133 . 75...
...Some, such as Ernesto "Che" Guevara, were sympathetic to Marxism, and oneCastro's brother Ratil-had been a member of the youth wing of the pro-Moscow Popular Socialist Party (PSP), although he was expelled following the failed attempt to take the Moncada barracks.' Soviet theorists later proclaimed that "the victory of the Cuban Revolution inflicted a crushing blow to the geographic determinist theory that Latin American countries were supposedly doomed by their proximity to the USA to eternal dependence on American imperialism...
...Indeed, the Sandinista victory ap- pears to have taken most Soviet specialists by sur- prise...
...Indeed, later that month, the Central Committee Plenum decided to give priority to legal forms of struggle over guerrilla warfare...
...Blasier, Hovering Giant, pp.154-158...
...By January 1966 it became clear that the 1964 Soviet-Cuban compromise on selective armed struggle was no longer in effect...
...Nikita S. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974) p.511...
...To the Soviets' dismay, Castro declared that "any revolutionary movement anywhere in the world could count on Cuba's unconditional help...
...Bonsal, p.157...
...The Soviets, hoping for better relations with Cuba, were no doubt relieved...
...Gornov and B.G...
...146 -150...
...invasion came just after the death of 241 U.S...
...9 Other claims that the Cuban military was about to seize Grenada and that Americans there were in severe danger were, as The New York Times put it shortly after the invasion, "misleading factual allegations to bolster President Reagan's unproven assertion that the invasion was necessary...
...Koval', Revoliutsiia prodolzhaetsia (Moscow: Nauka, 1984), p.68...
...in practice these were often not issued...
...While the USSR supported a few med movements committed to socialism, generally it sought to encour- age nationalist and progressive governments that would favor greater state participation in the economy and au- tonomy from the United States...
...Nikolai S. Leonov, Ocherki novoi i novesihei istorii stran Tsentral'noi Ameriki (Moscow: Mysl', 1975), pp.201-202, 293...
...Foreign Minister Ratil Roa, in his first address to the United Nations General Assembly in September 1959, condemned military interventions by both power blocs, declaring that "there must be no more Guatemalas, no more Algerias, no more Hungarys and no more Tibets...
...Smith, p.13...
...124 - 14 3 and The Struggle for the Third World (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1986...
...2 Bonsal was recalled to Washington and on January 4, 1961, less than two weeks before John F. Kennedy's inauguration, Eisenhower broke diplomatic relations...
...In both military-reformist and civilian administrations, there was a new openness to the USSR that led in most cases to diplomatic relations...
...L6vesque, p.172...
...Overall trade was to increase by only 10% in 1968 instead of the 23% of the previous year...
...In offering sustained, unequivocal backing to a significant guerrilla movement, the Venezuelans stood alone, although CPs in Guatemala and Colombia also sponsored armed organizations...
...The United States had successfully blocked Chile's access to multilateral credits, making a bad economic situation worse...
...See also V.V...
...Even invasion supporters concede that "Soviet and Cuban involvement in Grenada did not present an immediate threat to U.S...
...N.lu...
...That is why we are against communism...
...11-12...
...In the first months of 1960, two U.S...
...Some Chilean observers suggest Soviet outspokenness was rooted in Pinochet's effort to launch an "anticommunist crusade" portraying "the USSR as exactly the opposite of how it wanted to appear or act...
...I am not a communist, nor do I agree with communism...
...The money may have been destined for elements in the party that were beginning to press for an end to armed struggle...
...In Colombia, however, the CP-supported FARC guerrillas have observed an uneasy truce with the government since 1984...
...Regis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution...
...products, many of which were obtained from countries such as Canada...
...Koval' and B.T...
...invasion-devoted little serious attention to the fatal intra-party crisis that split the NJM...
...Initially, the Soviets expected little...
...Indeed, looking at Latin America as a whole, most Soviet efforts on the continent are highly pragmatic: building diplomatic links and expanding trade relations and development assistance programs...
...The first visit by a Soviet prime minister, the Cubans nonetheless refused to sign a joint communique...
...Washington: The Wilson Center, 1984), p. 4 . 8. Quoted in Andres Sudrez, Cuba: Castroism and Communism (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1967), p.4 8 . 9. Revoluci6n (Havana), September 25, 1959, quoted in Smith, p.4...
...Lev S. Gitin, Vneshniaia politika Venesuely: poiski novyx reshenii (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniia, 1981), pp.90, 98...
...Eliana Merlet, "La experiencia chilena 1970-1973: presencia sovi6tica y percepciones desde Estados Unidos," Cuadernos Semestrales 12 (2 semestre 1982), p. 3 18 . 59...
...Viktor A. Kremeniuk, SShA: bor'ba protiv natsional'no-osvoboditel'nogo dvizheniia (Moscow: Mysl', 1983), pp.48-50...
...In May 1973, Chilean Army Commander-inChief Carlos Prats made an official visit to the USSR...
...The Cubans could have been disingenuous, but if courting Soviet favor had been a significant consideration, these statements hardly played well in Moscow...
...Edelman, "Lifelines," pp.42-49...
...threat to Cuba did indeed outlive the Bay of Pigs landing, but the Soviet missile deployment was also motivated by other than altruistic concern for Cuba's defense...
...See BI...
...Urging "that a consistent position be adopted," he demanded the same Soviet "protection" be given to Cuba: "Will they send the divisions of the Warsaw Pact to Cuba if the Yankee imperialists attack our country, or when threatened, if our country requests it...
...trade embargo against Cuba to the rest of the hemisphere...
...But it was clear that his revolutionary activities continued elsewhere on the continent, most likely with Cuba's support...
...Semenov, M.F...
...Sashin, p.1 49 . Ovando also suppressed a new outbreak of guerrilla activity...
...Zagladin, Mirovoe kommunisticheskoe dvizhenie (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1984), p. 30 5 . 57...
...More recent works on Nicaragua only state that the country is "on the road of democracy and social progress...
...By 1964, the OAS extended the U.S...
...Vladimir Mironov, "Ernesto Che Guevara: hombre-revoluci6n," America Latina (Moscow) No.3 and No.4 (1986...
