Fidel Castro

by Volker Skierka

  Just a few weeks after Kennedy’s death, Castro tried to resume the feelers with the United States. In February 1964 Lisa Howard reported a verbal message from Castro to Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, in which the Cuban leader gave assurances of absolute secrecy, even if domestic political considerations forced Johnson to make “bellicose statements about Cuba” or even “to take some hostile action.”169 All he asked was to be informed of this beforehand. But there was no reaction from Johnson, either to this or to subsequent initiatives on Castro’s part.

  6

  The Long March with Che

  Moscow, Beijing, and Havana

  “On 31 January 1963 … Khrushchev wrote me a lengthy letter, really a wonderful letter. It is 31 pages long … a beautiful, elegant, friendly, very friendly letter. Some of its paragraphs are almost poetic. It invites me to visit the Soviet Union.… Tempers had been cooling down by then; they had been quite hot. I accepted the trip.”1

  Castro set off on April 26. Khrushchev had his guest picked up with what was then the most modern Soviet long-haul aircraft: a Tupolev 114. Fears that it might be shot down meant that the date and route of the trip were kept strictly secret. In any event, the Tupolev’s range did not permit a non-stop flight to Moscow, and so Castro made a refueling stop in Murmansk, where Khrushchev’s deputy Mikoyan was waiting to receive him. Castro later recalled:

  I got there by a miracle, because I had to fly in a TU-114 plane. It was a 16-hour flight. I think that it is a kind of bombardment in a plane like that.… The plane had four propellers, and it shook and vibrated, and we had to land blind. It was lucky that Khrushchev … had sent the best pilot in the Soviet Union, because he was the only man who would have been able to land in the middle of the mountains in Murmansk with such a fog that you could not see for five meters. On the third day, we finally landed … my part in all this could have ended that day.… I said: If this crashes, we will never even know why. I was sitting with the pilots watching the operation. Suddenly I said: I will get out of here… . I do not want it to happen that, instead of helping, I make things more complicated. I stayed sitting down until that monster landed.2

  Flying, it would seem, was the one thing Castro feared.

  Unusually, the Cuban Premier’s trip to the Soviet Union lasted 40 days, nearly six weeks, from April 26 to June 3, 1963. It turned into a triumphal procession accompanied by cheering crowds. He traveled all over the country, visiting 14 cities and looking round both civilian and military installations. Although he came with a large entourage, he made a point of not bringing any of the old Communist leaders from the PSP, not even the dependable Carlos Rafael Rodríguez. Nevertheless, no state guest had ever been given such a spectacular reception, or been so lionized by the media. He wore the highest medals on his chest – including those of Hero of the Soviet Union and the Order of Lenin. As a rare honor, he was asked to make a speech at a mass rally on Red Square, and it was at the Kremlin wall that he stood beside the Soviet leadership for the military parade on the First of May.

  It is true that, with an eye on Washington, the Kremlin refused a formal military alliance. But, in a joint statement issued on May 24 at the end of the official part of Castro’s visit, the Soviet Union endorsed the five demands Castro had made of U Thant – including a US withdrawal from the Guantánamo naval base. Moscow was mainly concerned to emphasize its guarantees of Cuba’s security, although they sounded like so much lip-service.3

  After their tour was over, Khrushchev invited Castro to his summer house at Pitzunda, on the Black Sea coast, where he one day read out his correspondence with Kennedy from the time of the missile crisis. He also quoted – inadvertently, it would seem – from the secret agreement on the removal of American mediumrange missiles from Turkey, in return for the withdrawal of Soviet nuclear missiles from Cuba. “It was the last thing that Nikita wanted me to hear,” Castro recalled many years later, “since he knew my way of thinking, and that we were completely against being used as an exchange token.”4 This surprise was more fuel for Castro’s mistrust. But apart from that, the two men used their seclusion to map out areas for future cooperation and to discuss ideological questions and differences.

  This being 1963, ideological differences within the socialist world centered on the bitter struggle between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. In principle, it was a question of which had more correctly used the teachings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin to find the way to a classless society: on the one side, the “right-wing” orthodox Soviet Communists had decided, after various setbacks, to decentralize the socialist-oriented state economy, to permit greater self-management at enterprise level, and to increase material incentives for the workforce; on the other side, the “left-wing” Chinese comrades condemned Moscow’s adoption of the capitalist market and law of value within the socialist system as a revisionist betrayal of true doctrine. There were also major differences over foreign policy. Since the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1956, without any break during the Cuban missile crisis, the USSR had followed a line of “peaceful coexistence” with the other major nuclear power, the United States. It was in accordance with this policy that Moscow had been cautious about any active exporting of the Cuban Revolution to other countries; Cuba was supposed to serve as a kind of shop-window demonstrating the superiority of the socialist system, but the Kremlin was not prepared to give significant financial or logistical backing to guerrilla movements elsewhere in the Third World. For this reason, the Chinese Communists and their supporters abroad accused the Kremlin of leaving Third World revolutionary currents in the lurch, and of living on the backs of poorer countries by reducing the “export of revolution” mainly to the exploitation of their raw materials and other resources. This, it was claimed, further promoted the underdevelopment of the Third World and was neither more nor less than a variant of imperialism painted red.

