Castro's 'New' Communists

...Four months later, the word may spread that he has "broken with the Communists" and that he was never really one of them "at heart...

...He was formerly considered the best brain in the party or at least a far better one than the General Secretary, Bias Roca...

...Yet at that very time a ground swell was building up against Escalante's party machine, and only a month later the struggle broke out openly in the top leadership...

...This pressure undoubtedly came primarily from the "new" Communists, who had lost most from the PSP's seizure of all the levers of power by means of the new party...

...As a result, the "new" Communists who came out of the 26th of July Movement or the Directorio Revolucionario suddenly found themselves sharply reduced in status...

...Theodore Draper's studies of Cuba, Castro's Revolution: Myths and Realities, to be published in June by Frederick A. Praeger, will include the present article...

...Raul Castro, Second Secretary...

...Henceforth, Communism in Cuba will be what he says it is...

...and the administrators, many of whom had not belonged to the PSP, were stripped of the authority to which they had become accustomed...

...Whereas previously, the old-time Communists, headed by Bias Roca and Anibal Escalante, were the authorized interpreters of "Marxism-Leninism," now they have been succeeded by Fidel Castro...

...In this dangerously deteriorating situation, the PSP has been forced to beat a painful retreat and to sacrifice one of its outstanding leaders, Anibal Escalante...

...After the December 2 speech, some seized on isolated phrases taken out of context to justify what they had always thought—that Castro was and had long been a tried and true "Marxist-Leninist" or Communist...

...Yet, at this stage, nothing could be more illusory and costly than the idea that Fidel Castro has "broken with" the Communists...

...It is supposed to prepare the way for a second and higher stage to be called the Partido Unido de la Revolución Socialista (PURS, or United Party of the Socialist Revolution...

...In effect, Castro revealed that all the positions in the ORI, from top to bottom and from one end of the country to the other, were mechanically filled by PSP functionaries...

...It was no accident that, in his March 13 speech on the Eschevarria incident, Castro chose to cite Lenin's "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder, the classic Communist text whenever a "turn to the right" is to be executed and justified...

...Yet, though Escalante bore the brunt of Castro's wrath, it was clear that he was aiming far beyond a single individual, no matter how highly placed in the hierarchy...

...At a ceremony at the university in honor of José Antonio Echevarria (who was killed in 1957 while attempting to overthrow Batista by attacking the Presidential palace), Castro blew up...

...By this time, then, the struggle had been resolved in favor of the "new" Communists, but it was not a final and crushing defeat for the "old" ones...

...The interpretation of Cuban events has long suffered from a tendency of outside observers to go from one extreme to another...

...This hapless secretary, Castro said scornfully, was "under the bed" while the other four were proving themselves in battle—a colloquial image which picturesquely expressed how most Fidelistas had felt about most Communists...

...He has stepped forward, as a result of Escalante's downfall, as the final authority on "sectarianism," "dialectics," "dogmatism," "cult of personality," "revisionism," the relations between party and government, "self-criticism," texts from Lenin, and all the rest...

...For one thing, Escalante had long been the No...

...As long as the PSP functioned in its own name, it was relatively easy to follow its leaders and policies...

...The only top Cuban Communist attacked by name was Anibal Escalante...

...It is a disintegration, both material and moral, which has threatened the Castro regime with losing control of the masses of people...

...He accused Escalante of creating a "system," but the entire PSP was implicated in and had benefited from the system...

...Not a subject, not a question, not a detail, he went on, could be taken up without going to the ORI's organizational bureau...

...His leadership has been marked by a peculiar combination of extreme opportunism and opportunistic extremism...

...An ORI student leader, acting as master of ceremonies, read aloud the "Testament" of Echevarria and chose to omit three lines expressing religious sentiments...

...Thereafter Castro headed for a showdown...

...In a rather lame effort to explain why the wrong policy had been permitted to go on for so long and to create so acute a problem, Castro made the revealing admission that the errors could not be combatted until "not only the leaders, but the masses themselves, became conscious" of them...

...the Revolution is absolutely defined as Marxist-Leninist, and we are making this self-criticism of our errors within the context of MarxismLeninism...

...Another culprit had dared to criticize Castro's "History Will Absolve Me" speech of 1953 as a "reactionary document," and someone else had called the Moncada affair and the "Granma" expedition an "error...