...The United States had successfully barred Soviet nuclear weapons from Cuba since 1962 and had also managed to pressure Guyana (as well as Portugal and Canada) to cease serving as a refueling stop during the 1975-1976 airlift of Cuban soldiers to Angola...
...economic interests, such as slashing rates charged by the U.S.-owned telephone company...
...Brutents et al., Sotsialisticheskiia orientatsiia osvobodivshikhsia stran (Moscow: Mysl', 1982), pp.3, 141...
...Quoted in Pamela Falk, Cuban Foreign Policy (Lexington, MA: D.C...
...In January 1960, CIA Director Allen Dulles' "Special Group" concluded that "over the long run the U.S...
...Latin American Regional Reports Caribbean (London), October 2, 1986...
...s Perhaps the ultimate absurd justification for U.S...
...Nevertheless, they recognized the existence of "a left with different shades" outside traditional parties, hinting that in particular cases such movements, in spite of differing strategic and tactical conceptions, were worthy of support.Soon after, the Cuban CP held its first congress, continuing the pro- cess of "institutionalization" that had begun in 1970 with the adoption of economic policies emphasizing material incentives and Soviet-style central planning...
...Levesque, p.42...
...Developments over the next decade forced the Soviets to re-evaluate relations with Latin America's revolutionary forces and adopt a broader definition of potential allies...
...While most Soviet specialists argued that the UP had pushed too hard and too fast and blamed ultraleft provocation, others felt that more rapid transformation would have consolidated support for the government., The economic loss for the USSR was considerable-the Pinochet regime refused to recognize debts to the USSR and its allies-but it was almost certainly worse in the less tangible arena of international prestige...
...Oil figured importantly in Cuba's shifting relations with the two superpowers...
...50 3-510...
...William LeoGrande, "Cuban-Soviet Relations and Cuban Policy in Africa," Cuban Studies/Estudios Cubanos (Pittsburgh), Vol.10, no.1 (January 1980), p.14...
...Bonsal, p.150, 19...
...will not be able to tolerate the Castro regime . . . covert contingency planning to accomplish the fall of the Castro government might be in order...
...Pre-1979 Soviet views on Nicaragua are discussed in greater detail in Marc Edelman, "EEUU-Nicaragua-URSS: un triAngulo explosivo," Nueva Sociedad (Caracas) No.88 (March-April 1987), forthcoming...
...7 Chilean exports to and imports from the USSR increased sharply in 1973, but still remained at modest levels...
...Latin American Weekly Report (London), September 4, September 11 and October 2, 1986...
...By contrast, the USSR was gradually recouping ground lost in the late 1940s and early 1950s during the Cold War's first years...
...onslaught intensifying in Indochina, Castro had become increasingly critical of both China and the USSR for their limited support for Vietnam...
...The New York Times, November 15, 1983...
...Latin American Economic Report (London), August 31, 1986...
...Gott, pp.136-137...
...In 1976 almost the entire underground leadership of the CP was captured after a militant talked under torture...
...There were expeditions to Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and even Paraguay...
...At the urging of the U.S...
...Colombian ties followed four years later...
...Ernesto Che Guevara, "La tarea consiste en fijar los precios que permitan el desarrollo," in Obras completas Tomo I (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Argentinas, 1973), p. 39 9 . 35...
...Cole Blasier, "The Soviet Union," in Blachman et al., eds., p.262...
...by the end of the year, a United Resistance Front was founded with participation of the pro-Moscow Guatemalan Workers Party (PGT), although the PGT's relations with the guerrillas began to sour by 1966...
...In January 1967 R6gis Debray's Revolution in the Revolution...
...Grenada established dip- lomatic relations with Cuba in April and with the USSR in September, but it seems clear from docu- ments seized in the U.S...
...Jorge Dominguez, "The Armed Forces and Foreign Relations," in Cole Blasier and Carmelo Mesa-Lago, eds., Cuba in the World (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979), p.54...
...It also showed the increasingly hostile Chinese that the USSR could stand up to the United States...
...Revolucirn, May 2, 1960, cited in Blasier, Hovering Giant, p.195...
...Szulc, Fidel, p.615...
...In April 1965 two Italian CP members were seized at Caracas airport with $300,000, said to be Soviet funds for the Venezuelan CP guerrillas...
...Rudenko, Kommunisticheskie partii Latinskoi Ameriki v bor'be za edinstvo antiimperialisticheskikh sil (Moscow: Mysl', 1976), p. 49 . 29...
...2 2 Castro, in an apparent effort to thumb his nose at the CIA and garner Soviet military support, announced on the eve of the invasion that the Cuban Revolution was socialist...
...hostility grew, suggesting a willing- ness to make up for losses of other sources of credit and aid, although far from providing the assistance granted a full member of the socialist camp such as Cuba...
...But in March 1960 when a French merchant ship loaded with munitions exploded in Havana harbor killing some 75 people, Castro blamed the United States and declared that Cuba would acquire arms where it thought best, hinting that this might be the USSR...
...In January 1968, he jailed Anfbal Escalante and 35 other old PSP members for unauthorized contacts with Soviet diplomats and for organizing a "micro-faction" within the party...
...SuArez, pp.63, 70-71...
...Levesque, p.135...
...See Luis Corvalin, My verim vpobedu (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1985), p. 22 3 . 53...
...Nsstor Sinchez, "What Was Uncovered in Grenada," Caribbean Review (Miami) Vol.12, no.4 (Fall 1983), p.59...
...Nevertheless, a few Sandinistas studied in Moscow in the 1960s and though relations were sometimes strained, at least some movement leaders were uncriti- cal of the USSR.66 In part because of PSN weakness, Soviet analysts appear to have placed hope in the FSLN, even in the early 1970s when the organization probably had only a few dozen full-time militants.67 In 1971, for example, Pravda published a greeting from FSLN founder Car- los Fonseca, indicating sympathy at a time when both the Soviet Union and Cuba had become less supportive of Latin guerrillas...
...Yet by far the most profound source of conflict was revolutionary strategy in Latin America...
...Figuratively speaking, should the need arise, Soviet artillerymen can support the Cuban people by missile-fire if the aggressive forces from the Pentagon dare intervene in Cuba...