  The ideological conflict between Moscow and Beijing was increasingly brought up for discussion within the Cuban leadership, especially by Che Guevara. Following the victory of the Cuban Revolution, Castro had given his friend and guerrilla comrade operational responsibility for the country’s economic planning and foreign policy. But Guevara, after an early period of enthusiasm, had watched with concern as Cuba’s growing dependence on the Soviet Union reduced its room for maneuver both internally and externally, and, like the comrades in Beijing, he considered that Moscow’s distinctive form of state capitalism was leading it on a false ideological path. Against this background, Castro could see that for Khrushchev the worst that could happen would be for Cuba to reach an understanding with the Chinese.

  It is not true, however, that when Castro sat down with Khrushchev in Pitzunda he was already making eyes at the Chinese. Much less ideologically aligned than either his brother Raúl or Che Guevara, he set greatest store by the political leeway that allowed him to remain in charge at home and guaranteed Cuba a large degree of national sovereignty. But he also wanted to play a role on the international stage – and knew that all this would be much less of a problem with the Chinese than with the Soviets. Still, Beijing had too little to offer economically, militarily and politically, and carried too little political weight in the international balance of power. If Castro played the Chinese card, it would only be to push up the price he could expect from Moscow. The real danger for Soviet–Cuban relations came from Che Guevara, while for Moscow the most reliable partner in Cuba’s ruling troika was the defense minister, Raúl Castro.

  Since he first met Fidel Castro in 1955 in Mexico, Che had grown in his quiet way into the role of ideological brains of the revolution, and exerted ever greater influence over the commanderin-chief. Sheldon B. Liss, a student of Castro’s political thought, writes:

  From José Martí, Fidel learned how to blend humanism and “cubanidad” into a revolutionary package. Argentine physician “Che” Guevara helped him to approach revolution theoretically. Castro does not mention Che by
name as often as he does Martí, but the ideas of his comrade-in-arms constantly appear in his speeches and motivate his actions. Fidel had read Marx and Lenin before he met Che.… But Che, with his more developed theoretical background, assisted Fidel in organizing the theory … and in fashioning a more coherent Marxist philosophy.5

  “Nobody is born a revolutionary,” Castro told US journalist Lee Lockwood in 1965. “A revolutionary is formed through a process.… At the time I met Che Guevara he had a greater revolutionary development, ideologically speaking, than I had … he was a more advanced revolutionary than I was.”6 In the Sierra Maestra they developed an almost brotherly relationship with each other, one outstanding feature of which was Castro’s personal care and consideration for Che because of his frequent asthma attacks. However different they were in temperament, they both tended to wear themselves out completely for the cause of the revolution. “There is no doubt,” Castro remarked, “that he has had influence in both the revolutionary fight and the revolutionary process.”7

  During those years Guevara was the only one, apart from Raúl, whom Castro would tolerate at his side; his worldwide popularity does not seem to have made the Máximo Líder think of him as a rival. In international circles he was the best advertisement for the Cuban Revolution, a media weapon useful for any number of purposes. With his exotic olive-green outfit, his black beret with a red star on a wild mop of hair, his shaggy beard and cigar in the corner of his mouth, he was the incarnation of a professional revolutionary for the protest generation all around the world. “El Che,” as he was called in Cuba, gave the impression of being the gentler of the two, well-mannered and almost feminine, but from time to time also arrogant and exceedingly vain. Fidel Castro, by contrast, was in external appearance clearly a macho figure, with a farmer’s earthiness like that of his father, more likely to crash about and to inspire fear in people. But appearances were deceptive: the reality was rather the opposite. Beneath his tough shell Castro was more open, more flexible, more tolerant and less dogmatic, and therefore far and away the wilier in everyday political affairs. In comparison, Guevara appeared to be a dogmatic revolutionary, coldly rigorous and unwilling to compromise.

  In an article that appeared in June 1960 in US News and World Report, we can read under the title “Communists Take Over 90 Miles from U.S.” that a “red dictatorship” was “in full control,” and that Che Guevara, as the brains behind the revolution, exercised “dictatorial power over national finances” and was thus responsible for the confiscation of US assets.8 For Castro, however, Guevara had “developed into a model person, not only for our people but for all peoples of Latin America; Che gave revolutionary steadfastness its highest expression.”9

  It is possible that, without Guevara, Castro would not have survived politically for long after the victory of the revolution, but would have been crushed between the middle classes and the orthodox Communists who had meanwhile jumped on the bandwagon. Whereas Fidel still adopted a moderate political tone toward the bourgeoisie, Che was already working behind the scenes with Raúl Castro to establish a Marxist-Leninist state. Fidel Castro was lucky to have had in Guevara a partner who, in the process of integrating into the revolutionary movement the Communist PSP founded back in 1925, could prove more than a match for power-hungry and Moscow-dependent dialecticians like Aníbal Escalante and Blas Roca.