...As Castro emphasized, the final decision to jettison Escalante was made unanimously...

...and Emilio Argonés...

...it is almost wholly concerned with control of the party and the Government...

...Let no one dream of anything else or entertain any illusion about this...

...In a larger sense, l'affaire Escalante was only part of a much broader maneuver that Castro's regime is now attempting to carry out...

...For the first time, he used the term "coyunda" (literally, a strap for yoking oxen) to characterize what had happened to the revolution...

...When Castro arose to speak, he made a scandal of this seemingly minor incident of the three lines and used the occasion to deliver an improvised but violent sermon on the evils of "sectarianism...

...This transference of the real power to the "old" Communists resurrected some of the former antagonisms between the PSP and the 26th of July Movement...

...Those who have dismissed him as "nothing but a Communist," and those who have deceived themselves or others that he could "never be a Communist," have both oversimplified him beyond recognition...

...The red thread through the whole speech was the clash of interest that had developed between the "old" and the "new" Communists...

...3 figure of the PSP...

...Castro did not come to power or to Communism by the route of any other national Communist leader, and both the Cuban and Russian Communists have no exact precedent for dealing with him...

...In the ORI's smaller and more powerful Secretariat, however, only one wellknown PSP leader, Bias Roca, was admitted...

...His three-and-a-half hour television performance on March 26, in which he denounced the Cuban Communist leader, Anibal Escalante, equaled in importance his five-hour monologue on December 2 of last year, in which he celebrated his conversion to "Manrism-Leninism...

...In essence, Castro attacked some Communists, but not Communism...

...Unfortunately for the "old" Communists, they moved to the center of the stage prematurely and exposed themselves to popular discontent just as the economy began to plunge downward...

...The problem he faced was whether the PSP should have all power, not whether it should have none...

...Until he has gone through the usual quota of internal crises, factional struggles, changes of line, and tests of loyalty to a higher Communist power, his place in the Communist movement cannot be fixed once and for all...

...The mandate of this hierarchy was derived from the official state ideology, Marxism-Leninism, in the service of which they could claim far more years than the newcomers...

...As Castro put it, anyone without the right party connections "did not have the slightest hope of being chosen for anything, neither to become a technician, nor to obtain a post in one of the People's Farms, the cooperatives, the municipalities, the provinces, the JUCEI [Coordination, Execution and Inspection Board], nor the State...

...In this "proletarian democracy," of course, Escalante was not permitted to defend himself, and he was quickly persuaded to accept a free ride to Eastern Europe—perhaps the punishment to fit the crime...

...It was so extreme," said Castro, "that if a cat gave birth to four kittens, it had to be taken to the office of the ORI to see how it should be resolved...

...In fact, Castro made abundantly clear that he was striking through Escalante at many others...

...Despite all the harsh things that he said about the PSP old guard, he went to the greatest pains on March 26 to pay homage to their past services and to insure their continued partnership in the party and Government...

...His speech of March 26 contained no little evidence that he was fully aware of what had been taking place and had played no small part in making the PSP's ascendancy possible...

...The crucial problem in Cuba has been and continues to be Castro's relations with the official Communists, formerly organized in the Partido Socialista Popular (PSP...

...The "cell" of the party in factories and other organizations began to make the real decisions...

...those who make him identical with every other member of that family miscalculate the novelties and complexities of his position...

...On the contrary, he reaffirmed in the strongest terms his belief and faith in Marxism-Leninism and in Communism, and it is precisely in this period that he has taken to using the two interchangeably...

...They ranged from "sectarianism" and "dogmatism" to converting the ORI into an instrument for personal ends, into a "tyranny" (coyunda), a "straitjacket," a "yoke," a "veritable chaos and anarchy," a "counterrevolutionary abortion...

...In this Directorate, the "old" Communists were allotted about 10 seats, and Castro could count on a working majority...

...The sequence of events which led to this open clash suggests that both the issues and his own role were not quite as clear and simple as Castro tried to make them...

...In fact, as I wrote over a year ago ("Castro's Cuba: A Revolution Betrayed," NL, March 27, 1961), Castro represents a Cuban "variant" in the "Communist family of revolutions...