...Signed in 1971, Allende's first Soviet agreements--covering trade and cooperation in mining, construction and fishing-were within the 1967 framework...
...The USSR and Nicaragua established diplomatic re- lations three months after the Sandinistas' 1979 victory over Somoza...
...Diana Kitaigorodskaia, "Ecuador," in I. Kumarian et al., America Latina: petroleo y polfrica (Moscow: Academia de Ciencias de la URSS, 1985...
...A number of new works appeared praising Che Guevara, including one by the USSR's leading Central America historian and another that purported to prove Guevara's sympathies for the Soviet Union...
...Compared to Peru and Bolivia, the Rodriguez Lara government was relatively moderate...
...the USSR began to build diplomatic and economic links with some of the hemisphere's larger countries...
...The New York Times, March 14, 1985...
...mainland helped compensate for the Soviets' still considerable disad- vantages in nuclear weaponry, and U.S...
...See William LeoGrande, "Cuba," in Confronting Revolution: Security Through Diplomacy in CentralAmerica editedby Morris Blachman, William LeoGrande and Kenneth Sharpe (New York: Pantheon, 1986), p. 2 52 . 46...
...By comparison with Cuba, the USSR appeared relatively innocuous to regional governments...
...5 4 In general, both Soviet and Chilean Communists criticized other left forces for pushing profound social change at a potentially menacing pace...
...8 6 Soviet support for revolutionary governments or movements has not, however, been sufficient to prevent friction with Cuba...
...One of the most detailed Soviet works on "socialist orientation" mentions Nicaragua only twice in over 300 pages- and then only to indicate that it "is on the road to social progress" and "deep progressive social processes are taking place...
...Augusto Varas, "The Soviet Union in the Foreign Relations of the Southern Cone," in Heraldo Mufioz and Joseph Tulchin, eds., Latin American Nations in World Politics (Boulder: Westview, 1984), p. 25 0 . 54...
...Levesque, pp.73-79...
...F OR THE SOVIETS, THE 1970 ELECTION OF Salvador Allende as president of Chile was a vindication of their contention that a peaceful road to socialism was possible, albeit a socialism that had little in common with the Soviet variety...
...David Albright, The USSR and Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s (New York: Praeger, 1983), p. 18 . 64...
...In effect, Castro was trading a limited endorsement of the invasion-much appreciated by the Soviets-for a closer embrace by the socialist camp and the commensurate economic, political and military support...
...N THE EARLY 1980s, SOVIET ATTITUDES TOward Latin American revolutionaries shifted toward selective, low-key support in a few countries...
...Costing little, support for Nicaragua provides con- siderable political dividends, particularly in Latin America, where there is widespread opposition to U.S...
...He also apparently concluded that if the USSR was unable to provide sufficient aid to Vietnam, Cuba might be even less likely to receive adequate assistance if under attack...
...4 " T HE OIL AND CREDIT SQUEEZE DID NOT bring Castro around immediately...
...In February 1969 diplomatic ties were established and a major trade pact signed...
...The first was the effort to implement social programs affecting U.S...
...U.S...
...Szulc, Fidel, p.610...
...5 Frei had reached commercial and aid pacts with the USSR in 1967...
...Almost a year before the Bay of Pigs, Cuban exiles began training in Guatemala and Castro charged that "the foreign office of the United States is preparing an aggression against Cuba through the government of Guatemala...
...spy planes appeared to indicate that the USSR was building a nuclear submarine base at Cienfuegos...
...Ibid., p.103...
...The Cuban CP attended an international Communist Party conference held in Moscow...
...2 Developments within Cuba provided Washington a handy pretext for hostility...
...The plan suffered from numerous tactical problems, but its fundamental flaw was the assumption that the exile landing would spark mass insurrection...
...For almost a decade, the Soviet-Cuban relationship was stormy, punctuated by disputes over ideology, de- velopment policies and regional revolutionary strategy...
...Through the late 1970s, only Cuba (and perhaps Panama) gave the Soviets cause for optimism...
...The Chilean party was the first CP outside the Eastern bloc to give public, unconditional support to the Warsaw Pact occupation of Czechoslovakia...
...In Venezuela, severe repression, military setbacks, factional divisions and declining support led to a major re-evaluation both by guerrillas and the Soviets...
...Bas- ing missiles 90 miles from the U.S...
...Roal'd E. Leshchiner, Nikaragua (Moscow: Mysl', 1965), p.60...
...After Torres's 1971 ouster by right-wing Colonel Hugo Banzer, Bolivia's relations with the USSR were reduced to a symbolic level for almost a decade...
...Support for Desmond Hoyte's Guyana has always been a secondary concern for the USSR...
...5 3 The USSR reportedly encouraged this, offering Allende military equipment and officer training...
...Diplomatic gestures served to exacerbate differences between the USSR and Cuba and between domestic fidelista or even CP guerrillas and more moderate party elements...
...Harsh polemics against neighboring CPs all but disappeared, and active support for armed struggle moderated or ceased...
...intervention...
...The USSR promised to absorb the surplus and Khrushchev declared that "It would be wise not to forget that the United States is no longer at an inaccessible distance from the Soviet Union...
...5. Tad Szulc, "Fidel Castro's Years as a Secret Communist," The New York Times Magazine, October 19, 1986...
...The pro-Moscow Nicaraguan Socialist Party (PSNbthough it pledged in 1960 to "prepare for an armed uprising"4nly lent limited support to the FSLN after 1977 when there was a major split in the party.6s PSN reticence probably ex- plains why Nicaragua was not among those countries where armed movements were to be supported...
...Conferencia de los Partidos Comunistas de Amirica Latina (Havana: Ediciones Politicas, 1975), p. 6 8 . 65...
...These are discussed in Jerry Hough, "The Evolving Soviet Debate on Latin America," Latin American Research Review Vol 16, no.1 (1981), pp...
...1 " That spring, the first shipments of Soviet arms reached Havana.' In the mid-1950s, the USSR expanded rapidly economically and began a significant aid program to developing Asia and Africa.' 6 The times were heady...
...Leonov, "Slavnyi cyn Latinskoi Ameriki," Kommunist (Moscow) No.4 (1985), pp.81-92...
...Guatemalan Army officers started armed groups in early 1962...
