Russian-Cuban Relations since 1992: Continuing Camaraderie in a Post-Soviet World

International Relations • History

BAIN

“A well-documented and exhaustive study. An invaluable resource for academics and researchers who wish to understand the profound nature of the Russo-Cuban relationship.” — Stephen Wilkinson, International Institute for the Study of Cuba, London Metropolitan University “This admirable study draws attention to the often-overlooked relationship between Cuba and Russia. Written on the basis of a deep knowledge of the subject, the availability of new sources, and a willingness to challenge assumptions—while setting it all within a historical context—the book presents a fascinating picture of a relationship that is remarkably still partly driven by the past. It is a welcome addition to the literature.” —Antoni Kapcia, The University of Nottingham

This book addresses the relationship between the Russian Federation and Cuba following the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1992. Mervyn J. Bain analyzes the reasons why the relationship between Moscow and Havana continues to thrive even after the end of the Cold War and the death of international socialism. He argues that there are five main areas to be studied in order to understand why the Russians and Cubans have maintained close cultural and political ties well into the twenty-first century. Bain first explores the effects that the collapse of the Soviet Union had on the relationship between Moscow and Havana in the years since 1992. He goes on to describe how the two countries have adapted (or failed to adapt) to the New World Order and the ways in which their foreign policies have changed the shape of their dialogue with each other. The third and fourth sections detail both the impact of globalization and the increased cultural, economic, and military exchange between Russians and Cubans. Bain concludes by showing readers the importance of placing the Russian-Cuban relationship in an international context, especially highlighting the influence of the United States. This book will interest students of postSoviet Russian foreign policy, Cuban foreign policy, and international relations.

Mervyn J. Bain

is a lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Aberdeen in the United Kingdom.

Russian-Cuban Relations since 1992

“Balanced, informative, and timely, this book is the most thorough and helpful study in recent years to understand this significant strategic partnership—one which promises to become increasingly important. An excellent, well-researched, and insightful work.” —John M. Kirk, Dalhousie University

Russian-Cuban Relations since 1992 continuing camaraderie in a post-soviet world Mervyn J. Bain

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-2423-9 ISBN-10: 0-7391-2423-4 90000 9 780739 124239

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Russian-Cuban Relations since 1992

Russian-Cuban Relations since 1992 Continuing Camaraderie in a Post-Soviet World Mervyn Bain

LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, MD 20706 Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom Copyright © 2008 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bain, Mervyn J., 1973– Russian-Cuban relations since 1992: continuing camaraderie in a post-Soviet world / Mervyn J. Bain. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-2423-9 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-7391-2423-4 (cloth: alk. paper) eISBN-13: 978-0-7391-3005-6 eISBN-10: 0-7391-3005-6 1. Russia (Federation—Relations—Cuba. 2. Cuba—Relations—Russia (Federation) 3. Post-communism—Russia (Federation) I. Title. DK69.3.C9 B348 27.4707291—dc22 2008015323 Printed in the United States of America

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For my Grandfather and Jonathan

Contents

List of Figures

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

1 Russian and Cuban Foreign Policy

1

2 Soviet–Cuban Relations

21

3 The Continuing Role of Ideology

51

4 The Soviet Legacy

83

5 Washington and the Wider World

111

6 Continuing Camaraderie

143

Bibliography

153

Index

163

About the Author

169

vii

List of Figures

Figure 2.1. Soviet-Cuban Trade

33

Figure 3.1. Trade between Moscow and Havana

53

Figure 3.2. Cuban Imports of Russian Goods

54

Figure 3.3. Russian–Cuban Trade 1995–1999

66

Figure 3.4. Russian–Cuban Trade 2000–2005

69

Figure 3.5. Russian Tourists Visiting Cuba

73

ix

Acknowledgments

T

he work for this book has been conducted in a number of different locations including New York City, Miami, Moscow and Havana. These research trips have been funded by the University of Aberdeen, College of Arts and Social Sciences Research Awards from the University of Aberdeen, the British Academy and for my trip to Havana I was awarded a research grant from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland. I would like to thank all the people involved for giving me this funding, which enabled me to conduct my research. I would like to thank Professor Natalia Yegorova of the Institute of Cold War History of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow for the help which she gave me in organising my visit to Russia. With relation to my trip to Cuba I would particularly like to acknowledge the debt which I owe Liliana Fernández of the University of Havana for her help, generosity of sprit and her time which made my visit such a success. I would also like to thank her husband, Arturo, and daughter, Rachel, for making me feel so welcome in their home. I also extend my thanks to the staff at the Centro de Estudios Europeos in Havana for their help during my stay in Cuba. I would also like to thank Professor Stephen White for his continuing support and advice on my trip to Moscow. I would also like to acknowledge the debt which I owe to Professor Trevor Salmon of the University of Aberdeen not just for assistance and suggestions in relation to this book but also in general. In addition, I would also like to show my appreciation to Professor John Kirk for his enthusiasm and support which he continues to show not just to my work but also myself. xi

xii

Acknowledgments

However, most importantly I would like to thank members of my family but particularly my parents and sister, Karen, and brother-in-law, Steve, for their love and support not just with relation to the work for this book but also in general. Without this it would not have been possible to complete this book. Unfortunately, my grandfather never saw the completion of this book but I would like to thank him for his love, great generosity and interest that he always showed not just to me but to his whole family. As a result, I jointly dedicate this book to his memory but also to my newly arrived nephew, and I am extremely proud to say godson, Jonathan.

1

 Russian and Cuban Foreign Policy

I

n October 1995, world leaders converged on the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York City to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the organisation’s creation, with the Russian Federation represented by Boris Yeltsin and Cuba by Fidel Castro. Despite the very close nature of relations between Havana and Moscow during the Cold War, people were unsure whether the two leaders would even greet each other as a result of the dramatic and sudden deterioration in relations that had taken place between their countries in the years since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in December 1991. In the end Yeltsin and Castro did shake hands but this was the height of their pleasantries, with this incident being a graphic illustration of the state of Russian-Cuban relations in the mid1990s. In the subsequent years Yeltsin has died and Castro, to the surprise of many, relinquished the Presidency of Cuba but since their 1995 meeting at the UN, relations between the two countries have improved but its foundations are now very different from Soviet-Cuban relations. Despite this, the relationship between Moscow and Havana in the post Soviet period has surprisingly attracted very little interest from the international academic community. This was very different from the Cold War era when Soviet-Cuban relations had been the focus of much scholarly attention with a number of theories being evident in the academic research that focused on it, but as with the Cold War itself, a great deal of this work was dominated by the realist paradigm in International Relations theory. Its central theme is the inherently anarchic state of international relations and that states act to maximise their authority by utilising their power in order to achieve this 1

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with the foreign policies of both the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War appearing to illustrate this. Realism is by no means a new theory with its routes traceable to Thucydides’ work on the Peloponnesian War, but in the late 1970s Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Relations reinterpreted it. Waltz wrote that the structure of the international system was still key in deciding a state’s behaviour but that new security challenges had appeared as a result of globalisation, chiefly inequality and economic disparity to challenge the traditional ones. In the twenty-first century some believe that Washington’s foreign policy in general, and its Cuban policy specifically, is still dominated by both realism and neo-realism.1 Before the onset of the Cold War and the prominence of realist thinking, the ideas of “collective security” and liberalism had been perceived as the chief paradigm in international relations. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s “fourteen points” at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and the subsequent creation of the League of Nations, in the hope of preventing another global war, had illustrated this. The events of the 1930s and the advent of the Second World War were a fatal blow for liberalism, but again in the 1970s, as with the advent of neo-realism, neo-liberalism evolved from classical liberalism.2 Neo-liberalism has reduced the distinction between high and low politics as this theory believes that in an increasingly interdependent world there are many more actors in international relations than simply states. In addition, neo-liberalists believe that absolute gains are of concern to states whereas neo-realists believe that they are more concerned with relative gains. In 1992, these ideas were revitalised with the publication of Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man, as the end of the Cold War, the spread of democracy in Eastern Europe, and re-democratisation in Latin America all appeared to prove his theory to be correct. In the early 1990s, these ideas in general became prominent within the United States’ governmental thinking, but specifically with relation to Latin America it spawned the appearance of the Washington Consensus.3 The momentous events in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and in the Soviet Union in the early 1990s may have brought Fukuyama’s ideas to the fore, but conversely they also appeared to signal the death knell of Marxist ideology, which had been of the utmost significance in the ideological battle between the Soviet Union and United States during the Cold War. Marxist theory had replaced the classic billiard ball analogy of realism in international relations with that of a model of an octopus and its tentacles, as Marxists believed that class and not nationalism or state actors was the most significant aspect in international relations. Moreover, Marxism stated that many global problems had economic reasons at their core, which has resulted in some people believing that despite the events

Russian and Cuban Foreign Policy

3

in the late 1980s and early 1990s disproving the inevitability of socialism, much of the theory still retains its validity due to the adverse effects of the globalisation process.4 This increase in global interdependence, along with the end of the Cold War, is not just one of the most significant changes to occur in international relations in the last fifty years, but also partly explains the emergence of Dependency Theory in Latin America in the 1960s. This theory tried to provide an explanation for why as both interdependence and globalisation increased many countries in the South remained underdeveloped. Dependency theory states that it is in the interests of the countries of the North for the countries in the South never to break their dependency on them. In addition, some within these poorer countries will act to protect their advantages with Fulgencio Batista in 1950s Cuba, often cited as an example of this “comprador” class who would act in this way. It has often been suggested that dependency has been a key element in the formation of Cuban foreign policy, and will, therefore, be detailed in more depth later in this chapter.5 Similarly, the Great Man Theory, which has also been of great significance in Cuban foreign policy, will also be examined later in this chapter. Throughout history an individual has sometimes emerged who appears to have been able to control the political process due to their complete domination of their country. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin are often seen in this manner. This theory ignores the more formal networks of the foreign policy making process and focuses instead on the idiosyncrasies of the particular individual involved.6 In this manner Moscow’s decision to station nuclear weapons in Cuba in 1962 is sometimes explained by Nikhita Khrushchev’s risk-taking personality. This does undoubtedly partly explain the decision, but ignores the role played in it by the remaining members of the politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).7 Graham Allison’s seminal work on the Cuban Missile Crisis, Essence of Decision. Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis reiterates this, as he outlines three models that may provide an explanation for Moscow’s decision to deploy nuclear weapons in Cuba, which are all very different from the Great Man Theory. Security and stability are key in Model I, Model II suggests that various organizations within a government all have their own reasons for making a decision while Model III states that the individuals involved all act while taking careful consideration of the political situation within their own country. Allison analyses the Soviet decision-making process in the summer of 1962 using these three different models, but they can also be applied to the study of foreign-policy making in general.8 As stated, the end of the Cold War has been one of the most seismic changes to occur in international relations, which many of these traditional theories had failed to predict. As a result of this, a number of new

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theories have recently appeared in international relations, not least constructivism. This theory attempts to explain international relations by utilising ideas from sociology with the actors’ knowledge being key in how they interpreted and constructed social reality. Therefore, the significance of ideas, history and culture are all prominent in constructivism, as it focuses not just on traditional military security but also on the increasing number of different security threats that have come to the fore in the post Cold War era and seeks to find alternative explanations for them. This has included economic disparity, social issues, the environment, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and not least since the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States, which some believe has left international relations fundamentally altered, terrorism.9 These events have not just led to the evolution of constructivism but in 1993 Samuel Huntington published his article “The clash of civilisations?” in the journal Foreign Affairs which provided a vastly different analysis and conclusions from those drawn by Fukuyama on the same events. Huntington divided the world into eight different civilisations and predicted a much less stable global situation with clashes appearing between these different civilisations. Huntington believed that wars would no longer occur as a result of ideology but instead due to these clashes.10 When published these ideas caused much controversy but attracted great public interest in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. A vast variety of different theories have evolved since the creation of International Relations as an academic subject with each attracting attention before world events changed and focus has moved elsewhere. As a result of the long duration of relations between Moscow and Havana that has spanned the end of the Cold War a number of these different theories will be significant for this work.

MOSCOW AND THE WORLD Stephen White has written on a variety of occasions that with regards to Russia’s relationship with the outside world some common themes and questions transcend not just the Soviet and post-Soviet eras but also even the czarist one. This includes the desire for warm water harbours but significantly, as a result of geography, also the fundamental question of Russia’s role in world affairs.11 This is vital in explaining Moscow’s relationship with Havana in the period since 1992 and will therefore be returned to on a number of occasions throughout the remainder of this book. Ideology, or more specifically Marxist-Leninist ideology, was key to providing the answer to this question in the Soviet period as it formed the

Russian and Cuban Foreign Policy

5

cornerstone of both its society and Moscow’s foreign policy. Moreover, successive Soviet leaders from Joseph Stalin onwards also used it as a tool to provide legitimacy and revolutionary heritage to Karl Marx, Frederick Engels and Vladimir Lenin.12 With regards to foreign policy, MarxistLeninism did not just believe in the inevitability of world revolution but also, as previously outlined, that class was more important than nationalism. Partly as a result of this, Moscow was able to acquire a global presence during the Soviet era. Marxist-Leninism may have provided the foundations of Soviet foreign policy but this did not prevent a number of theoretical problems appearing for Soviet ideologues throughout the twentieth century. This included both the ideas of “peaceful coexistence” with the West and, due to the lack of a working class, the decolonisation process that took place in the Developing World after World War Two.13 Conversely, the accusation has also existed that Soviet foreign policy during the Cold War was driven more by the realist model rather than by Marxist-Leninism, with the events in Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and the subsequent appearance of the “Brezhnev Doctrine,” all being motivated more by Moscow’s desire for power for its own sake rather than by the theories of Marx or Lenin.14 In the late 1980s not only was the “Brezhnev Doctrine” questioned by the reforms implemented by Mikhail Gorbachev, but also even aspects of Marxist-Leninism. The “new thinking” that appeared in Soviet foreign policy fundamentally changed international relations as it reduced tension between the superpowers, helped end the Cold War, but also impacted massively on Moscow’s relationship with Havana.15 This will be outlined in more detail in chapter 2. If Gorbachev’s reforms led to a re-thinking of many long-held foreign policy beliefs a plethora of questions regarding Moscow’s foreign policy appeared with the end of the Cold War and disintegration of the Soviet Union. As stated, some of these were not new but others, such as the nature of Russia’s security threats, were. However, the most fundamental question was a return of the age-old one of Moscow’s role in the world. On this White has written, “. . . the new Russia had to accommodate itself to a world in which it was no longer a superpower, and in which its economic weakness mattered more than a stockpile of rusting missiles.”16 As this quote suggests, Boris Yeltsin’s government did not just face questions regarding its foreign policy but also a number of internal ones including the continued poor state of the national economy. Moreover, Moscow had to face a number of new problems that it never before had to deal with. This was most certainly the case with the former Soviet republics, as Moscow had to cultivate ties with its “near abroad.” On this Margot Light has written, “The loss of the empire led to confusion about

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Russia’s role in the world.”17 This situation was only further complicated by Russia becoming the legal successor to the Soviet Union. Aspects of this inheritance, such as the Russian Federation obtaining the Soviet Union’s place in the UN General Assembly and Security Council, made it appear that Moscow still had a significant global influence. However, the Russian Federation also inherited the debt that many countries in the Developing World owed to Moscow which had been accumulated during the Soviet era. This was most certainly the case with Cuba and it would have a great impact on Russian-Cuban relations in the 1990s. This will be examined at some length in chapter 4. In this difficult situation the Yeltsin administration, most of whom had very little foreign policy experience, turned to their Cold War enemy, but the one remaining superpower, the United States, for help. Relations with Washington would come to dominate Moscow’s foreign policy in the early 1990s, and Bobo Lo would later write, “During the Yeltsin period, America represented the single greatest external influence on Russian foreign policy.”18 Russian-United States relations in the 1990s undoubtedly improved from the Cold War era with a great many summits being held between the two countries throughout the decade.19 The result of this was that Russian foreign policy was not just very different from that pursued by Moscow during the Soviet era but also a debate within the Russian Federation regarding foreign policy appeared, with the main protagonists being Liberal Westernizers, Pragmatic Nationalists and Fundamental Nationalists. This debate was also very closely associated with the internal Russian situation, as a number of Yeltsin’s polices, but particularly the implementation of market reforms, were disliked by some Russians. Many thought that these reforms, in conjunction with his pro-U.S. foreign policy, had resulted in an increase in Russian dependency on the United States, which they found gravely offensive to Russian nationalism. It also gave rise to the question of what type of foreign policy Russia was following, which was only further complicated by the haphazard nature of Yeltsin’s management style. MarxistLeninism may have been confined to history but it was replaced by a number of other ideologies, with constructivism appearing to be significant as were liberalism and great power ideology amongst others.20 Again, this was of utmost significance for Russian-Cuban relations and will be examined in much more depth in chapter 3. As the 1990s progressed, a change in Moscow’s foreign policy took place with the importance of relations with the United States being replaced in Russia’s priorities by relations with its “near abroad” and Europe. This was partly driven by the electoral changes taking place within Russia as more nationalistic parties began to come to the fore from the time of the 1993 Duma elections onwards. People were not just unhappy

Russian and Cuban Foreign Policy

7

with the importance which Moscow attached to its relationship with the United States, but many also blamed the economic difficulties, which continued to plague Russia, on the West due to the policies which the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank had imposed on Russia.21 Moreover, the Yeltsin government was becoming increasingly disillusioned with Washington as it had not received the aid and assistance which it had hoped for. Andrei Kozyrev, who had been closely associated with the pro-U.S. stance, resigning as Foreign Minister in December 1995, illustrated this change in policy. White has written of this, “In the end he became a ‘virtual sacrifice’ to the new Duma.”22 Kozyrev’s replacement as Foreign Minister, Yevgeny Primakov, was not just very different to his predecessor due to his education and career path but also in his global outlook. Primakov believed in “spheres of influence” and saw the world in much more multipolar terms than Kozyrev had, and in conjunction with the nationalistic tendencies prevalent within the Russian Federation, wanted Moscow to try and reassert itself in international relations.23 This led to a number of flashpoints with the West appearing. The most prominent were over North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) action in the former Yugoslavia which offended Slavic sensibilities, and Moscow disliking the treatment that its friend Saddam Hussein received from the West. In addition, Russia was gravely concerned at the NATO expansion to the east that brought the organisation’s influence to the very borders of the Russian Federation. These events did not go unnoticed in Cuba, with particularly Cuban academia commenting upon them, as they had repercussions for Russian-Cuban relations and will therefore be analysed more fully in chapter 5. Moreover, this chapter will also detail the importance of Primakov himself in the improvement in RussianCuban relations. By the end of the 1990s Russian foreign policy and its objectives were very different from the beginning of the decade with a much less pro-U.S. and more multipolar stance being taken.24 It had appeared the nationalistic tendencies had defeated the Liberal Westernizers. As the world entered a new millennium Vladimir Putin became the President of the Russian Federation, which prompted the question of “Who is Mr Putin?” to arise in the West, as very little was known about him except for his KGB past. Western uncertainty only increased as a result of his trips to North Korea and Cuba in the infancy of his presidency. This led Andrei Grachev to comment, “In those first few months in office, Putin seemed to be much more at ease with the leaders of former client states of the Soviet Union . . . than with his Western counterparts.”25 This, however, ignored the fact that when Putin became Russian President he was the first resident of the Kremlin since Yury Andropov who had experience of living outside the borders of the Soviet Union or Russian Federation due to being stationed in the German Democratic Republic (GDR)

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from 1985 to 1990. This led some people to even believe that Putin had somewhat of a pro-European outlook.26 However, this did not mean that he ignored the United States with relations between Moscow and Washington visibly improving after Putin met U.S. President George Bush in Slovenia in June 2001. Moreover, Putin also gave the U.S. Russian backing and use of air bases in Central Asia after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. If this had been done in the hope of cultivating closer ties with the United States Putin was left disappointed, as he did not appear to have gained what he hoped from Washington. This resulted in him aligning Russia with Germany and France with regards U.S. and UK action in Iraq in 2003. On this Richard Pipes has commented, “With the Germans and the French, the Russians can balance the United States. Russia would not be a superpower, but it would be part of a superpower complex. They can only be a junior partner with the United States.”27 This has been important as Russian nationalism continued to be significant in the foreign policy pursued by Putin’s government. The economic aspect of foreign relations has also increased in importance, as has been illustrated by the sale of military hardware to Latin American countries with the Venezuelan purchase of 100,000 Kalashnikovs attracting most attention.28 The importance of this economic aspect in Russian foreign policy in Russian-Cuban relations cannot be overestimated, but has led many to believe that Putin has in general been following a very pragmatic approach to foreign policy. This, however, has not prevented the recent tension between Moscow and Washington over U.S. plans to develop an antimissile defence system and U.S. concerns over the state of democracy within the Russian Federation. Grachev has even suggested that a “Putin Doctrine” has appeared which has close traditions to, and some Soviet features, but also nationalistic sentiments and anti-Western reflexes.29 Dmitrii Medvedev may have won the Russian Presidential election in March 2008 by winning just over 70 percent of the vote but this change in the main resident of the Kremlin is unlikely to herald a dramatic change in Moscow’s foreign policy. Some believe that Medvedev may oversee a slight change in style but it would be a great surprise if this also applied to the substance of Moscow’s foreign policy. This results from Medvedev’s promise to continue with Putin’s policies, the fact that Putin is likely to remain highly influential in Russian politics as a consequence of being appointed Prime Minister and also because Putin’s United Party easily won the elections held in December 2007. It won over 64 percent of the vote and increased its representation in the State Duma to 315 seats from a total of 450, not just illustrating the popularity of Putin’s policies but also again making any great change in Russian foreign policy both unlikely and difficult to implement.

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HAVANA AND THE WORLD Revolutionary Cuba’s foreign policy has always attracted a great deal of scholarly attention, in no small part as the result of a Caribbean island being able to become a prominent player in international relations, which led Jorge Domínguez to write, “For many years . . . relatively weak Cuba behaved as if it were a major power.”30 During the Cold War Havana’s relationship with Moscow was vital to this, but since 1992 and the disappearance of the Soviet Union, Cuban foreign policy has continued to attract the attention of the academic community. Michael Erisman in Cuba’s Foreign Relations in a Post-Soviet World has outlined four basic ideas that he believes have been prominent in Cuba’s foreign policy since January 1959. The first one is realism, which as detailed, was prevalent in both Moscow and Washington’s foreign policies during the Cold War as both superpowers attempted to maximise their power. It is thought that Cuba used its foreign policy not just to maximise its power but also to move the West’s attention from the Caribbean to other parts of the world which it was hoped would help increase its own security. This was particularly the case in the early 1960s as the Cuban government feared a possible U.S. military invasion of the island.31 Some believe that it was not classical realism that the Cuban government adhered to but instead realist pragmatism. This is very similar to the realist model, but significantly the survival of the revolution was always the most important consideration in all foreign policy decisions made by the Castro regime even if some of these were not always what might have been expected. One of the most famous examples of this was Castro’s decision to back the Warsaw Pact action in Czechoslovakia in August 1968. Edward González believes that it was also prevalent in the 1970s, with Carlos Rafael Rodríguez being one of the main adherents of this pragmatic approach. This was despite the Cuban Revolution having gone through an institutionalization process, which resulted in the appearance of a number of different groups in the Cuban elite, such as the one headed by Rodríguez.32 Pragmatism if anything has even increased in importance in Havana’s foreign policy in the post-Soviet world, as the island has attempted to recover from the loss of its closest political and economic ally. This had a number of implications for Russian-Cuban relations, some of which were unforeseen, and will therefore be returned to on various occasions throughout this book. Erisman believes that although realism was and continues to be significant in Cuban foreign policy it is much more complex and nuanced. He writes that adherence to a strict realist model ignores the extremely strong nationalist strands in the Cuban Revolution, which have been prevalent since its victory in January 1959.33 The second core theme in Cuba’s foreign

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policy that Erisman outlines is that of a revolutionary crusade, and again González’s writings coincide with this belief. In a similar fashion to the Bolsheviks in Russia in the years immediately after the Russian Revolution, the Cuban ruling elite believed that the Cuban Revolution would herald the appearance of other revolutions. This certainly appeared to be the case in the 1960s with Havana’s very public, and high profile, internationalism which aimed to create revolutions in various parts of the world.34 This policy did not last long as it failed to produce another successful revolution, graphically illustrated by Ernesto Guevara’s death in October 1967. From this point onwards Cuba attempted to cultivate state-to-state relations, just as the Soviet Union had in the 1920s, which is a vastly different approach to foreign policy than the ideas of the revolutionary crusade. These ideas decreased still further in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but it could be argued that it has returned, but at a much reduced level, with the appearance of a number of left leaning governments in Latin America at the start of the twenty-first century that has spawned the appearance of both the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) and an apparent anti-U.S. bloc within the region.35 As detailed earlier in the chapter, a person sometimes appears who is able to dominate their country’s political arena, which since January 1959 has certainly been the case with Fidel Castro in Cuba. This resulted in some believing that Fidelista peronalismo, the specific Cuban version of the Great Man Theory, was prominent in Cuban foreign policy. Castro’s force of character and personality would certainly suggest this to be the case, and Carlos Montaner in Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution makes this very point.36 However, Erisman writes that from the 1970s the revolution has become increasingly institutionalized, which began partly as a result of improved relations with Moscow, but that this safeguarded its future if Castro was to disappear from the political scene. The result was that Castro could not simply do as he pleased with the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), the National Assembly and the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) all being significant in the Cuban decision making process. As outlined, González has written of the more pragmatic line followed by some within the Cuban government but the Cuban Armed Forces (FAR), Ministry of Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR) and the remnants of the original ruling elite have also all been involved in the formation of Cuban foreign policy since the mid-1970s. Writing in 1976 González wrote, “In sum, Fidel and his brother remain solidly entrenched in the Cuban political system. Nevertheless, it is evident that Cuba’s ruling coalition has been significantly broadened in recent years.”37 This may have been written over thirty years ago, but since August 2006 it has been graphically illustrated to the world that Cuban politics in general, and foreign policy

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specifically, are not the subject of Fidel Castro’s personal whim due to the decreasing role that he has played in the everyday political life of the island that culminated in February 2008 in his decision to relinquish the Cuban Presidency. From the time of joint Cuban and Soviet action in Africa in the mid1970s, the surrogate/superclient thesis attracted much academic attention with U.S. Senator Daniel Moynihan even describing the FAR as the “Ghurkhas of the Russian Empire.” The surrogate thesis suggests that Moscow had control over both Cuba’s internal and foreign policies, whereas, the superclient thesis, although giving Havana more power in the relationship, stated that the Soviet Union ultimately had the right of veto over Cuba’s actions.38 During the Cold War, Havana’s relationship with Moscow was undoubtedly of the utmost significance for the Cuban Revolution, and the security it provided helped explain Havana’s overseas adventures. However, during the Soviet era this thesis was criticised for ignoring the strong nationalistic strands evident in the revolution since its inception. This is a crucial omission and, moreover, speeches by the Cuban elite and documents that have recently become available also disprove this theory.39 However, in the post-Soviet world the surrogate/superclient thesis is most certainly no longer relevant to Cuban foreign policy. Erisman adds dependency and counter dependency to the theories prevalent in Cuban foreign policy. Cuba would appear to be a classic example of dependency as the island has been dominated by outside powers since the time of the conquest. This was firstly Spain and then, from the end of the nineteenth century, the United States, and some would argue that this continued even after the Cuban Revolution with dependency on the United States being merely replaced by dependency on the Soviet Union.40 Even while Soviet-Cuban relations were in existence Erisman writes that the Castro regime continually tried to end this situation, as a result of the importance of nationalism in the Cuban Revolution. This was most apparent in Havana’s attempts to reduce its reliance on Moscow by diversifying both its political and economic policies. The result Erisman believes is counter dependency, the antithesis of the surrogate thesis, as these policies also resulted in the Cuban regime acquiring bargaining power, or leverage, in Moscow, which provided Havana with a semblance of ‘control’ over Soviet-Cuban relations.41 Throughout the relationship Havana continually strove to show its independence from and reduce its dependence on the Soviet Union. In the 1990s as Cuba attempted to come to terms with the loss of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the New World Order this has increased in importance for Havana with John Kirk having written that at this time,

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“The greatest single task in terms of foreign policy facing the Cuban government in the early 1990s, however, was how to keep the traditional (self-declared) enemy at bay.”42 Erisman believes that despite the odds being stacked against the Caribbean island it has been able to achieve this by a diversification of its foreign policy, which was done in the pursuit of acquiring greater economic and political space.43 The results of this policy have been numerous and varied, but they have had a fundamental impact of Havana’s relationship with Moscow in the period from 1992 onwards. As stated, some of these may have been unforeseen, but this is a topic that will be examined throughout this book. In relation to this, dependency issues have retained their significance in the island’s foreign policy, but it has evolved with Havana playing a much more significant role in hemispheric organisations with the Cuban government attempting to keep their influence in international relations by championing development issues and anti-globalisation ideas. The staging in the Cuban capital of anti-globalisation conferences in both 1999 and 2001 and the Nonaligned Movement Congress in September 2006 allowed the island’s government to showcase the significance of these ideas in their foreign policy.44 Moreover, with the recent appearance of the ALBA in Latin America this has if anything increased in significance for the Cuban regime. As the Cuban Revolution approaches its fiftieth anniversary Kirk does not only believe that this will remain an important aspect of Cuba’s foreign policy for the foreseeable future but also that its outcome with regards foreign policy is that contemporary Cuba has “an approach that is totally sui generis, following its own blend of principles and pragmatism, self-interest and selflessness, and fuelled by a volatile blend of nationalism and pride in being distinctive.”45 In a similar manner to Dmitrii Medvedev replacing Vladimir Putin as Russia President it is unlikely that there will be any dramatic change in Cuba’s approach to foreign policy as a result of Fidel Castro’s surprising announcement in February 2008 to give up the Presidency of Cuba. Some may perceive Raúl as a possible reformer but since August 2006 when he became Cuba’s acting President due to his brother’s ill-health he has not overseen any widespread reform of the island’s foreign policy. Moreover, the chance of this commencing due to Fidel’s further removal from the everyday politics of the island remains low especially as much of Raúl’s attention may have to be focused on the economy, but the chances of any widespread reform are further reduced as a the result of the appointment of Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, another guerrilla war veteran, as Cuba’s Vice President instead of one of the island’s younger politicians. This would appear to signal that it is more likely that a cautious approach in general and in foreign policy specifically will be pursued for the foreseeable future instead of the implementation of far reaching reforms.

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The evolution of both Russian and Cuban foreign policy in the postSoviet world has obviously impacted hugely on Russian-Cuban relations which since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in December 1991, has become the almost ‘forgotten’ relationship in international relations and been virtually ignored by the academic community. In 1992, their focus of attention at first moved to the question of the very survival of the Cuban Revolution after the loss of its largest trading partner and staunch political ally, which only increased with the actions of the United States government in the 1990s, as it attempted to hasten the demise of the Castro regime by tightening the trade embargo on Cuba still further. In relation to this, the balsero crisis in the late summer of 1994, when many Cubans fled the island for the United States, was taken as evidence of the Cuban Revolution’s permanent decline. More recently academic scrutiny has moved to the impact that Fidel Castro’s poor health has had for the island with this only likely to further increase due to Raúl’s permanent succession to the Cuban Presidency in February 2008. With relation to Cuba’s foreign policy academic focus will continue to be dominated by Havana’s relationship with Washington to the detriment of both the island’s other bilateral relationships in general and Russian-Cuban relations specifically. In addition, the relationship between Moscow and Havana has also attracted very little media attention with the situation regarding the Lourdes listening post and Vladimir Putin’s trip to Cuba in December 2000 being notable exceptions. As a result of this, very little has been written on the relationship that has evolved between Moscow and Havana in the period since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, which is surprisingly also true of both Russian and Cuban academics. In the early 1990s studies on the effects of the disappearance of the Soviet Union for the Cuban economy were published, most noticeably Cuba after the Cold War edited by Carmelo Mesa-Lago, but these did not provide analysis on either why the relationship ended or the reasons for a semblance of it continuing after the disintegration of the Soviet Union.46 Nicola Miller has, however, written a chapter entitled, “Trying to Stay Friends: Cuba’s Relations with Russia and Eastern Europe in the Age of U.S. Supremacy” that was included in Morris Morely and Chris McGillion’s book Cuba, the United States, and the Post-Cold War World. The International Dimensions of the Washington-Havana Relationship. This chapter takes a much broader approach to the topic as it does not concentrate solely on relations between Havana and Moscow but also analyses Cuba’s relationship with the other European countries of the former Soviet bloc. More recently W. Alejandro Sanchez Nieto has published an article entitled “Cuba and Russia: Love is Better the Second Time Around” that was published in Cuban Affairs in 2007.47 This work is not only taken very much from the

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perspective of a Cuban American scholar but also only examines the period from the year 2000 onwards. The result is that it omits the highly significant period of the 1990s as relations between Moscow and Havana not only suffered a dramatic downturn when compared to the Soviet period, but also an upturn from the mid-1990s onwards. This is crucial as a number of the reasons for both are still of fundamental importance to the relationship that continues to flourish between the two countries as the Cuban Revolution approaches its fiftieth anniversary. Some books have been published in Russia including Fidel Kastro Politicheskaya Biogoafiya written by N.S. Leonov and V.A. Borodaev, Gavana-Moskva: Pamiotnye Gody by Vitali Vorotnikov, Fidel Kastro: neistovgi komandante Ostrava svobody written by I.U. Gavrikov and Politicheskaia istorii Kuba XX Veka by Eugenio Larin.48 Not only do these utilise almost exclusively Russian sources but are more general books on Cuba or the relationship between Havana and Moscow which tend to concentrate almost exclusively on Soviet-Cuban relations to the detriment of the post-Soviet period. This book will fill this scholarly gap that exists and provide analysis on this ignored and ‘forgotten’ relationship and analyse both the period from 1992 to the year 2000 and the subsequent years of the new millennium. It will examine not just the reasons and pressures which were instrumental in its deterioration in the years immediately after 1991 but also in its improvement from the mid-1990s onwards, which resulted by the end of the twentieth century in Russia remaining one of Cuba’s most important trading partners. This was very different from the years 1992 to 1994. Moreover, no other work of this length has been published on this specific topic. Due to its contemporary nature and the characteristics of both governments documental evidence at the moment does not exist. However, this book will benefit from the publication of number of different memoir sources since 1992 which includes Boris Yeltsin, Andrei Kozyrev, Yevgeny Primakov and perhaps turning his attention to his legacy Fidel Castro has also recently published, in conjunction with the French journalist Ignacio Ramonet, his thoughts on his time in the Cuban political spotlight. Although not a memoir in its truest sense it is undoubtedly highly significant due to the general lack of such Cuban sources, which is partly the result of the island’s political system. Alina Revuelta Fernández, Castro’s illegitimate daughter, has, however, published her memoirs after defecting to the United States.49 Although it is more a personal account of her relationship with her father rather than a political work it is still important. These memoir sources that do exist will be augmented by both interviews with Russian and Cuban academics who specialise in the study of each other’s country if not the relationship between the two and also the use of sources that are only available in Russia and Cuba. This in-

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cludes both data collected for the Cuban Foreign Ministry (MINREX) and the Russian embassy in Havana. The importance of counter-dependency in Russian-Cuban relations may have fallen in the period since 1991 but the framework of dependency, which Erisman has outlined, which was significant in Cuban foreign policy in general and in Soviet-Cuban relations has, in my opinion, retained its significance in the relationship that has evolved between Havana and Moscow in the post-Soviet world and will be important for this work. In addition, pragmatism and more specifically realist pragmatism will also be crucial because they were also of great significance throughout the revolutionary period of Cuban history, but in light of many of the reforms made in Cuba in the 1990s and the globalisation process in general, continue to be. Moreover, as the Russian Federation also adapted to the appearance of the New World Order, realist pragmatism has also become a fundamental aspect of the foreign policy pursued by Moscow in the post-Soviet era. In addition to this, the high prevalence of nationalism within the foreign policies pursued by both countries will also be significant for this work. Realist pragmatism and nationalism continue to be significant in contemporary Cuban foreign policy while Russian foreign policy also contains realist pragmatism and nationalism but these ideas only partly explain the deterioration and subsequent improvement in Russian-Cuban relations that have occurred in the years since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The legacy from the Soviet era has cast a colossal shadow over the relationship in the period since 1991. Due to the all-encompassing nature of SovietCuban relations this is not surprising, but this legacy was not just significant in explaining the deterioration in the years 1992 to 1994 but, conversely, also their improvement from 1995 onwards. In the Gorbachev era of SovietCuban relations a resentment towards the Caribbean island had begun to appear in the Soviet Union, in no small part the result of glasnost, but this continued after its disintegration with many in the Russian Federation delighted to have this ‘noose’ finally removed from around their country’s neck. However, over time the realisation began to form in both countries that in many ways it was easier, and even cheaper, for some semblance of the relationship to continue. It was not just economic reasons that drove this, but also some within both countries continuing to have affinity for the other. This was particularly the case in Russia but as the prominence of both countries on the global stage diminished in the immediate aftermath of the implosion of the Soviet Union a relationship between Moscow and Havana illustrated both countries’ more glorious pasts. A study of the work of both academic and journalists in Russia and Cuba will also be conducted which will further enrich this study as it will provide both an important, but different, perspective of these events. In addition to this, it will

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also help explain this change in perception which took place in both Russia and Cuba of each other which is vital in the improvement in the relationship from the mid-1990s onwards. Apart from analysing the Soviet legacy an examination of the variety of different pressures that now underpin the relationship will also be conducted. Some of these are vastly different from those of the Soviet era, but interestingly some have not only survived the end of Soviet-Cuban relations, while others have remerged in the 1990s but they have continued to help shape the contemporary relationship. Both their significance and reasons for their survival will be detailed. Chapter 2 will provide a general history of Soviet-Cuban relations, which is not just important in itself but will also allow the Soviet legacy to be concluded. Chapter 3 will analyse the significance of ideology in relations between Moscow and Havana, which in the Soviet era provided a cornerstone of the relationship. The importance of Marxist-Leninism may have disappeared but ideology, and ironically the neoliberal economic model, has been very important in the ‘new’ relationship that has evolved. Chapter 4 will detail the effects that the Soviet legacy, as outlined above, has and continues to play in Russian-Cuban relations. Chapter 5 will analyse the significance of both the United States and the global community in general, in Russian-Cuban relations. Particular attention will be given to the recent apparent move to the left of many countries in Latin America and the appearance of ALBA. In addition to this, the changes made to both Russian and Cuban foreign policies, detailed earlier in this chapter, will also be crucial in explaining relations between Havana and Moscow in the post-Soviet world.