...Castro told how it had become impossible even for a Cabinet minister to change an official or an administrator without calling the ORI for permission, and the top ministers took their orders from Escalante directly...

...But Castro himself, all through 1961, had contributed most to the political atmosphere which had made possible the seizure of power...

...Even Camilo Cienfuegos, one of the chief heroes of the revolution, he remarked bitterly, could have been removed from his command for this reason...

...Both speeches will undoubtedly represent key points of reference in Castro's political career and the evolution of his regime...

...Escalante's "crimes," if Castro can be trusted, could not help but reflect on his entire training and on all those in the Party who for so many years had put their confidence in him...

...Since Echevarria had been the chief founder of the Directorio Revolucionario, and had never seen eye-to-eye with Castro or the Communists, he represented the kind of political tendency which again must be wooed by the present regime...

...In the light of his past record, Escalante was hardly one to act on his own or against the top leadership of the PSP as a whole...

...Thus, it has been necessary to work out a new equilibrium of forces to put the regime on a broader mass basis and to enable it to recapture some of its lost Fidelista glamor...

...By running the country itself, instead of through others, the PSP old guard set itself up as the most eligible scapegoat in the crisis of a regime which must execute a "change of line" to obtain far more maneuvering room than it has previously allowed itself...

...A "shattering disintegration" has taken place in Cuba, as the Associate Editor of the Montreal Star, Gerald Clark, recently wrote after a visit there...

...2 or No...

...Undersecretaries, he said, no longer discussed their problems with the ministers but with ORI officials...

...After conceding that Escalante was "a true Communist, an honest Communist," Castro accused him of a whole catalogue of "errors" and "crimes...

...In this way, Castro served notice that Soviet Russia had little to worry about in terms of the fundamental character and future course of his regime...

...A former law student, he had joined the Cuban Communist party about 1932, had spent a long apprenticeship in Soviet Russia, had served as editor of the official party organ, Hoy, from its inception in 1938 to April 1959 (when he was replaced by Carlos Rafael Rodriguez), and had then assumed the post of Executive Secretary of the PSP...

...The future course of Castro's revolution is not likely to be any more conventional than its past...

...Soon afterward, he observed: "Of course, we all have been responsible in a greater or lesser degree...

...Castro himself described the system as one in which "the only revolutionaries, the only comrades who could be trusted, the only ones who could get a post in a People's Farm, in a cooperative, in the State, in any place whatever, had to be an old Marxist militant...

...Castro also related how he had been told by more than 100 Rebel Army officers who had fought in the mountains that they were not commanding troops any longer because of their "low political level...

...On March 13 trouble broke out anew...

...A shakeup in the Government was made public on March 24, and what Castro called the "holy mess" of Escalante and the "old" Communists was aired two days later...

...Despite the fact that Escalante had become the storm center of the factional struggle, he was included in the Directorate, as if an arrangement had been made which did not entail his complete elimination and disgrace...

...And of those who had harbored the idea that he wanted to create a "cult of personality" around himself, Castro declared, "it is well to remind them of certain facts, such as the fact that we waged a war, we led it, we won it.' Indeed, Castro devoted only a relatively small portion of his long harangue to Escalante...

...In the middle of 1961, however, a socalled fusion took place between the PSP, Castro's 26th of July Movement and the Directorio Revolucionario, primarily a student group active in the struggle against Batista...

...President Osvaldo Dorticós...

...He is an inherently unstable but indispensable element in an inherently unstable conjuncture of forces...

...Castro cited a number of concrete cases, all of them involving more or less obscure PSPers, but the broader implications could not be lost on his listeners...

...Their power was primarily based on their positions in the Government, but the Government had come to be totally subordinate to the party, and the party was wholly controlled by the former cadre of the PSP...

...Not until March 9 was the ORI's 25-member Directorate announced, a step so long delayed that it implied an internal struggle of extraordinary virulence...

...Even though he virtually handed over the day-by-day task of running the country to the "old" Communists, forces beyond his control made it impossible for him to pursue an "orthodox" line with the official guardians of Cuban Communist orthodoxy...

...It is to be expected that Escalante's old comrades will now drag his name in the mud and demonstrate with countless examples that he was always a corrupting influence and treacherous deviationist...