...Gott, p.21...
...When the CIA's force finally hit the beaches after more than a year in preparation, only about 50 islanders joined them...
...Jestis M. Bland6n, Entre Sandino y Fonseca (Managua: Departamento de Propaganda y Educaci6n Polftica del FSLN, 1981), pp.87-113...
...The Cubans, on the other hand, viewed the conference as tacit Soviet recognition of their regional leadership and as an opportunity to endorse guerrilla movements...
...Gornov, ed., Kommunisticheskoe partii Latinskoi Ameriki (Moscow: Nauka, 1982), p.3...
...During an April 1959 visit to New York he remarked that Cuba was "a sincere democracy that wants no bread without freedom, no freedom without bread, no dictatorship of one man, one class, one caste, no oligarchy...
...the USSR's concern with nurturing state-to-state and trade relations, as well as its traditional links with Latin American CPs, con- trasted sharply with Cuba's isolation...
...Soviet military aid has guaran- teed survival for an endangered revolution, raising the cost of U.S...
...This included even Brazil (a country with which the USSR had diplomatic relations) where, just two months before, the new military government had arrested most of the CP leadership...
...By 1965, however, the strategy was unraveling in what had been the Soviets' most promising case...
...See Szulc, Fidel, p.516...
...B UT EVENTS ON THE ISLAND HAD GREATer implications...
...Szulc, Fidel, pp.498-499...
...Pravda (Moscow), July 10, 1960, quoted in Jacques Levesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution (New York: Praeger, 1978), p. 17 . 20...
...8 9 Last year, the USSR cut the price it was paying for Cuban sugar, while maintaining petroleum prices even in the midst of a world oil glut...
...Yet the Brezhnev Doctrine that justified the Czech invasion was potentially good news for Cuba...
...The government claimed Cuba was now "the socialist country with the highest percentage of stateowned property," implying that it had reached a more advanced level than the USSR and its Eastern European allies...
...Nelson P. Vald6s, "Revolutionary Solidarity in Angola," in Blasier and Mesa-Lago, eds., p.104...
...But by 1960-1961, with the U-2 incident, the cancellation of the May 1960 Paris summit, the Congolese civil war, the Berlin crisis and the need to appear militant in the face of Chinese charges of capitulation to imperialism, incentives to remain distant from Cuba were significantly reduced...
...Idem., Fidel: A Critical Portrait (New York: Morrow, 1986...
...But recognition of alternative routes to change was merely one aspect of a broader rapprochement...
...But Soviet enthusiasm remained muted...
...Semana Latinoamericana (Mexico), January 12, 1987...
...Soviet analysts hailed General Juan Velasco *Cuba became a full CMEA member in 1972...
...Ibid., pp...
...Behind the superficial unanimity of Soviet political analysis there are often serious debates...
...4 9 T HE REBELLION OF THE GENERALS THAT began in Peru and Panama seemed, for a few years, to be almost a continental phenomenon...
...See Franqui, p. 159...
...A number of civilian administrations in this period, such as those in Guyana (since 1970), Chile (1970-1973) and Jamaica (19721980), also attempted to implement reformist programs that clashed with traditional U.S...
...coasts, with or without Cuban bases...
...The USSR immediately broke relations with Pinochet and began special radio broadcasts to Chile...
...Security Policy in the EnglishSpeaking Caribbean," Report on the Americas Vol.19, no.4 (JulyAugust 1985), p.2 2 . 78...
...Government Printing Office, 1975), pp.92-93...
...John Prados, Presidents' Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations Since World War II (New York: Morrow, 1986), p.206...
...Soviet economic aid to Cuba rose from approximately $600 million per year in 1971-1974 to $2 billion per year in 1975-1977, $3 billion in 1978-1979, and over $4 billion by 1984...
...Paul E. Sigmund, "The USSR, Cuba, and the Revolution in Chile," in Robert H. Donaldson, ed., The Soviet Union in the Third World (Boulder: Westview, 1981), pp.4041...
...In most countries the CPs were under pressure not only from REPORT ON THE AMERICAS fidelista critics, but from pro-Chinese elements, splinter groups that abandoned reformist parties (such as APRA in Peru and Acci6n Democrdtica [AD] in Venezuela) and radical tendencies in the military, all of which contributed in varying degrees to the founding of the first guerrilla organizations...
...At bottom were the twin principles of current prestige and potential threat...
...Szulc notes that "there is ample evidence that the initial idea to remove [Castro] already constituted top-secret policy in March of 1959" (emphasis added...
...Castro, wishing perhaps to ingratiate himself with Soviet leaders, has provided similar accounts, most recently in his widely publicized interviews with U.S...
...The Sandinista Revolution convinced most Soviet analysts that "political-military fronts" were more effective than traditional CPs in overthrowing entrenched right-wing dictatorships...
...It was only when victory was in sight that party leader Carlos Rafael Rodriguez met Castro in the Sierra Maestra...
...7 In any struggle between "democracy and communism" he would be "on the side of democracy," he added...
...This was particularly true in Venezuela-where the government made diplomatic overtures to the USSR while involved in a counterinsurgency war and a bitter dispute with Cuba-and in Colombia, where the CP openly sponsored the FARC guerrillas.'6 Around 1970 the USSR achieved nuclear parity with the United States, which Soviet analysts believe bolstered the country's influence in the world and shifted the international "correlation of forces" in its favor...
...Heath, 1986), p.2 8 . 36...
...In June 1960, the Cubans requested that foreign oil companies refine Soviet crude, which would equal about half the country's needs...
...Alvarado's "independent foreign policy...
...7. Quoted in Wayne Smith, Castro's Cuba: Soviet Partner or Nonaligned...
...6. Quoted in Rend Dumont, Cuba: Socialism and Development (New York: Grove Press, 1970), p. 24 . Castro made similar remarks during a 1959 visit to Uruguay, leading the Cuban Communists to protest...
...P RESIDENT KENNEDY INHERITED OPERAtion Pluto, the covert scheme that culminated in the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion...
...While cautious, Soviet hopes were clearly high for the Chilean path to socialism and its possible impact not only in Latin America but in Italy and France...