NOTES 1. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, (Indianapolis: Hackett Pub, Co, 1998). Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, (New York: Knopf, 1972). Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics, (New York: Random House, 1979). Jorge Domínguez, “U.S.-Cuban Relations: From the Cold War to the Colder War” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Volume 39, No. 3 (Autumn 1997), 58. 2. Chris Brown, Understanding International Relations, (New York: Palgrave, 2001). 3. M.J. Smith, “Liberalism and International Reform” in Traditions of International Ethics, ed. T. Nardin & D. Mapel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). J.L. Richardson, “Contending Liberalism: Past and Present,” European Journal of International Relations, 3:1 (1997) 5–33. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, (London: Penguin, 1992). 4. Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1982). Andrew Gamble, Timewalkers: The Prehistory of Global Colonisation, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).

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5. Andre Gunder Frank, Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution: Essays on the Development and Underdevelopment and the Immediate Enemy, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969). Michael Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations in a PostSoviet World, (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), 43–45. 6. Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations, 2000, 30-33. Daniel L. Byman & Kenneth M. Pollack, “Let Us Now Praise Great Men: Bringing the Statesmen Back In,” International Security, Vol 25, No. 4 (Spring 2001), 107–46. 7. Aleksandr Fursenko & Timothy Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble” The Secret History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, (London: John Murray, 1997), 177–83. 8. Graham T. Allison, Essence of a Decision. Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1971). 9. Emanuel Alder, “Constructivism,” in Handbook of International Relations, ed. Walter Carlneas, Beth Simmons & Thomas Risse (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003) 95–118. M. Hollis & S. Smith, Explaining and Understanding International Relations, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) 196–216. Alan Collins, Contemporary Security Studies, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 10. Samuel P. Huntington, “The clash of civilisations?” Foreign Affairs (Summer 1993), 22–49. 11. Stephen White has stated that the question of Russian identity has existed throughout its history, with some believing that it possesses its own cultural heritage due to existence of the Orthodox Church. Moreover, geography further complicates the question with Russia spanning both Europe and Asia. Stephen White, Gorbachev and After, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) 179–80. Stephen White, Russia’s New Politics. The Management of a Postcommunist Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) 213. Allen Lynch has also written that with regards to its role in the world Russia faced an identity crisis in the early 1990s. Allen C. Lynch, “The Realism of Russia’s Foreign Policy,” Europe-Asia Studies, Volume 53, No. 1, (2001), 7–9. 12. Margot Light, The Soviet Theory of International Relations, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), 1–2, 319. 13. Light, The Soviet Theory, 1988, 316–21. 14. The basis of this doctrine was that once a country had become socialist it was not theoretically possible for it to move back to capitalism. Although it was given this name in 1968 it had also been the reason for the action taken in Hungary twelve years earlier. In the aftermath of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia Brezhnev wrote “Defence of Socialism in the Highest International Duty” which was published in Pravda. He wrote, “the defence of socialism in Czechoslovakia is not only the internal affair of that country’s people but is also a problem of defending the positions of world socialism.” Pravda 22 August 1968, 1. 15. A. Lynch, “Does Gorbachev Matter Anymore?” Foreign Affairs, 69, (Summer, 1990), 25. White, Gorbachev and After, 12–14. Richard Sakwa, Gorbachev and his Reforms 1985 to 1990, (New York: Philip Allan, 1990), 20–25. Mervyn J. Bain, SovietCuban Relations 1985 to 1991. Changing Perceptions in Moscow and Havana, (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007). 16. White, Russia’s New Politics, 2004, 215. 17. Margot Light, “Foreign Policy” in Developments in Russian Politics, ed. Stephen Hite, Zvi Gitelman & Richard Sakwa (London: Palgrave Macmillan,

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2005). 225. On Russia becoming the legal successor of the Soviet Union Martin Malia has written, “the Yeltsin government inherited only rubble from the past.” Martin Malia, “Martin Malia: History Lessons,” in Conversations on Russia: Reform from Yeltsin to Putin, ed. Padma Desai, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 346. 18. Bobo Lo, Russian Foreign Policy in the Post-Soviet Era. Reality, Illusion and Mythmaking, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 8. 19. White, Russia’s New Politics, 2004, 222–29. 20. For this debate see: Margot Light, “Foreign Policy Thinking” in Internal Factors in Russian Foreign Policy, ed. Alex Pravda, Roy Alison and Margot Light, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 33–100. Neil Malcolm and Alex Pravda, “Democratization and Russian Foreign Policy,” International Affairs, 72, 3, (1996), 537–52. Paul Kubicek, “Russian Foreign Policy and the West,” Political Science Journal, Volume 114, Number 4, (1999–2000), 547–50. 21. Light, “Foreign Policy Thinking,” 82–83. 22. White, Russia’s New Politics, 2004, 229. 23. White, Russia’s New Politics, 2004, 230. Lynch, “The Realism of Russia’s Foreign Policy,” 9–12. 24. White, Russia’s New Politics, 2004, 231–39. 25. Andrei Grachev, “Putin’s Foreign Policy Choices,” in Leading Russia. Putin in Perspective. Essays in Honour of Archie Brown, ed., Alex Pravda, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) 256. Andrew Jack has also made this point that Putin’s foreign policy during his first year in office “offered ambiguous signals.” Andrew Jack, Inside Putin’s Russia. Can There Be Reform Without Democracy? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 258. 26. Bobo Lo, Vladimir Putin and the Evolution of Russian Foreign Policy, (Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 2003), 16. 27. Richard Pipes, “Richard Pipes. The Past in the Present,” in Conversations on Russia, 2006, 363. Jack has also made the point that Putin was disappointed with the U.S. reaction to his offers after 11 September 2001. Jack, Inside Putin’s Russia, 2004, 289. 28. The sale of Russian military goods to Latin America has been a very important aspect of the country’s recent increased interest in the continent. In April 2007, RIA Novosti reported that Rosoboronexport was taking part in the Latin America Aero and Defense (LAAD) arms exhibition held in Rio de Janeiro. See http://www .rian.ru/russia/20070417 (25 April 2007). In June 2007, Hugo Chávez made a sixday trip to Russia. See http://www.miamiherald.com (29 June 2007). 29. Grachev, “Putin’s Foreign Policy Choices,” 262–64. Sergei Rogov, “Sergei Rogov. In Search of Checks and Balances at Home and Abroad,” in Conversations on Russia, 2006, 219. 30. Domínguez, “From the Cold War to the Colder War,” 52. 31. Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations, 2000, 23–26. The recently declassified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents on covert operations against Cuba further illustrate Washington’s desire to topple the Castro regime at this time. See http://www.foia.cia.gov/browse_docs.asp (21 Sept. 2007). 32. Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations, 2000, 25–26. J. Levesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution Ideological and Strategic Perspectives (New York: Praeger Publish-

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ers, 1978), 147–49. Edward González, “Complexities of Cuban Foreign Policy,” Problems of Communism, Volume XXVI, (November–December 1977), 3. 33. Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations, 2000, 26. 34. Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations, 2000, 26–30. González, “Complexities of Cuban Foreign Policy,” 3. 35. Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations, 2000, 29–30. 36. Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations, 2000, 30–33. Carlos Alberto Montaner, Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution: age, position, character, destiny, personality and ambition, (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1989). 37. Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations, 2000, 32-33. González, “Complexities of Cuban Foreign Policy,” 1–15. Domínguez also repeats this point. Jorge Domínguez, To Make A World Safe For Revolution. Cuba’s Foreign Policy, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 248. Antoni Kapcia, “Political Change in Cuba: The Domestic Context for Foreign Policy” in Redefining Cuban Foreign Policy. The Impact of the “Special Period,” ed. Michael Erisman and John H. Kirk, (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006), 24–27. 38. Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations, 2000, 33–36. 39. Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations, 2000, 35–36. González, “Complexities of Cuban Foreign Policy,” 10–13. Fidel Castro, “Angola: African Giron” in Fidel Castro Speeches. Cuba’s Internationalist Foreign Policy, (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1981), 91–92. “Transcript of Meeting between US Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig, Jr, and Cuban Vice Premier Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, México City, 23 November 1981” in Cold War International History Project Bulletin, Issues 8–9, 210. 40. Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations, 2000, 36–48. 41. Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations, 2000, 43–47. 42. John H. Kirk, “Defying the Odds: Five Conclusions about Cuban Foreign Policy,” in Redefining Cuban Foreign Policy ed. Erisman and Kirk, 2006, 334. 43. Michael H. Erisman, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Survival Strategy in Cuba’s New Foreign Policy,” in Redefining Cuban Foreign Policy, 2006, 3–5. 44. “The Globalization Process and Latin America,” Latinskaia Amerika, No. 8, 2001, 9–21. In addition, Cuba has played a more prominent role in a number of regional organisations including CARICOM and the Association of Caribbean States (ACS). Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations, 2000, 160–66. 45. Kirk, “Defying the Odds,” in Redefining Cuban Foreign Policy, 2006, 333. 46. Carmelo Mesa-Lago, “The Economic Effects on Cuba of the Downfall of Socialism in the USSR and Eastern Europe,” in ed. Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Cuba after the Cold War, (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993), 133–96. 47. Nicola Miller, “Trying to Stay Friends: Cuba’s Relations with Russia and Eastern Europe in the Age of U.S. Supremacy,” in ed., Morris Morley & Chris McGillion, Cuba, the United States, and the Post-Cold War World. The International Dimensions of the Washington-Havana Relationship, (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005) 59-96. W. Alejandro Sanchez Nieto, “Cuba and Russia: Love is Better the Second Time Around,” Cuban Affairs, Volume 2 No. 2 (2007). 48. N.S. Leonov & V.A. Borodaev, Fidel Kastro Politicheskaya Biogoafiya (Moscow: Trud, 1999). V.I. Vorotnikov, Gavana-Moskva: pamiatnye gody, (Moscow: Fend imeni I.D. Sytina, 2001). I.U. Gavrikov, Fidel Kastro: neistovgi komandante Ostrava svobody,

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(Moscow: Veche, 2006). E.A. Larin, Politicheskaia istorii Kuba XX Veka (Moscow: Veschaya shkola, 2007). 49. Boris H. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, (New York: Public Affairs, 2000). Andrei Kozyrev, Preobrazhenie, (Moscow: ‘Mezhdunov otnoshenii,’ 1995). Yevgeny M. Primakov, Minnoe pole politiki, (Moscow: Molodai gvardii, 2006). Fidel Castro and Ignacio Ramonet, My Life, (London: Allen Lane, 2007). Alina Revuelta Fernández, Castro’s Daughter: An Exile’s Memoir of Cuba, (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1999).

2

 Soviet-Cuban Relations

I

n January 1959, when Fidel Castro’s victorious guerrilla army marched into Havana, a relationship between the new Cuban regime and the Soviet Union would have appeared highly unlikely, especially as the Soviet leader, Nikhita Khrushchev, would later write in his memoirs that he had no idea of what type of revolution had occurred on the Caribbean island.1 This was despite previous contact between the two countries which had not only seen Moscow buy sugar from Cuba but even diplomatic relations exist for ten years from 14 October 1942. These had only been broken off in the aftermath of the coup which had brought Fulgencio Batista to power, but remarkably during this ten-year period Andrei Gromyko, a future Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, had traveled to the island from New York City to present his credentials as the Soviet Union’s envoy to the island.2 Khrushchev’s lack of knowledge was even more surprising as reports exist that in December 1958 Castro’s guerrillas had made tentative attempts to obtain weapons from Czechoslovakia and that the Czech government had consulted Moscow over this request. These weapons were never delivered as Batista had fled the island before they could be transported to Cuba.3 It was not just the Soviet leadership that was unsure of the unfolding events in Cuba in early 1959 but surprisingly also the U.S. one. However, due to its hegemonic position within the region and large economic involvement in the island, this quickly changed. Washington’s concerns were partly alleviated by Carlos Manuel Urrutia Leo’s appointment as the Provisional President but they quickly returned and intensified as a result of both Castro’s trip to the United States in April 1959, and also that through21

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out 1959, guerrilla war veterans began to be promoted to increasingly prominent roles in the new Cuban regime. Relations between the United States and Cuba deteriorated during 1960 as Washington’s anxieties increased due to the Castro regime moving increasingly to the political left, illustrated by both the expropriation of United States owned property on the island and the creation of the Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA).4 Moreover, the timing of these events was highly significant as the Cold War appeared to be turning against Washington. It had only been ten years since the United States had ‘lost’ China to communism, and when this was coupled with the Soviet Union’s ever increasing global presence, the United States administration was concerned about possible communist penetration in Latin America. In addition to this, the belief abounded that Soviet nuclear parity with the United States had been achieved, further increasing feelings of insecurity in the U.S. The result was that the decision was made in Washington that events in Cuba could not be allowed to run their own course and that Fidel Castro had to be removed from power. This decision would not only lead to the attempted invasion at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961 but would also form the cornerstone of Washington’s Cuban policy in the early 1960s.5 However, these very same events and Washington’s reaction to them only increased Moscow’s interest in them. In an interview Aleksandr Alekseev, the first Soviet citizen to be granted a visa to travel to Cuba after the victory of the revolution, said that although he was unsure of what type of revolution had taken place in Cuba, the anti-American feeling that was prevalent in it was its most important aspect for Moscow.6 In addition, Soviet foreign policy had begun to change in the aftermath of Joseph Stalin’s death with the Soviet Union becoming more outward looking and, as stated, attempting to acquire a presence in the Third World. This had resulted from both the de-colonization process taking place throughout the developing world, with Khrushchev’s risk-taking personality only aiding this process. The Soviet leader’s speech to the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in February 1956 illustrated this change in Soviet foreign policy when he said, “The awakening of the African peoples has begun. The national liberation movement has gained strength in Brazil, Chile and other Latin American countries.”7 Moscow strove to achieve this more prominent role in the developing world by backing national liberation movements as the very small working class in this part of the world caused ideological problems for the Soviet leadership. The Kremlin hoped that once these movements were in power they would cut their traditional ties with their former colonial masters, become increasingly left wing and align themselves with the Soviet Union. Moreover, the newly independent countries were drawn towards Moscow not just as a source of aid, but also as a result of the Soviet

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development model that had produced rapid industrialization and modernization from the 1930s onwards. The Soviet Union’s lack of a colonial past in this part of the world only further aided this process.8 Soviet interest in the Cuban Revolution was further fuelled by both the timing of its victory, at the height of the Cold War, and the fact that these events had taken place so geographically close to the United States. The time was right for Moscow to gain an ally in the western hemisphere, especially one in such a significant geographical location, which made the continuing presence of the new regime in Havana and Moscow’s relationship with it a spectacular propaganda coup for the Soviet Union. Furthermore, other benefits of Soviet-Cuban relations existed for Moscow including that it illustrated to Washington that the Soviet Union was now a global rival to challenge the United States, but also to Peking that Moscow was still the capital of the global revolution, therefore answering Chinese accusations of revisionism. The result was that a relationship with the Cuban Revolution had a number of benefits for Moscow which made Soviet interest in it much less surprising than would first appear.9 Moreover, Khrushchev quickly formed a strong personal bond with his young Cuban counterpart which only aided the burgeoning relationship between their two countries. By the time of the Cuban Revolution the Soviet ruling elite no longer consisted of heroes of the 1917 Revolution but instead comprised mainly middle-aged career politicians and the emergence in 1959 of the young bearded revolutionaries in the Caribbean captivated them. This did not just happen to Khrushchev but also Anastas Mikoyan who in 1959 was not just the great survivor of Soviet politics but was also a member of the Presidium of the CPSU. In relation to the Cuban Revolution he would later comment, “You Americans must realize what Cuba means to us old Bolsheviks. We have been waiting all our lives for a country to go communist without the Red Army. It has happened in Cuba, and it makes us feel like boys again.”10 Mikoyan quickly became one Havana’s closest friends in Moscow and can be seen as one of the first members of the “Cuban lobby” in the Soviet capital. This lobby comprised people who championed the Cuban Revolution’s cause amongst the Soviet elite. It was important throughout the Soviet era but was crucial in the Gorbachev period as it was able to slow the effects of the reform processes on the relationship. Moscow and Washington may both have been unsure of the unfolding events in Cuba in the months after 1959, and a debate has existed about the exact nature of the revolution, but the new regime in Havana’s thinking towards the Soviet Union at this time was also unclear. This was despite Fidel Castro’s 26 July movement having signed an agreement with the Cuban Socialist Party (PSP) in 1958 and Raúl Castro having been both a member of Juventud Socialista while at university and also having even visited Eastern Europe. This would suggest that a relationship between

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Cuba and the Soviet Union in some form was a possibility, but Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali have written that throughout 1959 Castro was worried about the reaction of the Cuban population to closer ties with Moscow and he was therefore uncertain of agreeing to this.11 Although this was the case, what was clear was that Castro wanted his country’s relationship with Washington to change. This was partly the result of the U.S.’s hegemonic position on the island before 1959 on which the Cuban leader would later comment, “We would not in any event have ended up as close friends. The U.S. had dominated us for too long.”12 Moreover, the overthrow of the Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954 by U.S.-backed exiles, which Che Guevara had personally witnessed, was also crucial because when coupled with increased U.S. hostility towards his fledging regime, which culminated in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Castro’s decision to proclaim himself a Marxist-Leninist in December 1961 appears logical.13 The Cuban leader would have hoped that increased Soviet security guarantees would have resulted, as he would have known that for ideological reasons Moscow could not let the first communist regime in the region be overthrown by the United States, especially one in such a significant geographic location. His proclamation that he was Marxist-Leninist was designed to take advantage of this and increase the pressure on the Soviet elite.14 In addition, the Soviet economic and political models and economic assistance from Moscow all appealed to the new Cuban government. The result was that close relations between the Soviet Union and Cuba were less strange than may first appear as both countries gained from the relationship. The appearance in December 1961 of the first Marxist-Leninist regime in the western hemisphere was in no small part the result of the Cold War setting in which it occurred. Moscow may have had some contact with Cuba before January 1959 but the relationship that developed after this occurred was to the benefit of both governments. The Soviet Union obtained a priceless propaganda coup in the Cold War as it strove to have a global presence, whereas Cuba was able to reduce its dependence on the United States and at the same time obtain both a crucial economic partner and some form of security from a hostile United States. In addition, in this 35 month period a number of pressures had appeared which would not just drive the two countries together but also form part of the foundations of the relationship for the next thirty years.

TENSIONS AND RECONCILIATION (1962–1972) By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis relations between Havana and Moscow may have been in existence for less than 4 years, but even in this

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short period a variety of pressures had come to bear on it that had not only pushed the two countries together but would also be severely tested by the events of the last two weeks of October 1962 and its aftermath. The Cuban government was unhappy with the agreement reached on 28 October 1962 between the U.S. and Soviet governments that had ended the crisis due both to its content but also as a result of being excluded from the negotiating processes. In conducting bilateral discussions with Washington, Moscow may have been able to find a peaceful solution to the crisis but they had also simultaneously both offended Havana and ignored the strong nationalistic strands prevalent within the Cuban Revolution. This would adversely affect Soviet-Cuban relations and Khrushchev would later write in his memoirs, “Our relations with Cuba, on the other hand, took a sudden turn for the worse.”15 As a result of this, the reception that Anastas Mikoyan received in November 1962 when he visited the island was particularly frosty, despite his close links to the Cuban elite. During this visit Mikoyan did his best to placate his Cuban hosts by stating that the result of the crisis had been both to make the Monroe Doctrine irrelevant for Cuba and also that the “the prestige of the socialist camp has strengthened.”16 This did not stop Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, President of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform, stating in a meeting on 4 November 1962, that the Cuban authorities believed there had been secret communications between Moscow and Washington during the crisis that they had not been informed of.17 Mikoyan may have been specially chosen for this trip due to his close ties to the Cuban government but his trip can not be seen as a success as the outcome of Cuban Missile Crisis fundamentally altered Soviet-Cuban relations for a number of years. The honeymoon period in the relationship was most certainly over. This was not, however, immediately apparent with Fidel Castro himself visiting the Soviet Union twice between Mikoyan’s November 1962 trip and the end of January 1964. His first trip was in May 1963 when he received a hero’s welcome throughout his month-long visit and during his second trip he stated in a speech, “And if today a socialist revolution is under way in Cuba, it became possible because the socialist revolution of 1917 took place to begin with.”18 Moreover, during this trip in January 1964 the second trade agreement between the countries since the Cuban Missile Crisis was signed. Not only did this suggest that relations were not strained, but the 1964 agreement was highly significant as it was the first 5-year agreement signed between Moscow and Havana. This provided increased economic security for Cuba as it guaranteed both the amount and price of goods that the Soviet Union bought from Cuba. In addition, it also provided a template for future trade agreements signed between the two countries in the 1970s and 1980s.19

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Castro’s two trips to the Soviet Union appeared to illustrate the healthy state of relations between the two countries and that problems as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis had not occurred. However, and conversely to this, these trips also strengthened the Cuban leader’s feeling of betrayal due to the events of October 1962, because it was during his May 1963 trip that Castro had learnt of the agreement regarding the removal of the United States missiles in Turkey made during October 1962. This in itself was bad enough but was only made worse as Khrushchev had only mistakenly referred to it during a conversation.20 A public schism may not have appeared but from the mid-1960s onwards problems between the two countries became increasingly obvious as Cuban radicalism increased. Internally this was illustrated by the attempts to produce the “new man” and its radical foreign policy showed itself in a number of ways. The first was a speech given by Che Guevara in February 1965, in which he not only criticized the Soviet Union in general, but also accused Moscow both of degeneration and of practicing imperialism towards the Third World. 21 Throughout 1966, the differences between Soviet and Cuban policies were highlighted by a number of events beginning in February 1966 when the Cuban capital staged the First Tricontinental Conference with representatives from Africa, Asia, and Latin America in attendance. The proceedings of this conference were very different from the policies pursued by Moscow at this time towards the Developing World due to their highly radical nature. The 23rd Congress of the CPSU was held in Moscow in April 1966 with Armando Hart, a member of the politburo and secretary of the Central Committee for the PCC, being the Cuban representative. His speech to the congress was met with complete silence because in it Hart had said that the First Tricontinental Conference in Havana had been correct in the ideas that national liberation movements would help speed revolutions in the Developing World. This was again not only very different from Moscow’s policies but also highly controversial.22 The radical content of both Castro’s May Day speech at the Plaza de la Revolución and the First Congress of the Organization for Latin American Solidarity (OLAS) held in Havana in August 1966 further illustrated the differences between Cuba and the Soviet Union. Moreover, in November 1967 Castro snubbed the celebrations for the fiftieth anniversary of the victory of the Russian Revolution by not personally attending them illustrating graphically the strained nature of Soviet-Cuban relations.23 The tension in the relationship arose for a number of reasons, but primarily as both countries did not completely understand each other with Moscow in particular failing to realize the significance and importance of nationalism within the Cuban Revolution which had been gravely offended by the outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Moreover, as stated,

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the Castro regime also thought that the Soviet Union was suffering from degeneration. This had manifested itself in Cuba wanting to choose its own independent path and in conjunction with the Cuban government believing that a radical foreign policy could help safeguard its survival by moving capitalism’s attention from it to other parts of the world only further increased the differences between Cuban and Soviet policies.24 However, a permanent schism had not materialized because even by the mid-1960s a number of pressures had arisen in the relationship that would have made this problematic. This included the 1964 trade agreement that guaranteed Cuban economic security for five years; significantly it was only after its signing that Cuban radicalism increased, and even by this point of time some within the Soviet Union had felt that large amounts of aid had been lavished on Cuba, which would have simply been lost if a schism had appeared. This was something that Moscow was unprepared to do. Moreover, Chinese accusations of Soviet revisionism, and the fact that Maoism appeared to fit the developing world better than Leninism, meant that Moscow could not break relations with Havana if it wanted to retain its position at the pinnacle of the world revolution. The outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis further increased the pressure on Moscow as it had defended its actions by saying it had helped to safeguard the Cuban Revolution. This would have been lost if relations were broken off. The upshot was that despite their differences, a permanent schism would not have benefited either country and the Castro regime had taken advantage of this situation, and pressures, to pursue its radical internal and external policies. This situation began to change from 1968 onwards as Cuba’s relationship with the Soviet Union improved. It was not the result, as is often thought, of Soviet pressure on the Caribbean island but was rather the result of the failure of Cuba’s radical policies. With regard to foreign policy, Che Guevara’s death was a graphic illustration of this, but also Cuban political isolation within the region appeared to be coming to an end after the appearance in 1968 of a left-leaning military regime in Peru. Moreover, Cuban security and Castro’s pragmatism were also highly significant in this process. The Cuban leader’s backing of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 may have gone against world opinion but it signaled Cuba’s return to the Soviet fold. However, even Castro’s speech on this increased the pressure on Moscow as he asked if similar action would be taken to safeguard socialism in Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba, with the implication being very clear.25 The failure to move capitalism’s focus away from Cuba due to the inability to spark other revolutions only increased Cuban feelings of insecurity. Moreover, Peter Shearman has written that Castro’s backing of this Soviet action was not as surprising as it may have first appeared since Castro believed that the

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“Prague spring” was a dangerous phenomenon due to its possible detrimental effects on socialism.26 Even before this process had begun Castro had illustrated Cuba’s nationalistic tendencies to both the PCC and CPSU leadership and also sent a blunt message to Moscow that the Cuban Revolution was not going to be dominated by the Soviet Union. This was done partly with a marathon ‘secret speech’ in January 1968 when he was very scathing in his account of Mikoyan’s behavior during the talks held in November 1962 in the aftermath of the missile crisis.27 In addition, even while backing Soviet action in Prague in the summer of 1968, he stated that Czech sovereignty had been violated, and the trial of Aníbal Escalante and his associates further illustrated Cuban independence from the Soviet Union, as they were accused of both encouraging Moscow to implement economic sanctions against the island and also providing Soviet officials in Havana with false information about Cuban personnel.28 The uniqueness and individual nature of the Cuban Revolution was yet further illustrated when Cuba did not send a representative to a Consultative Meeting of all Communist Parties that was held in February 1968 in Budapest.29 Despite Castro’s graphic illustration of Cuba’s own revolutionary heritage, reconciliation in Soviet-Cuban relations only increased from this point onwards. Salvador Allende’s electoral victory in 1970 may have further reduced Cuban isolation in the western hemisphere but it also showed that Moscow’s more cautious policy towards Latin America had been more successful than Cuban radicalism. In addition, Havana was pushed further towards Moscow as Cuban economic dependence on the Soviet Union increased after the failure of Cuba’s much vaunted 1970 10m-ton sugar harvest, which had signaled the death knell of the island’s internal radicalism, as the rest of the economy had been neglected in the attempts to produce this record harvest.30 In November 1969, Soviet Defense Minister Marshal Andrei Gretchko traveled to Cuba thus showing the improvement in relations that had taken place as the absence of such trips since the mid-1960s had been a very noticeable illustration of the tension in the relationship. In April 1971, the 24th Congress of the CPSU was held in Moscow and Osvaldo Dorticos, a member of the politburo and secretariat of the PCC, represented Cuba. His speech was vastly different from Hart’s speech at the previous congress in 1966 which, as stated, had been highly radical.31 In 1971 the Soviet-Cuban Intergovernmental Commission on Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation was created and in June 1972 Cuba gained membership to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA). Both events illustrated the vast improvement in relations since the mid-1960s and as Shearman has written was the “logical” conclusion of Cuba’s move back into the Soviet fold. Moreover, in June 1972 Castro

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had visited the Soviet Union for the first time in eight years during which he stated in a speech in the Kremlin, “We are deeply satisfied with the present state of our friendship and the present state of our fraternal relations, sincere relations based on mutual respect, the type of relations that should exist between the revolutionary parties and revolutionary peoples. We shall continue to work tirelessly for sake of this friendship and its strengthening.”32 Although relations had undoubtedly improved, and membership in the CMEA was of great prestige to the Caribbean island, many scholars believe that Castro may have been hoping for much more. This arose from the fact that he had left Moscow a matter of days before the signing of the CMEA agreement, which led many to conclude that his actual goal had been membership of the Warsaw Pact and the increased security guarantees that this would have provided.33 It appeared that despite the improvement in relations Moscow was not prepared to do this as it could have resulted in large numbers of Soviet troops having to be sent to the Caribbean to offset possible U.S. aggression. After the Cuban Missile Crisis Moscow’s unwillingness to allow Cuba to again become a flashpoint between the superpowers had been shown in 1970 when the Soviet government had quickly backed down in the face of the U.S. pressure over the “mini-crisis” of Soviet nuclear submarines being moored at Cienfuegos.34 In addition to this, Cuban membership in the CMEA was of great benefit to Moscow. Even by the early 1970s some within the Soviet Union were concerned at the levels of Soviet economic involvement with the Caribbean island, and its membership of this organization not only gave Moscow an increased control over the Cuban economy, but significantly it also allowed Moscow to spread the economic ‘burden’ of the Cuban Revolution across all of the CMEA states. The result was that economically Cuba was no longer the Soviet Union’s sole responsibility.35 The ten-year period from 1962 to 1972 was a highly turbulent one in Soviet-Cuban relations. During it both the first five-year plan between the two countries was signed and Cuba also gained membership in the CMEA but in the eight years between these two events a termination of the relationship had appeared possible. A number of reasons accounted for this tension with the outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Caribbean island’s radicalism both being very significant. Despite this a permanent schism had not taken place as even by the mid-1960s a number of pressures had come to bear on the relationship that made this both unlikely and problematic. These included the already large amounts of Soviet aid lavished on the Caribbean island, the continuing propaganda significance of the Cuban Revolution for the Kremlin and the fact that the Soviet government, in the face of growing Chinese pressure, could not afford for the Cuban Revolution to fail if Moscow was to remain as the capital of the

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world revolution. However, by the end of the1960s Cuba’s radicalism began to waver due to the failure of both its internal and external policies and when coupled with the reduction in Havana’s political isolation within the western hemisphere and some form of Soviet coercion the Caribbean island moved back towards the Soviet fold. However, even while this process was unfolding, both Havana’s desire for a form of independence from the Soviet Union and also the Cuban Revolution’s uniqueness had been made abundantly clear to Moscow.

THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF THE CUBAN REVOLUTION (1972-1985) The 1970s were very different from the turbulent days of the second half of the 1960s as the two countries became increasingly intertwined, not least economically. In addition, in January 1974 Leonid Brezhnev became the first Soviet leader to visit Latin America when he travelled to Cuba, a further illustration that the problems of the 1960s had been resolved. The Soviet leader did not just travel throughout the island but was also awarded Cuba’s highest honour, the Order of José Martí, and gave a speech in front of one million Cubans on the Plaza de la Revolución in Havana. In this speech he stated, “We are linked by bonds that are completely different from those that are customary in the capitalist world. For the Soviet Union, Cuba is not an object of exploitation and capital investment, not a strategic base or a so-called sphere of influence. Our friendship, our closeness, is an expression of the socialist nature of our countries, a living embodiment of the lofty principles of socialist internationalism.”36 During the 1970s the two countries’ economies did not just become increasingly interlinked but Cuba underwent a series of changes that made it more closely resemble the Soviet Union. From the early 1970s the appearance in the top echelons of the Cuban elite of people more favorable to Soviet policies, particularly Carlos Rafael Rodríguez and Blas Roca, heralded this, but this process culminated at the First Congress of the Cuban Communist Party in December 1975. At this congress a new constitution, which closely resembled the Soviet one, was ratified. On this Shearman has written “Concomitant with CMEA membership came domestic Sovietization of the economy and the polity.”37 In February 1976 in his speech to the 25th Congress of the CPSU, Brezhnev stated, “The Congress of Cuban Communists, the party’s programmatic platform and the country’s new constitution show that the Western hemisphere’s first socialist state is making steady progress.”38 However, even while this “sovietization” of the Cuban Revolution was underway Castro again illustrated its distinct nature. At the First Congress of the PCC he pointedly stated that the is-

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land’s revolutionary heritage dated from the nineteenth century and moreover the congress also ratified Popular Power, which was systematic of Cuba’s wish to have some form of independence from Moscow.39 In addition to this, from the mid-1970s, as stated, the Cuban army had to face accusations that they were merely acting as the “Ghurkas of the Russian Empire” as the two countries became involved in first Africa and then at the end of the decade Central America, with this action being an important element in the end of the period of détente that had existed in the 1970s between the Soviet Union and the United States.40 This new dimension to Soviet-Cuban relations was in no small part borne out of Castro’s “goal to become leader of the Third World,”41 but the Cuban leader has spoken on a number of occasions about this action, and has always stressed the links which the Caribbean island had with both the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in Angola and Sandinistas in Nicaragua dating from the 1960s. He has even stated that the MPLA asked for their assistance and that Cuba had only become involved in any of these operations once the new governments were already in power. In conjunction with this, the shared history and culture between Cuba and both continents make Cuban involvement less strange than it first appears.42 Havana and Moscow may have had shared objectives in these operations but contrary to this, the Cuban desire for a form of independence from Moscow was also important, as was the fact that the spread of revolution was an integral part of the Cuban Revolutionary philosophy. Moreover, it may have been hoped that Cuban security would increase as capitalism’s attention would be moved from the Caribbean to other parts of the world. The timing of this action was also significant as by the mid1970s Cuba, for a number of reasons, could again employ a more expansive foreign policy. This included the economic security that membership in the CMEA gave the island, but also the of disintegration of the Salazar dynasty in Portugal, that heralded the wars in Africa, and the overthrow of the Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua gave the Cuban regime the opportunity for these courses of action. Furthermore, the chance of a U.S. invasion of the Caribbean island had by the mid-1970s receded due to the more inward looking administration in Washington. This had resulted from both the prevalence of war-weariness in the United States after its South-East Asian debacle and the resignation of Richard Nixon in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal.43 Cuba may have had to face accusations that it was acting merely as a Soviet puppet but by taking this course of action the island’s leverage in the Soviet capital increased, as the Castro regime would have hoped to use this to obtain some form of severance from the Soviet Union for its action in Africa and Central America. The result was that the pressure on

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Moscow with regards to Soviet-Cuban relations would have gone up. In addition to this, this Cuban action was also very useful for the Castro regime for a number of other reasons. It produced new markets, despite Castro’s claims to the contrary, for both the sale of Cuban merchandise but also the purchase of goods that the island required. Moreover, it also helped resolve a number of internal problems that had appeared on the island by the mid-1970s including a shortage of jobs. This was the result of the Cuban Revolution producing a highly educated population, but the supply of jobs on the island not increasing at an equivalent rate to its levels of education. This was especially the case for teachers and doctors whose skills could be utilized in both Africa and Central America. Edward González believes that it also helped to alleviate pressures that had developed between members of the Cuban elite some of whom had advocated pragmatism, others revolutionary zeal while yet another faction desired military missions in the island’s foreign policy.44 The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 exerted new pressures on Soviet-Cuban relations but ultimately showed the importance of the relationship to Havana. In January 1980 a United States-backed resolution in the United Nations (UN) condemned the Afghan invasion, with Cuba voting with the Soviet bloc against it. This in itself was not surprising but the Caribbean island was put under great pressure and faced accusations that it was merely Moscow’s ‘mouthpiece’ in the Nonaligned Movement.45 This arose as Cuba was not just the only member of this organization to vote in this way but Castro was also its President at the time. This graphically illustrated the importance of its relationship with the Soviet Union to Cuba as it outweighed the international scorn that the island had had to face for this action in the UN. In addition to this, Cuba voting in this manner also showed that by the early 1980s the Caribbean island was an integral part of the socialist bloc, which was further illustrated in December 1980 when it was awarded the honour of having Konstantin Chernenko, a member of the politburo and future General Secretary of the CPSU, represent the Soviet Union at the Second Congress of the PCC.46 Partly as the result of this, and increased Cuban leverage in Moscow, but also due to a worsening of Cuban-United States relations in the early 1980s, Moscow supplied the Caribbean island with some of its most sophisticated military hardware. The increase in tension between Havana and Washington had resulted from the election of Ronald Reagan as President of the United States, which had heralded a new stage in the Cold War. During his Presidential campaign Reagan had both very publicly courted the large and influential Cuban-American vote in Florida, and also promised to “rollback” creeping communism. He believed that Havana’s increased role in the world had been a failure in Carter’s diplomacy towards Cuba.47 In the early 1980s superpower rela-

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tions deteriorated, resulting in a nuclear build-up in Europe and, as stated, an increase in tension between Havana and Washington. The robust nature of Soviet-Cuban relations was further shown on 10 November 1984 when Nikolai Tikhonov, a politburo member and chairman of the Council of Ministers, signed an agreement on cooperation between the two countries, while he was in Cuba.48 The significance of this was its twenty-five-year duration as it meant that Moscow had committed itself to Cuba into twenty-first century. In addition, by the mid-1980s the relationship had also become extremely expansive and developed an all-encompassing nature. This saw some 8,000 Cubans per year studying in the Soviet Union, and 140 educational centers completed on the island with Soviet help. In general, Soviet investment in the Caribbean island since the early 1960s had been colossal.49 Trade quickly became a vital aspect of Soviet-Cuban relations with both countries benefiting from it. The Soviet Union purchased not only sugar from Cuba but also nickel, citrus fruit and tobacco while it exported over fifty different goods to the Caribbean island. These goods ranged from oil and bulldozers to condensed milk, and affected all parts of Cuban society, illustrating the significance of trade with the Soviet Union to Cuba. The continual upward trajectory of figure 2.1 to the mid-1980s illustrates the ever increasing levels of trade conducted between the two countries during the Soviet era. If a comparison of various five-year plans is carried out this becomes even more explicit. If 1965, the first year of the original fiveyear plan, is used as a base year it allows all five-year plans to be compared

Figure 2.1.

Soviet-Cuban Trade

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to the original one. If this is done, 1975 has a figure of 387.7, 1980 one of 674.4 and 1985 a figure of 1312. Soviet trade with Cuba had continued to expand throughout this period but particularly in the 1980s because by 1985 it had increased 13 fold when compared to the first five-year plan, or more than doubled from the previous five years. The sale of Cuban sugar to the Soviet Union is vital in explaining the dramatic increase in the levels of trade in the early 1980s and also its subsequent decrease at the end of this decade. Moscow did not just buy the vast percentage of Cuba’s sugar export, but in the early 1980s also continually paid above the world price. In 1985 Moscow bought 61 percent of the Cuban sugar harvest for 45.00 US cents per pound compared to a world market price of just 4.05 US cents per pound. This was in excess of ten times that of the world price, when it had been more normal for the Soviet Union to only pay between one and a half and two times the world price.50 In the late 1980s, the terms of trade began to turn against Cuba as the difference between the price Moscow paid and the world price fell. It was predominantly this, but also to a lesser extent some adverse affects of the Soviet reforms, which resulted in the level of trade in 1990 being lower than in 1985. The 1985 sugar price may have distorted the trade figures but it could still not hide the huge levels of Soviet involvement in the Cuban economy as even in 1990 trade was in excess of eleven times that conducted during the first five-year plan in 1965. On this Carlos Rafael Rodríguez would comment, “there is not a single sector of our national economy which is to any degree important in which this cooperation (with the USSR) does not already exist or is not planned.”51 By March 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the CPSU, the original pressures that had appeared in Soviet-Cuban relations were not just still in existence but new ones had also come to the fore, which provided still more robust foundations for the relationship. This did not just entail Moscow’s colossal economic investment, but by the mid-1980s the two countries had a shared ideology, twenty-year history and the nature of the relationship had impacted on all aspects of society within both countries. In addition, the Cold War had taken a general turn for the worse, continuing to make the Cuban Revolution an important propaganda tool for Moscow. Washington may no longer have been attempting to overthrow the Castro regime by force but successive U.S. administrations did wish to see its removal from power. This was in no small part due to the fact that Cuba remained both a domestic and foreign policy issue as a result of the powerful and influential Cuban exile community in the United States. The result was that Moscow’s Caribbean commitments had continued to adversely affect superpower relations and played a part in the failure of détente in the 1970s, and the strained nature

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of Cuban-U.S. relations increased still further the pressure on Moscow with regards its relationship with Havana. The relationship remained vital for the Cuban government, not least economically, due to the continuing U.S. embargo against the island. Moreover, the Castro regime had acquired a semblance of leverage in Moscow due to the joint action in Africa and Central America from the mid-1970s. This yet again increased the pressure on the Kremlin with regards Soviet-Cuban relations but vitally in the mid-1980s it remained beneficial for both governments.

REFORM PROCESSES (1985–1991) By 1985 a variety of pressures may have impacted on Soviet-Cuban relations but during his time as General Secretary of the CPSU, Mikhail Gorbachev would have to face a number of new ‘explosive’ pressures that no previous General Secretary had had to deal with. This resulted from the introduction of different reform processes in both the Soviet Union and Cuba. In March 1985 when Gorbachev became General Secretary of the CPSU he was the fourth person to hold this position within three years. This in itself would have a destabilising effect, but the Soviet Union faced a plethora of problems and he would later write, “On taking office as General Secretary in 1985 I was immediately faced with an avalanche of problems. . . . The Soviet Union faced tremendous internal problems.”52 These included a Soviet leadership that had turned into a gerontocracy, the country’s science and technology falling increasingly behind the West, as was the stagnating national economy that was still further adversely affected by the large military spending that Moscow traditionally undertook. Yegor Ligachev, Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, would later comment, “our country’s economy approached the year 1985 very short of breath.”53 Gorbachev quickly addressed these problems and in his speech at the Central Committee plenum in April 1985 he introduced the process which became known as perestroika. This program was a drive for more economic efficiency, technological progress and the reduction in the need for state subsidies.54 However, he soon realised that perestroika could not survive by itself and that other reforms were also needed to help to sustain it. As a result of this, but also the deterioration in superpower relations and the dire situation in Afghanistan amongst others, “new thinking” in Soviet foreign policy was introduced, which questioned many long-held Soviet foreign policy beliefs including both the desire for nuclear parity and even the Brezhnev Doctrine.55 In a further attempt to help maintain perestroika, glasnost was introduced and by ending the traditional secrecy

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within Soviet society it was hoped that this would simultaneously both re-energize the country’s population and also end their practice of listening to Western radio broadcasts. This worried the Soviet government due to the negative content that many of these reports contained on events within the Soviet Union, which they feared could result in an increase in tension within the population.56 These reform processes may have been introduced to help alleviate the problems facing the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s but they would all impact massively on Soviet-Cuban relations during the remaining years of the Soviet era. It was not just the Soviet Union that was undergoing problems in the mid-1980s as the situation facing Cuba was also very grave. In his speech in April 1986 to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Bay of Pigs, Fidel Castro expanded on what he had said at the 3rd Congress of the PCC about this. He blamed the economic slow down on the effects of Hurricane Kate that had hit the island in late 1985 and the continuing U.S. embargo. Moreover, he also believed that the revolution was undergoing degeneration due to increased bureaucracy, overstaffing and the effect of allowing some forms of private enterprises to exist on the island. After a number of years, degeneration in a socialist society is not unusual but the island’s young population, many of whom could not remember prerevolutionary Cuba, only exacerbated this process.57 Castro’s proposed solution was the introduction of the campaign of rectification of errors which would reduce bureaucracy and inefficiency and also outlaw private enterprises and increase voluntary work.58 The first of these ideas may have been similar to Gorbachev’s reforms but the others were not and appeared to be a retrenchment of the revolution to the ideas of the 1960s. However, Western experts believe that other reasons were also important for the campaign’s implementation. Marifeli Pérez-Stable believed that the Cuban economic “model was largely exhausted” by this time due to the changes in international economics in the late 1970s while it has also been suggested that it was used to return power to the original ruling elite in Cuba and away from Soviet trained technocrats, people such as Humberto Pérez, the head of the Central Planning Board, who had become increasingly powerful from the early 1980s onwards. In addition, this continued the Cuban practice of being willing to experiment with different ideas, but the chances of this being an opening up of the system were negligible due to Cuban fears of a possible U.S. invasion after Washington had invaded Grenada in 1983.59 As stated, the introduction of all of these reforms processes would have a massive impact on Soviet-Cuban relations during the Gorbachev era, but this was not immediately apparent, as both governments concentrated on the similarities between them.60 In addition, Moscow’s relation-

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ship with Havana may not have been of the highest priority for the Soviet government at this time as they instead concentrated both on the internal situation in the Soviet Union and on superpower relations. Moreover, this also illustrated the traditional low importance, with the noticeable exceptions of the initial period of the relationship’s inception and the Cuban Missile Crisis, of Soviet-Cuban relations to the Soviet governing elite. Although this was the case, some tentative or ‘veiled’ criticisms did take place, with the highest profile examples being Ligachev’s speech to the 3rd PCC held in February 1986 and Castro’s address to the 27th Congress of the CPSU held in the Soviet capital during the same month.61 However, from 1987 onwards this situation began to change with Soviet criticism of Cuba becoming ever more public and scathing from this point onwards. It focused in particular on Cuban economic inefficiency, which in light of perestroika was not surprising, as it would have appeared to go against the very ethos of this process if Moscow continued to subsidize an inefficient Cuban economy as it struggled to reform its own. With relation to the CMEA this was certainly the case because an unreformed Cuban economy and continued Soviet subsidies to it could have led to awkward questions for Moscow from other member states. As a result it was not surprising that Nikolai Ryzhkov, Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, was very forthright in his criticism of Cuban economic inefficiency in July 1988 at the 44th session of the CMEA held in Prague.62 This may have increased the pressure on Gorbachev with regards to Soviet-Cuban relations but so too did glasnost. Quite simply some Soviet citizens could not understand why Moscow continued to spend colossal amounts of money and aid on the Cuban Revolution as Gorbachev’s reforms failed to produce the desired results within the Soviet Union. This feeling only further increased as the geostrategic importance of the island to Moscow fell as the superpower relations improved.63 Moreover, the Cuban government’s close association with what had become by the late 1980s discredited former Soviet regimes only further increased this criticism. This became apparent in a number of different ways but particularly in the Soviet press and academic writings. In August 1987, New Times printed the article “An Uphill Task” written by Vladislav Chirkov that was so scathing in its criticism of Cuba that it drew a response two months later from none other than Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, the island’s leading economist and member of the politburo of the PCC.64 In October 1990, the Cuban government felt compelled to repeat this when Pravda printed a rebuttal written by the Cuban Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jose Ramon Balaguer, to an earlier article in Komsomolskaya Pravda that had belittled the Castro brothers’ personal lives.65 In addition, Moscow’s practice of paying above the world market price for Cuban sugar came in for particularly strong and repeated criticism. In June 1989 this even

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reached the Congress of People’s Deputies, despite the terms of trade in this period turning against the Caribbean island. 66 This criticism of Soviet-Cuban relations and the Cuban Revolution itself as a result of glasnost did not mean that everyone within the Soviet Union agreed with it, as some newspaper and journal articles that were published continued to be sympathetic towards the Caribbean island. This was certainly the case with Sergo Mikoyan, who was the editor of Latinskaia Amerika, and also the son of Anastas Mikoyan.67 However, glasnost had unquestionably introduced a dynamic new “explosive” element to Soviet-Cuban relations as in the new increasingly democratic Soviet Union of the late 1980s and early 1990s Gorbachev could not ignore these negative sentiments amongst the population. This was something that no previous General Secretary had had to face. In the period from March 1985 to 1989 the Cuban government did not appear to add to the pressures on Gorbachev regarding relations between the Soviet Union and Cuba, as unsurprisingly the Castro regime wished to see the status quo in Soviet-Cuban relations maintained. The nature and importance of the relationship both economically and also the security it provided in the face of continuing United States’ hostility explain this. The Soviet reforms may have been very different from their own, but for a large part of this period the Cuban government followed a trend that had been prevalent in their foreign policy throughout the revolutionary period; that of a pragmatist approach with the survival of the revolution being the single most important aspect in it. They may not have liked the Soviet reform processes but they employed a “wait and see” policy by making as little comment on the unfolding events in the Soviet Union as possible for fear that any made could adversely affect Soviet-Cuban relations.68 In addition, as the Castro regime had witnessed the demise of détente in the late 1970s, they may have hoped that the Soviet reforms would have a similar fate in running their course and simply blow themselves out, and that Soviet-Cuban relations would return to its traditional path before they had to make any comment that could potentially jeopardize the relationship. When Gorbachev visited Cuba in April 1989 many in the West thought that it would be a turning point in Soviet-Cuban relations with the Soviet leader imposing his own ideas on his Cuban counterpart. This, however, was not the result with some believing that Cuba’s position may even have been strengthened as a result of the two countries signing the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation during this trip.69 Although this was the case, Gorbachev’s trip was indeed pivotal but not for the reasons many had thought. It was during this trip that the Castro regime’s aversion to the Soviet reforms, which they had been secretly harbouring for some time, became very public. This resulted from the fact that when Castro in-

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troduced the Soviet leader to the National Congress of People’s Power on 5 April 1989 he publicly lectured Gorbachev on the reasons why Soviet style reforms were not needed in Cuba.70 This speech heralded a new stage in Soviet-Cuban relations as throughout the remainder of 1989 the island’s government’s dislike of the Soviet reforms became ever more obvious. This may have resulted from the belief that the relationship had become fundamentally altered and therefore the possible adverse impact on it of any negative comments would be reduced. In July 1989 the Cuban leader in his speech to mark the anniversary of the attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953 was again scathing of the Soviet reforms and the effect they were having on Eastern Europe.71 Moreover, the trial and subsequent execution of General Arnaldo Ochoa and his associates, also in the summer of 1989, sent a very blunt message to the Cuban population that reforms similar to those in the Soviet Union were not going to be repeated in Cuba. This arose as a result of Ochoa having become a figurehead for discontented army veterans from Angola and Ethiopia with some believing that he could even have become a possible challenger to the Cuban leadership. It very much appeared that he had faced a show trial as both Castro brothers spoke for the prosecution, but this did end any tentative support that some within the ruling Cuban elite may have had for the Soviet reforms. This had included Carlos Aldana, a member of the politburo of the PCC, and even Carlos Rafael Rodríguez.72 In a similar vein the pro-reform Soviet periodicals Russian News and Sputnik were banned in the aftermath of the “velvet revolution” in Eastern Europe. Moreover, policies were implemented to try and offset the negative economic consequences of the Soviet reforms on the Caribbean island. This would eventually lead to the “special period in peacetime” but it was hoped that the other policies would make the island become more self-sufficient in food production and also that foreign investment could be encouraged, particularly in tourism, to provide a source of much needed hard currency.73 These had the effect of reducing Cuban dependence on the Soviet Union but this second point would become vital for the Cuban Revolution after the end of Soviet-Cuban relations. As stated, it could be thought that if these programmes were successful Cuban dependence on the Soviet Union would have decreased which would have helped reduce the pressure on Gorbachev with regards to the relationship between the two countries. However, this was not the case as the events in Cuba in 1989 only further increased the pressure on the Soviet leader. Many within the Soviet Union perceived the Caribbean island as an anachronism and to be swimming against world opinion as democracy swept through both Eastern Europe and Latin America in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They could not understand why Moscow continued to back

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such a regime, and the ever-increasing number of calls for this to change only increased the pressure on Gorbachev. The decrease in tension between the two superpowers, as stated, had reduced the geostrategic importance of the island for the Kremlin, fueled further calls within the Soviet Union for the relationship to be terminated. However, the pressure on Gorbachev only further increased as the U.S. administration used this improvement in relations with Moscow to try and influence it regarding its relationship with the Cuban Revolution. On a number of occasions George H. W. Bush told Gorbachev that SovietCuban relations were hindering further improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations. By the late 1980s the Cuban Revolution may have been in existence for 30 years but time had not resulted in Washington’s dislike of it receding. Moreover, in August 1991 Jorge Mas Canosa, leader of the Cuban America National Foundation (CANF), made a historic trip to the Soviet capital where it appeared that even the Cuban exile community were attempting to have an impact on Moscow’s relationship with Havana.74 Contrary to this, and explaining the lack of change in the relationship, a reading of the Soviet leader’s memoirs would suggest he might have felt personal affinity towards the island. In conjunction with this, the two countries had a shared thirty-year history and the relationship may even have provided a form of stability, and as the terms of trade turned against Cuba in the late 1980s even a competitive source of sugar, in a fast changing world. In addition to this, and mirroring the Soviet internal situation, Gorbachev was also subjected to pressures from those who wished to see the status quo with Cuba preserved. In relation to this, the power and influence of the “Cuban lobby” in preventing further reform cannot be overestimated. The trade agreement for 1991 was very different from previous ones, as it was to last for only one year and not the more traditional five, and trade was to be conducted at world market prices. However, the agreement may have been even more different if Konstantin Katushev, who was not only a former Soviet ambassador to Cuba but also a member of this lobby, had not been the head of Foreign Economic Relations in Moscow.75 The lobby’s ability to slow reform in the relationship was perfectly illustrated in the aftermath of the August 1991 coup in Moscow as its failure had also simultaneously ended the lobby’s power as the most significant members of the coup had also been Cuba’s closest friends in Moscow.76 This explains the Castro regime’s lack of comment on the unfolding events in Moscow at this time, perfectly illustrating both their ‘wait and see’ policy and realist pragmatism, as they could not afford to back the wrong side for fear of jeopardizing the relationship. Comment was only made once events in Moscow had been played out and the coup had failed.77 However, within one month of these dramatic events in Moscow Gorbachev announced the removal of the final Soviet troops

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from Cuba, illustrating the influence that the lobby had been able to play in Soviet-Cuban relations. In addition, the government in Havana was extremely unhappy about this announcement as not only had they not been consulted about this decision, but Gorbachev had also made it during a joint press conference in the Soviet capital with the U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, resulting in accusations appearing that Washington had been able to influence this decision.78 When compared to his predecessors Mikhail Gorbachev faced many new and varied pressures with regards to Soviet-Cuban relations and these had resulted in the relationship in December 1991 being very different from what it had been in March 1985. With the reforms in Soviet foreign policy, both the geostrategic importance of the island and MarxistLeninism in the relationship had decreased. In addition, trade was fundamentally different as it was by the end of 1991 conducted at world market prices, an announcement that the final Soviet troops would be removed from Cuba had been made and as a result of the August 1991 coup in Moscow the island had lost its privileged position within the Soviet governing elite. In short, Moscow’s relationship with Havana more closely resembled that which the Soviet Union had with other countries. The Cuban government may have generally employed a ‘wait and see’ policy, further illustrating the prevalence of realist pragmatism in their decision making, as they had not wished to risk jeopardizing the relationship, but they had increased the pressure on Gorbachev regarding Soviet-Cuban relations when their dislike of his reform processes had become ever more vociferous from 1989 onwards. However, the relationship continued to exist and at no point had Gorbachev called for it to be terminated and it was only with the implosion of the Soviet Union that SovietCuban relations came to an abrupt end.

CONCLUSIONS In the months after the victory of the Cuban Revolution as Havana’s relationship with Washington soured, it drastically improved with Moscow. At first Cuba and the Soviet Union appeared very strange bedfellows but their relationship was very much a product of its time due to the dynamics of the Cold War and the fact that it benefited both countries. At this time the Soviet Union was attempting to increase its global influence, with the Cuban Revolution specifically appealing to Moscow due to both its anti-American sentiments and also the geostrategic importance of the island for the Soviet Union. In January 1959, closer relations with Moscow may not have been one of the Cuban Revolution’s original goals but it most certainly wished to change its relationship with Washington. At the

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height of the Cold War, if Havana did not have close relations with the U.S. it required them with the Soviet Union especially as Washington appeared determined to destroy the new regime in Havana. This would be a constant factor throughout the Soviet era and would even continue after the end of the Cold War. In addition, the lack of a Soviet colonial past and its political and economic models also all appealed to Cuba. Very quickly a number of pressures appeared that would form the foundations of the relationship for the next thirty years. Castro proclaiming himself Marxist-Leninist and thus also the revolution in December 1961 was vital in this. Not only did the two countries now have a shared ideology but this had also increased the pressure on Moscow regarding its relationship with Cuba. By doing this, Castro had attempted to gain increased security guarantees from the Soviet Union, significant in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs and continuing U.S. aggression, and although these may not have been entirely forthcoming it certainly meant that Moscow could not see the Cuban Revolution fail. This resulted from Cold War geopolitics and the tensions that existed between Moscow and Peking. In addition, the large amounts of aid and trade lavished on Cuba by the Kremlin also resulted in pressures that ‘tied’ Moscow to Havana. If the Cuban Revolution failed, these large amounts of money would have simply been wasted, something that the Soviet Union could not afford. The close personal affinity between Khrushchev and Castro was also important in the burgeoning relationship between their two countries. Khrushchev was very much a member of the “Cuban lobby” that had quickly appeared after the inception of the relationship. These people were vital throughout the Soviet era but also partly explains Cuba’s place as ‘first among equals’ in the Soviet Union. The events of the Cuban Missile Crisis added further pressure on Moscow regarding Cuba because if the revolution failed the risks that the Soviet Union had taken by deploying the missiles to Cuba would have been in vain. Soviet prestige already dented by these events would have suffered yet another blow. In addition, it may have also led to more questions about Soviet revisionism from China. This was something that Moscow wished to avoid. These pressures remained in place in March 1985 when Gorbachev became General Secretary of the CPSU but new ones had also appeared in the intervening years. These included the fact the Cuba remained an important propaganda tool for Moscow in the Cold War that had taken a turn for the worse in the early 1980s, a shared twenty-year history and a large number of joint projects that resulted in the relationship affecting most parts of society in both countries. Joint education and social programmes were amongst these as were economic ones. The levels of trade and aid had continued to escalate which was very beneficial for Cuba, but

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also meant that Moscow continued to be ‘tied’ to Cuba because if the revolution failed these huge amounts of money over twenty years would have been wasted. Moreover, the “Cuban lobby” remained in place and Havana had also been able to exert some forms of leverage over Moscow resulting from, amongst other reasons, joint Cuban and Soviet involvement in Africa and Central America. However, for the remainder of the Soviet period the relationship would be affected by a number of powerful new forces, some of which were unforeseen, resulting from the various reforms implemented in both countries. The results of perestroika increased the pressure on Gorbachev as not only could the Soviet Union not afford to continue to subsidize an inefficient Cuban economy while it struggled to reform its own, but it could also have led to awkward questions within the CMEA as to why an inefficient Cuban economy continued to have large amounts of money lavished on it. In light of this, it is surprising that it took so long for these pressures to appear but this resulted from the traditional low importance of Cuba for the Soviet elite and also due to the fact the internal Soviet situation acquired their full attention. Calls for reform only increased due to glasnost which led many in the Soviet Union to criticise both Soviet-Cuban relations and also the Cuban Revolution itself, as many began to perceive it as an anachronism and due to its close association with previous, and what had become by the late 1980s, discredited Soviet regimes. In the increasingly democratic Soviet Union of the late 1980s and early 1990s this was something that Gorbachev could not ignore. The result was that those wanting reform were pulling him in different directions from those who wished to see the status quo with Cuba preserved. This situation was further complicated by the fact that the reforms instigated in Cuba were very different from the Soviet ones and appeared to be more of a return to the ideas of the 1960s. At first this was not apparent as both governments concentrated on their similarities and the Cuban government, although not liking them, employed a ‘wait and see’ policy to unfolding events in the Soviet Union in fear of jeopardizing the relationship. Their reaction to the August 1991 coup in Moscow was the most graphic illustration of this. However, this began to change in 1989 as Castro’s dislike of the Soviet reforms became ever more public from this point onwards. This included his very public denouncement of them during Gorbachev’s visit. This only further increased the pressure on Gorbachev. Moreover, what would be vital for Russian-Cuban relations after 1991 were the changes instigated by the Castro regime from 1989 onwards in an attempt to offset the negative consequences of the Soviet reforms, with the desire to attract foreign investment from outside the socialist bloc being particularly significant. Moreover, the “Cuban lobby” remained in place and continued to be able to exact pressure on the Soviet government regarding Cuba and was able to

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slow the rate of reform in Soviet-Cuban relations. Their ability to do this was most apparent after the defeat of the August 1991 coup, which had simultaneously ended their influence as within one month of this Gorbachev had announced the removal of the final Soviet troops from Cuba. It appeared U.S. pressure may have been involved in this decision but Washington had most certainly increased the pressure on Gorbachev to try and bring influence to bear on Cuba. Moreover, and in relation to it, as superpower relations improved as a result of “new thinking” in Soviet foreign policy and the Cold War came to an end, the geostrategic importance of the island for the Kremlin receded. In addition, the role of MarxistLeninism had also decreased in both Soviet foreign policy and its internal politics. Many of the foundations of Soviet-Cuban relations were beginning to crumble. International relations in general and Soviet-Cuban relations specifically may have been very different at the end of 1991 but it was only with the implosion of the Soviet Union that Soviet-Cuban relations disintegrated. Gorbachev never called for them to be terminated but only reformed. A variety of pressures had impacted Soviet-Cuban relations throughout its existence, with some being constant while many had changed and others had simply vanished. However, in the New World Order of the 1990s some of these not only survived the end of SovietCuban relations but others would reappear which would be vital for the relationship that evolved between Moscow and Havana. NOTES 1. Nikhita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, (New York: Penguin Books, 1971), 450. 2. Diplomaticheskii slovar A-U, Tom 1, (Moscow: Nauka, 1984), 319. Andrei Gromyko, Pamiatnoe, Kniga Pervaya, (Moscow: Politizdat, 1988), 389–98. 3. Aleksandr Fursenko, and Timothy Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble” The Secret History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, (London: John Murray, 1997), 12. 4. Relations between Havana and Washington deteriorated at this time, illustrated by the effects of Castro’s April 1959 trip to the United States, the radical content of the 1960 Declaration of San Jose, which led Washington to believe that the Monroe Doctrine, which gave Washington the right to intervene in Latin America to prevent the influence of outside powers increasing in the region, had been infringed and Castro’s counter to this, the Declaration of Havana on 2 September 1960. For these events see Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years Waging Peace 1956–1961 (London: Heinemann, 1966), 521–33. H. Thomas, Cuba or The Pursuit of Freedom, (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1971), 1234–54. 5. For analysis of Washington’s Cuba policy see: Morris Morley, Imperial State and Revolution. The United States and Cuba 1952–1986, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 72–146. Juan Carlos Rodríguez, The Bay of Pigs and the CIA, (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 1999).

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6. Fursenko, and Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble,” 27. 7. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 475. On the Soviet foreign policy shift that occurred after Stalin’s death see: Margot Light, The Soviet Theory of International Relations, (Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books, 1988), 99–124. P. Zwick, Soviet Foreign Relations Process and Policy, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall, 1990), 37–45. V. Zubok and C. Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 180–235. 8. The new regime in Moscow hoped that the Soviet Union could become more influential in the Third World by offering trade or aid to the newly independent countries. The agreement with Egypt was announced in Izvestia, 25 April 1954, 8; with Afghanistan in Pravda, 30 April 1954, 4; and with Iran in Pravda, 19 June 1954, 3. 9. G. J. Boughton, Soviet-Cuban Relations 1956–1962, (Michigan State University PhD Thesis, 1972), 10. Thomas, Cuba or The Pursuit of Freedom, 1216–17. 10. Samuel Farber, The Origins of the Cuban Revolution. Reconsidered, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 147. 11. Raúl had not just traveled to Eastern Europe but on his return from Europe had spent considerable time with the KGB officer Nikolai Leonov as they were passengers on the same ship as they traveled from Genoa to Latin America in 1953. Thomas, Cuba or The Pursuit of Freedom, 826. Fursenko and Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble,” 33–34. 12. Wayne Smith, The Closest of Enemies. A Personal and Diplomatic Account of U.S.-Cuban Relations Since 1957, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1987), 144. 13. Revolución 2 December 1961, 1. Ernesto Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey Around South America, (London: Fourth Estate, 1995), 61–64. D. E. Schulz, The Cuban Revolution and the Soviet Union, (Ohio University PhD Thesis, 1977), 14–19. 14. As outlined in chapter 1 Erisman details five different paradigms in Cuban foreign policy. These are the realist scenario, the use of foreign policy as part of a revolutionary crusade, the role of Fidel himself, the surrogate/superclient theses and dependency theory. Michael Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations in a Post-Soviet World, (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), 22–48. This speech was just one example of Castro trying to manipulate Cuba’s relationship with the Soviet Union by attempting to increase the pressure on Moscow. 15. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 461. James Blight, and Philip Brenner, Sad and Luminous Days. Cuba’s Struggle with the Superpowers after the Cuban Missile Crisis, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002), 35–85. Yuri Pavlov, Soviet-Cuban Alliance 1959–1991, (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994), 45–61. It has also been stated that the Castro regime did not want the Soviet Union to try and carry out the deployment of the missiles covertly. Tomas Diez Acosta, October 1962. The ‘Missile’ Crisis As Seen From Cuba, (New York: Pathfinder, 2002) 103–05. 16. Document 1, Cuban Record of Conversation, Mikoyan and Cuban Leadership, Havana 4 November 1962 in Cold War International History Project Bulletin, Issues 8-9 Winter 1996/1997, Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Issues 8–9 (Winter 1996/1997), 339–42. 17. Document 1, Cuban Record of Conversation, 339–42.