...Though Escalante was accused of "personal ambition," he clearly could not have satisfied it without satisfying the personal and political ambitions of the PSP's cadre and membership...

...The credentials of those who came from the 26th of July Movement were derived from the struggle against Batista...

...Castro himself attributed the rumors that he had been replaced by Bias Roca or by Anibal Escalante, and that Raul Castro had been pushed aside by someone else, to the "mandomania" (power madness) and "gobiemomania" (government mania) that had flared up...

...In the showdown, it had to face the reality that it could not govern Cuba by itself and that Fidel Castro is still the essential element in the ruling equation...

...Those who take him out of that family misconstrue his fundamental position, on which he himself insists...

...After all, they protested, they had done most of the fighting while the "old" Communists were still dallying with electoral politics...

...Nevertheless, it seems that Castro took an unusually long time to make up his mind to resist the PSP's takeover of the ORI...

...And he went still further by charging darkly that "certain campaigns" had been waged "in a very subtle manner" against a group of "the most valuable comrades of the revolution...

...In his speech on December 2, in which he had presented himself as a "Marxist-Leninist," he had included Anibal Escalante as one of those old Communists whose years of service entitled them to special consideration...

...The only ones, he said, who could get away with any mistakes without punishment were the "old" Communists...

...Toward the end of his March 26 speech, he declared: "Today we are not discussing the merits of Communism or anti-Communism, or ideological definitions...

...Castro and the Communists have driven Cuba into an impasse from which they can extricate themselves only by adopting a line of temporary concessions and compromises, of sweet reasonableness instead of extreme rigidity, of maximum maneuverability, even in relations with the United States...

...When he spoke of the local ORI secretary who had been "under the bed" during the fight against Batista, Castro added ominously that this had not been an isolated case, and he promised to expose and "sweep away" all the others...

...On March 26, Castro fully confirmed this view, though no one else had dared to go to such extreme lengths to show what a caricature of a "new" party the ORI has been...

...There was an ORI secretary of a group of People's Farms who had spoken contemptuously of four wellknown Fidelistas—Captain Emilio Aragonés, Guillermo Garcia, the first campesino to join the Rebel Army, Sergio del Valle, a doctor with the Rebel Army in the Sierra Maestra, and Haydée Santamaria, one of the two young women who had taken part in the Moncada attack of 1953 and had played a leading role in both the Sierra Maestra and the underground resistance...

...But he mentioned no names, and in the same speech he gave his blessings to the change of name of the youth organization from Jóvenes Rebeides (Young Rebels) to Jóvenes Comunistas (Young Communists...

...Mass pressure obviously had something to do with alerting Castro and those closest to him to the fact that the situation had become explosive and needed a drastic remedy...

...The party resulting from this fusion was named Organizaciones Revolucionarias Integradas (ORI, or Integrated Revolutionary Organizations...

...This means that the ORI was functioning for at least six months on the basis of virtually complete PSP control...

...According to Castro, the crisis of leadership in the ORI was first brought up on January 1 of this year...

...Those who came from the PSP arrogated to themselves all the rights and privileges of an ordained hierarchy, including, if Castro can be believed, packing party units and handing out jobs to their relatives...

...It is most significant that Castro's March 26 speech never referred to questions of policy...

...He had repeatedly humbled himself before the PSP's old guard and had effusively acknowledged its ideological superiority...

...Minister of Industries Ernesto (Che) Guevara...

...Anibal Escalante, who had been organizational secretary of the PSP, became organizational secretary of the ORI, and PSP secretaries in every province and municipality simply moved into similar posts in the ORI...

...Thus the party split, which had been temporarily papered over on March 9, was reopened...

...It is still a Communist regime, but it is Communist with a difference...

...he has never been wedded to lost causes or to abstract ones...

...The other five members were: Fidel Castro, First Secretary...

...For some time, it has been apparent that the ORI was merely the PSP writ large...

...But the political crisis in the party is only part of, and partially a result of, a much broader and deeper crisis of the entire regime...

...In one passage, Castro admitted not only that "we fell into" the PSP's "sectarianism," but that "I fell into it, in part unwittingly...

...If all had been going well in Cuba for the past year, the PSP's control might well have gone unchallenged or might have been unchallengeable...