...Jiri and Virginia Valenta, "Leninism in Grenada," Problems of Communism (Washington) Vol.33, no.4 (July-August 1984), p. 23 (emphasis added...
...Most delegates at August 1967's OLAS meeting represented fidelista guerrilla movements rather than Communist Parties...
...S OVIET ANALYSES OF NICARAGUA suggest this hopeful caution...
...Levesque, p.138...
...Supporting revolution in the rest of Latin America once again appeared the guarantor of Cuba's survival...
...The weakness of the Honduran military reformist regime generated few hopes among Soviet Latin Americanists...
...There is a much wider movement on this continent than the movement constituted simply by the Communist Parties of Latin America . . . We shall judge the conduct of organizations not by what they say they are, but by what they prove they are . . . by their conduct...
...They view political pluralism and the mixed economy as stabilizing factors, while expressing ap- proval of state control of the "commanding heights" of the economy ." Party analysts have hailed "the creation of a party of the Nicaraguan workers capable of directing the revo- lutionary process in the [present] democratic stage of development [and] creating the necessary advances for its further deepening...
...absent were China, Albania, North Korea and North Vietnam...
...But evidence was at best circumstantial that the USSR had favored Coard over Bishop...
...attack have been withheld...
...Chilean CP General Secretary Luis Corvaldn, perhaps Moscow's best friend among regional Communists, was seized shortly after the coup and imprisoned for three years until he was exchanged for a jailed Soviet dissident...
...The Soviets agreed to buy 4.4 million tons of sugar and to extend $100 million in credit...
...Karol (p.272) politely translates this as "Nikita, you little braggard- what one gives, one gives for keeps...
...Ibid., p.148...
...Increased aid and Soviet experience with planned economies might, it was hoped, alleviate what even REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 24 Castro referred to as "unquestionable inefficiency," "imbalances" and "ignorance" in economic matters...
...Aid to Chile from the socialist countries in 1971-1973 amounted to $620 million, of which $260.5 million was from the USSR...
...B Y LATE 1959 IT WAS EVIDENT THAT CUBA would clash with the United States on two points...
...K.N...
...8 Yet Soviet post-mortems on Grenada have-beyond soundly condemning the U.S...
...Unlike Nicaragua, the March 1979 takeover by the New Jewel Movement (NJM) was accomplished by some 45 indi- viduals in a bloodless coup...
...Since re-exported Soviet oil had been an important foreign exchange source, the cost to Cuba was some $300 million per year...
...See Emil' S. Dabagian, Natsional-reformizm v sovremennoi Venesuele (Moscow: Nauka, 1972), p. 147 . 33...
...In Colombia, pro-Cuba armed groups that began in the early 1960s were joined by the CPsponsored Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) in 1966.28 Elsewhere guerrilla bands, in most cases quite small or short-lived, sprung up in Nicaragua, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil...
...marines in Lebanon...
...Robert Pastor, "Cuba and the Soviet Union: Does Cuba Act Alone...
...The Soviets, it is said, favored political struggle led by the Communist Parties in alliance with progres- sive or nationalist sectors of the bourgeoisie...
...In 1964, Uruguay and the USSR exchanged ambassadors and relations were restored between the USSR and Chile...
...In fact, this version understates the diversity and fluctua- tions in both Soviet and Cuban policies over time, their specificity regarding individual countries and debate within the Soviet establishment over armed struggle and related issue^.^ It also reduces Latin CP policies to mirrors of Soviet positions when it is apparent that party leaders were often responding to domestic politi- cal considerations and at times were "out of synch" with their Soviet ment~rs.'~ OAS pressure and Cuban support for foreign guemllas were taking their toll on Cuba's traditional diploma- tic and economic links in the hemisphere...
...This touched off a brief crisis when photographs taken from U.S...
...Smirnova, "Formirovanie partii nikaraguanskoi revoliutsii, Voprosy Istorii KPSS (Moscow) No.5 (May 1984), p.83...
...Soviet post-mortems on Chile were pessimistic, particularly in the 1970s...
...Castro accused Khrushchev of lack- ing "cojones" [balls] .24 Except for a brief thaw fol- lowing Castro's 1963 trip to the USSR, Cuban resent- ment lasted throughout the decade, fed by disputes over industrialization policy, moral incentives, trade relations, division in the international Communist movement and military support for Vietnam...
...Volskii and B.I...
...Edmd Dominguez, "Los debates acad6micos sovi6ticos sobre Amirica Latina durante los afilos setenta," Cuadernos Semestrales 12 (2 semestre 1982...
...In addition, the USSR refused to grant multi-year trade pacts and would henceforth charge interest on credits extended to finance Cuba's trade imbalance...
...A strong supporter of the constitution, he was forced to resign his post shortly before the September 1973 coup...
...Acknowledging Cuban leadership within the region's REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 26 revolutionary forces, the conferees did not indentify with non-CP guerrillas...
...Generally Communists are engaged in parliamentary or union work and some, such as the Mexican party, have evolved like those of the Western European Eurocommunist parties that eschew Soviet supervision and control...
...Alarmism and propaganda notwithstanding, Cuba has hosted no Soviet missiles or nuclear submarines since 1974 and no Soviet bombers have flown out of Cuba since 1962...
...The thaw was facilitated by East-West detente and the rise in Latin America of progressive military and ci- vilian governments...
...Castro's speech also triggered the U.S.-sponsored ouster of Cuba from the OAS, and every Latin AmeriJANUARY/FEBRUARY 21 Rw**tld The Other Super Power Holguln, Cuba: Soviet-built sugarcane tractor factory can country except Mexico broke relations...
...In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Soviets managed to establish ties with almost all nations in the region...
...In case any emerged victorious, the USSR wanted to remain nominally open...
...Chile had established diplomatic ties with most socialist countries during the previous administration of Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei...
...Kudachkin, B.I...
...The USSR's leading Venezuelanist does not mention the April 1965 CP meeting, but claims that the CP began to come to this conclusion already in 1964...
...The U.S...
...interests...
...Panama was one of the few Latin American countries with which the Soviets frequently enjoyed a significant trade surplus, yet diplomatic relations were never sought...
...See S.I...
...In 1975 Latin American CPs gathered in Havana...