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18. The Cuban leader may have traveled to the Soviet Union twice in the three years immediately after the Cuban Missile Crisis but Che Guevara made three trips in the same period. In addition, Cuba also signed two trade agreements with the Soviet Union with the second being the first to last for a duration of five years. Pravda, 18 January 1964, 1–2. 19. The 1964 agreement set both the levels of sugar and the price which Moscow would pay until 1970. These levels were 2.1m tons in 1965, 3m tons in 1966, 4m tons in 1967, and 5m tons in both 1968 and 1969. The price was to be 6 US cents free alongside ship. This meant that delivery was included in the price. Pravda, 23 January 1964, 1. 20. Blight and Brenner, Sad and Luminous Days, 35–85. 21. Ernesto Guevara, “Discurso en el Segundo Seminario Económico de Solidaridad Afroasiática” in Ernesto Che Guevara escritos y discursos, 7, (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1985), 341–54. 22. Granma, 7 February 1966, 1. Pravda, 2 April 1966, 7. 23. Fidel Castro, Fidel Castro Speaks, (London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1969), 161–80. 24. Blight and Brenner, Sad and Luminous Days, 99-104. Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations, 80–82. 25. In relation to Cuban security Erisman states that the Cuban government was happy with Soviet action as it illustrated that Moscow was prepared to use military power to defend socialism, which after the Cuban Missile Crisis Havana had been uncertain of. Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations, 76. 26. Peter Shearman, The Soviet Union and Cuba, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), 35. 27. Blight and Brenner, Sad and Luminous Days, 33–76. 28. Ibid. Pavlov, Soviet-Cuban Alliance, 90–92. 29. Cuba did not appear on the list of participating communist parties at this conference. Pravda, 28 February 1968, 1. 30. J.D. Rudolph, The Evolution of a Crisis, (London: Praeger, 1992) 53–76. 31. Moreover, during this trip an exhibition was held in Cuba to mark the one hundredth anniversary of Lenin’s birth. Pravda, 18 November 1969, 5. Pravda, 3 April 1971, 6–7. 32. Pravda, 3 September 1971, 4 and Granma, 12 July 1972, 1. Pravda, 28 June 1972, 1–2. 33. As Castro left Moscow five days before Cuba gained membership to the CMEA Carmelo Mesa-Lago has written that he may have also wanted membership to the Warsaw Pact. Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Cuba in the 1970s, Pragmatism and Institutionalization, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1974), 16–17. M. Robins has suggested that this did not happen as it meant that Moscow did not have to grant Cuba a formal defense treaty. M. Robins, “The Soviet-Cuba Relationship” in Soviet Foreign Policy in the 1980s, ed. Roger E. Kanet, (New York: Praeger, 1982) 152. 34. Nicola Miller, Soviet Relations with Latin America 1959–1987, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 92. 35. Soviet-Cuban trade did not dramatically rise with the Caribbean island’s membership to the CMEA. In 1972 it was 938,464 million pesos and for 1973

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1,287,685 million pesos. However, Cuban trade with the other members of this organisation did increase sharply. Anuario Estadístico de Cuba, (Comité Estatal de Estadísticas: Havana, 1975), 159. On the economic significance of the relationship to Cuba Peter Shearman has written, “Unlike other distant Third World client states of the Soviet Union, its very economic survival was dependent on aid from Moscow. Shearman, The Soviet Union and Cuba, 29. 36. Pravda, 31 January 1974, 5. 37. Peter Shearman, “The Soviet Union and Cuba: the ‘Best’ of Friends” in Troubled Friendships Moscow’s Third World Ventures, ed. by Margot Light, (London, British Academic Press, 1993), 170. 38. Pravda, 25 February 1976, 3. Mesa-Lago, Cuba in the 1970s, 10–12. Shearman, “The Soviet Union and Cuba,” 173. González has also stated this but on Castro’s role in the process he wrote, “Fidel’s position as the supreme lider maximo has now been institutionalized in his multiple roles as First Secretary, president of both the Council of State and Council of Ministers, and commander in chief.” Edward González, “Institutionalization, Political Elites and Foreign Affairs” in Cuba in the World, ed. Carmelo Mesa-Lago and Cole Blasier, (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979), 16. 39. Granma, 19 December 1975, 2–7. Munck, Revolutionary Trends, 53–57. In the five different paradigms in Cuban foreign policy as outlined by Erisman he states that Havana was continually striving for increased independence from Moscow. Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations, 22–48. 40. Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations, 2000, 33–36. 41. Shearman, “The Soviet Union,” 172. 42. Domínguez, “Political and Military Limitations,” 107. Levesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution, 188. Fidel Castro, “Angola: African Giron” in Fidel Castro Speeches. Cuba’s Internationalist Foreign Policy, (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1981), 91–92. Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations, 71, 80–82. On the decision to send troops to Angola, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez told Alexander Haig, the United States Secretary of State, in December 1981 during secret talks held in México City that “I can assure unequivocally, in as much as I played a direct role in this matter, that when the decision to dispatch Cuban forces into Angola was made, we communicated nothing about it to the Soviet Union.” “Transcript of Meeting between US Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig, Jr., and Cuban Vice Premier Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, México City, 23 November 1981” in Cold War International History Project, Bulletin, Issues 8–9, 210. 43. Jorge Domínguez, To Make a World Safe for Revolution. Cuba’s Foreign Policy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 145, 229. 44. Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations, 68–70. González, “Institutionalization,” 17, 23. Domínguez, To Make a World Safe for Revolution, 151. Domínguez, “The Armed Forces and Foreign Relations,” 53. 45. Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations, 103–4. 46. K. U. Chernenko, Izbrannye rechi i stat’I (Moscow: Politizdat, 1984), 424–28. 47. A change in United States foreign policy had taken place in the late 1970s with it once again becoming much more pro-active. The catalyst for this had been the Iranian Revolution but it soon spread to Latin America. This policy became known as the “Carter Doctrine.” Morley, Imperial State and Revolution, 366. Washington’s

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Cuba policy had since the early-1960s been heavily influenced by the CubanAmerica exile community as a result of their great wealth, the significance of the state of Florida in Presidential elections that meant no Presidential candidate could afford to ignore them and the creation of the Cuban American National Foundation that was excellent at lobbying politicians in Washington. Morris Morley and Chris McGillion, Unfinished Business. America and Cuba After the Cold War, 1989–2001, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 12–13. 48. Pravda, 11 November 1984, 1, 4. 49. V. Lavrentyev, ‘USSR-Cuban Brotherhood and Cooperation,’ (FBIS LD182341 Moscow Domestic Service in Russian 0615, 18 April 1985). 50. Anuario Estadístico de Cuba, 1975, 1980; 168, 184–205. For economic analysis of Soviet-Cuban relations after Cuba had gained access to the CMEA see amongst others: Julio Díaz Vázquez, Cuba y el CAME (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1988). A.D. Bekareich, “USSR-Cuba. Collaboration of Experience and Perspectives” in USSR-Latin America. Collaboration of Writings and Perspectives, (Moscow: Nauka, 1989), 41–53. J.L. Rodríguez, “Las Relaciones Económicas CubaURSS” Temas de Economía Mundial l, (1986), 7–33. 51. González, “Castro and Cuba’s New Orthodoxy,” 11. 52. Pravda, 24 April 1985, 1. 53. Yegor Ligachev, Inside Gorbachev’s Kremlin, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), 313. 54. Pravda, 26 February 1986, 5. It has been suggested that many of the outcomes of the Soviet reform processes were unforeseen as this process had been formulated on an adhoc basis. Ligachev, Inside Gorbachev’s Kremlin, 357–58. 55. In addition to this, the reforms in Soviet foreign policy also questioned the ideas of the inevitability of the world revolution, reassessed traditional thinking towards both the United States and its population, as Moscow wanted better relations with the West, and a re-thinking of its nuclear strategy also commenced. This change in foreign policy was aided by an enormous changeover in personnel in the foreign policy making apparatus, with the highest profile example being Andrei Gromyko being replaced as the Minister of Foreign Affairs by Eduard Shevardnadze. Pravda, 26 February 1986, 6. The result of this, amongst others, was a reduction in tension between the superpowers. For more analysis on this see: Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika i novoe myshlenie dlia nashei strany i dlia vsego mira, (Moscow: Politizdat, 1987), 158, 197–267. Stephen White, Gorbachev and After, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 174–214. Mikhail Gorbachev, Zhizn i Reformy Kniga 2, (Moscow: Izdatelstvo “Novosti,” 1995), 312. S. F. Akhromeev, and G. M. Kornienko. Glazami marshala i diplomata: kriticheskii vzgliad na vneshniu politiku SSSR do i posle 1985 goda, (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1992), 55. Eduard Shevardnadze, Moi Vybor v Zashchitu Demokratii i Svobody, (Moscow: Novosti, 1991), 47. 56. The effects of glasnost were not, however, immediately felt and it was not until after the Chernobyl disaster in April 1986, it had taken Moscow three weeks to admit this accident had occurred, that the process accelerated. For a full analysis of this see White, Gorbachev and After, 70–73. 57. Castro had talked about the problems facing the island on a number of occasions see: Supplement to Granma 21 April 1986, Granma Weekly Review 2 August

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1986, 3 and at the 3rd Congress of the PCC. Fidel Castro, Fidel Castro: ideología, conciencia y trabajo político, (Havana: Editora Política, 1986). 58. Antoni Kapcia, The Cuban Revolution in Crisis, (Research Institute for Study of Conflict and Terrorism, Conflict Studies, 1992), 256. Antoni Kapcia, Political Change in Cuba: Before and After the Exodus, (Institute of Latin American Studies, Occasional Papers No. 19, University of London). Kapcia, “Political Change in Cuba: The Domestic Context for Foreign Policy” in Redefining Cuban Foreign Policy, 27–28. Jorge Domínguez, “The Political Impact on Cuba of the Reform and Collapse of Communist Regimes” in Cuba After the Cold War, 104–17. Marifeli Pérez -Stable, The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course and Legacy, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 154. Andrew Zimbalist. “Cuban Political Economy and Cubanology: An Overview” in Cuban Political Economy: Controversies in Cubanology, ed. by Andrew Zimbalist, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988.), 72. 59. Supplement to Granma, 21 April 1986. 60. For examples of this see: Moscow in Spanish to Cuba 0244 GMT 27 September 1987 (FBIS-SOV 6 October 1987, 33, PA021650). Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, “La Oportunidad Que No Podernos Rehusar” America Latina No. 8, (1986): 4–8. 61. Ligachev’s speech contained the reasons why the reforms were needed in the Soviet Union and significantly also in CMEA countries, which included Cuba. Granma 6 February 1986, 7. In his speech to the 27th Congress of the CPSU Castro had pointedly talked of national liberation movements when Gorbachev’s earlier speech to the same congress had not, illustrating the differences in opinions. Pravda, 27 February 1986, 7. 62. At the 44th session of the CMEA held in Prague in July 1988, Nikolai Ryzhkov’s, Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, stated in his speech, “It is of paramount importance to make economic assistance significantly more effective and to improve the use that Vietnam, Cuba and Mongolia make of their own resources, as well as of outside resources, to resolve key problems in these countries’ social and economic development and ensue their participation in the international division of labour.” Pravda, 6 July 1988, 4. 63. For this type of article see: Literturnaya Gazeta, 21 October 1987, 14. P. Bogomolov, “Plans by the Ocean. Journalist Raises Problem” Pravda, 1 June 1987, 5. 64. Vladislav Chirkov, “An Uphill Task” New Times, 33, (17 August 1987), 16–17. Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, “A Difficult But Steady Ascent” New Times, 41, (19 October 1987), 16–21. 65. In an article in Moscow Komsomolskaya Pravda the Castro brothers’ personal lives had been attacked with amongst other things the number of houses that they owned was questioned as was even the number of children that each had fathered. Moscow Komsomolskaya Pravda 28 August 1990, 2. (FBIS-SOV 4 September 1990, 44-45, PM3108115990). For the Cuban response to this see: Jose Ramon Balaguer “Lies and Insults” Pravda, 26 October 1990, 5. 66. In his speech to the Congress the outspoken economist N.P. Shmelyev had questioned Moscow paying 400 percent of the world market price for Cuban sugar. Izvestia, 9 June 1989, 10. 67. For examples of these types of reports see: K. Khachaturov, “Latin America and Us” International Affairs (10), (1992), 32–39. M.A. Belya, “Cuba: How Distant?”

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Latinskaia Amerika No. 9 (1991), 9. P. Bogomolov “Switching Spigots” Pravda, 24 October 1991, 4. 68. For this type of reporting see: Granma, 25 February 1988, 6; Granma, 14 July 1988, 5; Granma, 19 July 1988, 6; and Granma, 25 November 1988, 4. 69. Granma, 5 April 1989, 3. Yuri Pavlov, Soviet-Cuban Alliance 1959–1991, (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994), 134. 70. Granma, 5 April 1989, 2. It has been suggested that Gorbachev’s Perestroika i novoe myshlenie dlia nashei strany i dlia vsego mira, published in Cuba in 1988, was not the work of a socialist mind. Interview with Dr Rodolfo Fonte, a retired ideologue to the Central Committee for the PCC, in Havana over a number of days between 14 and 30 November 2000. 71. Granma, 28 July 1989, 4. 72. Kapcia, The Cuban Revolution in Crisis, Kapcia, Political Change in Cuba. Andreas Oppenheimer, Castro’s Final Hour, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 91. Domínguez, “The Political Impact,” 104–17. 73. On this decision Castro said, “We could not hesitate to prevent the circulation of certain Soviet publications which have been against the policies of the URSS and socialism. They are for the ideas of imperialism, change and the counterrevolution.” Granma, 8 December 1989, 4. Castro announced the “special period in peacetime” on 10 March 1990 at the Cuban Federation of Women (FMC) 5th Congress. Granma Supplement, 10 March 1990, IV. The first hotel opened in conjunction with foreign money in Varadero in May 1990. Granma International, 27 May 1990, 3. 74. Gorbachev talks about Bush attempting to influence him regarding SovietCuban relations on a number of occasion in his memoirs. Gorbachev, Zhizn i Reformy Kniga 2, 425–29. During his visit to Moscow Mas Canosa met both Boris Yeltsin and Boris Pankin. Moscow Central Television First Programme Network 2055 GMT 6 September 1991 (FBIS-SOV 10 September 1991, 13, LD0609223691). 75. Gorbachev, Zhizn i Reformy Kniga 2, 417–29. Granma, 31 December 1990, 1. Katushev had close ties to the Cuban ruling elite and on leaving his post as Soviet ambassador to Cuba in November 1985 Castro had awarded him the Order of Solidarity for his work on the island. Granma, 23 November 1985, 1. 76. Mervyn J. Bain, Soviet-Cuban Relations 1985 to 1991. Changing Perceptions in Moscow and Havana, (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), 94–95. 77. The Cuban government’s response to the August coup came ten days after it had begun and had subsequently been crushed with a Granma editorial on 29 August 1991 that was very similar in content to Castro’s speech on 26 July 1989 as it blamed the problems facing the Soviet Union on the policies implemented at the 27th Congress of the CPSU in February 1986. Granma, 29 August 1991, 1. This was very different from the very concise report at the start of the coup that had simply stated that Gennadii Yanaev had replaced Gorbachev as President of the Soviet Union due to ill-health. Granma, 19 August 1991, 1. 78. Boris Pankin believed that Baker had been able to bring pressure to bear on Gorbachev over this decision and that relations with the U.S. were certainly significant in it. Boris Pankin, The Last One Hundred Days of the Soviet Union, (London: I. B. Tauris Publishers, 1996), 71.

3

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A

s detailed in chapter 2, Soviet-Cuban relations had been subjected to a number of pressures throughout its duration which had not just pushed the two countries together in the late 1950s and early 1960s but had then formed its foundations for the next thirty years. However, the implosion of the Soviet Union, which simultaneously ended SovietCuban relations, meant that many of these pressures simply vanished. Chief amongst these was Marxist-Leninism which had been of the utmost importance in the relationship. Moreover, its removal from the internal policies pursued by the Kremlin would also impact on Russian-Cuban relations, but the result was that the disappearance of Marxist-Leninism was a key factor in the massive downturn in relations between Moscow and Havana in the period from 1992 to 1994. This downturn was so swift and dramatic that by the end of 1992 it would have appeared to the casual observer as if the thirty-year relationship between Moscow and Havana had never existed as many aspects of the relationship had been destroyed, with the removal of Marxist-Leninism being fundamental to this. The result was that Moscow was no longer ‘tied’ to Havana due to ideology, and in conjunction with improved relations between Moscow and Washington, this meant that the geostrategic importance of a Marxist-Leninist state in the Caribbean for the Kremlin had simply vanished. This could be seen in September 1992 when it was announced that the final 1,500 Russian troops would be removed from Cuba by mid-1993, as their presence in Cuba “no longer makes sense” with the disappearance of the Soviet Union.1 In addition, it also meant that the existence of joint projects between the two countries no longer illustrated 51

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the superiority of the Marxist-Leninist system compared to the capitalist one and, therefore, also lost their importance for Moscow. This was illustrated on 7 September 1992 when Fidel Castro announced that the joint project to build the nuclear power plant at Juragua had been mothballed. The reason being the Russian Federation wanted $300,000 a month in hard currency for the wages of the Russian experts working on this project, and this was simply a prohibitive cost for the Cuban government.2 In 1992, further illustrating the very different nature of relations between Havana and Moscow with the removal of Marxist-Leninism was that both the book, On Eve of Collapse, was published in Russia whose content was highly critical of the Castro regime, and also the first Cuban dissident group, Cuba Union, was even created in Russia, neither of which would have taken place during the Soviet era.3 Besides this, the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) attempted to increase the influence that it had gained in the Russian capital in the final months of the Soviet Union by applying for three hundred visas for Cubans living in Russia to be allowed to relocate to the United States. In addition, the prominent Cuban-Americans Carlos Alberto Montaner and Carlos Fanqui visited the Russian capital in May 1992 for a conference held on Cuba which debated what would happen to the island with the end of SovietCuban relations. It was highly critical of the Caribbean island and its government with A. Tsipko of the Gorbachev Foundation not only comparing Fidel Castro to Adolf Hitler but also mocking the phrase “socialism or death” which the Cuban leader had taken to finishing his speeches with when he said, “Today Fidel says ‘socialism or death.’ This phrase should really be ‘My power or your death.’”4 Moreover, the Ochoa case was even discussed, which they believed had been a call for change on the island and the former head of the Cuban army in Africa was described as “an outstanding person, who was not allowed to fulfil his potential.”5 Such discussions had never taken place in 1989, further illustrating the very different nature of Russian-Cuban relations. Moscow’s voting behaviour at various United Nations (UN) forums also highlighted both the fundamental change in relations between the two countries, and also Russians’ attitudes towards the Caribbean island. In October 1992, in a further attempt to hasten the demise of the Castro regime in light of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Cuban Democracy Act, or Torricelli Bill, which further tightened the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba, became law. A resolution condemning it was placed before the UN in November 1992, and in the ensuing vote the Russian Federation abstained.6 If this was not a big enough shock for Havana, Moscow voted against Havana at the UN Convention on Human Rights in Geneva in 1992. This was truly historic, as Moscow had never voted in this manner before, but it was repeated in 1993 and 1995. Moreover, also

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in 1992 the Russian parliament held hearings on the subject of Cuba’s human rights record.7 A number of reasons explain this which will be discussed in chapter 5, but the fact that Moscow no longer had to defend a fellow Marxist-Leninist state in these forums was a key factor in the Russian Federation voting in this manner. The deterioration in relations was not just political but also economic. In 1991 delivery problems of Soviet goods to the Caribbean may have been blamed for the sudden drop in trade levels, but they fell still further in 1992, when it crashed to a mere 823 million pesos, a figure less than 25 percent of the 1991 level, or below 9 percent of trade conducted in 1988.8 In four short years Havana had had to withstand a drop in excess of 90 percent, in trade with Moscow. This dramatic fall in trade continued in 1993 and 1994 but is even more graphically illustrated if a comparison to 1965 or the first five-year plan between the Soviet Union and Cuba is made. If 1965 has a base figure of 100, 1992 has a figure of 110, 1993 a figure of 71 and 1994 only has a figure of 43. In the late 1980s, even as the terms of trade had begun to turn against Cuba, this figure had exceeded 1100 or even 1200, but in 1994, twenty-nine years after the first five-year agreement, trade was less that half of the 1965 level.9 The trade that did take place consisted mainly of Russian oil being exchanged for Cuban sugar, and the reasons for this will be analysed in detail in chapter 4. Figure 3.1 further illustrates this spectacular fall in trade between Havana and Moscow in the years immediately after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, which had a catastrophic effect on the Cuban economy, as

Figure 3.1.

Trade between Moscow and Havana

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over 70 percent of the Caribbean island’s trade had been conducted with the Soviet Union. This had been despite continued Cuban attempts during the Soviet era to reduce dependency on Moscow, but the situation was so dire that in 1993 Raúl Castro described its effect on the Cuban economy was “as if a nuclear bomb had exploded.”10 Moreover, the seriousness of the situation is further shown by Figure 3.2 which has an even steeper downward gradient than Figure 3.1. Cuban imports of Russian goods were falling even more quickly than overall trade between the two countries. In 1992 Russian imports made up only 23 percent of total trade and in 1993 this fell to just 13 percent. The Soviet Union had been the source of many important goods for Cuba and this downturn did not only still further weaken the island’s economy, but it also adversely affected its citizens with the “special period in peacetime” becoming increasingly grave as amongst other things consumer goods virtually vanished in this period. A variety of socio-economic figures illustrate this point, not least Cuba’s falling Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which fell for four straight years from 1990 with the decrease in the years from 1991 to 1993 all exceeding 10 percent.11 The result of this was an increase in tension on the island which many observers believed would be terminal for the Castro regime. Although this did not happen it did lead to the balsero crisis of August 1994 when over 25,000 Cubans had fled the island.12 As stated in chapters 1 and 2, Marxist-Leninism had been a cornerstone of Soviet-Cuban relations but its importance had been reduced during the Gorbachev era, which had badly affected the relationship, but in the years after 1992 it was completely removed from it. This meant that one of the

Figure 3.2.

Cuban Imports of Russian Goods

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key reasons for the relationship’s continuation had simply evaporated overnight, as had the importance for the Kremlin of a socialist state in the western hemisphere, and this partly explains the massive downturn in both political and economic relations in the period from 1992 to 1994. On this Nadya Plankton, co-organiser of the cinema, video and graphic arts project entitled ‘Days of the Russian contemporary culture in Havana’ which was held in Havana in November 2005, has written that for Russia, “Cuba was the first country that has been stroked off the friends’ list, it was wiped out from the world’s map.”13 Both Boris Yeltsin and the Liberal Westernizers, apparent victory in the debate over Russian foreign policy were fundamental to this. Not only was Yeltsin and their ideas most certainly not based on Marxist-Leninism, but they also believed that it was not possible for Moscow in the early 1990s to have close relations with both Havana and Washington and due to both the importance that the Russian government attached to relations with the U.S. at this time, and the removal of Marxist-Leninism from it, relations with Cuba suffered.14 In addition, internally Russia was also undergoing an economic transition as the Yeltsin government whole-heartedly embraced the ideas of the neoliberal economic model, based on very different foundations from the Soviet planned economy. This had a number of knock-on effects for Russian-Cuban relations. A number of the new Russian companies that appeared at this time who were no longer constrained by political motives simply did not wish to trade with Cuba in the traditional manner but instead wished to implement new terms of trade which the Caribbean island simply could not afford. The Russian desire for Cuba to pay for its experts working on the Juragua project in hard currency was a perfect example of this. Moreover, as the Russian economy was thrown into turmoil by the harsh policies implemented by the Kremlin, who wished to move to the market economy as quickly as possible, more established Russian companies at this time were in no position to compete with their Western counterparts in an increasingly competitive Cuban market. This was the logical conclusion of neoliberal economics as it is simply the most efficient and competitive companies that thrive in such a model. As stated, Russian exports to Cuba falling at a faster rate than imports from Cuba to Russia graphically illustrated this point. In January 2006, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, wrote, “Our ties survived various stages: from growth in the middle of the last century to an open decline of the 1990s, partly due to Russia’s shift to a market model of development.”15 On this Yuri Pavlov has written that Yeltsin finished the de-ideologization process begun by Gorbachev, and A. Ermakov, head of the Department on Cuba in the Russian Latin American Department, stated in an interview in February 1992 that ideology no longer played any part in relations between Havana and Moscow. Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev

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was much more forthright when he wrote that, “it is necessary to create normal links between our two countries, after an abnormal fragile stereotype, which was based on ‘revolutionary romanticism’ which was politically and economically onerous for the USSR.”16 In addition, and related to this, the removal of Marxist-Leninism from the relationship and the victory of the Liberal Westernizers in Russia was also symbolic of the defeat of the “Cuban lobby” in Moscow who had most certainly believed in this ideology. As stated in chapter 2, they had been very influential in shielding the island from some of the adverse effects of Gorbachev’s reforms in the 1980s but their disappearance removed this important brake to reform that resulted in changed relations between Havana and Moscow not just speeding up, but the relationship virtually disintegrating. However, in the new democratic Russia Cuba remained a very emotive subject for many Russians with Plankton believing that at this time a person’s thinking on the “island of freedom” could even be used to show their political orientation. Some were extremely unhappy with the effects that Yeltsin’s policies were having for Cuba, blaming him for the grave situation that the Caribbean island found itself in, with the Russian President even being described as “a cowboy without the hat.”17 However, with the Liberal Westernizers to the fore and as a result of both the Castro regime’s previous close association with former discredited Soviet regimes, and its refusal to change its socialist nature despite world events which was illustrated by it being referred to as a “totalitarian regime” during the 1992 Moscow conference which analysed the Cuban situation, this for many simply provided further reasons for the relationship between the two countries to be terminated.18 The Cuban response to these events was extremely interesting and not what may have been expected because although the Castro regime was no longer constrained by a shared ideology or diplomatic protocol its reaction was in many ways not dissimilar to the Gorbachev era of SovietCuban relations, as little or no analysis on events in Russia was given. Granma did print a number of articles on the unfolding situation in the former Soviet Union with many concentrating on the socio-economic problems that faced the vast proportion of the population. A number of Cuban academic articles at this time also commented upon this, as did Castro who on a number of occasions also highlighted the socio-political problems that engulfed Russia in the 1990s. He not only commented that the effect of these reforms could be extremely dangerous due the fact that Russia was a nuclear power, but interestingly he appeared to lay much of the blame for Russia’s problems at forces from outside the Russian Federation, the implementation of International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank policies in particular, but also on the increased influence of

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the mafia. As stated, Raúl Castro may have compared the effect of the loss of the Soviet trade to the Cuban economy to that of a nuclear explosion but he too blamed forces from outwith the Soviet Union for its collapse.19 This is not surprising due to their ideological aversion to both of these organisations policies but these attacks on the socio-political problems in Russia also sent a very clear message to the island’s population: this was the outcome of attempts to reform the socialist system, and would be the fate awaiting them if a similar situation arose in Cuba. Moreover, the Cuban academic Sofía Hernández Marmal, a researcher at the Centro de Estudios Europeos (CEE) in Havana, has written that neoliberalism resulted in an “economic Darwinism” appearing that hurt the vast proportion of the Russian population. In addition to the criticism of the IMF and World Bank the role of the United States was also attacked. This will be examined in more depth in chapter 5 but Cuba was of the opinion that the U.S. belief in free market economy and the influence that Washington had in Moscow at this time had also been responsible for the problems suffered by the Russian economy and in turn the country’s population. Moreover, this also had a knock-on effect for Russian foreign policy as specifically they believed that Kozyrev had fallen “in love with the United States and the U.S way of life,” which had resulted in the appearance of the “Kozyrev Doctrine” with its emphasis on good relations with the West and U.S. in particular. 20 In August 1994, in a speech to Cuban solidarity groups in Colombia, the Cuban leader was much more forthright on the economic effects that the end of Soviet-Cuban relations had had on the Caribbean island. However, it appears that the real intended audience was not an international one but instead an internal Cuban one. In this speech he said, “when we are subjected to a double blockade, because we practically do not have any commerce with former socialist countries and with Russia.”21 This comparison to the U.S. economic embargo is significant for a number of reasons, as it not only illustrated the impact that the Cuban leadership believed that the end of Soviet-Cuban relations had had for Cuba, but it was also an attempt to absolve them of blame for the dire condition of the island’s economy in the early 1990s. Traditionally the U.S. embargo had been used by the Cuban elite to blame external reasons for the island’s economic problems and Castro was using the fall in trade with Moscow in a similar manner to ‘explain’ the worst economic crisis that had hit Cuba in the revolutionary era. The timing of this speech was no accident as it was at the very moment that the balsero crisis, due to the build up of internal pressure as a result of the island’s failing economy, was about to explode. Castro was attempting to use this speech to shift the blame for this away from himself and his government to once again external reasons beyond their control.

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More forthright criticism of the downturn in relations between Havana and Moscow may have been expected from the Cuban government, but in the situation they found themselves in the early to mid-1990s they had a severe lack of alternative options as any influence that they may have had in Moscow during the Soviet era as a result of a shared ideology, a semblance of leverage or the role of the “Cuban lobby” had disappeared. However, what was absolutely crucial was that even in 1992 exchanges of Cuban sugar for Russian oil were mooted. As detailed, trade may have been a fraction of earlier levels, but in these very difficult days for the Castro regime with the very survival of the revolution in question, any trade was of great importance for the Caribbean island, but trade with Russia was particularly significant as at this time it was one of the few sources of much needed oil. Simply, the government in Havana did not wish to jeopardise the exchanges that were taking place by being overly critical of Russia. It appeared as if realist pragmatism, prevalent throughout the revolutionary period, was still very much in evidence in the decision-making apparatus of the Cuban government. Interestingly, Cuban academia has been critical of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) and the effects that it has had on Cuba. Dr Hiram Marquetti, a researcher at Centro de Investigaciones de la Economía Internacional (CIEI) in Havana, has certainly done this while José Bell Lara has written that Cuba’s membership in the organisation was “fundamentally based upon Cuba’s continuing export of selected primary goods, notably, sugar, citrus fruit and nickel, it was essentially an insertion of the underdeveloped type. Precisely for this reason, the external vulnerability of the economy was not eliminated by a prolonged insertion in these relations.”22 Such forthright criticism may be surprising but what is absolutely crucial was that when these articles were written the CMEA no longer existed so therefore, the island’s relationship with the organisation could not be affected regardless of what Cuban academics wrote about it. However, Russian-Cuban relations did still continue and, although much reduced in comparison to the Soviet era, they remained vital to the Cuban Revolution at this time. Therefore, criticism of Russia and Russia-Cuban relations was avoided in fear of jeopardizing them, with realist pragmatism still being very much in evidence on the island. This did not, however, mean that the Cuban leadership made no comment on the state of Russian-Cuban relations in the early 1990s because Castro did criticise Russia’s human rights record in Chechnya, and will be discussed in chapter 5. In addition, Cuban displeasure at these events can be seen in the Granma report of Boris Yeltsin’s death in April 2007 when the article pointedly reminded its readers that it had been Yeltsin who had been responsible for the dissolution of both the Congress of People’s

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Deputies and Supreme Council of Russia, which had both been significant institutions in the Soviet Union.23 The reforms implemented by Gorbachev in the late 1980s reduced the significance of Marxist-Leninism in the relationship between Moscow and Havana, but after the disintegration of the Soviet Union it completely disappeared from both its internal policies and foreign policy, both of which had grave consequences for the relationship and the Cuban Revolution itself. Moreover, both the Russian Federation looking to the West and the United States in particular, and the Castro government’s refusal to deviate from its socialist path further adversely affected Russian-Cuban relations. This downturn was both political and economic with the Cuban economy suffering greatly from the loss of its most important trading partner. The result was that the disappearance of Marxist-Leninism from relations between Moscow and Havana was a fundamental aspect in the spectacular downturn in their relationship in the years 1992 to 1994.

CUBA EMBRACES REFORMS As detailed, the disintegration of the Soviet Union had a catastrophic effect on the Cuban economy with the island’s total trade plummeting in the years 1992 and 1993 to below $3b, which had severe repercussions on the standard of living of Cuban citizens and led to unrest on the island in the summer of 1994. This situation was something that the Cuban government could not allow to continue and although their rhetoric on the socialist nature of Cuban society may not have changed after 1992 a series of reforms were introduced which it was hoped would alleviate these economic problems. As these appeared to be very different from the socialist economic model, it perfectly illustrated the prevalence of realist pragmatism within the Cuban Revolution as its very survival was at stake. As has been outlined, throughout the Soviet era the Castro government made repeated attempts to reduce its dependence on Moscow and in the late 1980s a further attempt, in light of the adverse repercussions for the island of Gorbachev’s reform processes, had been made which had included amongst others the hope of encouraging tourism to the island. This was to be partly funded by permitting foreign companies to invest in the Cuban tourist industry, which as stated in chapter 2, would be vital to the Cuban government in the 1990s as it attempted to economically recover from the loss of the Soviet Union. These Cuban attempts were aided by the fact that the end of the Soviet Union and Soviet-Cuban relations had coincided with the increase in the globalisation process, partly as a result of the lack of an alternative to the international capitalist system with the disappearance of the

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socialist economic model. In the final years of the twentieth century globalisation was at the centre of a multifaceted scholarly debate, which did not just concentrate on the process in general, but also over a definitive definition of it and whether it is even a new process or not.24 In relation to this, investment in Latin America in general and Cuba in particular before 1959 from outwith the region was not new, but in the 1990s it was on a truly global scale and not predominantly from the United States, as had previously been the case. The effects of globalisation have led some to believe that it has impinged on states’ sovereignty, questioned the continued significance of nationalism and resulted in the appearance of a number of new security dilemmas as it has not just increased the power of multinational companies and transnational enterprise but also impacted on many other parts of society including politics. Although this is the case and the effects of globalisation on countries even within the same region have not been universal, what can be concluded is that interdependence between various world economies has increased with the pre-eminence of international capitalism, illustrated by the growth of transnational investment.25 This was vital for not just the Cuban Revolution but also Russian-Cuban relations. As outlined, in the late 1980s Cuba had made attempts to encourage foreign investment to the island from outwith the socialist bloc, but in the 1990s this process increased dramatically, with various legislation being passed to encourage this. In 1992 the National Assembly changed the constitution so that state property could be transferred to joint ventures with foreign money and in September 1995 a new foreign investment law was passed which not only allowed foreign companies to move their entire profits abroad, but also very significantly allowed 100 percent foreign ownership of investments in Cuba. This was truly historic due to the prominence of nationalism in the Cuban Revolution. As stated, it was hoped that Cuba’s tourist industry would be particularly attractive to foreign investors; with significantly the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and Raúl Castro being at the forefront of this.26 Moreover, in January 1995 it became legal for joint ventures with foreign capital to be created in both oil and mineral exploration and production. In relation to this, in 1992 Consulting Associates (CONSAS) and in 1994 the Ministry of Foreign Investment and Economic Cooperation (MIECE) had been created to help facilitate foreign investment. Then, in 1997 free trade zones were created in a further attempt to attract yet more foreign investment. In addition, internal reforms were also implemented which not only legalised both agricultural and artisan markets to try and alleviate food shortages, but also the possession of U.S. dollars on the island.27 These economic reforms perfectly illustrated the strong prevalence of realist pragmatism that has existed within the Cuban ruling elite since the

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victory of the Cuban Revolution. They may have ideologically disliked globalisation and neoliberal economics and were not slow to attack them or the effects that they had on the Russian economy but they had had to embrace them to a certain extent due to the dire economic situation which the island found itself in during the early to mid-1990s that resulted from the loss of their socialist trading partners and the continuing U.S. economic blockade. With regards to this José Bell Lara describes the island’s relationship with capitalist countries very much as a marriage of convenience when he wrote, “In a world in which wealth dictates power, alliances must be formed with the wealthy in order to beat the wealthy. The strategy could be approximately formulated as follows: a policy of alliance with some sectors or factions of the international bourgeoisie as to successfully resist and overcome imperialist harassment and to achieve paths towards development.”28 This would very much appear to be an extremely eloquent description of realist pragmatism. A series of political reforms were simultaneously passed in order to prevent the island’s economic problems also becoming political. This included amongst others a change to the constitution that introduced direct elections for deputies for both the National Assembly and provincial assemblies of the Organs of People’s Power (OPP). Moreover, in an attempt to broaden the appeal of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) religious believers were allowed to become members of the party. Mindful of the Soviet situation of the late 1980s that had run out of control, but also illustrating their pragmatism, political reforms were cautious and not nearly as far reaching as many of the regimes’ opponents, especially in the United States, had wished for. On this point Max Azicri has written, “The domestic changes proceeded cautiously, avoiding costly mistakes, but not everyone welcomed a balanced approach. Dissidents at home and opponents abroad were not satisfied with the paucity of political change. Though economic change was generally welcomed, some critics found it inadequate. Orthodox cadres in the regime took the opposites tack: they believed that the changes had gone too far and could only jeopardize the socialist system, weakening its true nature.”29 The results of the economic reforms have been numerous, varied and some even unforeseen. This has led some to believe that aspects of the revolution have even been eroded, and not just because these reforms embraced neoliberal economics, the very antithesis of earlier Cuban economic models. In relation to tourism María Espino has written, “International tourism has been targeted as a key sector and is a major component of the Cuban economic adjustment program” because “the economic importance of international tourism lies in its ability to generate benefits for the host country.”30 These include revenue for the government and jobs amongst others. However, tourism has also caused inequality on