  Castro soon placed Guevara in key positions. He put him in charge of the secret group that planned the agrarian reform law promulgated in May 1959. From the end of November of the same year, Guevara was president of the National Bank running a new monetary policy that turned the country away from a freemarket economy, and on February 23, 1961, he became minister of industry responsible for the construction of a Moscow-oriented Marxist-Leninist planned economy. In June 1959 he began his first foreign-policy assignment; he traveled until September to more than a dozen Asian and African countries, enlisting support there for the Cuban Revolution and forging new economic links. In February 1960 he signed the first trade agreement with the Soviet Union, and over the following months with China, Hungary, Bulgaria, North Korea, and the GDR. But, when he flew to Moscow for two weeks in late October 1960, to discuss trade issues at a “round table” with representatives of the socialist countries and to try to gain permanent observer status at the Council for Mutual Economic Aid, his request on behalf of the Cuban government was turned down. Moscow was of the view that it was too early for such a step.

  The new man

  “Fidel,” Sheldon Liss writes, “contends that his political ideas, for the most part, result from reflection. He does not regard himself as a philosopher. Whereas philosophers formalize or explain the relations between ideas, Fidel informally interprets ideas.”10 His thinking is influenced by Martí, Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao, as well as by Gramsci, Hegel, and others.

  He very rarely puts pen to paper, as a thinker such as Mao Zedong would have.… He is more concerned with mobilizing forces around ideas.… He also has the ability to blend his ideas with those of others.… Historicism pervades Castro’s thinking. He proceeds on the premise that all sociological phenomena are historically determined, all truths are relative, no absolute values exist, and all events are influenced by the past. He believes in a moral imperative in politics.… Castro, like Marx and Engels, … expects the superior morality of communism to elevate humanity. He believes that if a person has superior intelligence, it should be put at the service of humanity, but that individual should receive the same benefits as one with lesser intelligence. All owe society their maximum effort.11

  In Guevara’s view, Castro conveyed his ideas by the “intuitive method;” he was a master at this, and only someone who had experienced it could appreciate his special way of becoming one with the people. In his essay, “Man and Socialism in Cuba,” Guevara goes into raptures about Castro’s powers of suggestion: “In the big public meetings, one can observe something like the dialogue of two tuning forks whose vibrations summon forth new vibrations each in the other. Fidel and the mass begin to vibrate in a dialogue of growing intensity which reaches its culminating point in an abrupt ending crowned by our victorious battle cry.”12 Unlike Castro, Guevara did put pen to paper to express his ideas about Cuba’s new political system; he thus became over time the chief theoretician of fidelismo. After his death, several volumes of his speeches, essays and thoughts about “the new man in Cuba” formed the intellectual basis of Cuban society, even though practice rarely was able to match the theory. The new man continually failed because of the old.

  With the victory of his revolution, Fidel Castro refuted the orthodox Marxist theory that the capitalist system could be overcome only in an industrial society endowed with Marxist consciousness; he also showed that this could be achieved with a small group of non-Communists. Subsequently, Castro and Guevara agreed that Cuba’s economic foundations and power structures had to undergo swift and radical transformation if the pendulum was not to swing back – a logical consequence of this was the removal from power of the bourgeois politicians who had been brought into the first post-Batista government under President Urrutia. For Castro and his leadership group, the point was to prevent the rule of the old elites from being gradually restored under the direction of Washington and Florida. At first, this by no means necessarily meant for him the establishment of a Marxist system, although it is true that the Communists in his milieu became more influential as the pressure mounted from the United States. Very soon this removed any chance of seeking a third way of “peaceful coexistence” between capitalism and socialism, under the aegis of a bourgeois left-wing government. One thing was clear: in order to involve the whole people in the revolution, there had to be radical changes and a new social consciousness had to be created.

  Once the only alternative was counter-revolution, the pace of things speeded up. The moral values and principles that had proved themselves in the Sierra Maestra were now transferred to the realm of everyday life: selflessness and modest living
, discipline and comradeship instead of egoism, material incentives and moral degeneracy. Guevara put it as follows in 1963, in a speech on “Party Militancy” that saw the 26th of July Movement as the engine driving Cuba toward socialism: “We have discovered that the process of the historical development of societies can, in certain cases, be shortened.… We were able to speed things up through the vanguard movement by shortening the various stages and establishing the socialist character of our revolution two years after the Revolution triumphed.”13 The Cuban leadership wanted to gain acceptance for the idea that, with the support of an economically and technologically more developed Soviet Union, it could venture a “great leap forward” of its own.

  In the early 1960s, the main aim was the conversion of Cuba from an export-oriented sugar monoculture to a modern industrial economy less dependent upon imports from abroad. “Industrialization depends upon land reform. We have already covered the first part of this road,” Guevara said in 1960 in a speech on “revolution and egoism.” “Our road is difficult, and our strength is the unity of the workers, the peasants, and all the underprivileged classes.”14 The agrarian population was indeed the strongest pillar of the revolution, because it had gained most from it through the redistribution of land. No longer was anything said of another group whom Castro had to thank for the victory over Batista: the liberal bourgeoisie. “Industrialization is built of sacrifices,” Guevara warned. “A process of accelerated industrialization is no lark, and we will see this in the future.”15