...Marc Edelman, "Lifelines: Nicaragua and the Socialist Countries," Report on the Americas (New York) Vol...
...1973 Chilean exports to and imports from the USSR were worth $17.2 million and $21.8 million respectively.This was part of a dramatic 1973 increase in Soviet purchases from Latin America that benefitted Argentina and Brazil much more than Chile...
...James Kohl and John Litt, Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1974), p. 62 . 32...
...Threatened by Washington and with little international experience, Grenadian leaders strove to convince skeptical and at RThe Other Super Power The Other Super Power times paternalistic Soviet officials of their revolutionary credentials and assistance needs...
...record, it is difficult to take these fears at face value...
...invasion of Grenada, Cuba cancelled the November 7 celebration of the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviets stayed away from festivities marking 25 years of the Cuban Revolution...
...detente made it easier for Latin American governments of various political stripes to establish relations with the USSR without incurring U.S...
...Twenty percent of the payments were in cash and the rest in goods...
...The growth of the USSR's nuclearpowered submarine fleet has made it possible to deploy increasing numbers of submarines off U.S...
...See The New York Times, December 19, 1976 and CorvalAn, pp.227ff...
...The Cu- bans, on the other hand, saw Latin bourgeoisies as closely tied to imperialism and the CPs as hopelessly reformist...
...Levesque, p. 131...
...Varas, "Southern Cone," p.251...
...But Brezhnev's remarks contained a fundamental ambiguity: it was unclear whether "defense" implied greater caution or stepped-up social and political change...
...properties were seized...
...In March, Castro announced a "revolutionary offensive," nationalizing remaining private businesses...
...Che later remarked that this "group of adventurers [had been] headed by a caf6 barbudo" [coffee house revolutionary] and that "Cuban government officials worked with the Panamanian government to destroy it...
...intervention...
...Ibid., p.166...
...invasion and other sources that-with the exception of Cuba-it was the NJM that actively courted socialist allies...
...This crusade constituted "a new and unexpected danger for the stabilization of . . . relations between the USSR and the rest of the Latin American countries.'"'62 The Soviet attitude, however, also reflected deep solidarity with the Chilean CP, as well as a sense that lost ground could be regained by linking the Soviet Union and the CP with the democratic values fundamental to the UP experiment...
...T HE VENEZUELAN COMMUNIST PARTY opted in 1962 to support the armed struggle begun by dissident military officers and the Revolutionary Left Movement [MIR] , a split-off from R6mulo Betancourt's ruling AD party...
...Finally...
...Khrushchev claimed at the 1959 CPSU Congress that by 1980 his country would overtake the United States in per capita industrial production...
...T HE 1960s SOVIET-CUBAN DEBATE OVER armed struggle is often reduced to a dispute be- tween different strategies of revolutionary change based on contrasting analyses of Latin American soci- ety...
...By the end of that year, Panama's Omar Torrijos was the only progressive military ruler still in power...
...4 7 Soviet-U.S...
...Corvaldn was among the most vocal of Castro's Latin American CP critics during 1966-1967...
...They also no doubt hoped to mediate the frequent, acrimonious disputes that separated Cuba from most of the region's parties...
...missiles in Europe and Turkey...
...The Soviets, however, were reluctant to admit Cuba to the socialist camp...
...Szulc, Fidel, p.622...
...The main purpose of the conference-from the Soviet perspective-was to contain divisive pro-Chinese elements that it was feared might gain influence in Cuba...
...and Dutch refineries...
...Coming on the heels of the military coup in Uruguay, the Chilean events were followed by a shift to the right in Peru in 1975 and a military takeover in Argentina in 1976...
...Gvozdarev, Strany Latinskoi Ameriki v sovremennykh mezhdunarodnykh otnosheniiakh (Moscow: Nauka, 1967), p.4 7. 3. Quoted in Karol, p.139...
...In October, the United States declared a trade embargo that Ambassador Bonsai termed "a godsend to Castro," because it unified the Cuban people without causing major disruptions in the supply of U.S...
...Nevertheless, Cuban aid was deci- sive in the final days of the struggle against Somoza, while direct Soviet support was almost certainly token Grenadian Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, 1979 or non-existent...
...Aid and trade relations expanded sig- nificantly as U.S...
...Already during 1967 trade negotiations, the USSR denied Cuba's plea for an 8% increase in oil deliveries...
...For the USSR, this cautious attitude was complemented by significant, though lowkey economic support to the UP government...
...3 " Oil deliveries were delayed and although the Soviets blamed temporary logistical problems, Castro instituted strict gas rationing in January 1968, citing the inadequacy of Soviet supplies...
...Edm6 Dominguez, "Soviet Academic Views on the Caribbean and Central America," in Augusto Varas, ed., Soviet-Latin American Relations in the 1980s (Boulder: Westview, 1987...
...tuna boats violating territorial waters and the expulsion of U.S...
...was published in Havana, giving the official Cuban imprimatur to the "military foco" approach to guerrilla warfare and castigating "Marxist-Leninist parties which do not fulfill their revolutionary obligations...
...Armed struggle led by guemlla focos was a means to strike at both domestic ruling groups and for- eign interests responsible for underdevelopment...
...IN THE LATE 1970s, WHEN RIGHTIST MILItary dictatorships ruled the Southern Cone, Moscow reserved particular venom for Pinochet, even as it cultivated relations with the equally repressive Argentines (see below...
...56...
...The Washington Post, November 15, 1983 and February 10, 1984...
...The Washington Post, November 5, 1983...
...Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (Garden City: Doubleday, 1983), pp.58-61...
...Allende declined, fearing it might cause dangerous rivalries...
...Soviet optimism about Third World militaries also grew out of the advent of nationalist or Marxist military regimes in Iraq (1968), Congo Brazzaville (1968), Somalia (1969), Benin (1972) and Ethiopia (1974...
...pledge not to invade...
...Politburo member Anastas Mikoyan attended a trade fair in Mexico in November 1959 and a major coffee deal was signed with Brazil in December...
...HE FAILURE OF THE MUCH-HERALDED 10 million ton sugar harvest in 1970 was emblematic of the Cuban economy's profound difficulties...