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the island to increase as citizens working in this industry have access to foreign currencies and their experiences are very different from those who do not have this luxury. On this Azicri has written, “A heart surgeon paid in pesos would have a lower salary and live a more difficult life than a tourism worker, including not only hotel and restaurant managers but lower ranking employees, taxi drivers, etc.”31 Cubans who either receive remittances from abroad or are involved in the burgeoning black market repeat this. Moreover, tourism has also resulted in the return of prostitution to the island, which has seen an increase in sexually transmitted diseases amongst Cuban women.32 In addition to this, Cuba’s biotechnological industry has also been important to the Cuban economic strategy in the 1990s, which Julie Feinsilver has described as a “First World approach to development.”33 This attempted to take advantage of the island’s excellent levels of education and reputation in medicine and medical services, but if successful would also help Cuba break its reliance on primary produce, which continues to be a problem for many developing countries. Moreover, this process has also spawned the appearance of health tourism which has seen an increasing number of wealthy foreigners being prepared to pay in hard currency for Cuban medical expertise. Cuba’s biotechnological industry has, however, been hampered by international property rights which has prevented it from manufacturing more affordable alternatives to First World produced goods, and also as a result of both the lack of an expensive marketing campaign that many pharmaceutical companies have and the continuing U.S. embargo that has tried to prevent the island trading with third party countries. Although this is the case, Cuba’s biotechnological produce has become even more important as levels of sugar production, Cuba’s traditional export, have recently fallen. Jorge Pérez-López has on a number of occasions described Cuba’s economic reforms as having been partially successful, which is undoubtedly correct but the question must be asked of what would have happened to the Cuban economy and the revolution itself if they had not been implemented? Trade may not have returned to levels enjoyed in the Soviet era, and problems within the Cuban economy still exist, not least the island’s levels of foreign debt, but trade has recovered from its nadir of the early 1990s, and steadily increased throughout the 1990s to reach 5.8b pesos in 1999, with Cuban experts believing that the island’s economy had moved from its initial period of instability immediately after the disintegration of the Soviet Union to a more settled second.34 In addition to this, the composition of Cuba’s trading partners changed dramatically from the Soviet era when, as stated, over 70 percent of the island’s trade was conducted solely with the Soviet Union and over 80 percent with the socialist bloc. Spain, France, Italy, Mexico, China, Canada and Venezuela are the coun-

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tries which Cuba now conducts most trade with. In the last year of the twentieth century Spain was Cuba’s largest trading partner with 881,180m pesos worth of trade being conducted, or 15 percent of Cuba’s overall trade.35 In addition to this, large quantities of foreign investment have also been attracted to the island. By mid-1995, 212 joint ventures had come to fruition with over nine different countries from around the world, and in the period from 1998 to 2001 a further 190 joint enterprises, in conjunction with twenty-eight countries, were created. In comparison in 1991 there were only eleven joint ventures excluding those with socialist bloc countries. Mexican companies have tended to concentrate on Cuba’s telecommunications links while Canadian ones have invested in the island’s nickel industry. European countries have taken an interest in the tourist, tobacco and alcohol industries, with one of the highest profiles being in 1992 when the French company Pernod Ricard bought an interest in and the global distribution rights for Havana Club rum. In the similar manner, in the year 2000 the French-Spanish company Altadis bought 50 percent of Habanos, the international distributor of Cuban cigars.36 The result has been that Cuba has once again returned to the global economy having been removed from it for a number of years, illustrated by the involvement of companies from over one hundred countries with the island. This has been a remarkable change from the Soviet era, and is made even more so when it has been achieved despite Washington’s continued attempts to economically strangle the Castro regime with the passing of both the Cuban Democracy Act, or Torricelli Bill, in 1992 and four years later the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, or HelmsBurton Act, which attempted to prevent companies from third party countries trading with Cuba. In addition, this was also achieved despite the Caribbean island not having access to money from the IMF, World Bank or the Inter-American Development Bank. Ironically, the United States embargo, despite being the antithesis of neoliberal economics, has conversely made Cuba a more appealing investment opportunity for foreign companies, as they do not have to face competition from U.S. companies, who held the pre-eminent position within the Cuban economy before 1959. This has allowed foreign companies to gain a foothold in the Cuban economy before the embargo ends when U.S. firms will once again be permitted to invest in it. In 2005 a survey conducted in Florida illustrated this, as 65 percent of the 417 executives polled would be “likely to do business in a post-Castro Cuba.”37 Moreover, once U.S. citizens are free to travel to Cuba, these foreign companies would hope that their profits would further increase due to the expected influx of U.S. dollars. The implosion of the Soviet Union had a catastrophic effect on the Cuban Revolution, not least economically as the island also simultaneously lost its

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most important trading partner. Throughout the revolutionary period both realist pragmatism and attempts to reduce dependency have always been prevalent in the Cuban elites’ thinking and they were again very evident in the years immediately after the disintegration of Soviet-Cuban relations. The process of encouraging foreign investment in the island, begun in the late 1980s, increased as a number of different reforms were implemented that aimed to take advantage of the increase in transnational investment with the global dominance of the neoliberal economic model. This was despite their ideological aversion to these ideas, but they were vital to the survival of the revolution and have helped the Cuban economy recover from its acute problems of the early to mid-1990s. However, it has also had other unforeseen results with some arguing that aspects of the revolution have been eroded, but the composition of the island’s trading partners has also changed dramatically from the Soviet era as companies from around the world invested in the Cuban economy. This would be vital for relations between Moscow and Havana.

THE EFFECTS ON RUSSIAN-CUBAN RELATIONS This change in the composition of the countries that the Caribbean island traded with when compared to the Soviet era, which saw the Soviet preeminent position in the Cuban economy being usurped, was vital to the improvement in relations between Cuba and Russia from the mid-1990s onwards. This occurred because in the early to mid-1990s Russian companies came to realise that they had lost out due to the economic changes made in Cuba. In March 1993, the journalist Nikolai Vlasov wrote in Moscow News, “As last year’s experience has shown the Canadian, Spanish and Mexican companies started immediately to fill the vacuum formed after the curtailment of Russian-Cuban investment cooperation. They become firmly established in the most promising branches, using with great benefit the industrial infrastructure created with our country’s assistance.”38 Moreover, Stanislav Kondrashov, another journalist, wrote on this subject, “in Cuba’s nickel industry, Canadian capital now reigns supreme. And the Chinese dominate the consumer goods market. The Spanish, the British and the Mexicans are investing in Cuba.”39 A number of politicians and academics also commented upon this process including Yevgeny Primakov, the Russian Foreign Minister in the mid to late 1990s. In addition, in the two-year period from 1995 to 1997, 260 joint projects with Cuban and foreign money were opened but only two of these were with Cuban and Russian money. This was something that Russian companies wished to address and once again become more involved in the Cuban economy to take advantage of the investment op-

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portunities that it offered. Dr Rodolfo Humpierre of CEE in Havana stated that this was most certainly the case with companies which had experience of trading with Cuba from the Soviet era.40 Moreover, as with other foreign companies investing in Cuba it was only made more appealing, as stated, by the lack of competition from U.S. companies. In short, Russian companies wanted a ‘piece of the action’ in the Cuban economy. In implementing the economic reforms in the 1990s the goal of the Castro regime had not been to specifically stimulate trade with Russia but just increased trade in general as the revolution’s very survival had been at stake. As an increasing number of foreign companies became involved in the Cuban economy Russia witnessed the loss of their pre-eminent position within it. A desire to address this situation was key to the increase in Russian interest in the Cuban economy from the mid-1990s onwards. This was only aided by the thirty-year links between the two countries from the Soviet era, which will be examined in the next chapter. However, the upshot has been that a bi-product of these reforms, although not planned but resulting from the effects of neoliberal economics, has been significant in Russian-Cuban relations. The irony was that ideology, or more specifically the ideas of the free market but most certainly not Marxist-Leninism, remained crucial to relations between Havana and Moscow at the end of the twentieth century. This was aided by the, as stated, economic changes that took place in Russia throughout the 1990s, which saw the country move to a market economy. After the initial shock of this economic transition had been survived, on this Boris Yeltsin has since written, “The Russian economy was like a patient . . . , having survived a life-threatening fever,”41 Russian companies in the mid-1990s were able to begin to compete with Western competitors in the international market, which logically also included an interest in Cuba. Humpierre believes that this process was very significant for the increase in Russian interest in the Cuban economy.42 In July 1994, the umbrella organization RosKuba, consisting of twenty-five Russian companies, was created to help facilitate trade between the two countries and in 1995 S. Batchikov, co-chairman of the Russian Foreign Economic Policy Fund, commented, “Any country, including Russia, that is building a market economy is interested in expanding the assortment of goods in its consumer market. And this means that high-quality Cuban tropical produce is of considerable interest to us, especially considering Russia’s natural and climatic conditions.”43 This consisted of not just traditional Cuban exports of sugar and tropical fruit but also high-quality Cuban rum and tobacco. In addition, Russian agriculture production fell dramatically in the aftermath of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the implementation of neoliberal economics which resulted in a drastic

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fall in tobacco production which increased the importance of the purchase of this commodity from Cuba. In relation to this, in May 1999 La Casa del Habano, a Cuban cigar emporium very much concentrating on the exclusive end of this market, was opened in Moscow.44 Moreover, further illustrating the importance of trade for both countries was the fact that in late 1995 Oleg Soskovets, First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, signed a package of economic agreements with Cuba while on the island and in May 1996 the Russian Duma ratified the decision to develop commercial relations with Cuba. Directly linked to this was the creation in 1997 of the Russian-Cuba Commission on Commercial, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation, which did not just provide a much more robust foundation for trade to be conducted in but also illustrated the growing importance that the Russian Federation attached to trade and commerce with Cuba.45 As stated, levels of trade in general may not have returned to those enjoyed during the Soviet era but trade with Russia was a vital component in the partial recovery of the Cuban economy. This increase was due to both an upturn in Russian imports to Cuba but as Batchikov’s quote suggests also significantly Cuban exports to Russia. As well as primary produce the island’s biotechnological goods have also increased in significance for Russian-Cuban trade. In addition, intergovernment agreements have also been signed, which in 1996 included the hope of an increase in Information Technology (IT) and telecommunication links between the two countries.46 The result was that in 1996 the Russian Federation was Cuba’s single largest trading partner, which had most certainly not been expected or

Figure 3.3.

Russian-Cuban Trade 1995-1999

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predicted in 1992. The fact that this upturn in Russian-Cuban trade was based on an increase in Cuban exports to Russia, very different from Cuban trade with other countries that were primarily based on Cuba importing goods and not exporting them, was equally remarkable. This led Ricardo Cabrisas, Cuban Foreign Minister, in 1997 to even suggest that by 1999 or the year 2000 trade between Havana and Moscow may even return to the 1991 level.47 This, however, has not materialised as since 1996 trade with other countries, most noticeably Spain and Canada, has overtaken that which has been conducted with Russia. This is partly explained by the economic crisis that hit Russia in August 1998, but it most certainly does not mean that Russian interest in the Cuban economy has waned. For example Rosvooruzheniya, the Russian state arms company, never closed its Cuban office while it did in other parts of Latin America. This would become very significant in the twenty-first century as Russian interest in Latin America increased.48 The result was that in the period from 1995 to 1999 Russia remained in the top five of Cuba’s most significant trading partners. Again the increase in trade was despite the Helms-Burton Act that had seen Washington attempt to restrict Cuban trade with third party countries, and moreover, this act had even contained a section that concentrated specifically on Russia due to the listening post at Lourdes that remained open throughout the 1990s. The importance of this will be discussed in both chapters 4 and 5. Moscow not only voted against the implementation of the act in the UN resolution that condemned it but appeared to be prepared to both ignore and circumvent it. A Russian Foreign Ministry declaration stated, “We confirm our intention to develop and broaden beneficial co-operation with Cuba as well as sectors of mutual interest, particularly in the commercial and economic sphere.”49 As has been suggested this increase in trade was partially driven by Russian companies wishing to try and address the situation which had seen the Soviet pre-eminent position within the Cuban economy usurped by companies from other countries. This had occurred due to both the globalisation process in general and the economic changes made in Cuba in the 1990s, which resulted in making the Cuban economy an inviting investment opportunity for transnational capital. Other reasons, such as a number of Cubans having a Russian language ability that made trade negotiations easier, as well as other aspects of the Soviet legacy were also important and these will be analysed in detail in the next chapter. However, neoliberal economics was one of the key reasons that resulted in the improvement of relations between Moscow and Havana from the mid1990s onwards. Just as in the Soviet era it appeared as if ideology was again significant in the relationship, but ironically it was not MarxistLeninism but instead its very antithesis.

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This, however, gives rise to another very important question. Due to the nature of the globalisation process was this Russian interest in the Cuban economy not simply a result of the process in general and not due to the Russian desire to correct the losses it sustained in it in the 1990s? If this was the case it could also be expected that Russian trade with other Latin American countries would have also increased at an equivalent rate. However, this is not the case as trade between Russia and Cuba far exceeded Russian trade with any other Latin American country in the period from 1995 to 1999, with only trade with Brazil even approaching this level.50 It can therefore be concluded that it was not just a result of globalisation in general that caused this upturn in Russian-Cuban trade, but instead the Russian desire to correct the ‘wrongs’ of the 1990s that was more important. The irony is that one of the key reasons for the improvement in RussianCuban relations has been the effects of neoliberal economics. This was no means by design, as it had not been the goal of the Castro regime to specifically stimulate Russian interest in the Cuban economy, but was instead a side effect of the reforms that were instigated in Cuba in the early to mid1990s in an attempt to deal with the economic effects of the disintegration of Soviet-Cuban relations. This had again shown the prevalence of realist pragmatism in the Cuban Revolution because ideologically the Cuban regime may not have liked the nature of these reforms but they were fundamental in its economic revival from the mid-1990s onwards. As foreign companies invested in Cuba the realisation formed in Russia that their pre-eminent position within the Cuban economy had been lost and their desire to address this was one of the key reasons for the improvement in relations between Moscow and Havana from the mid-1990s onwards.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: A RETURN TO MARXIST-LENINISM? As has been suggested in chapter 1 Vladimir Putin’s KGB past and trips to North Korea and Cuba in the infancy of his Presidency caused concern in the West to arise that the Russian Federation’s foreign policy may have been returning to a more traditional Soviet stance. Moreover, this was not helped by the fact that during his trip to the Caribbean island the Russian President visited both the monument to the unknown Soviet soldier and the highly contentious Lourdes listening post on the outskirts of the Cuban capital. Did this mean that Marxist-Leninism would return to prominence in Russian-Cuban relations in the twenty-first century to the detriment of neoliberal economics that had been one of the factors in the improvement of relations from the mid-1990s onwards? The short answer to this question is a resounding no, as the Russian President demonstrated during his trip to Cuba. The Cuban government

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may have been delighted about his visit with Granma stating “The visit of excelentismo Mr Vladimir Putin and his important delegation is met with the great joy of our people and is of great importance for relations between Cuba and the Russian Federation.”51 Moreover, Professor Eugenio Larin, Director of Latin American Studies at the Institute of Cold War History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, has written, “A new stage in Russian-Cuban Relations officially opened with the visit of the President of the Russian Federation V. V. Putin between 13 and 16 December 2000.”52 This visit was unquestionably significant as Putin became the first Russian leader to visit Latin America but it did not mean that MarxistLeninism was increasing in importance in the relationship. While on the island Putin stated: “We lost a lot of positions which were a top priority for both countries, and our Russian companies in Cuba have been replaced by Western competitors.”53 It appeared that the trend of improved Russian-Cuban relations being partly based on economic reasons and not Marxist-Leninism was continuing. This was also borne out with the agreements signed during Putin’s visit. It was announced that the Norilisk Nickel company was to invest $300m in the nickel-ore processing plant at Las Camariocas in Holguin province and a joint agreement to build diesel equipment for the Cuban sugar industry was signed. Moreover an exchange deal for 2001 to 2005 involving Cuban sugar, rum, medicines and medical equipment being exchanged for Russian oil, machinery and chemicals was also signed.54 In light of this agreement the downturn in trade between Cuba and Russia, illustrated by Figure 3.4, is surprising, but most certainly shows

Figure 3.4.

Russian-Cuban Trade 2000–2005

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that Marxist-Leninism has not returned in importance in the relationship, because if it had it could be expected that the trajectory of the graph would have been upward and not downward, as relations would once again have been driven by political and not economic reasons. The closure of the Lourdes listening post in January 2002 did briefly adversely affect Russian-Cuban relations, and the reason for Moscow’s decision will be examined in more detail in chapter 5. However, the downturn in Russian-Cuban trade does not mean that either the Cuban economy has contracted, as overall trade has increased to 9.5b pesos in 2005, or that Russia has lost economic interest in the Caribbean island. Russian-Cuban trade may have fallen but interestingly its composition has changed greatly with 70 percent of the trade conducted in 2005 made up of Russian imports to Cuba. This was not just a return to the pattern seen from the Soviet era but was also very different from the late 1990s when trade between the countries had been dominated by Cuban exports to Russia. In addition, Russian-Cuban relations have been affected by other events, which have seen a partial retrenchment in Cuba from the reforms of the 1990s. Amongst other things the U.S. dollar is once again no longer legal tender on the island. However, the appearance of an apparent antiU.S. bloc in Latin America, which has seen Cuba in conjunction with Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela create the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) to challenge the U.S.-backed Free Trade of the Americas (FTAA) has been highly significant.55 This in conjunction with Russia’s recent increased interest in the region, which also partially possesses political motives, a shared global outlook and a willingness to challenge the apparent unipolar nature of world politics, has questioned the significance of neoliberal economics to this process in general and in Russian-Cuban relations specifically. Economics, however, remain important to Russian interest in both Cuba and Latin America as the sale of military hardware to the region is a crucial aspect of this. The Venezuelan purchase of 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles, fighter planes and helicopters in 2005 may have attracted international attention, but in April 2007 18 Russian companies exhibited goods in Rio de Janeiro at the Latin American Aero and Defense (LAAD) trade fair, the largest and most important such fair in the region.56 Moscow is not selling these goods to a few specific countries that they may share a political outlook with, but is instead attempting to diversify its markets in the whole region. In addition, Russia also faces competition from other global arms manufacturers, and with relation to Russia selling arms to Latin America, Alexander Yakovenko, a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, stated in an interview, “Russia is a recognized producer of arms, which are in demand on world markets, including in this region.”57

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The result is that the ideas of the neoliberal economic model are a significant factor in Russia’s recent increased interest in the western hemisphere. Moreover, Russia’s interest in Cuba began before the appearance of this apparent anti-U.S. bloc in the region, which does not diminish the importance of neoliberal economics to the start of the upturn in Russian-Cuban relations. However, it has undoubtedly had repercussions for RussianCuban relations, as Cuba’s relationship with Venezuela has become vital to the Cuban Revolution, not least as a source of oil which may only increase in importance with the recent surge in the price of oil, and the Russian share of the Cuban trade has subsequently fallen. In the year 2000, Venezuela replaced Spain as Cuba’s most important trading partner, as it supplied almost 19 percent of the island’s total imports. Moreover, in the year 2004 total trade between Cuba and Venezuela reached 1.368b pesos, which was the first time since 1991, when trade between Cuba and the Soviet Union had been 3.3b pesos, that trade between Cuba and any other country had exceeded 1b pesos. In 2005, Cuban-Venezuelan trade continued to increase to over 2b pesos.58 Moreover, China has also become a significant player in the Cuban economy with trade in 2005 reaching almost 1b pesos. In addition to this, Peking offers the most attractive interest rates on loans to the Cuban government, which tend to be 3 percent per annum over twenty years, which far exceeds what any other country can offer.59 This has made trade with China economically advantageous for Havana, as has its close political ties with Venezuela, but this has not signalled a reduction in Russian interest in the Cuban economy stimulated by the effects of neoliberal economics. This was illustrated in 2002 when Dr Juan Triana Cordai of the Centro de Investigaciones de la Economía Cubana (CEEC) in Havana wrote, “In 2001 Cuba had commercial links with 166 countries. Venezuela, Spain, Canada, Russia and China are the five principle countries that Cuba traded with in 2001.”60 Moreover, in 2002 Cuba remained Russia’s second largest trading partner in Latin America and in 2005 its sixth. In March 2003 Leonid Reyman, Russian Minister of Communication and Information Technology, spoke of this trend while in Cuba when he said, “We are worried about a slowdown in the bilateral trade and economic relations and we would like to reverse the process with the Cuban side.”61 Reyman’s presence in Cuba illustrated that it was hoped that Informational Technology and telecommunications could be part of this desired improvement. In addition, during the previous year an international trade fair had been held in the Cuban capital, which ten Russian companies had attended. Raúl de la Nuez, Cuban Minister of Foreign Trade, had commented upon this when he said, “Our countries have years of long good traditions of trade and cooperation. Russia is one of the 10 biggest trade partners of Cuba.”62 In 2003 Russia was again represented at this fair with the Volga Car factory,

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VAZ, having one of the most prominent exhibits at it.63 These trade fairs illustrate that despite the decrease in trade it remains significant for both countries and Russia has by no means lost interest in the Cuban economy. In addition, the presence of the different types of Russian companies at these trade fairs also illustrate that economic ties between Havana and Moscow have diversified. As suggested this includes IT but also projects involving gas and oil fields, which would revolutionise the relationship, are also desired. In February 2005, Fidel Castro told Grigory Elkin, head of Russian Federal Technical Regulation and Metrology Agency that Russia could enter energy projects in Cuba and that they would like to purchase electric generators from Russia. In February 2007, the Russian oil company Gazprom (GAZP) and India’s Oil and Natural Gas Cooperation (ONGC) discussed the possibility of joint work in Cuba while Jorge Martínez, Cuban ambassador to Russia, said that the car industry and modernization of railroads were also projects that Russia could become involved in. The continuing Russian interest in the Cuban economy was further illustrated in May 2005 when 132 Russian companies from the Moscow area attended a Cuban trade fair held in the Russian capital and Russian companies such as Grupo GAZ, Salyut, RusiaAutomotriz, Zvezda S.A, Transchemexport S.R.L and Rosoboronexport all attended the international trade fair held in Havana in November 2006. Ricardo Alarcón, President of the Cuban National Assembly, spoke of his desire for economic relations between Russia and Cuba to improve during his trip to Moscow in late 2006, and moreover an agreement was signed in April 2007 over the production of enriched food.64 Cuba has also purchased two Russian made IL 96-300 airplanes, which have been partly funded by a £200m credit from a syndicate of Russian banks, illustrating their confidence in the Cuban economy. Moreover, further agreements on the Cuban purchase of Russian made planes have recently been signed. In a similar manner, in September 2006 Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov signed a £355m grant with the Cuban government for the purchase of Russian goods.65 In 2007, the official publication of the Cuban Chamber of Commerce commented, “In short, it can be said that the following 10 countries have been among the top countries of Cuba’s foreign trade in recent years: Venezuela, Spain, China, Canada, Holland, Russia, Italy, Brazil, Mexico and France. More than 70 percent of the country’s trade exchange is carried out with these countries.”66 More than fifteen years after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russian’s inclusion on this list was remarkable and not what would have been expected in 1992. Furthermore and very interestingly on 31 July 2007 the Cuban Economic Press Service stated, “Russia, the principle nation of the former Soviet Union, is interested in increasing its commercial ties with the island.”67 This would ap-

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pear to suggest that Russian interest in the Cuban economy has most certainly not waned and if anything trade between the two countries might increase in the future. This diversification of economic ties between the two countries has also included tourism, with Jorge Martínez commenting, “Investment in tourism and hotel business might become a major sphere of cooperation in the future.”68 In 1996 the ‘Latina’ travel agency opened in Moscow that specialised in travel to Latin America and in addition, the Russian travel agencies Atlantic Travel Agency, Atlas and Druzhina have all opened offices in Havana. Moreover, in August 1999 the airline companies Air France and KLM began flying routes from Russia to Havana with stopovers in Paris and Amsterdam respectively. In December 1999 Aeroflot and Cubana began their own joint service from Russia to Cuba.69 Russian tourists may only make up a very small percentage of the total number of tourists visiting the island, 1.5 percent in 1994 and less than 1 percent in 2005, but as Figure 3.5 illustrates their number has steadily increased. The introduction of the Air France, KLM and joint service from Aeroflot and Cubana has undoubtedly made travel from Russia to Cuba easier, as is the fact that Russians do not require visas to travel to Cuba. Moreover, the appearance of more wealthy Russians who can afford vacations in the Caribbean has also helped this increase. In addition, in January 2004 Ernesto Senti, acting Minister for Foreign Investments and Economic Cooperation, stated that tourism was an area that it was hoped could be expanded. This was shown in January 2007 when Mario Fernández, head of the Cuban

Figure 3.5.

Russian Tourists Visiting Cuba

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Tourism Foreign Relations department, stated that it was hoped that soon 100,000 Russian tourists would be visiting the island each year. Moreover, in March 2007 a number of Russia tour operators attended the presentation of the Cuban tourist board (MINTUR) at the Inturmarket Fair held in the Russian capital.70 Furthermore, and interestingly the Official Portal of Tourism, Cubatravel.cu, has a Russian language option, further illustrating the importance that the Cuban government attaches to Russian tourists.71

CONCLUSIONS Ideology, or more specifically Marxist-Leninism, was a key cornerstone of relations between Moscow and Havana for over thirty years after Fidel Castro proclaimed himself, and thus also the Cuban Revolution, MarxistLeninist in December 1961. However, ideology has remained crucial to the relationship in the period since 1992, as it partly explains both the downturn in the relationship in the years 1992 to 1994 and also its subsequent improvement from the mid-1990s onwards. Marxist-Leninism may have become less important in the relationship during the Gorbachev era, but once it was completely removed after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the relationship suffered a massive political and economic downturn. As the Russian Federation’s political system changed and it looked to the West it no longer felt ideologically tied to Havana and this became apparent with Moscow’s voting behaviour at various UN forums. This was only exacerbated by many Russian citizens’ perception of the Cuban Revolution, which they believed was fast becoming an anachronism in the New World Order due to the lack of reform on the island. Economically, the removal of Marxist-Leninism was also vital to the downturn in the relationship because as Russia embraced the ideas of neoliberal economics its companies were no longer instructed by the Kremlin whom they could trade with for political reasons and instead had the choice of whom they wished to conduct business with. In the early 1990s this was most certainly not Cuba. At this time not only were Russian companies in no position to compete with Western competitors in the Cuban market due to the Russian economic transition, but the new companies that had appeared in Russia simply did not want to trade with Cuba. Russian exports to Cuba falling at a faster rate than Cuban imports to Russia illustrated this. However, even at this point some trade was still being conducted between the two countries, the reasons for this will be examined in chapter 4, but this was very important in explaining the surprising lack of comment by the Cuban government on events in the former Soviet Union as they did not want to jeopardize this trade.

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However, the economic changes instigated by the Castro regime as it tried to recover from the loss of trade with the Soviet Union did not just illustrate both the strong prevalence of realist pragmatism in the Cuban Revolution and attempts to end dependency, but was also of fundamental importance to the upturn in relations between Moscow and Havana. Some accusations of an erosion of the revolution may have appeared as these reforms were based on neoliberal economics, but they helped the Cuban economy partially recover from its severe contraction of the early 1990s. Furthermore, they also saw the island’s economy return to the world economy after being removed from it for a number of decades. In addition, the composition of the island’s trading partners changed dramatically as the Soviet Union’s pre-eminent position within it had been usurped by companies from other countries. As Russian companies witnessed this, the realisation began to form that they were missing out on the investment potential that the Cuban economy offered. A desire to address this was a key driving force in the upturn in relations from the mid-1990s onwards as was the fact that they had sufficiently recovered from the economic transition and were in a position to compete with global competitors in the Cuban market. Remarkably in 1996 this resulted in Russia being Cuba’s largest trading partner. It could be thought that due to the globalisation process in general Russian interest in the Cuban economy would have taken place anyway, but if this had been the case it could be expected that Russian investment in Latin America as a whole would also have occurred. This however did not happen as Cuba remained Russia’s largest trading partner in Latin America up to the beginning of the new millennium and even today with an increase in Russian interest in the region it remains one of its most important. This has been aided by a diversification in economic links between the two countries. The desire to right the ‘wrongs’ of the early 1990s as a result of the effects of neoliberal economics was crucial to RussianCuban relations. It must, however, be stressed that this was not by design as it had not been the goal of the Cuban government in making these reforms to encourage Russian interest specifically but just much needed investment in general. This Russian interest had been an unforeseen side effect of the economic reforms of the early to mid-1990s. A partial retrenchment and fall in the Russian share of the Cuban economy may have subsequently taken place but this does not reduce the importance of it to the relationship’s upturn. Ironically, neoliberal economics, the antithesis of MarxistLeninism, provided a key reason for both the deterioration in relations in the years 1992 to 1994 and its subsequent improvement. The result is that ideology remained significant to relations between Havana and Moscow in the post 1992 era.

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NOTES 1. Izvestia, 17 September 1992, 5. 2. Granma, 8 September 1992, 3–6. 3. Izvestia, 11 January 1993, 3. Moreover, Yury Pavlov, former head of the Latin American Directorate of the USSR Foreign Ministry, has written that the Cuban government requested that one Cuban student have his Ph.D. degree from a Russian university withheld as he had attempted to gain an exit visa for the United States while studying in Russia. Yury Pavlov, “Russian Policy Toward Latin America and Cuba” in Russian Foreign Policy Since 1990, ed. by Peter Shearman, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995), 250. 4. Izvestia, 4 May 1992, 5. In January 1993 Montaner again travelled to Moscow and met Russian Foreign Minister Kozyrev. Izvestia, 11 January 1993, 3. Nezavisimaya gazeta, 18 August 1992, 4. A. Tsipko, “Extract from speech at International Conference. Russia-Cuba: From Totalitarianism to Democracy,” Latinskaia Amerika, Nos. 10–11, (1992): 32. Castro’s phrase “Socialism or Death” was not just an adapted version of José Martí’s “Fatherland or Death” but also illustrated his resolve not to change Cuba’s political model. 5. A. A. Blenova, “My Cuba,” Latinskaia Amerika, Nos. 5–6 (1992), 46. 6. Cuban Democracy Act of 1992, see http://www.state.gov/www/regions/ wha /cuba/democ_act_1992.html. (4 April 2006) Izvestia, 25 November 1992, 5. 7. Izvestia, 12 March 1993. 8. Vneshiaia Torgovliia v 1989–1990, 5 and Vneshiaia Torgovliia v 1986, 259 and 265. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) 1991, 135. Anuario Estadístico de Cuba 2000, see http://www.camaracuba.cu/TPHabana /Estadisticas2000/estadisticas2000.htm (14 July 2007). VI-5-VI-7. Direction of Trade Statistics Yearbook 1999, (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund), 392. 9. Trade in 1992 was 825,977 million pesos, 533,131 million in 1993 and just 322,882 million in 1994. Anuario Estadístico de Cuba 2000, VI-5-VI-7, see http://websie.eclac.cl/anuario_estadistico/anuario_2000/datos/2.1.1.1.xls (14 July 2007). Direction of Trade Statistics Yearbook 1999, 392. 10. Raúl Castro, “Raúl Castro: Reasons and Revelations,” Latinskaia Amerika, No. 9 (1993): 22. Carmelo Mesa-Lago has written of the debate that existed over whether Cuba’s economic problems from 1986 to 1990 had resulted for internal or external reasons. However, he states that after 1990 external reasons were the causes of the worsening economic situation on the island. Carmelo Mesa-Lago, “The Economic Effects on Cuba of the Downfall of Socialism in the USSR and Eastern Europe” in Cuba after the Cold War, ed. by Carmelo Mesa-Lago, (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press), 181–84. On the situation in 1994 Archibald Ritter wrote, “Cuba’s world has fallen apart. It has become an international orphan, economically and politically, having lost its mentor and supporter, the Soviet Union,” A.M. Ritter, “Cuba’s Economic Strategy and Alternative Futures,” in Cuba at a Crossroads: Politics and Economics After the Fourth Party Congress, ed. by J. PérezLópez, (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994), 67. Carmelo Mesa-Lago and J. Pérez-López, Cuba’s Aborted Reform. Socioeconomic Effects, International Comparisons, and Transition Policies, (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005), 71–130.

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11. In 1990, Cuba’s GDP fell by 2.5 percent, 1991 by 10.1 percent, 1992 by 10.2 percent and 1993 by 13 percent. “1990–2005: Depresión, crisis, reanimación” IPS, Año 18, No. 22, 30 November 2005, 20. This was also illustrated by the falling calorie consumption of the Cuban population at this time and that in August 1993 the island had been experiencing twelve hours a day with no power due to fuel shortages. Delai Luisa López García,”Economic Crisis, Adjustments and Democracy in Cuba,” in Cuba in the 1990s, ed. José Bell Lara, (Havana: Editorial Jose Marti, 1999), 23. Elena Díaz González, “Cuban Socialism: Adjustments and Paradoxes,” in Cuba in the 1990s, 60. Castro’s illegitimate daughter Alina Revuelta has written on the effects that the end of the socialist bloc had for Cubans’ daily lives and the ways that they attempted to cope with this. Alina Revuelta Fernández, Castro’s Daughter: An Exile’s Memoir of Cuba, (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1999), 217–19. 12. Recently Castro has commented upon the 1994 balsero crisis and the reasons for it when he said, “The exodus of 1994 was brought on by the Soviet crisis, the fall of the USSR, the beginning of the special period in Cuba.” Fidel Castro and Ignacio Ramonet, My Life, (London: Allen Lane, 2007), 341. 13. Nadya Plankton, “Inferiority complex of Post-pioneers.” Paper presented at the Symposium “Cuba, Russia and the Post-Soviet Experience,” the University of Connecticut, Conn, February 2007, 3. Igor Ivanov, “Russian Diplomacy’s Latin American Vecotr, Nezavisimaya gazeta, 18 September 1999, 6. 14. A. Glinkin, “After Perestroika” Hemisphere. Volume 4, Number 2, (Winter/Spring 1992), 14. Yury Petrov, “Latin America’s Relations with Russia and Other Former Socialist Republics. Implications for U.S. Policy” North-South: The Magazine of the Americas, Volume 2, Number 4, (December 1992–January 1993), 6. 15. Dr Rodolfo Humpierre of Centro de Estudios Europeos (CEE) in Havana made this point to me about new Russian companies in the early 1990s being prepared to trade with Cuba but only under new terms of trade during an interview conducted in Havana on 14 February 2008 in Havana. The internal Russian situation was so grave at this time that Professor Nikolai Ivanov, Deputy Director of the Center of Latin American Studies at the Institute of Cold War History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said it looked like Russia “may not survive.” Professor Ivanov expressed these sentiments to me during discussion in Moscow on 9 January 2008. S. Lavrov, Latinskaia America, No. 1 2006, 3. 16. Pavlov, “Russian Policy Towards Latin America and Cuba,” 253. A. Ermakov, “Cuba desde la nueva perspectiva de Moscú,” Hispano Americano, Numero 2599, (21 February 1992): 33. Andrei Kozyrev, Preobrazhenie, (Moscow: ‘Mezhdunov otnoshenii,’ 1995), 269–70. 17. Professor Eugenio Larin, Director of Latin American Studies at the Institute of Cold War History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, used this phrase to describe the former Russian President during an interview conducted in Moscow on 9 January 2008. V. I. Vorotnikov, former Soviet ambassador to Cuba, has also blamed Yeltsin for the problems which the Cuban Revolution was experiencing at this time, which is not surprising due to his close association with it from the Soviet era. V. I. Vorotnikov, Gavana-Moskva: pamiatnye gody, (Moscow: Fend imeni I. D. Sytina, 2001), 390. 18. Tsipko, “From Totalitarianism to Democracy,” 27.

