Myths of the Revolution
SAUVAGE, LEO
Myths of the Revolution CASTROISM: THEORY AND PRACTICE By Theodore Draper Praeger. 263 pp., $5.95. Reviewed by LEO SAUVAGE Author, "Autopsie du Castrisme" THE FIRST of Theodore Draper's...
...As for the "most favorable his torical moment," it had certainly not passed in the fall of 1959...
...His book is well reasoned and well written...
...Nor were there gangsters in Stalin's Russia, if one thinks only in terms of gambling, business rackets, dope and commercialized prostitution...
...Just as predictably, a strange alliance of sympathizers and businessmen springs up...
...But, alas, il y a des cadavres qu'il jaut qu'on tue: Dead myths must sometimes be killed again and again...
...But I believe Draper is right about Cuba...
...If nothing else, the boycott had left Cuba wide open to the Soviets and had given them a chance to show what they could do...
...In this new book, Castroism: Theory and Practice, Draper once more explains in depth what Castroism originally purported to be, and what in actual fact it has become, and he does so with great clarity...
...And despite political and economic mistakes, political prisoners (the quoted parenthesis is, emphatically, Thomas' own) and "re-education camps" (that a serious writer still dares to use that term today is almost beyond belief), the Stalin government was not "corrupt" as far as private financial deals were concerned...
...The circumstances under which he would not rule out military action by the U.S...
...With quite justified irony, Draper reminds the Chairman of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee that "curiously, the State Department, which had not concealed its extreme displeasure at the British-Cuban and French-Cuban deals, was able to restrain its indignation at the Spanish-Cuban deals, though the United States was capable of putting far more economic pressure on Spain than on Britain or France...
...Draper specifically does not quite rule out though he does not want it now, would surely be followed, if successful, by the return of the exiles, a massacre and a new Right-wing dictatorship which would probably make Batista seem a family doctor...
...To which of Draper's statements does Thomas take exception...
...the West obtains short-term profits, if there are any, for a few entrepreneurs...
...His analysis— some of which was first developed in THE NEW LEADER—is indeed so clear that one would be hardpressed to know which of his points needs restating if the young English historian Hugh Thomas, in his recent review of Draper's book in the New York Times Book Review, had not given us a-list of the last arguments which the last non-Communist defenders of Castro are still willing to bring forward...
...His strictures should not, therefore, be allowed to pass without comment...
...Now the church fares less well in Cuba than in Poland...
...Draper's researches.' Yet it is, in some respects, typical of a cer tain cast of mind...
...Is that compensation for "re-education camps...
...What he proposes is "a Cuban policy that seeks to avoid the complementary follies of invasion and capitulation...
...It was all a tragic case of too many well-intentioned people having too much faith in a man who proved to be unworthy of it...
...Oh yes, there is also in Cuba, Thomas reminds Draper, "a cultural effervescence, with no insistence on social realism," and "the Cuban Trotskyists appear to be free again and the church at least survives...
...The quid pro quo is usually, as Professor Hans J. Morgenthau put it, 'idiotic' The Communist regime obtains the means of long-term survival and power...
...There have been more noteworthy differences—as Draper carefully notes—in this Communist "new wave" than the temporary coexistence of totalitarianism and abstract art...
...The United States may have been guilty of many things, but it could not be held responsible for the missing 30 per cent of Soviet imports, the 'difficulties' which Guevara had sportingly admitted had come 'principally from our side,' the increase of workers' 'absenteeism' and decrease of their 'productivity.' " What about military intervention...
...But Thomas has omitted the sentence in Draper's book which appears immediately after the one quoted above...
...it could also bring a major war...
...The recent Dominican expedition, which has now been denounced by both Fulbright and Draper (by the writer in a superb article in THE N EW LEADER ["The Roots of the Dominican Crisis,' N L , May 24], long before the Senator), was an ominous precedent...
...Thus the American planners, not the Cuban people, provided Castro's panegyrists all over the world with their major weapon: the myth that the Bay of Pigs has proved the solidarity of Castro and his people...
...Draper no more favors a take-over by the embittered and increasingly reactionary exiles than he favors an invasion by the U.S...
...Draper thus ex ploded the fundamental myth shared by both Castroites and anti-Castroites—the myth of Fidel's faithfulness, either to his people or to his party...
...It was a necessary work of de-mystification which demon strated not only how Castro had "promised one kind of revolution and made another," but also showed how Castro's actual revolution, far from being the logical consequence of his original promised program, was in reality a brutal and cynical destruction of it...
...To cover up their responsibility for that disaster, the planners of the CIA offered the excuse that the Cuban people did not, as anticipated, rise against Castro...
...Yet they have been largely ignored " This, in fact, is the only way to what I believe is the only hope of liberation for the Cuban people: a Havana Budapest, a revolutionary explosion from within...
...The Cuban leaders have boasted that the Cuban people would be better off without U.S...
...Draper pays eloquent tribute, was surely partly due to their own weakness, disunity, and also to the fact that their most favorable historical moment had already passed...
...policy...
...But is there an alternative...
...Thomas adds that "the defeat of the 'liberals' in 1959, to the high quality of some of whom Mr...
...As Draper puts it: "The economic miracle that Castro and the Communists had promised in Cuba had become an unmistakable mirage...
...There is little doubt that such a solution is quite possible, at any time, in Cuba, where the Russian tanks are far away and where American anti-tank guns could be dropped to the rebels in a few hours...
...Every time a Communist power needs a breathing spell, it begins to make cooing sounds and dangle offers of trade...