...But the USSR continued to enjoy temporary naval and air facilities there-both of considerable strategic importance for surveillance and electronic listening...
...The Corvalin-Vladimir Bukovsky swap was the first exchange of political prisoners not accused of espionage in the history of East-West relations...
...wrath...
...But Allende's appeal only brought an additional $50 to $100 million...
...Soviet sources indicate some Colombian CP support for armed "rural self-defense units" as early as 1953...
...This period saw the rise of nationalist reformist military governments in Peru (1968-1975), Panama (1968-1981), Bolivia (1969-1971), Ecuador (1972-1976) and even Honduras (1972-1975).48 To varying degrees and with varying success, these regimes-in some cases united in regional common markets such as the Andean Pact-sought to distance themselves from the United States and obtain alternative trading partners and sources of credit that would give them increased autonomy...
...Krivoguz, "Strategiia i taktika kompartii stran srednego urovnia razvitiia kapitalizma," Rabochii Klass iSovremenyiMir(Moscow) No.5 (1985), p. 154...
...With the U.S...
...The USSR announced increased petroleum deliveries to Brazil and Chile, neither of which was friendly to Cuba...
...Cuba and the USSR grew closer in the 1970s and it was clear that while the Soviets paid dearly for good re- lations, there were considerable political as well as cer- tain military-strategic benefits...
...These gestures were hailed in Moscow as indications of the government's "anti-imperialist, left-nationalist course.' ""50 The following year, a rightist counter-coup was crushed and General Juan Jos6 Torres replaced Ovando and accelerated his "revolutionary nationalist" policies...
...Gonzalez, p.95...
...3 The Venezuelan setbacks were not the only cause for Soviet concern...
...Treasury Department, the companies refused and Castro expropriated the refineries...
...In 1969 General Alfredo Ovando-who paradoxically had been chief of staff in the Army that destroyed Che Guevara's guerrillas-took power in Bolivia and nationalized Gulf Oil's immense concessions...
...4 C UBA'S EVENTUAL DRIFT TOWARD THE Soviet Union has been subject to a considerable historical rewrite, with peculiarly congruent, self-interested versions being propounded by anti-Castro forces, old PSP leaders and Fidel himself...
...The issue first arose in April 1959 when a group of about a hundred Panamanian and Cuban would-be guerrillas sailed from Cuba, landed in Panama and were captured within a few hours...
...The conference communique was a compromise between Soviet and Cuban lines, with the participating parties agreeing to support armed struggle in six countries-Venezuela, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti and Paraguay-of which only the first three had significant guerrilla movements...
...7 Washington claimed that Grenada's airport was to be used for Soviet bombers or refueling Cuban troop planes en route to Africa...
...3 3 Similar, if less drastic, reverses took place in Colombia and among Bolivian miners...
...Also Paul Seabury and Walter A. McDougall, eds., The Grenada Papers (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1984...
...Elsewhere, the CPs were to use peaceful means, with Cuba's approval...
...Elizabeth K. Valkenier, The Soviet Union and the Third World (New York: Praeger, 1983), pp...
...The appearance of progressive military regimes around the continent seems to have led the Soviets to reject "simplistic anti-militarism," giving hope that the Chilean armed forces could play a supportive, not threatening role for the government...
...3 The PSP's support for Batista won no points with the guerrillas...
...1958...
...The Guatemalan party, which had recently opted once again for armed struggle, was the only regional CP not condemned by Debray...
...In response, Castro delivered his now famous "I am a Marxist-Leninist speech" on December 1, 1961 and announced the imminent creation of an Integrated Party of Socialist Revolution...
...Nor is there conclusive evidence that Grenada had become a depot for large concentrations of Soviet arms designed for future use in Latin America...
...clearly Chile was not Cuba...
...Nevertheless, according to Levesque (p.1 40), the Colombian CP agreed to the opening of diplomatic relations with the USSR, a move the Venezuelan CP apparently opposed until 1969 or 1970...
...There were indications that profound changes could occur in Latin America through unforeseen means...
...And as Cuba became increasingly isolated in the 1960s...
...Yet the revolu- tion had generated enormous enthusiasm throughout the continent and sparked an ongoing debate within the Left on the lessons of the Cuban experience...
...Only hours ear- lier Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista had joined his Dominican counterpart Rafael Trujillo in Santo Domingo...
...6 3 Widely considered a Cuban-Angolan initiative, the USSR rapidly lent logistical support...
...The Cuban Revolution seemed to generate increased Soviet interest in Latin America as a whole...
...military advisers...
...and Valkenier...
...Other Latin American countries that expressed interest in the 1970s in establishing formal links with the CMEA include Guyana, Jamaica, Colombia and Argentina, although none of them was granted formal observer status...
...Too, the Soviets probably had doubts about their own ability to provide the defense shield the Cubans so insistently sought...
...74 Obviously, they are also pleased that the Nicaraguan revolution has learned from the Chilean experience and "knows how to de- fend itself...
...Pleased by the September 1959 Camp David summit and the outlook for detente, they were reluctant to antagonize Eisenhower...
...Mexico was granted CMEA observer status in 1975, as was Nicaragua in 1983...
...Philip W. Bonsal, Cuba, Castro, and the United States (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971), pp...
...Specialists are con- cerned about possible roll-backs in the Third World and, with rare exception, are reluctant to include Nicaragua among the "socialist-oriented states" such as Afghanistan, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, South Yemen and Congo-Brazza~ille.'~ Applied to Nicaragua, this label would imply greater Soviet com- mitment based on certainty about the revolution's course...
...Supportive Pragmatism: The USSR and Revolutionaries 1. Carlos Franqui, Family Portrait with Fidel (New York: Vintage, 1985), p. 15 2 . 2. A.N...
...This coincided with major oil finds in the Urals in the late 1950s that left the USSR with significant surpluses that it was beginning to market in Italy, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay...
...Weapons deliveries are closely geared to the ups and downs of the contra war and advanced fighter aircraft that might trigger a U.S...
...Quoted in Gott, p.11...
...The Washington Post, March 24, 1985...
...The 1974 revolution in Portugal no doubt contributed to this as well...
...Blasier, Giant's Rival, p.49...
...4. Franqui, p.5...