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19. For this type of reporting see for example Granma, 2 January 1992, 4 and Granma, 3 January 1992, 4. F. Laguera in Bohemia wrote about the economic struggle that most Russians faced and that state pensions were simply not enough to survive on due to the spiralling prices. F. Laguera, “Especulación callejera” Bohemia, 31 July 1992, 15–17. In 1993 Sofía Hernández Marmal, a researcher at the Center of European Studies in Havana, wrote, “the Russian economy is in ruins.” Sofía Hernández Marmal, “El conflicto de pobres en Rusia: herencia y desafío,” Revista de Estudios Europeos, Nos. 25–26, (January–June 1993): 7. Ariel Dacal Díaz, “Rusia: el sueno postergado de una ‘gran potencia,” Revista de Estudios Europeos, (September–December 2001): 69. Fidel Castro, “Main Report to the 5th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba,” Main Report. Speech at the Closing the 5th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, (Havana: Editora Política, 1998), 32–33. Fidel Castro, “Master Lecture at the autonomous university of Santa Domingo,” 24 August 1998. De Gorbachov a Yeltsin. Correra Rusia la misma suerte que le Union Sovietica? (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales) 78–84. Fidel Castro, Una Revolución Solo Puede ser Hija de la Cultura y las Ideas, (Havana: Editora Política, 1999), 23. A number of articles appeared in Bohemia throughout the 1990s written by Eleana Claro which were highly critical of the situation in Russia. For this see: “Expediente Peligroso,” Bohemia, 28 February 1992, 46–47. “Jornada difícil,” Bohemia, 13 November 1992, 42–43. “De galgos, podencos y abedules,” Bohemia, 5 July 1996, 45–47. 20. Hernández, “El conflicto de podres en Rusia,” Revista de Estudios Europeos (January–June 1993): 9. Humpierre made this comment about Kozyrev during an interview conducted in Havana on 14 February 2008 in Havana. Francisco Brown Infante, “La política exterior rusa en el periodo 1991–2000. Del romance con Occidente a la búsqueda de un mundo multipolar,” Revista de Estudios Europeos, (January–April 2001): 22–23. 21. Havana Cuba Vision Network in Spanish 0027 GMT 11 August 1994, FBISLAT-94-155 FL1108133194. 22. José Bell Lara, Globalization and the Cuban Revolution, (Havana: Editorial José Marti, 2002), 52. 23. “Falleció ex presidente ruso Boris Yeltsin,” Granma Digital, 23 April 2007. Interestingly, Castro has recently commented upon Yeltsin when he said, “back then we had a high opinion of him, because of his radicalism. This was quite some time before the disaster of the [Soviet Union’s] disintegration.” Castro and Ramonet, My Life, 364. 24. M. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 2000). Richard Gilprin, Global Political Economy: Understanding the International Economic Order. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). R. N. Gwayne, and C. Kay, Latin America Transformed. Globalization and Modernity, (London: Oxford University Press, 1999). R. Robertson, The Three Waves of Globalisation. A History of Developing Global Conscousiness. (Nova Scotia: Zed Books, 2003). 25. R. Munck, “Neoliberalism, necessitarianism and alternatives in Latin America: there is no alternative (TINA)?” Third World Quaterly, Vol. 24, No. 3, (2003): 495–511. R. L. Harris, “Resistance and Alternatives to Globalization in Latin America and the Caribbean,” Latin American Perspectives, Issue 127, Vol. 29, No. 6, (November 2002): 136–51. Robert C. Dash, “Globalization. For Whom and for What,” Latin American Perspectives, Issue 103, Vol. 25, No. 6, (November 1998): 52–54.

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26. Ley de le Inversión Extranjera, (Havana: Editora Política, 1995). J. PérezLópez, “The Cuban Economy in the Age of Hemispheric Integration” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 39, No. 3 (1997): 15–22. 27. J. Pérez-López, “The Cuban Economy,” 3–47. The Cuban reforms have been compared to a wide variety of other countries. See Alvaro Taboada Teran, Nicaragua: Political Processes and Democratic Transition - Possible Lessons for Cuba’s Future, 2003, see http://ctp.iccas.miami.edu/Research_Studies/ATaboadaTeran.pdf (10 November 2005). Michael Radu, The Cuban Transition: Lessons from the Romanian Experience, 2003, see http://ctp.iccas.miami.edu/Research_Studies/MRadu.pdf (10 November 2005). Carlos Alberto Montaner, The Spanish Transition and the Case of Cuba, 2002, see http://ctp.iccas.miami.edu/Research_Studies/CAMontaner.pdf (10 November 2005). Mesa-Lago and Pérez-López, Cuba’s Aborted Reform, 131–54. 28. J. Bell Lara, Globalization and the Cuban Revolution, 2002, 114. 29. Max Azicri, Cuba Today and Tomorrow: Reinventing Socialism, (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), 101. 30. María Dolores Espino, “Tourism in Cuba: A Development Strategy for the 1990s,” in Cuba at a Crossroads, 147. 31. M. Azicri, Cuba Today and Tomorrow, 74. 32. M. Azicri, Cuba Today and Tomorrow, 81. On this Carmelo Mesa-Lago has written, “These changes resulted in significant increases in income inequality and other socio-economic disparities, reversing many of the previous accomplishments of the Cuban regime.” Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Growing Economic and Social Disparities in Cuba: Impact and Recommendations For Change, 2002, i, see http://ctp.iccas.miami .edu/Research_Studies/CMesaLago.pdf . Sergio Diaz-Briquets and Jorge PérezLópez have argued that corrupton which has always been evident in Cuba has recently increased and affected all parts of Society. S. Diaz-Briquets and J. PérezLópez, Corruption in Cuba. Castro and Beyond, (Austin: University Press of Texas, 2006), 123–79. 33. Julie Feinsilver, “Cuban Biotechnology: A First World Approach to Development,” in Cuba at a Crossroads, 185. 34. J. Pérez-López, “The Cuban Economy,” 38. J. Pérez-López, “Foreign Investment in Cuba,” in The Cuban Economy, ed. Archibald R. M. Ritter (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004) 166. Anuario Estadístico de Cuba 2000, VI-5-VI-7. “1990–2005: Depresión, crisis, reanimación.” IPS, Año 18, No. 22, 30 November 20. 35. Anuario Estadístico de Cuba 2000, VI-5-VI-7. 36. J. Pérez-López, “The Cuban Economy,” 33–34. Hernando Ospina, Bacardi The Hidden War. (London: Pluto Press, 2002). J. Amberg, “Co-President of Altais SA Sees More Opportunties in Cuba,” see http://www.cubanet.org/Cnews/y00/ jul00/03e7 .htm (3 July 2006). 37. “Execs have eyes on Cuba,” see http://www.herald.com (13 Oct 2005). 38. Nikolai Vlasov, “Economic cooperation with Cuba is in Russia’s interests,” Moscow News, 19 March 1993, 5. 39. Stanislav Kondrashov, “Language of Gestures in Putin’s Diplomacy,” Vremya, 22 December 2000, 3. 40. Yorgeny Primadov. For comments upon the change in Cuba’s trading see: Evgeny M. Primakov, Minnae pole politiki, (Moscow: Molodaia gvardii, 2006), 149. Vorotnikov, Gavana-Moskva, 402–12. I. U. Gavrikov, Fidel Kastro: neistovgi komandante

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Ostrava svobody, (Moscow: Veche, 2006), 294. E.A. Larin, Latinskaia Amerika istorii.vtoraya polovina XX Veka. (Moscow: Nauka, 2004) 134. S. Batchikov, “The Cuba That We are Losing and Everyone Else is Finding.” Nezavisimaya gazeta, 14 November 1997, 2. Moreover, the title of this article is also significant as it illustrates the feelings that some people within Russia had about the loss of their pre-eminent position within the Cuban economy, as companies from other countries invested in the island. Dr Rodolfo Humpierre stated this during an interview conducted in Havana on 14 February 2008 in Havana. 41. Boris Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, (New York: Public Affairs, 2000), 200. 42. Humpierre, interview conducted on 14 February 2008 in Havana. 43. S. Batchikov, “Rossiisko-Kubinskie otnosheniia: retropektiva, nastoiashchee, perspektiva,” Rossiiskii ekonomicheskii zhurnal, No. 11 (1994), 38, 45. 44. For the dramatic fall in Russian tobacco production see I. Glasov, G. KaraMurza and A. Batchikov, El Libro Blanco. Las reformas neoliberales en Rusia, 1991–2004, (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2007) 119. Izvestia, 19 May 1999. 45. Professor Eugenio Larin stressed the particular importance of both sugar and the creation of the Russian-Cuba Commission on Commercial, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation for Russian-Cuban relations during an interview held in Moscow on 9 January 2008. Batchikov, “The Cuba That We are Losing,” 1997, 2. Cronología de Cuba 1996, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX), 32. 46. Cuba may have been exporting more goods to Russia than it was importing but it did still import goods, and particularly machinery. In 1996, it was reported that 450 ChMZAP8335 trailers were imported from Russia. Inzhenernaya Gazeta, No. 6 1996, 2. Moscow Rossiyskaya Gazeta, 26 September 1996, 5. 47. C. Mesa-Lago and J. Pérez-López, Cuba’s Aborted Reform, 33–35. Interfax in English 1753 GMT 6 June 1997. 48. Ilya Bulavinov, “Détente at Rosvooruzheniye,” Kommersant, 24 September 1998, 2. 49. Granma International, 17 April 1996, 13. 50. Direction of Trade Statistics Yearbook 2006. (Washington DC: International Monetary Fund), 409. 51. Granma, 13 December 2000, 1. 52. Eugenio Larin, Politicheskaia istorii Kuba XX Veka. (Moscow: Visshaya shkola, 2007), 164. 53. L. Newman, “Cuba, Russia Seek New Post-Cold War Relationship.” 1999, see http//.www.cnn.com (24 February 2003). 54. This agreement involved Russia supplying $25–32m rolled steel products, $10-20m spare parts for agricultural machinery, $25–40m spare parts for the motor and railroad transport, 100,000–150,000 tons of mineral fertilizers, 5,000–6,000 oil plant protective chemicals, 100,000–150,000 sets of car tyres and $60–80m worth of other goods. Cuba was to supply $10–40m worth of medicines, vaccines and medical equipment, 2,000–5,000 nickel and cobalt products, 4–9m cigarettes and $60–80m worth of citrus fruits, citrus concentrates, rum and other products. Moscow Interfax in Eng 1203 GMT 22 March 01 FBIS-SOV 2001 0322027 CEP20010322000270. 55. Granma, 29 April 2005, 1.

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56. “Russia to exhibit Buk-M2 air defense system at LAAD 2007” (25 April 2007) The importance of economic links between Venezuela and Russia was shown by Hugo Chavez’s recent trip to Russia when this topic dominated talks. “Reafirma Venezuela su alianza con Rusis y Bielorussia,” (2007), see http://juventudrebelde.cu/internacionales/2007-0630/reafrima-venezuela-su-ali (4 July 2007). 57. Interfax Interview with Alexander Yakovenko 16 November 2004. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Information and Press Department, electronic version. 58. Anuario Estadístico de Cuba 2006, VII-4, see http://websie.eclac.cl /anuario_estadistico/anuario_2006/datos/2.1.1.1.xls (14 July 2007). 59. Yelena Lashkina, “Cocktail of Freedom,” International Affairs November 2006. 60. Juan Triana Cordai, “La economía cubana en el 2001, una perspectiva global, La Economía Cubana en el 2001, (Havana: Centro de Estudios de la Economía Cubana, 2002), 13. 61. In 2002, Brazil was Russia’s largest trading partner in Latin America and in 2006 Moscow conducted more trade with Brazil, Argentina, Bahamas, Ecuador, Mexico, and Panama than with Cuba. Direction of Trade Statistics Yearbook 2006, 409. Moscow ITAR-TASS in R 0817 GMT 25 March 2003-FBIS-SOV-2003-0325 CEP20030325000089. 62. Moscow ITAR-TASS in Eng 09092 GMT 8 November 02 FBIS-SOV-2002-118 CEP20021108000013. 63. ITAR-TASS 18 September 2003. 64. ITAR-TASS 27 February 2005. “Gazprom to join India’s ONGC in upstream activities,” RIA Novosti 9 February 2007. See http://rian.ru/russia /20070209/6041916-print.htm (28 Feb.2007). ITAR-TASS 1 January 2005. Moscow Prensa Latina, 17 December 2005. “Rusia con pabellón absoluto en la FIHAV2006,” El Ruso Cubano, Boletín Informativo de le Embajada de le Federación de Rusia 2006, No. 5, 2 November 2006, 3. “Ricardo Alarcón comenta la colabarcion entre Rusia y Cuba,” Boletín Informativo 2 November 2006, 5. Ana Margarita González, “Cuba and Russia sign contract to produce enriched foods,” see http://www .trabajadores.co.cu,/2007/abril/20/textos_y_fotos/amg-contract.htm (4 May 2007). 65. “Russia banks syndicate $203m aircraft loan for Cuba” RIA Novosti 22 December 2006. See http://rin.ru/business/20061222/57603049-print.html (4 Jan. 2007). “Russia to grant Cuba $355m 10-year loan—PM Fradkov,” RIA Novosti 28 September 2006. See http://rian.ru/russia/20060928/54353408-print.html (4 Jan. 2007). As stated, Chinese loans have been more attractive than Russian ones due to lower interest rates. The Chinese offer is for twenty years at 3 percent per annum whereas the Russian one is for ten years at 5 percent per annum. Lashkina “Cocktail of Freedom,” 2006. 66. “Nuevas tendencias y Alternativa del ALBA,” Cuba Foreign Trade. Publicacion Oficial de la Cámara de Comercio de la Republica de Cuba, No. 3, 2007, 15–16. 67. “Logros e insatisfacciones en la economía cubana,” IPS, Año 20, No. 14, 31 July 2007, 16. 68. ITAR –TASS, 21 January 2004.

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69. Havana Prensa Latina in Spanish 1550 GMT 96 FBIS-LAT-96-082 p21 PA2604001396. Caribbean Update, 15 (11) 7 December 1999. 70. ITAR-TASS 21 January 2004. ITAR-TASS 31 January 2007. See http://www.granma.cu (19 March 2007). 71. On the Cubatravel homepage there are only four language options, Spanish, English, German and Russian. The number of Russian tourists visiting Cuba may be considerably less than from these other countries but this illustrates the importance that the Cuban government attaches to them. See http://www.cubatravel.cu/client/home/index.php (20 Aug. 2007).

4

 The Soviet Legacy

A

s detailed in chapter 2, relations between the Soviet Union and Cuba did not just last for over thirty years but due to their all-encompassing nature they impinged on virtually every part of life in both countries. By the mid-1980s this had seen over 5,000 joint projects completed in Cuba and some 8,000 Cubans a year studying in the Soviet Union. Moreover, Cuba had acquired some of the Soviet Union’s most modern military and industrial equipment partly as a consequence of the island’s place as “first among equals” for many within the Soviet elite. As a result it could be expected that some sort of legacy from the Soviet era would have existed in the relationship that evolved between Russia and Cuba in the post 1992 period. This is certainly not without precedent as throughout history various examples exist of a legacy existing between two countries which have had a relationship lasting for as long a time period as that which had occurred between Moscow and Havana. This has taken various forms including cultural links and a shared language, but Dependency Theorists have particularly criticised the economic and political aspect of it.1 In this manner, and in part due to the creation of the Commonwealth of Nations, the United Kingdom has relations of varying degrees with a variety of its former colonies, as does France. This is not to suggest that Cuba was a colony of the Soviet Union, as shown by the prevalence of nationalism in the Cuban Revolution and Havana’s repeated attempts throughout the Soviet era to reduce its dependence on Moscow. In addition to this, Cuba’s ruling elite most certainly did not lack political experience or its population suffer from poor levels of education as occurred in many 83

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newly independent countries, but as suggested it would be unusual if some type of legacy from the Soviet era did not exist in Russian-Cuban relations in the post 1992 period. However, this did not appear to be the case, because as outlined in chapter 3 in the aftermath of the disintegration of the Soviet Union the downturn in relations between Havana and Moscow was so swift and decisive that by the end of 1992 it would have looked to a casual observer as if a relationship had never existed. The nature of this break had parallels to the one which took place between Havana and Washington after the victory of the Cuban Revolution, which due to the characteristics of U.S.Cuban relations in the first half of the twentieth century has been unusual in both its severity and duration. International relations may have been vastly different in the early 1990s when compared to the late 1950s and early 1960s, but it did not make the apparent split between Moscow and Havana any less surprising. The termination of joint collaboration projects that had been in progress at the end of 1991 was evidence of this break and lack of a legacy from the Soviet era. As stated in the previous chapter, work on the nuclear project at Juargua was stopped due to cost, which at the time Izvestia described as, “the last beacon of ‘fraternal cooperation’ in Cuba is being extinguished.”2 This may have been the most high-profile example, but it was by no means the only one. In a similar manner education programmes that had seen students from Cuba and the Soviet Union study in each other’s respective countries also died out as the scholarships simply did not provide sufficient levels of money for the students to live on and further illustrating the break in relations Russian language television programmes simply disappeared from Cuban television screens.3 On 11 February 1994, Izvestia published an article on joint collaboration projects, which stated, “For Decades Kremlin leaders tried to carry out grandiose plans on the island, plans that were comparable, considering the countries’ difference in size, to reversing the flow of our northern rivers.”4 This left no one in any doubt about what many within the “new” Russia felt about these projects as they believed considerable amounts of time, effort and no little money had been wasted on them. This sentiment is important in explaining the apparent lack of a legacy from the Soviet era existing in the years from 1992 to 1994. However, these feelings are certainly not without precedent in the Soviet era, as similar ones had started to come to prominence when the full force of Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union began to affect relations between Havana and Moscow in the late 1980s. As an increasing openness swept through the Soviet Union, as a result of glasnost, people began to question various aspects of the relationship, not least the levels of eco-

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nomic aid that Cuba received as the Soviet economy continued to under perform despite the implementation of perestroika.5 It could therefore be seen that this downturn in relations in the years from 1992 to 1994, and apparent lack of a Soviet legacy, was in fact a continuation of what had taken place during the Gorbachev era of SovietCuban relations and was consequently a legacy from this period if not earlier ones. However, after the disintegration of the Soviet Union this process unquestionably accelerated, as these feelings which may have been fermenting for some time were suddenly brought to the surface without fear of recrimination. Moreover, Cuba’s association not only with the mistakes of past discredited Soviet regimes but also a political and economic system which many Russians were delighted to see confined to history only accelerated this process, as did both the removal of MarxistLeninism from the relationship and improved relations with the West being top of Moscow’s foreign policy priorities. In relation to the lack of reform on the island, the continued refusal of the Cuban government to embrace reform in light of the fundamentally altered nature of international relations in the 1990s simply made it an anachronism to many. These feelings within Russia were very evident in 1992 with both the creation of the anti-Castro group Cuba Union and the publication of Eve of Collapse, as detailed in the previous chapter.6 In addition to this, and most certainly a legacy from the Gorbachev period, but also earlier ones in the Soviet era, was the low importance that the Kremlin attached to relations with Cuba. Apart from some noticeable exceptions, predominantly the period of the relationship’s inception and the Cuban Missile Crisis, Cuba had never been at the top of the Soviet government’s priorities. Relations with Washington and internal policies were of more importance. This continued in the years from 1992 to 1994 when Russia was undergoing fundamental internal change in conjunction with the importance of improved relations with the United States for the Kremlin further explains the downturn in the relationship in these years. As has been suggested the break in relations between Havana and Moscow in 1992 was so swift and decisive that it appeared that a general Soviet legacy did not exist. This is however, not completely accurate as the continued presence of Soviet-designed Lada cars on Cuban roads, the use of Russian names such as Olga, Niurka, Boris and even Vladimir on the island and Lenin Park in the suburbs of Havana all testify to. Old Havana may be a World Heritage sight, in no small part due to the Spanish colonial architecture, but on the outskirts of the Cuban capital much less aesthetically appealing Soviet era housing blocs remain and the Miramar district of Havana continues to be dominated by the former Soviet and now Russian embassy. In short, despite the spectacular break in relations in 1992 a Soviet legacy does exist in Cuba and it is a vital component in

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explaining not just the continuation of relations between Moscow and Havana, but also their improvement from the mid-1990s onwards.

1992–1995: RELATIONS SURVIVE THE CATACLYSM As detailed in chapter 3 the final remaining troops from the former Red Army returned to Russia from Cuba in the summer of 1993, but this by no means heralded the end of Russian citizens living and working in Cuba. A number of Russians remained on the island after this as a result of marriage, which is again not surprising due to the long duration and the number of Soviet citizens who had visited Cuba while Soviet-Cuban relations had existed. This process was repeated as a number of Cubans attempted to remain in Russia in the 1990s rather than return to the Caribbean, as outlined in chapter 3. This is significant as it not just illustrates that despite appearances in 1992 a complete break in relations between Havana and Moscow did not take place, but also due to intermarriage it resulted in the appearance of a number of palavinos. This is the Cuban term for children born on the island who have Cuban and Russian parents. The importance of this is increased as it is partly as a result of intermarriage and the existence of palavinos that Cuba possesses a unique Russian speaking ability in Latin America. It is this, in conjunction with the legacy of the education programmes that existed during the Soviet era which saw many Cubans learn Russian with some believing this could be as high as 20 percent of the population, and many Russians Spanish, that explains this phenomenon. In 1996 when Yevgeny Primakov, the Russian Foreign Minister, was in Cuba K. Khachaturov, President of Russian Commission of Cooperation with Latin America, wrote about these Cubans who had been educated in the Soviet Union as their “experience and knowledge may be used successfully for the development of economic and trade as well as scientific and technical ties.”7 This Russian language ability not only eased the various types of talks that took place in the 1990s, but would also increase in importance at the beginning of the twenty-first century as the Russian Federation became increasingly interested in Latin America. This will be analysed in more detail in the next chapter. In the aftermath of the break-up of the Soviet Union the Russian Federation became its legal successor, which did not only mean that Russia gained the Soviet seat on the Security Council of the United Nations (UN) and that throughout the world the Russian flag replaced the Soviet one above former Soviet embassies but also that Boris Yeltsin’s government inherited the debt which many countries, but particularly ones in the Developing World, owed to Moscow. Cuba was certainly no different and

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the generous levels of aid and assistance which Moscow had supplied to Havana during the Soviet era had been both very important for the Cuban Revolution but had also become increasingly contentious once glasnost had begun to impact on the relationship. However, the debt that Havana owed to Moscow would be both highly significant in relations between the two countries in the 1990s and also cast a long shadow over them. After 1991 not only was payment of the debt not forthcoming but the two countries could not agree on the actual level of the debt, the currency it was to be paid in or even the exchange rate that was to be used to calculate it. In January 1995, a Russian State Duma hearing on RussianCuban relations was held and in the Sevodnya report on this the journalist Leonid Velekhov wrote, “The Russian side (and it is not alone; international estimates are similar) puts Cuba’s debt at 17 billion transferable rubles, which according to accepted practice is equivalent to the same number of dollars. Cuba insists that its debt be calculated at a ratio of one dollar to 50 transferable rubles.”8 Cuba’s debt to Russia was both a legacy from the Soviet era but also an important reason in explaining the relationships continuation. Moreover, the fact that it was a topic that the two countries continually discussed throughout the 1990s meant that the relationship between Havana and Moscow was never completely severed. The chances that Moscow would be repaid were very small if not negligible due to the economic crisis that engulfed the Caribbean island at this time, but if relations between the two countries had been completely terminated the slim chance that it may be repaid would have completely disappeared. As the Russian Federation was also experiencing economic difficulties at this time, this was something that Moscow simply could not afford to do. In the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Moscow had been unable to cut its links with Havana due to the economic implications for the Soviet Union, and in a not identical, but similar way the Russian Federation could also not afford to write off the Cuban debt. This was shown by the fact that at the Russian State Duma hearings it was even suggested that the Russian Federation could be paid in the form of real estate and land on the island rather than in hard currency.9 This may not have been the ideal scenario for Russia, but it would have at least meant that the debt had been honoured. The result was that an old pressure from the Soviet era appeared to be re-emerging to impact on the relationship. The debt may have been a controversial issue between Havana and Moscow at this time, but it was not the most high-profile example of a legacy from the Soviet era existing in the years immediately after 1991. Moscow’s decision to keep the listening post at Lourdes on the outskirts of Havana open was not just important for Russian-Cuban relations but was also a large bone of contention between Moscow and Washington

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throughout the 1990s. Officially the Russian government stated that Lourdes was “necessary in order to maintain stable communications with our embassies in Latin America,”10 but by making this decision Moscow obviously attached much importance to the information that they continued to acquire from this facility. It also illustrated that relations between Moscow and Washington, although undoubtedly improved, were perhaps not as cordial as may at first appear. Moreover, the facility also acted as a counterweight for Moscow to NATO expansion to the east. This will be examined in chapter 5. However, with the end of the Cold War the U.S. administration could not understand why the Russian Federation did not close Lourdes. In addition to this, and in light of the economic embargo against the island being tightened still further in the 1990s in an attempt to herald the end of the Castro regime, Washington was also unhappy with the fact that Lourdes proved a valuable source of income for the Cuban government. Initially the Cuban government had hoped to receive $1b a year in rent from Russia for the use of Lourdes but eventually in November 1994 a compromise deal was signed by Colonel General M. Kolesnikov, Russian Chief of General Staff, while he was in Havana. This agreement stated that Cuba would receive $200m a year and this would be paid in the form of fuel, timber and spare parts for equipment which included military equipment. Russia was delighted with this agreement and Sevodnya even described this as a “rather modest sum.”11 The Cuban government may have been hoping to receive a larger amount of money but due to their economic situation it was still invaluable for the Caribbean island. In relation to this and due to the nature of relations between Moscow and Havana the source of both military hardware and industrial machinery for Cuba during the Soviet era had been the socialist bloc countries but particularly the Soviet Union. Moreover, the Soviet Union had also supplied over 80 percent of the cars found on Cuban roads.12 As the 1990s progressed this equipment became increasingly old and therefore in need of repair, which resulted in Cuba requiring spare parts as the Castro regime could most certainly not afford to replace this equipment due to the economic problems which had befallen the island with the end of Soviet-Cuban relations. However, these spare parts were becoming increasingly difficult to find and Russia paying for the use of Lourdes in kind, and especially spare parts, was a vital source of these for the Caribbean island. Besides this, the Soviet equipment had proved to work well in Cuban conditions and, in direct relation to this, the island’s workers had been both trained to use this equipment and were also familiar with it as it had been used on the island for a number of decades. This made the continuation of its use appealing to the Cuban government, but in conjunction with not being able to afford replacements it increased the

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importance of these spare parts for the Cuban government. Moreover, Russia, lacking alternative markets for these goods, proved a more than willing vendor. This illustrated not just the continuation of the relationship, but also provided an important reason for it. Cuba requiring spare parts for its Soviet era machinery was a significant reason for relations between Moscow and Havana never being completely terminated in this period, but so too was the Russian need for sugar and Cuban need for oil. Again, this was a legacy from the Soviet era as Russia has traditionally been an importer of sugar as it on average consumes three times the level of sugar that it produces. During the Soviet era this shortfall had been met by the purchase of Cuban sugar. In a similar manner the Soviet Union had been the Caribbean island’s main source of oil throughout the revolutionary period. After 1991 the realisation quickly formed in both capitals that it was easier and cheaper to continue trading with each other in terms of these goods rather than try and cultivate links with new vendors, illustrating the existence of pragmatism within both governments. In addition, the Cuban economist Hiram Marquetti believes that due to the complexities of the international finance system Russia’s alternative sources of sugar were somewhat limited.13 This was most certainly the case for the number of possible sources of oil for the Caribbean island as a result of both the United States embargo and cost, as it was unlikely that vendors would allow the Cuban government to buy oil on a credit basis due to the economic problems engulfing the island. In January 1992 an Izvestia article stated, “. . . it will be to our advantage to buy sugar from Cuba.” 14 On 26 October 1992, Yevgeny Bai, the Izvestia Cuban correspondent, expanded on this when he wrote, “Cuba sold the sugar that it had produced last year anyway . . . while we were forced to buy sugar on the world market through middlemen and at higher prices.”15 Moreover, Moscow had only paid between 15 to 20 percent of the price for Cuban sugar in hard currency with the rest being paid in kind. The journalist Nikolai Vlasov reiterated the economic benefits for Russia of continuing to buy sugar from Cuba in March 1993 when he wrote, “If Russia enters . . . the so-called free market where the produce is sold without preliminary agreements (up to 10 million tons a year) a sharp rise in prices will occur there. It will be impossible to compensate it by additional incomes in hard currency from sales of withdrawn goods meant for Cuba . . . Besides, sugar is bought in Cuba without mediators.”16 In addition, in 1993 in an interview with Latinskaia Amerika Lionel Soto, vice president of the Cuban Council of Ministers, very succinctly addressed this issue when he said that it was normal for Moscow to buy Cuban sugar and he saw no reason why it should stop.17 As stated in the previous chapter Russian agricultural output had plummeted in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and this

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was most certainly the case with production of sugar which continued to fall throughout the 1990s. The effect of this was to only increase the significance of the purchase of Cuban sugar for Moscow. In addition to this, during the Soviet era sugar refineries were able to work in a constant twelve-month cycle due to the import of Cuban sugar as a result of the Soviet and Cuban sugar harvests being at different times of the year. The loss of this only further reduced Russia’s already poor agricultural output.18 In the fast changing world of the 1990s, as both the Russian and Cuban economies struggled to adapt to the new global situation oil for sugar swaps were not just beneficial due to both cost and the lack of alternative sources of these commodities for Russia and Cuba but it also provided a very much needed semblance of stability for both countries, while illustrating the existence of pragmatism within both governments. It appeared somewhat ironic that the Russian purchase of Cuban sugar as a result of it being more competitively priced than other sources was an important reason for the continuation of the relationship in the post 1991 period as the price that Moscow paid for this commodity had attracted much criticism in the final years of the Soviet era. This was despite both Cuban attempts to reduce dependency on the Soviet Union and also the terms of trade turning against the Caribbean island at this time. Even as late in the Soviet period as August 1991, V. Churkin, Soviet Minister of Foreign Economic Cooperation, had stated in an interview that economic relations between Moscow and Havana were “doomed” to continue. This was despite them being greatly affected by the Soviet reform processes, but his attitude was synonymous with the negative feelings felt by many within the Soviet Union at this time about both trade being conducted with Cuba and Cuban-Soviet relations in general. However, the realisation had quickly formed in Russia after 1992 that contrary to this belief the continuation of relations, due to the nature of Soviet-Cuban relations, was in fact beneficial to both countries. In 1997, Olga Gridchina, a Russian economist who lives and works in Cuba, likened the importance of sugar for Russian-Cuban relations to that of oil in the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia.19 The irony is still further increased as Cuba’s traditional export since colonial times was still of the utmost significance for the island and its relationship with Russia at the end of the twentieth century. It appeared that Cuba was still heavily dependent on this primary product. The importance of trade with Cuba for the Russian Federation was shown in 1992 by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations’s reaction to the Cuban Democracy Act, or Torricelli Bill, that aimed to tighten the U.S. embargo against the Caribbean island. In an interview with Izvestia, a spokesmen from this ministry said, “there is a possibility that Russia can circumvent the US embargo. The trick is to charter ships

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of European states—France for example—to buy goods from Cuba, and ships belonging to Latin American states to carry oil to the island.”20 The Castro regime was not slow to highlight the point that Russia had realised that there were economic benefits of its relationship with Cuba in the post 1991 period. On 9 June 1993, Radio Rebelde broadcast a report of an interview that A. Rubinskiy, Deputy Chief of the Latin America Department of the Russian Ministry of Economic Relations, had given to Komsomolskaya Pravda in which he had stated that “strengthening relations with Cuba is vital.”21 As a result of this in December 1993 a swap deal involving 1.5m tons of sugar being exchanged for 4m tons of oil was mooted, which was greatly beneficial to both countries. This resulted in the Bohemia journalist, Fernando Davolos, commenting on the radio programme “Straight Talk” that ties between Cuba and Russia were stabilizing.22 This sentiment and agreement were very important as they were further illustrations of relations never being completely severed, continuing and the significance of the Soviet legacy in them. It appeared that in terms of sugar and oil Russia was Cuba’s ‘traditional’ trading partner and Cuba Russia’s, and this remained the case even after the end of SovietCuban relations. In relation to this, the Cuban government’s surprising lack of comment on Russia, the unfolding events there and their effects for the Cuban Revolution, as detailed in chapter 3, which at first appeared somewhat strange due to the removal of diplomatic protocol, can most certainly be perceived as a legacy from the Soviet era. A report does exist that in August 1994 the Cuban embassy in Moscow complained to the editor of Izvestia, I. Golembyovskiy, about Yevgeny Bai’s reporting of the balsero crisis. Prensa Latina stated that, “Yevgeny Bai demonstrates in his work a lack of professional ethics and of civilised behaviour and norms employed in journalism.”23 This was however very unusual because although Cuban academia may have been more critical, in the main little comment was made. This, and the reaction of the island’s academic community, were both a legacy from the Soviet era as this was a very similar response to the negative effects of Gorbachev’s reforms on Soviet-Cuban relations.24 In the Gorbachev period the lack of comment had occurred as a result of both diplomatic protocol and the wish not to jeopardise the relationship. Realist pragmatism had always been very prevalent throughout the Cuban Revolutionary period with this being an important aspect in the explanation for this reaction in the late Soviet era, but it was once again fundamental in the post 1991 period, because as detailed in chapter 3, the Cuban government did not wish to endanger the links, outlined above, which had survived the end of Cuban-Soviet relations. These may have been vastly reduced when compared to the Soviet era, but they remained

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vital to the Cuban Revolution, not least the Russian supply of oil, as the island struggled to adapt to the loss of its closest economic and political ally. As has been stated, it is not unusual for some semblance of a relationship to continue between two countries which have a history such as that which had existed between Moscow and Havana, as in many ways it is simply easier for it to continue rather than attempt to cultivate links with other countries. The title of Velekhov’s 22 December 1993 article in Sevodnya, “Old Friends: Russia and Cuba. It seems They Are Brothers Forever After All,” certainly suggests this to be the case.25 However, the military in both countries also played a part in this. In the 1990s with the Cold War confined to history both militaries suffered a downturn in their fortunes. However, a continuation of relations between Moscow and Havana was an illustration of their more glorious past, and when this is coupled with the very close ties that existed between them throughout the Soviet era, a number of Soviet military officials had been members of the “Cuban lobby,” it again provided evidence of both a Soviet legacy and also the importance of the relationship that developed between the two countries in the period after 1991. In November 1993 Izvestia stated that the Russian military were fighting to keep their presence in Cuba. Lourdes remaining open certainly showed this as did General Kolesnikov’s visit to Cuba in November 1994, because the number of such visits had fallen drastically with the end of the Soviet era.26 In the years immediately after the termination of Soviet-Cuban relations it may have appeared that a legacy from the Soviet era did not exist in the relationship between Moscow and Havana, but the reality was somewhat different, as it not only existed but was in fact multifaceted. It included Russians remaining in Cuba and Cubans in Russia, the listening post at Lourdes not being closed with the end of the Cold War, Russia being a more than willing vendor of spare parts for Soviet era machinery that continued to be used in Cuba and close ties between the two militaries. In addition, the legacy also comprised both Havana’s debt to Moscow accumulated during the Soviet era, which Russia had inherited on becoming the legal successor to the Soviet Union, and also that quickly the realisation had formed in both countries that it was easier and cheaper for oil for sugar swaps to be conducted rather than either country attempt to cultivate new trade links. This did not just highlight the existence of pragmatism within both ruling elites but also benefited both countries due to a lack of alternative sources for either commodity. Moreover, in Latin America Cuba has a unique Russian language ability due to intermarriage and educational programmes from the Soviet era which made the bi-lateral talks which did take place easier. It could have been thought that some form of a legacy could have been expected due to the duration and nature of Soviet-Cuban relations, but the legacy was a vital reason for

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the fact that even as relations between Moscow and Havana suffered a downturn in the years immediately after the disintegration of the Soviet Union they were never completely severed.