...Thomas is him self the author of a well documented and almost too cold-bloodedly ob jective history of the Spanish Civil War, and he also writes frequently for the London New Statesman, which, so far as the Cuban Revolu tion is concerned, has always been a major British myth-monger...
...For Draper points out that in the options proposed by Senator Fulbright, there is not "the slightest allusion to, or place for, the Cuban people," and he recalls that this "extraordinary oversight" was also "one of the chief contributing factors to the Bay of Pigs disaster...
...Well, as we know, under Mussolini the trains ran on time...
...His first point, I must say, is unexpected...
...policy...
...Draper's chapter on "The Declasse Revolution," which Thomas himself describes as "brilliant," makes perfectly clear the cases of "exceptionalism" among those "ex-bourgeois anti-bourgeois" revolutionaries...
...policy toward Cuba...
...invasion, which Mr...
...Reviewed by LEO SAUVAGE Author, "Autopsie du Castrisme" THE FIRST of Theodore Draper's two books on Cuba was entitled Castro's Revolution, Myths and Realities...
...In an important speech on March 25, 1964, Fulbright suggested that, owing to British and French trade deals with Cuba, economic boycott of that country was no longer "feasible...
...What he wants is to bring back into any discussion about Cuba that curiously forgotten factor: the Cuban people...
...This shortsighted view of the national interest was also implicit in Senator Fulbright's remarks on Cuba " I do not believe that Draper's— or Professor Morgenthau's—attitude should be generalized, i.e., applied under any circumstance to any country (certain countries of Eastern Europe, for example...
...The fact is that the CIA systematically ignored the then very active and influential Cuban internal resistance, and did not want any popular uprising that would not be under the control of its own agents...
...If some Trotskyists are free, it is because they are really more Maoists than Trotskyists and were thus part of the influential pro-Chinese group at the time Thomas was writing...
...Conceivably," Draper writes, "an extreme international situation might require extreme measures in Cuba...
...Now the Cuban people have discovered, for all the world to see, that while depending on nobody is best, depending on Moscow is far worse for them than depending on Washington...
...It was then that Castro delivered1 the1'Cuban unions into the hands of the Communists and sentenced Hubert Matos to 30 years in the old Isle of Pines prison, where he himself had been jailed by Batista for three years...
...One can only conclude, then, that Thomas does not know the facts when he writes not only that the Cuban Communist party was at that time "the oldest Cuban political party still in being"—which means nothing—but that "it came out of the Batista era with more dignity than Mr...
...Draper says that the Cuban Community party in 1959 was "relatively small, weak, isolated...
...Draper reminds his readers (and one hopes there will be some in high places in Washington) that the anti-Castro underground was left "in utter ignorance and confusion," and as a result, was easily destroyed: "Unmourned, unacknowledged, unransomed, it was the hapless victim of U.S...
...There is no comparable group in all Latin America...
...No one who knew Cuba in 1959 could possibly deny that fact...
...As for the cultural effervescence, there is plenty of insistence on social realism, though it is true that some abstract painters, like the church, at least survive...
...The question is whether the Johnson Administration will heed Draper's advice rather than let the CIA "handle it," i.e., destroy it, once again...
...Yes, and Draper now reveals that he had indicated that alternative on November 13, 1962, in a memorandum he was asked to write for President Kennedy: "Among Cubans today (and not only Cubans), only the young can speak to the young, only the disillusioned to the disillusioned, only the 'revolutionary' to the 'revolutionary.' We have, if appearances do not deceive me, given little or no aid and comfort to the young, the disillusioned, the 'revolutionary' in the anti-Castro struggle...
...therefore do not apply to the search for a solution of the Cuban problem but only to a new attempt—by Russian military forces for example—to establish another missile base in Cuba...
...Thomas' criticism of Draper is, to be sure, somewhat half-hearted, following on the homage duly paid to "the intelligence and depth of Mr...
...But the unions, which were 99 per cent anti-Communist, felt they could not say no to their Fidel, and Matos too declared he would rather die than lift a hand against his Fidel...
...On the question of a possibly different U.S...
...trade...
...military action could be ruled out under all circumstances," Thomas concludes his Times review: "A U.S...
...The "historical moment" had nothing to do with it...
...Draper first of all rejects "the choice between political bankruptcy and military adventurism...
...But of greater importance, Draper emphasizes what it would mean to Castro if, in addition to this relatively small quantity of Western European trade, he could now look forward to normal trade with the U.S...
...The most fascinating aspect of Thomas' criticism of Draper—and defense of Castro—is to be found, however, in the following revelation: "Despite the political and economic mistakes, the political prisoners (Castro himself speaks of 15,000 in contrast to the exiles' minimum estimate of 45,000), and the re-education camps, the Cuban government is not corrupt and there are no gangsters...
...This is not even partly true, unless one means by "weakness" and "disunity" that it took those "liberals" a long time—though the length of time varied with the individual—to accept the fact that Castro was double-crossing them and betraying their revolution...
...Draper allows"—which means a great deal, but is perfectly false...
...Moreover, on more than one occasion Draper has expressed the same misgivings as Thomas and most friends of an independent, democratic Cuba about the possibility of a bloody Right-wing dictatorship...
...We have precious political capital in these young Cubans who have in the past few years undergone an incredible range and depth of political experience, who have ventured up to the edge of Communism and turned back in revulsion...
...The part of Draper's book which is open to more serious controversy is the short appendix in which he deals with Senator Fulbright and U.S...
...Noting that Draper writes "I do not mean that U.S...
...He went on to recommend "acceptance of the continued existence of the Castro regime" by the U.S...
Vol. 48 • November 1965 • No. 22