...policy-makers saw the disarray in the NJM as a golden opportunity for restoring U.S...
...Fidel was still an ideological unknown and Cuba had no ruling Communist Party...
...When the government delayed payments to landowners, the U.S...
...Nikki Miller and Laurence Whitehead, "The Soviet Interest in Latin America: An Economic Perspective," in Robert Casson, ed., Soviet Interests in the Third World (London: Sage Publications, 1985), pp...
...The United States-which had slapped an arms embargo on Batista in March 1958-maintained its ban on military sales, citing the "armed expeditions . .. organized and launched against various countries...
...Some military accords apparently were signed between Grenada and the USSR shortly after the NJM came to power, but the much-touted secret deals with the USSR, Czechoslovakia, North Korea and Cuba that became pretexts for the U.S...
...But given the U.S...
...The law provided compensation with government bonds...
...In November 1961 relations were established with Jofo Goulart's nationalist administration in Brazil and trade pacts were broadened and extended...
...But he pursued it with personal zeal, despite its evident shortcomings...
...a few REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 20 disaffected revolutionaries defected or were arrested...
...In his closing address, Castro denounced "socialist states" that offered dollar loans to Colombia, "an oligarchic government that is repressing, persecuting and assassinating guerrillas...
...The New York Times, November 6, 1983...
...Apparently revolution would not spread rapidly to the rest of the hemisphere, and Cuba would have to increasingly rely on the USSR for its long-term economic and physical survival...
...Levesque...
...2 0 When the Cubans made good on a retaliatory threat by nationalizing numerous U.S...
...Pravda, April 14, 1971...
...By the end of 1965, Peru's guerrillas "had been totally liquidated...
...While Soviet military aid to Nicaragua is crucial to the revolution's survival, the USSR has shown caution...
...journalist Tad Szulc.' Yet the historical record suggests that initially, at least, Castro was genuinely concerned with nationalism and reformism, rather than the construction of a Marxist-Leninist state...
...Suirez, pp.71-72...
...3 " OVIET-CUBAN RELATIONS HIT THEIR lowest point in 1967-1968...
...He assailed the action as a "flagrant" violation of Czech sovereignty, but argued at the same time that it was a "bitter necessity" justified to prevent Czechoslovakia from moving toward "capitalism and into the arms of imperialism...
...And as an oilbased economy, Ecuador had few products to offer...
...8 " They lend rhetorical and occasionally limited material support to revolutionaries in Guatemala, El Salvador and Chile...
...in Barry B. Levine, The New Cuban Presence in the Caribbean (Boulder: Westview, 1983), p. 194 . 41...
...B. I. Koval', "Nachalo 80-kh godov: oslozhnenie mezhdunarodnoi obstanovki i klassovaia bor'ba," in Mezhdunarodnoe rabochee dvizhenie (Moscow: Politizdat, 1984), p.2 8 . 48...
...While in prison after the 1973 coup, he was awarded the USSR's Lenin prize for his contribution to "strengthening friendship among peoples...
...The Soviets clearly hoped that these measures would lead to "the reinforcement of independent economic and political positions...
...Machista rhetoric was also evident after the crisis in the marching slogan the militia chanted: "Nikita mariquita- lo que se da no se qaita...
...H6ctor Bdjar, Peru 1965: Notes on a Guerrilla Experience (New York: Monthly Review, 1970), p. 112...
...In Chile, the CP supported the founding of an "armed self-defense" organization, the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front, although it maintains that the two organizations are "autonomous" and that many of the front's actions "are not exempt from criticism...
...Gornov and N.Iu...
...These treaties provided equipment for a force estimated at 6,300, or according to the Reagan Administration, 10,800, a figure equivalent to about 10% of the island's population...
...Both governments denied any Cuban participation...
...8 S EPTEMBER 1973's BLOODY MILITARY coup generated intense outrage and debate among Soviet observers...
...As 26th of July Movement supporter Carlos Franqui recalled, "Rodriguez's short beard didn't bring much glory to the Communist Party when he turned up in the Sierra at the very last minute...
...Ibid., p.320...
...116 - 118 . 18...
...The New York Times, November 1, 1985...
...Humanism is freedom with bread and without terror...
...The Soviets sympathized with the growing independence from the United States, which allowed for limited cooperation...
...New York: Grove Press, 1967), pp.30, 125...
...prestige with an easy victory...
...The U.S...
...Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders Report 94-465 (Washington: U.S...
...State Department protested bitterly...
...Ecuador also forged ties with the USSR in 1969, but it was not until 1972 when the country joined OPEC that the Soviets showed much interest...
...most attractive for the Cubans was certainly oil priced at approximately one-half the value of the Venezuelan crude used by the island's U.S...
...Fidel Castro, "Waves of the Future," in Horowitz, et al., eds., pp.550, 564...
...The Chilean debt to all the socialist world, including China, only rose from $14 million in 1970 to $40 million in 1973, while debt to Latin America and Spain increased from $9 million to nearly $150 million...
...The Soviets provide varying levels of support to Cuba, Nicaragua and Guyana...
...Wayne Smith, "The Failure of Statecraft," in Joseph Cirincione, ed., Central America and the Western Alliance (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985), p. 18 5 . 44...
...While the weapons had been the Soviets' idea, the Cubans were outraged when they backed down...
...These problems served to push Cuba closer to the USSR...
...Castro's response to the August 1968 Warsaw Pact occupation of Czechoslovakia-condemned by all but 14 non-Eastern bloc CPs-was at once critical and supportive...
...Karol, pp...
...By 1972, Cuba was incorporated into the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), the socialist common market.* While the nature and amount of the Soviet "subsidy" to Cuba is the subject of considerable debate, many agree that joining the socialist camp brought support which by the early 1980s was running at around $4 billion per year...
...The "old Communists" of the PSP-eager to establish revolutionary credentials ex post facto-inflate their own early importance...
...In July, one week after the refineries were seized, the United States suspended Cuba's sugar quota...
...2 But the Communist PSP had condemned Castro's 1953 attack on Moncada as "a desperate form of adventurism, typical of petty bourgeois circles lacking in principle and implicated in gangsterism...
Vol. 21 • January 1987 • No. 1