RELATIONS WARM AND THE ADVENT OF A NEW MILLENNIUM Relations between Moscow and Havana may have deteriorated in the period from 1992 to 1995 but they were never completely broken with a legacy from the Soviet era being an important element in this. However the legacy was also important as relations between the two countries improved from the middle of the final decade of the twentieth century onwards and was particularly prominent at the aforementioned Russian State Duma hearings on Russian-Cuban relations held in January 1995. The very fact that these meetings were even convened illustrate that the significance of relations with Cuba was becoming an increasingly important topic within Russia and that attitudes towards the Caribbean island were beginning to change. Perhaps unsurprisingly the Russian Communist Party under the leadership of Gennady Zyuganov were very supportive of these meetings and called not only for the revival of economic ties with Cuba, but also for those who had been responsible for their downturn immediately after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, which had led to the “collapse of the Cuban economy,” to be prosecuted.27 The Russian Communist Party, many of whom had been members of the “Cuban lobby” during the Soviet era, would have continued to have felt an ideological tie to the Cuban regime. This was apparent in both June 1998 when Zyuganov travelled to Cuba at the invitation of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) and met Fidel Castro and also in April 2007 when Zyuganov was again in Havana and Carlos Lage, member of the politburo of the PCC and then Vice-President of Cuba, accepted a medal on behalf of Fidel Castro from the Russian Communist Party for his “distinguished merits in the construction of socialism and belief in the ideas of the October Revolution.”28 In addition to shared ideological beliefs, members of Russian Communist party, as with the military in both Russia and Cuba, would have also felt that improved relations between Moscow and Havana would have illustrated the halcyon days of the Soviet era. Again, it appeared that even in the mid-1990s a legacy from the Soviet era had been a large driving force behind these meetings being convened, but they illustrated the changing attitude in Russia towards its relationship with Cuba. In addition to these feelings of affinity, a legacy also existed from the massive economic investment that the Soviet Union had made in the Cuban Revolution for over thirty years, which was again very important

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in explaining the improvement in relations from the mid-1990s onwards. As detailed in the previous chapter, a desire within the Russian business community to address the loss of their pre-eminent position within the Cuban economy had also been significant to this, and in a not dissimilar manner the realisation formed in Russia that due to the sudden deterioration in relations in the period from 1992 to 1995 the Soviet investment in the Cuban economy had simply been wasted. As stated, this had seen the completion of in excess of 5,000 joint programmes by the end of the Soviet era. Again, as in the early 1960s when the number of these projects escalated massively it appeared that even in the 1990s Moscow could not afford to simply cut its ties with these projects due to the economic implications this would have for the Russian Federation. A pressure, which had been a significant part of the foundations of Soviet-Cuban relations, had re-emerged in the post 1991 period, although at a much reduced level, to once again be important in the relationship. S. Batchikov, co-chairman of the Russian Foreign Economic Policy Fund, wrote in 1997, “One wouldn’t want to think that in Cuba . . . Russia is ignominiously squandering the legacy built by the selfless labor of several generations of our fellow countrymen.”29 The idea that the legacy from the Soviet era may be being lost was returned to during Vladimir Putin’s trip to Cuba in the year 2000 when Aleksei Chichkin wrote, “According to Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Investment, more than half of the old Soviet projects on the Isle of Freedom have been taken over by foreign firms.”30 In relation to this economic legacy a very interesting article appeared in Moskovskiye novosti in the summer of 1995. It stated, “According to some estimates, in the course of 30 years of Soviet-Cuban cooperation, we invested more than $100 billion in the island’s economy. One should also remember that no other country in the world has so many factories built with Soviet assistance and so many specialists trained in the USSR. Had we managed to preserve our dominant status in Cuba’s nickel industry, Russia might have a monopoly on this raw material in the world market. Today there are more than five hundred joint production facilities on which all work has halted. And although relations with Cuba will never be what they once were, one thing is clear: No matter who is in power in Havana—Fidel Castro or the leaders of the Miami-based opposition— Russia will continue to have economic interests in Cuba. And for this reason the thaw in our relations can only be welcomed.”31 Moreover, Professor Eugenio Larin, Director of Latin American Studies at the Institute of Cold War History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, has stated that due to the “good and sincere” relations that existed from the Soviet era, the relationship between Havana and Moscow will continue for the foreseeable future regardless of who the specific leaders in either capital actually are. This is particularly significant in light of the

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events of late February and early March 2008 which saw Dmitri Medvedev win the Russian Presidential elections and Raúl Castro permanently succeed his brother as Cuban President. It could even be suggested that due to Raúl’s military past and close association with the Russian military for a number of decades, agreements between the Russian military and FAR were signed throughout the 1990s, that the importance of Russian-Cuban relations may increase for Havana in the future.32 Besides this, in November 1995, S. Tsyplakov, head of the Russian Federation Government Department of International Cooperation, pointedly commented that Cuba was “tied” to Russia due to this legacy.33 This was despite Cuba’s continued attempts to reduce its dependency on Moscow throughout the Soviet era and the dramatic change in the composition of the Caribbean island’s trading partners in the 1990s detailed in the previous chapter. As has been suggested some form of a relationship continuing to exist between two countries which have a shared history such as Russia and Cuba is not unusual but in this specific case due to the colossal Soviet economic investment in the Caribbean island it appeared particularly strong, which has resulted in some of the pressures that had formed the foundations of Soviet-Cuban relations re-emerging in the 1990s, but at a reduced level from those during the Soviet era. In addition, it also highlighted the prevalence of pragmatism within both governments, but as with the continued purchase of Cuban sugar, it appeared somewhat ironic that this legacy from the Soviet era was so significant in Russian-Cuban relations in the 1990s as they had been so heavily criticised in the final years of the Soviet Union. Moreover, some believed it had been so powerful that it could even outlive the Castro regime in Cuba and the then expected influx of U.S. dollars from the north. This economic legacy from the Soviet era was of the utmost importance, and was vital to the improvement in relations between Cuba and Russia from the mid1990s onwards. It was this desire not to waste the investment in the Cuban economy from the Soviet era, and wish to reclaim some of their lost influence in it, that drove this phenomenon and not the result of the globalisation process in general. As argued in the previous chapter, some Russian interest in Cuba in the 1990s may have been expected due to globalisation, but, if this had been the case it would be logical to think that at this time Russian interest in the rest of Latin America would also have been at a similar level to that which had taken place in Cuba. This, however, was not the case and it was the wish to reclaim some of their lost influence in the Cuban economy that was more significant. This situation only arose due to investment from the Cold War era or as a result of the economic legacy from the Soviet period, further illustrating its importance in the upturn in relations.

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It was not just an upturn in trade that symbolised the improvement in relations, but from 1996 visits by top ranking officials to each other’s respective countries recommenced, whose absence since 1992 had been both very conspicuous and also a graphical illustration of the downturn in the relationship. The first of these was in June 1996 when the Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov travelled to Cuba. During his visit he not only met both Castro brothers but a programme on bilateral co-operation on education, science and technology and culture was also signed. As Primakov was leaving Cuba, Fidel Castro spoke about the state of relations between Cuba and Russia when he said, “Recently, relations have been improving little by little. There have been good moments, there have been critical moments and now there’s an upswing.”34 In a similar manner, Professor Eugenio Larin has compared the relationship between Havana and Moscow to being like a marriage which has its good moments and bad moments but does not end in divorce.35 Primakov’s visit was important in itself, but the significance of Primakov himself to Russian-Cuban relations will be analysed in the next chapter. Roberto Robaina, the Cuban Foreign Minister, reciprocated this trip in March 1998 when he visited the Russian capital, and in September 1999 the new Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov travelled to Cuba.36 During his trip Ivanov partly explained the reasons for the improvement in relations, but also the importance of the Soviet legacy in it, when he said: “It’s evident that our taking into account the wealth accumulated in the many years of relations between both nations, it’s logical that the ties between Cuba and Russia continue to develop.”37 This was certainly the case with these type of visits because it would have been more surprising if they had not taken place as relations between the two countries improved. In January 1999, Robaina was again in Moscow by which time relations had undoubtedly improved but as detailed Cuba’s unpaid debt to Russia had been both an important factor in the relationship never being completely severed, but had also become a thorny issue between the two countries. On this Gennady Charodeyev, an Izvestia journalist, wrote, “Minister Roberto Robaina declined to give a detailed answer to a question from Izvestia as to whether Cuba recognised any debt to Russia. But it’s no secret to anyone that the foreign-debt problem wasn’t solved this time either. Moscow, realizing that the issue has become a vexing and protracted one, proposed a step-by-step process in which the sides would first reach agreement on capitalizing—on portion of the debt by converting it into shares in joint ventures and facilities built in Cuba with Soviet assistance.”38 As outlined in chapter 3 practical, economic reasons and not a return to Marxist-Leninist thinking were the driving forces in Vladimir Putin’s trip to Cuba in December 2000. The outcome of this visit appeared to be very

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positive with a number of agreements being signed, but the issue of Cuba’s debt continued to loom large over relations between the two countries. In the aftermath of this visit, Aleksei Chichkin, a journalist, wrote in Rossiiskaya gazeta, “Russia’s Ministry of Economic Development and Trade puts Cuba’s debt at £20 billion. Cuba didn’t even recognise this debt until last year. And for understandable reasons, it brought a counterclaim— namely, that the sudden break-off of economic, scientific and technological ties with the USSR and Russia in 1989–1992 had cost the Cuban economy at least $15 billion (including adjustments for the subsequent “lost” years). Moreover, Havana proposed that Russia compensate for this by drastically lowering and then abolishing import duties on all Cuban goods and services. It promised to extend the same benefits to Moscow.”39 Cuba’s unpaid debt to Russia may have been a contentious issue between the two countries since the end of Soviet-Cuban relations, but its importance to Russia can be further illustrated by the fact that in September 2005 Moscow announced that it was deferring payment of the debt.40 This was a first for the Russian Federation and significantly it was not simply cancelled. Cuban payment of this remains unlikely, but by not merely writing it off it appears that Moscow continues to cling to the hope that it may be repaid with the debt not only having been a very important issue in the relationship, but this remains so. Again, a legacy from the Soviet era has been a crucial factor in Russian-Cuban relations in the post 1991 period. However, it is also highly significant that Moscow took this decision because, as stated, they had never done this before, but by doing this it illustrates that the Russian government still attaches great importance to their relationship with Cuba. The issue of the debt may not have been removed from the relationship permanently but it could be argued that this decision has invigorated the relationship as a number of significant economic agreements between the two countries have since been signed. This includes both the Cuban purchase of Russian aircraft and a $365m grant from the Russian government. These will be analysed in more depth later in this chapter but it has been significant that they were signed once the Cuban debt had been deferred. Moreover, as a result of this decision it might not be beyond reason to think that Cuba has been treated differently from other countries by Moscow. This most certainly has parallels to the Soviet era. The issue of Cuba’s debt may have been a major issue between the two countries when Putin visited Cuba, but a number of articles appeared in the Russian press at this time which illustrate both the change in Russian citizens thinking towards Cuba and also the important role that the Soviet legacy played in the improvement in relations. On 15 December 2000, Izvestia reported that “Putin began his visit to Cuba by declaring that the

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breaking off of relations with Havana after the Soviet collapse had been a historical mistake. This was music to the ears of Fidel Castro (who welcomed Putin at Jose Marti Airport in person).”41 On the following day in the previously quoted article by Aleksei Chichkin, the significance of the Soviet legacy was shown even more clearly. Chichkin wrote, “Before reporting on the agreements reached in Havana, let us recall that over the past 10 years or so, since the break-up of the USSR, we have changed more than our ideology. For some reason, we thought that the foreign economic interests of the new Russian state would be completely different, and that there would be no place in them for ties (mainly economic) with the allies of the former USSR. Russia voluntarily pulled out of markets in which it had operating for some time (an unprecedented occurrence in world economic history), where our manufactured goods were and remain in great demand. Mongolia and Cuba were among the first countries that we ‘abandoned.’ The only remaining economic link between Moscow and Havana is ‘Russian oil for Cuban raw sugar.’ Most of our sugar mills process Cuban raw sugar during the winter months, after our own sugar beets have run out. So there was no compulsion to apply ideological clichés to this sector. From an overall perspective, however, Russia’s long-term economic interests were sacrificed to political expediency.”42 Also during his trip to Cuba the Russian premier presented the Order of Friendship to Carlos Dortes, the Cuban Health Minister. This was awarded to thank the Cuban nation for both its health and development ties with Russia, and also due to the fact that by the year 2000 some 19,000 children who had been affected by the Chernobyl disaster in April 1986 had enjoyed a period of convalescence in the Caribbean paid for by the Cuban government. This was important as it provided further evidence for both the fact that relations between Moscow and Havana had never been completely broken in the early 1990s and also the existence of a legacy from the Soviet era. In addition, it was quite remarkable that this program, which showed the Cuban government’s continued belief in internationalism, had remained in place when relations between the two countries had soured in the early 1990s and especially as its cost may have become prohibitive when the Cuban economy had deteriorated drastically after the disintegration of the Soviet Union.43 As outlined in the previous chapter, Cuba’s biotechnological industry has in general been both very significant for the recovery of the island’s economy, but also for Russian-Cuban relations specifically due to Russian interest in it. Although not directly a part of the Soviet legacy, it is again important as Moscow has attempted to use its links to the Cuban Revolution from the Soviet era to try and gain access to the island’s biotechnological products. Moscow’s desire to do this was evident during Putin’s

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trip to Cuba when the Russian President visited the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Havana and that the agreements he signed while on the island involved Russian goods being exchanged for Cuban medical ones. The Cuban economist Hiram Marquetti has also written of the importance of pharmaceutical goods for the relationship and Russia’s interest in it was seen by the fact that during the 2006 international trade fair in Havana a special presentation and workshop was held where the possibilities of increased collaboration in biotechnology were discussed.44 This again illustrated the significance and power of the Soviet legacy to the post 1991 relationship between Havana and Moscow as the Russian government was even trying to use it, and their friendship built up over a number of decades, to cultivate links to parts of the Cuban economy that had only begun to come to fruition in the final years of the Soviet era. Cuba’s recent purchase of two Russian-made IL 96-300 airplanes may again not be a direct result of the Soviet legacy with a variety of other reasons being significant, particularly the £200m credit from a syndicate of Russian banks that helped to fund this transaction, but it does play a part in it.45 The confidence that this syndicate of banks has shown in the Cuban government would have been acquired over a period of time and the long history of relations between Moscow and Havana will certainly not have harmed this process. Moreover, as with Soviet era machinery in general which had worked very well in Cuban conditions so too had Soviet planes and in addition the island’s pilots and mechanics have considerable experience of working with Russian and Soviet made aircraft, many of which were used for a considerable time period after the end of SovietCuban relations, and this will only have made the purchase of these planes more appealing to the Cuban authorities. The improvement in relations between Moscow and Havana and the agreements signed between the two countries have been very important for the Cuban Revolution as it has struggled to adjust to the loss of the Soviet Union. In December 2000 during Putin’s trip to the Caribbean island Fidel Castro commented upon the agreements signed when he said they “reaffirm the traditional sentiments of friendship between our two peoples.”46 Moreover, the Cuban academics Graciela Chailloux, Rosa Lopez and Silvio Baro have written with regards to Cuba’s relationship with Eastern Europe, “the Cuban foreign policy objective—based on the consideration that these countries had had friendly relations with Cuba for three decades—is directed to foster bilateral relations in the prevailing conditions based on the ever-present mutual respect, continuity of the relationship in all possible fields and ways.”47 Specifically they believed that relations with Russia were the most important as a result of the much larger volumes of exchange involved in comparison to the other former

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socialist countries of Eastern Europe. Russian-Cuban relations may have endured a turbulent period and undergone fundamental change but the significance of the great history which the two countries shared and its role in the evolution of the relationship from the mid-1990s onwards was not lost on either the Cuban leader or the island’s population. Due to the all encompassing nature of Soviet-Cuban relations the legacy from it is not just very strong but, unsurprisingly, can be seen in many parts of the ‘new’ relationship between Moscow and Havana. This even includes cultural links between the two countries, which would not have been expected as during the Soviet era they had often been made light of and even mocked. As stated, Nadya Plankton, joint organiser of the cinema, video and graphic arts project entitled ‘Days of the Russian contemporary culture in Havana,’ believes that in the early 1990s Cuba remained an emotive subject in Russia but as time has passed these feelings have gradually receded and people within both countries have begun to embrace the cultural links that existed between their countries. This is a very different sentiment to the one that existed in the late 1980s and early 1990s when many felt that the relationship was “doomed” to continue. This is not to say that cultural links have returned to levels enjoyed in the Soviet era as Plankton’s difficulty in trying to find funding within Russia for her project that was staged in Havana in November 2005 and even how some Cubans perceived their efforts, but this does not diminish the importance of this phenomenon. This is apparent not just from Plankton and her associates staging the above titled project, but in other ones that have also taken place. In June 1999, this has included readings of Alexander Pushkin’s work organised by the Cuban Ministry of Culture, Institute of Language and Literature of the University of Havana and the Jose Marti Library to commemorate the two-hundredth anniversary of the Russian writer’s birth, the signing of an agreement whereby sports science expertise would be shared between the two countries, the hope that a Russian cultural center may be built in Havana and more recently the construction of a Russian Orthodox Church in the Cuban capital, with this church symbolising both the changes which have taken place in Cuba in the 1990s and also the Soviet legacy.48 Many Cubans may still comment on the great differences in general between the two peoples while also stressing how well they got on with individual Soviet citizens that they may have come into contact with, but some very tentative interest in this cultural aspect of the Soviet legacy has been seen in Cuba. This has been apparent with the appearance of the project entitled “Proyecto mir xxi cu” whose aim is to promote within Cuba the interests of those born of Cuban and Russian parents and in 2002 the video of the punk rock group “Porno para Ricardo” even mirrored aspects of Cuban-Soviet relations.49

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This recent increase in the cultural links is an excellent illustration of the power and strength of the Soviet legacy in relations between Moscow and Havana more than fifteen years after the disintegration of Soviet-Cuban relations as in the early 1990s it would have appeared that a cultural legacy was somewhat tenuous and even highly unlikely. However, it is occurring quite simply because Soviet-Cuban relations existed because this phenomenon is not being repeated by Russians with other Latin American peoples. The point which Plankton makes about Cuba still being a controversial issue in Russia in the early 1990s and that it has only been with the passing of time that this began to change, was not only important in the re-emergence of cultural links between the two countries, but was pivotal for the relationship in general. As has been discussed, in the late 1980s many within the Soviet Union had become disillusioned with both Soviet-Cuban relations and the Cuban Revolution itself. This was perfectly illustrated by Churkin’s comment in August 1991 that trade between the two countries was “doomed” to continue. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, relations between Moscow and Havana changed dramatically, with many of these disillusioned people in Russia being glad that the Soviet Union had disintegrated, while some were also being highly critical of the Cuban Revolution and its government. However, as time passed these negative feelings began to recede with some Russians beginning to have feelings of nostalgia for the Soviet era. This did not just occur, as stated, amongst former members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) or the Red Army but also among Russian citizens in general. During the Cold War Moscow had been the capital of a superpower and not on the periphery of international relations as had occurred in the 1990s. Moreover, the economic situation of many Russians had often been far superior during the Soviet era than in the 1990s. This phenomenon did not go unnoticed in Cuba. In 2001 the academic Ariel Dacal wrote that in a survey conducted in the year 2000 61.1 percent of Russians polled would like to return to the “old times” while only 27.7 percent would like to remain in the “present situation.”50 As stated, due to the socio-economic situation endured by many Russians after the break-up of the Soviet Union these sentiments are not as surprising as they may first appear but the Cuban authorities would have also perceived them as justification of continuing to pursue their political and economic models in the aftermath of the end of Soviet-Cuban relations. In the specific case of relations between Moscow and Havana the realisation formed, that, as a result of the unique relationship between the two countries from the Soviet era, there had been a number of positive factors for Russia from its relationship with Cuba and it was in their national interest to try and foster these again. Ironically, in the early to mid-1990s this had even included the purchase of sugar from the Caribbean island. This

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change in attitude was sown by another opinion poll held in Russia in 2006. Of those questioned, 63 percent believed that Fidel Castro had been a great political figure of the twentieth century, 56 percent thought that the Cuban population had benefited from his time as Cuban President while only 8 percent disagreed with this sentiment.51 The importance of this change in attitude cannot be overestimated as it has been of absolutely fundamental significance and is another aspect of the Soviet legacy which has been vital in Russian-Cuban relations in the years since 1992. In a similar manner the alteration in Russian foreign policy which took place in the mid-1990s, that was detailed in chapter 1 and will be examined in chapter 5, was also of great importance. This change, which saw Moscow try and reassert itself on the world politics, resulted in the Russian Federation and Cuba having similar political outlooks on many issues. Moscow once again began to back Havana over various disputes that the Caribbean island had with Washington, with this most certainly being a legacy from the Soviet era when it had been the norm for the two countries to side with each other over various political issues.52 The legacy from the Soviet era has unquestionably been highly significant in both the fact that relations between Moscow and Havana were never completely severed even in the years 1992 to 1995 when the relationship suffered a massive downturn when compared to earlier periods, but it has also been important in the upturn in the relationship from 1995 onwards. Moscow’s decision to keep the listening post at Lourdes open was, as outlined, the most high-profile example of the legacy in this first period after 1992. This facility remained in operation throughout the 1990s much to the ire of Washington who made repeated attempts to increase the pressure on Moscow to close it, which will be detailed in the next chapter. However, this illustration of the Soviet legacy no longer existed after Lourdes was closed in January 2002.53 As stated in the previous chapter this decision did briefly adversely affect relations between Havana and Moscow and the reasons for Moscow’s decision will be analysed in more depth in chapter 5, but they were of such significance that they outweighed the power and strength of the Soviet legacy which has been a fundamental aspect in relations between Moscow and Havana in the post 1991 period. As outlined in the previous chapter, in the twenty-first century China and Venezuela have replaced Russia as Cuba’s chief trading partners with the South American country being the island’s main source of oil. Moreover, it was also detailed that recently the levels of Cuban sugar harvests have fallen. Earlier in this chapter it has been argued that oil for sugar swaps were an illustration of both relations between Moscow and Havana never being completely severed in the aftermath of the disintegration of

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the Soviet Union and also the presence of a legacy from the Soviet era in it. This is unquestionably true, but as the importance of oil and sugar in Russian-Cuban relations has fallen the relationship has evolved and other ones such as nickel and biotechnological products have replaced these products. This, however, does not reduce the significance of the Soviet legacy in the relationship that has evolved from the mid-1990s, as it was vital to the improvement in relations before this change regarding oil and sugar took place, or the fact that it continues to play in the relationship at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

CONCLUSIONS As has been suggested, throughout history it has often been the case that a legacy exists between two countries which have had a shared history such as that which existed between Moscow and Havana during the Soviet era. This by no means is to suggest that Cuba was a colony of the Soviet Union, due in no small part to both the prevalence of nationalism in the Cuban Revolution and repeated attempts by Havana throughout the Soviet era to reduce its dependency on Moscow. Contrary to this, and increasing the likelihood that a legacy would exist, is the fact that the Caribbean island was ‘first among equals’ for many within the Soviet ruling elite which had meant that it had received huge levels of aid and trade but also some of the most up to date Soviet military and civilian hardware. Therefore this makes the sudden and dramatic break in relations between the two former Cold War allies in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, when it appeared that a legacy didn’t exist, unusual. However, even this could be perceived as a legacy from the Gorbachev era of Soviet-Cuban relations if not earlier ones, when great change had occurred and many Soviet citizens perception of the relationship and Cuba itself had soured. Although this was the case, even in the years 1992 to 1995 a complete break in relations between Russia and Cuba did not take place with a legacy from the Soviet era being vital to this. This took a number of forms including citizens of both countries remaining in the other country and not returning to the one of their birth. This heralded the appearance of a number of palavinos, and this in conjunction with a legacy of Cubans studying in the Soviet Union, resulted in Cuba having a unique Russian language ability in Latin America and, due to Soviet-Cuban relations a large number of Russians learnt Spanish. In addition to this, the programme whereby children affected by the Chernobyl disaster enjoyed a period of convalescence in Cuba continued and Moscow also took the decision to keep the listening post at Lourdes open, which was perhaps the

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most high-profile example of relations not only continuing but also of the legacy itself. Besides this, a number of the pressures that had been of the utmost significance for Soviet-Cuban relations began to re-emerge as the 1990s progressed, although at a reduced level when compared to the Soviet era. This most certainly included the enormous debt that Havana had accumulated to Moscow during the Soviet era and was both a further illustration of this legacy and a vital component to the relationship in the 1990s. Moreover, the legacy also contained further economic aspects as the Caribbean island required spare parts for Soviet era machinery that continued to be used on the island, and also the realisation formed that in many ways it was easier, cheaper and beneficial for both countries that oil for sugar swaps continue. This did not just show the existence of pragmatism within both governments, but was also particularly ironic when it had been the economic element of Soviet-Cuban relations that had been so widely criticized within the Soviet Union in the final years of the Soviet era. Moreover, the irony is further increased that despite Cuban attempts to both reduce dependency on the Soviet Union during the Cold War period and diversify their economy, sugar, their primary export since colonial times, proved to be such an important aspect in the continuation of relations between Moscow and Havana in the post 1991 period. In relation to this, the fact some semblances of the relationship had survived the end of the Soviet-Cuban relations also partly explains the surprising lack of comment made by the Cuban government about the unfolding situation in Russia, because although not constrained by diplomatic protocol as they had been during the Soviet era they did not want to jeopardize the trade that was continuing. Not only was this a legacy in itself from the Soviet era, but it was also vital for the ailing Cuban economy at this time. In addition, trade with Russia was only made easier due to the ties which had existed between Havana and Moscow for over thirty years. Moreover, this Cuban reaction was yet another example of the strong prevalence of realist pragmatism in the Cuban Revolution. The legacy did not only illustrate that the relations between Moscow and Havana were never completely severed but they were also vital in the improvement in the relationship from the mid-1990s onwards. In January 1995 hearings on Russian-Cuban relations were held in the Russian State Duma and unsurprisingly it was members of the Russian Communist Party who were particularly prominent in these as they would have felt ‘tied’ to the Cuban Revolution for ideological reasons but also as it illustrated their more glorious past. This was repeated by the military in both respective countries. However, it also signalled a change in Russian citizens’ thinking towards Cuba which was vital. Contrary to the belief in the

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late Soviet era that relations were “doomed” to continue many began to realize that there were in fact benefits for Russia of the continuation of its relationship with Cuba and that it remained mutually beneficial to both countries. This was certainly the case with the Russian business community as the realisation formed that the huge Soviet investment in the Cuban economy was simply being wasted by the downturn in relations. A desire to address this was important as relations improved. Again, a pressure from the Soviet era was re-emerging. The legacy has also been significant as Russia has also tried to use it to gain access to Cuba’s biotechnological industry despite it only coming to fruition in the final years of the Soviet era. Moreover, it also partly explains the Cuban purchase of Russian planes, which had been found to work well in Caribbean conditions, as Cuban pilots and mechanics would have experience of working with Russian technology from the Soviet era. Cuba’s debt has continued to be significant in the relationship despite an agreement over both its payment and even its size failing to have been reached. In 2005 Moscow even deferred its payment, but significantly did not simply cancel it, illustrating that not only did the Russian government hope it would be repaid, but also as it was the first time Moscow had done this it also resulted in Cuba receiving very different treatment compared to other countries. This was most certainly a legacy from the Soviet era. During the 1990s as Russian foreign policy evolved it resulted in the two countries having a similar shared political outlook and Moscow backing Havana over its various disputes with Washington. Again this was no different from the Soviet era and a further illustration of the existence of a legacy. Also its importance was highlighted by various official visits to each other’s respective countries, with the return of such visits highlighting the improvement in the relationship. As has been outlined, Russian citizens’ thinking towards Cuba began to change as the 1990s progressed. This was repeated to a lesser extent in Cuba but it has resulted in the appearance of a number of recent cultural events. This has been remarkable and would certainly not have been expected in the early 1990s as cultural links between the two peoples had often been mocked during the Soviet era. It does however show the strength and power of the Soviet legacy. This changing attitude in both countries has been absolutely vital to the upturn in relations and due to the nature of Soviet-Cuban relations it is not surprising that it has taken a number of years for this to occur. It has been suggested that Russia continuing to use the listening post at Lourdes was the highest-profile example of both relations between Havana and Moscow never being completely severed and the Soviet legacy. It has however disappeared as this facility was closed in January 2002.

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This in conjunction with China, but particularly Venezuela, having a larger share of the Cuban economy than Russia could make it appear that the importance of the Soviet legacy is decreasing in the relationship. However, this is not the case as Russian involvement in the Cuban economy, partly as a result of the legacy, began before this, continues and has evolved since. The importance of the Soviet legacy, despite Havana’s attempts to reduce its dependence on Moscow during the Soviet era, to the relationship between Moscow and Havana in the post Soviet period simply cannot be overestimated. NOTES 1. Luis Eugenio di Marco. International economics and development; essays in honor of Raúl Prebisch, (New York: Academic Press, 1972). Ronald H. Chilcote, “Issues of Theory in Dependency and Marxism,” Latin America Perspectives, Volume 8, Nos. 3–4, (1981): 3–16. Chilcote, “A Question of Dependency,” Latin America Research Review, Volume 13, No. 2 (1978) 55–68. 2. Izvestia, 17 September 1992, 5. 3. Granma, 8 September 1992, 3–6. Yury Sigov, “Forgotten Cuba. MoscowHavana: Have We remembered Each Other Too late?” Noviye Izvestia, 13 January 2000, 6. “Los rusos y el idioma rusa en Cuba,” El Ruso Cubano, Boletín Informativo de le Embajada de le Federación de Rusia 2006, No. 8, 29 December 2006, 7. 4. Izvestia, 11 February 1994, 3. 5. For the specific effects that glasnost had on relationship see Mervyn J. Bain, Soviet-Cuban Relations 1985 to 1991: Changing Perceptions in Moscow and Havana, (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), 73–93. 6. Izvestia, 11 January 1993, 3. 7. K. Khachaturov, “Ye. Primakov in Latin America,” International Affairs Volume 42, No. 4, (1996): 54. 8. Leonid Velekhov, “Full Circle: Fidel Castro is State Duma’s New Friend. Deputies Eager to ‘Revive Cuban Economy,’” Sevodnya, 13 January 1995, 3. Eugenio Espinosa Martinez, “The Cuban Economy in the 1990s: From Crisis to Recovery,” in Cuba in the 1990s, ed. José Bell Lara, (Havana: Editorial José Marti, 1999), 91. 9. Bell Lara, Cuba in the 1990s, 91. 10. Izvestia, 4 November 1992: 5 11. Sevodnya, 12 November 1994, 2. 12. Professor Eugenio Larin, Director of Latin American Studies at the Institute of Cold War History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, stated this during an interview conducted in Moscow on 9 January 2008. Dr Rodolfo Humpierre of Centro de Estudios Europeos (CEE) in Havana also made this point to me about the importance of Russian spare parts to the Cuban economy during an interview conducted in Havana on 14 February 2008 in Havana. 13. Hiram Marquetti, “Cuba-Rusia: Situación actual y perspectivas de las relaciones económicas y comerciales,” Revista Estudios Europeos, No. 41, (January–March 1997): 14.

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14. Izvestia, 6 January 1992, 1. 15. Yevgeny Bai, “Torricelli Bill Also Affects Russia. U.S. Toughens Sanctions Against Cuba,” Izvestia, 26 October 1992, 7. 16. Nikolai Vlasov, “Economic Cooperation with Cuba is in Russia’s Interests,” Moscow News, Number 12, 19 March 1993, 5. 17. Lional Soto, “The Reasons for the Establishment of Relations with Russia,” Latinskaia Amerika, No. 9, (September 1993): 39. 18. I. Glasov, G. Kara-Murza and A. Batchikov, El Libro Blanco: Las reformas neoliberales en Rusia, 1991–2004, (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2007), 111. Dr Rodolfo Humpierre spoke of the importance of sugar for Russia during an interview conducted in Havana on 14 February 2008 in Havana. 19. Moscow INTERFAX in English 1200 GMT 2 August 1991 (FBIS-SOV 5 August 1991, 29–30, OW0508045391). The benefits of relations with Cuba for Russia was discussed at a roundtable event held at Latin American Studies at the Institute of Cold War History of the Russian Academy of Sciences in late 1992. A number of participants commented on the benefits with the academic A. A. Ermakov stating that at this time they were being ignored in Russia. “Russia-Cuba: A Perspective of Relations in the New Era.” Latinskaia Amerika, Nos. 10–11, 1992, 44–57. Vladimir Borodaev, a Ph.D. student at Latin American Studies at the Institute of Cold War History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, also commented on the mutual benefits for both countries in 2001. “Perspectives for the development of international ties with Cuba.” Latinskaia Amerika, No. 1, (2001): 24. Professor Larin also spoke of the benefits for Russia and in particular with regards sugar, because as the Cuban sugar harvest has decreased Russia has had to find new markets with in 2005, 50 percent of the country’s needs being bought from Brazil. Interview conducted in Moscow on 9 January 2008. Olga Gridchina, “El Mercado de azúcar en Rusia: posibilidades para Cuba,” Revista Estudios Europeos, No. 41, January-March 1997, 45. 20. Yevgeny Bai, “Torricelli Bill Also Affects Russia. U.S. Toughens Sanctions Against Cuba.” Izvestia, 26 October 1992, 7. 21. Radio Rebelde in Spa 2300 GMT 9 June 93—FBIS-LAT-93-110, p3 FL1006015293. 22. Radio Rebelde in Spa 1700 GMT 6 Dec 93-FBIS-LAT-93-234 pp 2–4 FL0712174893. Leonid Velekhov, “Full Circle: Mr Shumeoko Finds Golden Mean in Relations with Cuba,” Sevodnya, 29 December 1993, 3. 23. Prensa Latina in Spa 1707 GMT 17 August 94—FBIS-LAT-94-160 p.9 PA170820094. 24. Bain, Soviet-Cuban Relations, 95–123. 25. Leonid Velekhov, “Old Friends: Russia and Cuba. It seems They Are Brothers Forever After All,” Sevodnya, 22 December 1993, 3. 26. Izvestia, 30 November 1993, 3. “A Narrative Visit. What Underlies General Kolesnikov’s Trip To Havana,” Nevzavisimaya Gazeta, 4 November 1994, 4. 27. Velekhov, “Full Circle,” Sevodnya, 13 January 1995, 3. 28. Jose Canton Navarro and Martin Duarte Hurtado, Cuba: 42 años de Revolución. Cronología historia 1983–2000, (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2007), 284. “Comunistas rusos entregan medalla a Fidel Castro,” El Ruso Cubano, No. 15, 30 April 2007, 5.

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29. S. Batchikov, “The Cuba That we are Losing and Everyone Else is Finding,” Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 14 November 1997, 2. 30. Aleksei Chichkin, “Mutual Interest Replaces External Friendship,” Rossiiskaya Gazeta, 16 December 2000, 1, 7. Professor Eugenio Larin also emphasised the importance of the Russian desire to become more involved in the Cuban economy due to having lost their pre-eminent position in it. Interview conducted in Moscow on 9 January 2008. 31. Aleksei Bausin, “Cuban Poker: It’s America’s Turn,” Moskovskiye novosti, No. 38., May 28–June 4 1995, 12. 32. Interview conducted in Moscow on 9 January 2008. Dr Rodolfo Humpierre also stated that a change in the leadership of Russia in March 2008 was unlikely to affect Russian-Cuban relations. Interview conducted in Havana on 14 February 2008 in Havana. In December 1998 an agreement between the two militaries was signed by Raul Castro and General Anatoli Kvashnin while he was in Cuba. Navarro and Martin Duarte Hurtado, Cuba: 42 años de Revolución, 315. 33. Sevodnya, 1 November 1995, 2. 34. Granma International, 5 June 1996, 3. 35. Larin used this description of the relationship during an interview conducted in Moscow on 9 January 2008. 36. I. Ivanov, “Russian Diplomacy’s Latin American Vector, Nezavisimaya gazeta, 18 September 1999, 6. 37. L. Newman, “Cuba, Russia Seek New Post-Cold War Relationship,” 28 September 1999. See http://www.cnn.com (24 February 2003). 38. Gennady Charodeyev, “Moscow Takes New View of Isle of Freedom,” Izvestia, 20 January 1999, 3. 39. Chichkin, “Mutual Interest,” Rossiiskaya Gazeta, 16 December 2000, 1, 7. 40. ITAR-TASS News Agency, 15 September 2005. 41. Gregory Bovt, “Visit to a ‘Lennonist’—Vladimir Putin Visits Fidel Castro,” Izvestia, 15 December 2000, 3. 42. Chichkin, “Mutual Interest,” Rossiiskaya Gazeta, 16 December 2000, 1, 7 43. Moscow ITAR-TASS in Eng 2051 GMT 15 December 00 FBIS LAT 20001216 CEP20001216000078. This project has since been stopped with the facilities used by the children now housing foreign students studying in Cuba, but it was remarkable that this project survived for so long after the disintegration of SovietCuban relations. 44. Granma, 16 December 2000, 1. Marquetti, “Cuba-Rusia: Situación actual y perspectivas,” 1997, 17. “Celebración el Día de Rusia en Feria de la Habana,” El Ruso Cubano, No. 5, 2 November 2006, 3–4. 45. “Russia banks syndicate $203m aircraft loan for Cuba,” RIA Novosti 22 December 2006. See http://rian.ru/business/20061222/7603049-print.html (4 January 2007). 46. Granma, 15 December 2000, 1. 47. Graciela Chailloux, Rosa Lopez and Silvio Baro, Globalization and the CubanU.S. Conflict, (Havana: Editorial José Marti, 1999), 193. 48. Ibid, 5. Valerie Morodev and Yu. Korchagen, “History of Russian-Cuban Relations,” No. 7, 2002, 99–102. “Un acuerdo ruso-cubano en las esfera deportiva,”

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El Ruso cubano, No. 5, 2 November 2006, 6. “Los rusos y el idioma ruso en Cuba,” El Ruso cubano, No. 8, 29 December 2006, 7. 49. J. Loss, “Wandering in Russia,” presented at the Sixth Cuban Research Institute (CRI) Conference on Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, Florida International University, 6 February 2006. 50. Ariel Dacal Díaz, “Rusia: el sueno postergado de una ‘gran potencia,” Revista de Estudios Europeos, (September–December 2001): 70. 51. “Rusia: el sueno postergado de una ‘gran potencia, Para la mayoría de los rusos Fidel Castro as una gran figura política,” El Ruso cubano, No. 1, 7 September 2006, 3. 52. These will be examined in more detail in chapter 5 but has included in May 1996 the downing of two planes owned by the exile group “Brothers in Arms,” the situation that developed over Elian González between Havana and Washington in the year 2000 and the further tightening of the embargo in 2004. 53. The announcement that this facility was to close was made in October 2001. Granma, 18 October 2001: 1.

5

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s has been previously detailed Cuba since the time of the Spanish conquest has been dependent on various world powers which has meant that events occurring outwith the island have always impacted on it. This may have firstly resulted from the role that Spain and subsequently the United States played in Cuba, but more recently the relationship that developed between Moscow and Havana during the Soviet era. In relation to this, the foreign policy pursued by the Castro regime not only further increased the significance of global events for the island but also allowed Cuba during the Cold War to break traditional international relations thinking and acquire a disproportionately large amount of influence on the global stage. This influence, in conjunction with Moscow’s, may have waned in the aftermath of the implosion of the Soviet Union and disintegration of Soviet-Cuban relations but this has not decreased the significance of world events for the Caribbean island in general, or more specifically its relationship with Moscow. As outlined in chapter 2, since the victory of the Cuban Revolution and inception of relations between Moscow and Havana, Washington has made repeated attempts to both destroy the Cuban regime and bring pressure to bear on Moscow regarding its relationship with Havana. Even with the end of the Cold War, improved relations between Moscow and Washington, the implosion of the Soviet Union and disappearance of Soviet-Cuban relations, Washington has continued to act in this way. On this William LeoGrande has written, “Before 1991, Cuba’s partnership with the Soviet Union and ideological antagonism towards the United States made it a serious issue for Washington. Aiding revolutionaries in Latin 111

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America, sending troops to Africa, denouncing global capitalism in the Non-Aligned Movement—at every juncture Cuba stood opposed to U.S. foreign policy. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, any plausible Cuban threat evaporated.”1 A number of different reasons explain Washington’s unchanged Cuba policy after 1991, including history, the fact that despite events in February 2008 a Castro brother remains the President of Cuba and that since the early 1960s Cuba has been both a domestic and foreign policy issue in the United States. This resulted from the appearance of the influential and powerful Cuban exile community who have also been able to prevent the ‘Cuban issue’ disappearing from the U.S. political scene.2 A New World Order may have appeared in the early 1990s but, as stated, this did not appear to be the case regarding Washington’s policy towards Havana, as many in the U.S. believed that the end of SovietCuban relations was merely the forerunner to the demise of the Castro regime. As John Kirk has succinctly written, “Washington could smell blood.”3 This did not just apply to the administration in Washington but also the Cuban exile community, or the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) in particular, who appeared to be trying to use the influence in the ‘new’ Russia that they had gained from Jorge Mas Canosa’s trip to Moscow in August 1991. Not only did he return to the Russian capital in May 1992 in an attempt to acquire exit visas for Cubans living in Russia to relocate to the United States, but the Russian academic V.A. Borodaev believed that they may even have been able to influence Russian thinking regarding the Torricelli Bill.4 As stated in chapter 3, Moscow had sensationally abstained in the United Nations (UN) vote over this. In relation to the United States government, Washington may have increased sanctions against the island in the hope of speeding the demise of the Castro regime but, as stated, the practice begun during the Cold War of trying to influence Moscow’s Cuba policy also continued. Borodaev thought that the U.S. administration, as well as the Cuban American exile community, had also played a part in ‘helping’ Moscow to decide to abstain in the aforementioned UN vote on the Torricelli Bill. Throughout the 1990s a number of Russians attacked U.S. attempts to influence Moscow’s policies towards Cuba with Professor Eugenio Larin, Director of Latin American Studies at the Institute of Cold War History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, writing, “In order to improve political ties Washington demanded of B. H. Yeltsin that he must cut ties with Cuba. This course of action dominated the 1990s.”5 This belief certainly abounded in Cuba with a number of academics writing about the influence which Washington had in Moscow with regards to its Cuba policy in the years immediately after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. They thought that the Kremlin had allowed this situ-

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ation to develop in order to acquire the “help” of the United States in their economic and political transition but its result was, as stated in chapter 3, the appearance of the “Kozyrev Doctrine” which was not just very different from Soviet foreign policy but was also very Western orientated. They thought that the Developing World in general had been adversely affected by this but that with regards to Cuba specifically Richard Dello has written, “Cuba was almost immediately subjected to a wave of hostile measures on the part of the United States as Washington sought to exploit the opportunities afforded by the moment. Intense diplomatic pressure was placed on the tenuous Yeltsin regime, demanding that Moscow cease all commerce with Cuba. Washington even succeeded in winning a series of sharp criticisms of the Cuban government from its newfound Russian ally.”6 The most public example of Washington attempting to influence Moscow’s Cuba policy was also the most high-profile illustration of the existence of the Soviet legacy in Russian-Cuban relations and the fact that relations between Moscow and Havana were never completely severed even in the years from 1992 to 1995; the listening post at Lourdes. As stated, Washington could not understand why Moscow would want to continue to covertly gather information on the U.S. with the Cold War consigned to history. It not only illustrated that relations between the two former superpowers were not as cordial as may first appear, but Russia’s continued use of the facility provided the Cuban government with much needed revenue as Washington attempted to economically ‘strangle’ the Castro regime. Washington’s desire to try and get this facility closed was most obvious in 1996 with the Cuban Liberty and Solidarity Act, or Helms-Burton Act, which the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX) described as an illustration “of the attempt to impose on Cuba the hegemonic and expansionist ideas that persist in the minds of the ruling elite in the United States.”7 This act attempted to not only prevent third-party countries in general from trading with Cuba, but also contained a section that focused solely on Russia. The act read, “the President shall withhold from assistance provided . . . for an independent state of the former Soviet Union under this Act an amount equal to the sum of assistance and credits, if any, provided on or after such a date by such state in support of intelligence facilities in Cuba, including the intelligence facility at Lourdes, Cuba.”8 However, this did not seem to have the desired result for Washington because Moscow had backed Cuba in the UN vote that condemned this act, and as stated in chapter 3, the Russian government appeared to be prepared to ignore this piece of legislation as a Russian Foreign Ministry declaration stated, “We confirm our intention to develop and broaden mutually beneficial cooperation with Cuba as well as sectors of mutual interest, particularly in the commercial and economic sphere.”9

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As during the Cold War, Washington was trying to bring pressure to bear on Moscow with regards to its relationship with Havana, but apart from Washington’s possible successes at the UN votes on the Torricelli Bill and human rights, which undoubtedly had been a shock to the Castro regime but by no means fatal for it, pressure from the United States appeared to continue to be largely unsuccessful. Moreover, the Russian Federation disliked the Helms-Burton Act due to Washington’s attempts to influence international organisations and third party countries in general with regards to Cuba. This is something that Moscow had profound concerns about. In addition, an extremely tense situation had developed between Washington and Havana in 1996 with regards to the shooting down of planes belonging to the exile group “Brothers in Arms” by the Cuban air force. Some even believed that the outbreak of war between the United States and Cuba over this had been possible.10 This only made Russian backing for this and the Helms-Burton Act all the more important for Havana. Russian concerns about the Helms-Burton Act were symbolic of the alteration in Moscow’s perception of the changing nature of international relations in the post 1991 period which had seen the end of bipolarity that had lasted for over forty years. Moscow disliked the apparent unipolar nature of international relations as a result of the appearance of U.S. hegemony and instead believed in a multipolar world. As stated in chapter 1, Yevgeny Primakov replacing Andrei Kozyrev as Russia’s Foreign Minister was important in this change in Russian thinking, but the belief in a multipolar world was significant in Moscow wanting to cultivate closer ties with Havana. This was seen by the fact that as the 1990s progressed Russia very much wanted to reassert itself in geopolitics, illustrate that it was not on the periphery of international relations and change the poor global perception which many had of Russia, which had not been helped by Boris Yeltsin’s increasingly erratic behaviour. It appeared that the Russian bear was awakening from its slumbers and an improved relationship with Cuba was very much part of this process. Moscow desiring a global presence had been highly significant to the inception of Soviet-Cuban relations and in the 1990s it again appeared to be important. Again, a part of the foundations of Soviet-Cuban relations had re-emerged in the 1990s to impact on the relationship. Moreover, Moscow most certainly did not want to be dictated to by Washington regarding its relationship with Havana as this would have at the least gravely offended Russian nationalism. As stated in chapter 1 nationalism had become increasingly prominent in Russian politics from the time of the 1993 State Duma elections onwards. This change in Moscow’s Cuba policy obviously delighted the island’s government, but Cubans were aware of the part that the United States administration had played in this. Just as they had been aware that Wash-

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ington had been able to influence Moscow’s policies towards Havana in the early to mid-1990s due to the Russian desire to gain assistance from the United States in their economic and political transition, they also realised that Russia may not have received what they had hoped for from Washington and that this had been an underlying reason for this change in Moscow’s policies. On this Dr Rodolfo Humpierre of Centro de Estudios Europeos (CEE) in Havana commented that Russia may have been hoping for much more but all that Russia got from the United States was “chewing gum, Coca Cola and McDonalds.”11 This belief may partly be the result of the continued Cuban dislike and mistrust of Washington, but regardless of the reasons for this change in Russian policy it did not diminish the importance of it for the island’s government and population. Yevgeny Primakov becoming Russian Foreign Minister was also very significant for Russian-Cuban relations and not just because he oversaw this general change in Russian foreign policy which Cuban academics believe heralded the appearance of the “Primakov Doctrine” which was very different from the “Kozyrev Doctrine,” as it was much less Western orientated. As stated, this in itself was highly significant and delighted Havana after the traumatic period of the years 1992 to 1995. However, it also appears that Primakov personally wanted to foster closer relations between the two countries. His expertise may have been in the Middle East but it appeared that his political outlook was in many ways similar to that of the Cuban ruling elite and, moreover, it seems that he held the island in special affection after he visited Cuba in April 1981. As a result of his policies Boris Yeltsin may have subsequently accused him of trying to take Russia back to its Soviet past, but he most certainly enjoyed a good relationship with Cuba and the Castro brothers. This was illustrated by the fact that after his resignation he received a personal invitation from Fidel Castro for himself and his family to holiday on the island. This again could be perceived as a throwback to a previous time, as during the Soviet era Cuba had always had people within prominent positions in the Soviet elite championing their cause. A variety of reasons explain the upturn in Russian-Cuban relations but Primakov becoming Russian Foreign Minister was an important part in this.12 Moreover, the significance of this change in Russian foreign policy overseen by Primakov, which was so important for the Cuban Revolution, is further increased as Cuba perceives Putin’s policies as a continuation of them. In general the belief abounds amongst the island’s academic community that Putin has been good for both Russia in general and also more specifically for Moscow’s relationships with Havana. They may have disliked the “Kozyrev Doctrine” and the policies pursued by the Yeltsin regime in the early to mid-1990s that were heavily influenced by Washington, but they do not think of Moscow’s move away from these policies

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occurring with Putin becoming Russian President but rather when Primakov became Foreign Minister.13 In the face of increasing U.S. hostility that continued to offend Cuban nationalism with the Cuban Chamber of Commerce describing the ongoing embargo as, “the longest and cruellest in the history of mankind. An economic war that qualifies as an act of genocide,”14 this alteration in Moscow’s policies and the Kremlin’s refusal to bend to pressure from Washington regarding its Cuban policy obviously delighted Havana. Moreover, this was only helped by a shared belief between Cuba and Russia over the desire for a multipolar world. The Cuban government has been continually critical of the appearance of a unipolar world and the effect that it has had on the Developing World.15 As a result of their long history of strained relations with the United States and their ideological aversion to neoliberal economics, this is not surprising, but Russia also wanting to see this situation come to an end was music to the ears of the Cuban government. In relation to this, and as has already been detailed, a diversification in the island’s foreign policy had been a fundamental aspect in the way in which the Cuban Revolution had been able to survive the collapse of the socialist bloc. Closer relations with Moscow most certainly constituted part of this. In September 1999, this shared belief in a multipolar world was touched upon when the then Russian Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov, travelled to Cuba and commented “Cuba and Russia support a multipolar world order.”16 Moreover, in the twenty-first century the appearance of the “Putin Doctrine” in Russian foreign policy, which as stated in chapter 1 has some Soviet features but also nationalistic sentiments and antiWestern reflexes, has only increased Moscow’s desire to witness the emergence of a multipolar world. Closer ties with Havana certainly constituted part of this but the result is that this common belief only made an improvement in relations between Havana and Moscow logical for both governments. The Helms-Burton Act and the UN vote condemning it did not end Lourdes being a contentious issue between Washington and Moscow, or discourage the United States attempting to change Russia’s policy by increasing the pressure on the Kremlin. In March 2000 Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, one of three Cuban-American representatives from Florida in the U.S. Congress, attempted to get the $200m that Russia paid Cuba annually linked to Russia’s debt with the Paris Club of creditors. Yet another illustration of the exiled community’s power and ability to shape U.S.-Cuba policy.17 Moreover, the significance that Washington attached to this facility was seen yet again in July 2000 when the United States Congress stated that the Russian debt would not be rescheduled until Lourdes was closed. This decision was deeply unpopular in Russia with the Rus-

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sian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov commenting that “it’s inappropriate to link these two things—our installation on Cuba and the debt.”18 This was further shown by the provocatively entitled article “Caribbean Crisis” written by the journalist Aleksandr Chudodeyev published in Sevodnya in July 2000 in which he wrote, “A cold wind from the past began blowing again in relations between Moscow and Washington yesterday.”19 A slight change in the U.S. embargo appeared at the turn of the millennium for a variety of reasons including the lobbying power of the exile community being challenged by that of the U.S. business community. Moreover, the death of Mas Canosa in 1997, the reaction towards the exiles’ behaviour in the case of Elian González that had even seen anti-exile protests in Miami, and a recent change in the attitude of some younger members of the community all adversely impacted on their influence. Despite this, Washington’s policy towards Havana soon returned to its more traditional position as it was affected by global events, which included the increase in the importance of the promotion of democracy within U.S. foreign policy. On the effects that this had for U.S.-Cuban relations, LeoGrande has written, “This shift in the United States rationale made normalization even more difficult, because Washington was now demanding not just an end to objectionable Cuban behaviour abroad but to the very character of the socialist state.”20 Moreover, the inauguration of George W. Bush and the aftermath of 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. have resulted in relations between Washington and Havana ploughing new depths. After 11 September 2001, as Washington focused on its “war on terror,” events in the Middle East and security issues in general it resulted in Latin America not being of the highest priority for the U.S. administration. However, in this situation, despite Cuba giving its backing to the U.S. after 11 September 2001, LeoGrande argues that vested interests took this opportunity to use security issues for their own agenda and it was a result of this that saw Cuba placed on the “axis of evil” in January 2002. The Caribbean island has been on the U.S. list of sponsors of state terrorism since 1982, but it was also accused of conducting biological warfare research, supplying “dual-use biotechnology” to other rogue states and was placed on the 2006 National Security Strategy.21 Havana was very unhappy with this turn of events, which again offended Cuban nationalism, but as has been the case for a number of years Cuba believes that many of Washington’s policies towards the island are driven by the dynamics of U.S. internal politics. With regards to the shooting down of two planes owned by “Brothers in Arms” exile group in February 1996, just three weeks before the Florida primaries, Richard Dello has written, “In short, the aerial incidents offered the Cuban exile community of Miami an opportunity to influence U.S. policy towards the island

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like never before.”22 In a similar manner, and in relation to Washington’s accusations of Cuba supplying “dual-use biotechnology,” the Cuban academic Sorraya Castro Marino has written, “Washington’s inclusion of Cuba on the list of suspected countries with a capability in the area of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was probably an attempt to shore up domestic support for the antiterrorism war by bringing the threat closer to home—putting it in familiar territory with a familiar enemy.”23 In addition, Fidel Castro has described Bush’s 20 May 2002 speech in which the U.S. President called for a change to the island’s political system as “a real harangue for his friends in Miami.”24 Moreover, further illustrating the new strained nature of Cuban-U.S. relations was the creation of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba in October 2003. Its mandate was “to focus United States government efforts on achieving this objective,” and in 2004 TV Marti, the more hightech successor to Radio Marti, began broadcasting to the island.25 More recently, in October 2007 George Bush announced the new initiative Freed Fund for Cuba which would “give Cubans— especially Cuban entrepreneurs— access to grants, and loans and debt relief to help rebuild their country.”26 Access to these would only be instigated once a variety of reforms had been implemented on the island including freedom of the press and multi-party elections. Illustrating the continued personal animosity between the Cuban and U.S. leaders was that throughout the press conference to announce this initiative Bush refused to refer to either Castro brother by name.27 Unsurprisingly, due to importance of both nationalism and antiAmerican rhetoric in Cuba throughout the revolutionary period, Havana’s response to this has been very negative and highly critical. A large proportion of Castro’s 26 July speech in 2005 concentrated on Cuban-U.S. relations with the “Transition Plan” being described as “loathsome.”28 In addition, the Cuban leader also repeated the accusation that the U.S. Interest Section in Havana was conducting covert operations on the island. This had first been made in the aftermath of the 2003 crackdown on dissidents but Castro stated, “The US Interests Section offices and residence in Cuba, protected by diplomatic immunity, have become the venues for meetings to organise provocations, facilitate communications and openly give orders to mercenaries inside the country.”29 As detailed, Washington had made repeated attempts to influence Moscow over its relationship with Havana, which throughout the 1990s had been unsuccessful. This changed dramatically in October 2001 when the Russian government announced that Lourdes was to be closed. This facility, which had been the most high-profile example of both the continuation of Russian-Cuban relations and the Soviet legacy in it, eventually closed in January 2002 with the Russian government claiming that this de-

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cision had been made due to cost.30 This appeared somewhat strange as in November 1994, when the agreement on Lourdes had been reached between Moscow and Havana, the $200m a year Russia paid for the use of this facility was described by the Russian press as a “rather modest sum.”31 The Cuban government certainly believed that cost was not the main reason for this decision with Granma at the time stating that the $200m, ‘was not an extraordinary figure if one considers that it is barely 3 percent of the damage to our country’s economy by the disintegration of the Socialist bloc and the USSR’.32 More recently Castro has likened the decision to close Lourdes to the agreement at the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis when he said of the agreement over Lourdes, “it was a fait accompli—they informed us, hoping we’d go along.”33 This certainly leaves no doubt that the Cuban leader believed that a bilateral agreement between Moscow and Washington had been reached regarding Lourdes. In 2007 very interestingly the Cuban academic Dr Rodolfo Humpierre wrote, “Moscow has suffered a number of frustrations with its ‘pragmatic’ approach. In the aftermath of 9/11 Moscow dismantled its electronic radio listening station in Cuba and its naval base at Cam-Rang in Vietnam. The U.S. responded by installing an electronic radio espionage center in Estonia and deploying a number of spy planes to the Baltics.”34 It appears that Cuba very much believes that Moscow’s decision regarding Lourdes was not as simple as the Kremlin attempted to make it appear, that U.S. pressure had also had a part to play in it and that Russia may have hoped that this decision may win it favour in the U.S., but that this has not been forthcoming. This decision not only questioned the idea of the existence of the “Putin Doctrine” with it very much appearing that it was not cost that explained Moscow’s decision but rather U.S. pressure. Putin certainly left himself open to this accusation because in June 2001 he met Bush in Slovenia, and although no official statement was made on Lourdes, many felt that Washington had been able to exert pressure on him regarding this facility as the announcement on it was made so soon after this meeting. In an interview, Igor Rodionov, former Russian Defense Minister, said of this decision, “The intelligence-gathering center on Cuba is a defensive installation that enabled Russia to monitor the airwaves throughout the Western Hemisphere and make appropriate domestic and foreign policy decisions based on reliable information. Closing the center strikes another blow to the security of Russia and its allies, a blow inflicted by our own hand in the interests of the U.S. and NATO.”35 The Russian press also believed this to be the case, with Fydor Lukyanov and Aeksei Slobodin writing in Vremya novostei, “The Russian President is heading to his meeting with George W. Bush in Shanghai tomorrow with a gift that no one expected of him at this particular juncture. Mosocow’s decision . . . to close the

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Lourdes electronic tracking and intercept center in Cuba . . . seems like going overboard to accommodate our erstwhile adversary.”36 In addition, Professor Larin has called the decision a “grave mistake” and Alexander Karmen wrote in Vremya that “Russia may be mistaken when it cooperates with the United States and neglects small states like Cuba.”37 In a speech in February 2008, as relations between Russia and the West have deteriorated, Putin has returned to the issue of Lourdes. He commented, “We pulled out of bases in Cuba and Vietnam. And what did we get? New American bases in Bulgaria and Romania.”38 This gives credence to the idea that he may have hoped to win favour in Washington by making the decision to close Lourdes, but this has not been forthcoming. If this was not the case, Moscow had most certainly decided that the benefits of the information that could be gathered from this facility no longer outweighed the potential economic implications of continuing to keep it open. Moreover, the Russian military have tried to suggest that the technology in Lourdes had become outdated and superseded by that which is contained in satellites, thus reducing the potential benefits of keeping Lourdes open. However, other facilities with similar technology have remained open elsewhere in the world reducing the strength of this argument, but due to the timing of the announcement and Putin’s comments in February 2008 it did very much appear that Moscow had been able to bring pressure to bear on Washington over this.39 The Bush administration were obviously delighted with this decision but they were very much mistaken if they believed that this would herald a new stage in Russian-Cuban relations where they were to be able to influence Moscow’s Cuba policy. This is certainly not without precedent as it has been on very few occasions since the inception of relations between Moscow and Havana in the late 1950s and early 1960s that Washington has been able to do this.40 Protests in Cuba over the closure of Lourdes may have taken place but any problems in relations between Havana and Moscow were short lived, yet further illustrating the continuing significance of realist pragmatism prevalent in the Cuban ruling elite because although unhappy with the decision they did not let it adversely affect its relationship with Russia due to its continuing importance for Cuba. However, it also graphically illustrated that any leverage that the Castro regime may have had in Moscow was very much reduced, or virtually extinct, when compared to the Soviet era as they had simply been informed by the Putin administration that the facility was to be closed. The chances that problems between Moscow and Havana over the closure of Lourdes could escalate have been reduced due to the fact that in the period since, relations between Moscow and Washington have deteriorated. This has included U.S. concerns about the state of democracy in Rus-

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sia, including the March 2008 Presidential elections, and a lack of freedom in the press, which Bush warned Putin about in 2005. Moreover, further problems exist over Russian membership of the World Trade Organization (WTO), illustrated in March 2006 by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who during a press conference with Condolezza Rice held in Washington, stated, “we have expressed certain concerns of the Russian side with regards to the slow process of Russia’s WTO accession since the United States is the only country of today which has not yet signed the protocol on Russia’s WTO accession.”41 Even more worrying has been Moscow’s reaction to Washington’s proposed nuclear military shield being located in Europe with Putin stating, “If part of the U.S.’s strategic nuclear arsenal is located in Europe and our military experts find that it poses a threat to Russia, we will have to take appropriate retaliatory steps.”42 In March 2008 Dmitrii Medvedev won the Russian Presidential elections, but as stated in chapter 1, it is unlikely that his Presidency will herald a great change in Russian foreign policy or its relations with the United States. The same is also likely with whomever replaces George Bush as the President of the United States as the attention of the new incumbent of the White House is very much more likely to be focused on the Middle East or the U.S. economy rather than relations with the Russian Federation. In relation to this, Dr Rodolfo Humpierre suggested that no real great change in either Washington’s or Moscow’s policies towards Havana were likely to occur as a result of the elections in Russia and the United States during 2008. Moreover, it also appears that the Cuban government are not expecting any great change to occur when Medvedev becomes Russian President. The Granma report of his victory may have stated that the Russian Communist Party had come second but it also pointedly stated that during his campaign Medvedev had promised to continue Putin’s policies. Cuba may have preferred if the communists had won but as relations between Moscow and Havana have been robust under Putin, Havana appears unconcerned by this change of Russian President.43 Raúl Castro replacing his brother as Cuban President in late February 2008 also appears unlikely to affect Moscow or Washington’s policies towards the island. In the case of the United States this was illustrated by the reaction of not just U.S. Presidential candidates to this news but also the Cuban exile community, who received this news much more stoically than they had to the announcement of Fidel Castro’s ill-health in August 2006. In light of this, it appears that Moscow’s decision over Lourdes was very much a ‘one off’ with regards to possible U.S. influence over Moscow’s policies towards Cuba under Putin’s Presidency. This can be seen by the fact that the Russian Federation has backed Cuba over its various disputes with the United States. This has been apparent at UN Human Rights Convention in Geneva where Moscow has continued to vote with Cuba which

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has been particularly significant after the crackdown against dissidents on the island in 2003. In an interview published in May 2003 in Vremya novostei Andrei Dmitriyev, the Russian Ambassador to Cuba, said, “As far as accusations connected with violation of human rights in Cuba are concerned, this is the only pretext for imposing the embargo on the republic. This is another relic from the Cold War.”44 In addition to this, in Geneva the Russian government not only voted for the Cuban resolution condemning the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay in 2005 but also backed the Caribbean island’s membership to UN Human Rights Council in 2006 despite Washington’s attempts to prevent Cuba gaining membership to this new forum.45 Moreover, with regards to Cuba’s inclusion on the “axis of evil” and U.S. accusations that the island is both conducting biological warfare research and supplying “dual-use biotechnology” to other rogue states Moscow has criticised Washington over these issues. In the aforementioned interview Andrei Dmitriyev said “Such statements are unfounded. No one, including the U.S., has convincing evidence.”46 In September 2004, the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov stated, “I think that I will not exceed my powers if I say that I have never seen any hostility toward the United States on the part of Cuba during my contacts with Cuban friends.”47 Besides this, further illustrating the fact that the Russian Federation has continued to back Cuba despite pressure from the United States and that the decision over Lourdes was by no means the norm, Putin’s government has also voted with Cuba at the UN resolution condemning the U.S. embargo which most recently in October 2007 was defeated by 184 votes to 4 with one abstention.48 In November 2003 Yuri Isakov, Russian Deputy Representative to the UN, commented upon the U.S. embargo when he said, “Russia thinks that further American blockade of Cuba contradicts the modern realities and international relations. It is Cold War residue, which artificially brakes formation of a world order based on the UN Charter, international law and justice.”49 Moreover, in 2004 when George Bush tightened the embargo in the lead up to the U.S. Presidential election of that year, sections of the Russian press described this act as the “dumbest policy of the world”50 In addition, in November 2006 when Ricardo Alarcon, President of the Cuban National Assembly of Peoples Power, visited Moscow, the State Duma published a statement which stated that UN parliaments “should urge the United States to lift this embargo.”51 The Russian Federation voting in this way at these UN forums has been very important for Cuba and not just as a result of the numbers backing Cuba increasing by one single vote. In the 1990s as Cuba struggled to adapt to the New World Order and continued aggression from the United States, it began, as detailed, to diversify its foreign policy, again illustrating the strong prevalence of pragmatism in the Cuban ruling elite. An improved relationship with Moscow certainly constituted part of this with Russia proving to be a particularly valuable friend, which resulted from

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Havana’s perception of Moscow being able to provide a counter balance to Washington’s power and influence, not least within various UN forums. This may partly be a legacy from Russia’s Soviet past, and its permanent seat on the UN Security Council but also due to the general increase in Russian influence in international relations. Havana hoped that Moscow would be able to use its global diplomacy to get other countries to vote with it and thus Cuba. This has been of great significance to the Cuban government in its various disputes with the United States. The result has been that with regards to Havana and Moscow’s relationship with Washington closer relations between Cuba and Russia have been of benefit to both countries. For Russia, Cuba illustrates to Washington its reemergence in international relations while for Cuba Russia provides a counterbalance to the United States in the UN and other forums.52 As stated, animosity between Havana and Washington has recently returned to levels not seen since the 1980s but this may end in the near future as by January 2009 George W. Bush will no longer be the President of the United States. It will, however, remain unlikely that this will herald a sudden improvement in U.S.-Cuban relations regardless of who becomes the new resident of the White House for the reasons outlined above, not least the continuing power and influence of the exile community. Moreover, Washington may well continue to try and influence Moscow’s Cuba policy but again a successful outcome for the United States is unlikely. Neither Russia nor Cuba for nationalistic sentiments wish to have their policies in general or specifically with each other dictated by the United States, and in relation to this, both Moscow and Havana wish to see the emergence of a more multipolar world. After 1994 the situation regarding Lourdes was very much a “one off” as illustrated by the various other examples that have seen the Russian Federation side with Cuba over its disputes with the United States. Russia providing a counterbalance to the U.S. is important for Cuba, while RussianCuban relations illustrate to Washington Moscow’s increased global influence. Again, a reason for the relationship from the Cold War era has reemerged in the 1990s. The result is that Russian-Cuban relations continue to benefit both countries. Moreover, relations between Moscow and Washington, judging by recent events, are if anything more likely to deteriorate than improve, further reducing the chance that Moscow’s Cuba policy will dramatically change as a result of pressure from the United States.

GEOPOLITICS AND THE WIDER WORLD The continuing strained nature of relations between Havana and Washington that shows little sign of abating has impacted on relations not just between the Russian Federation and Cuba, but also with the Caribbean

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island’s other bilateral relationships. This has occurred not least because of legislation such as the Helms-Burton Act. However, many other global political situations have also affected Russian-Cuban relations in the post 1991 period. As has been discussed at some length in chapter 3, the economic transition that the Russian Federation went through in the early to mid-1990s had grave consequences for Russia, Russian-Cuban relations and the Cuban Revolution. In a not dissimilar manner, the dissolution of the Soviet Union which heralded the appearance of a number of new independent countries also affected relations between Moscow and Havana. As the Kremlin struggled to adapt to this and form relations with its “near abroad” its relationship with Havana suffered as it was not of the highest priority. Conversely, the importance of the “near abroad” was very significant for Moscow for both geostrategic reasons, and also due to the fact that large sections of the Soviet nuclear arsenal had been stationed in these countries. Simply, at this time relations with the “near abroad” took precedence over relations with the “island of freedom.” This was an important reason for the downturn in Russian-Cuban relations in the immediate aftermath of the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) was created in April 1949 to offset the Western powers’ perception of possible Soviet aggression. Its basis was the ideas of collective security but with the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s this organization, as with many others, had to try and adapt to the New World Order with the very reasons for its creation, possible Soviet and Warsaw pact aggression, having disappeared. The result was that NATO appeared somewhat of a relic from a previous age, or even redundant. It could therefore have been thought that due to this situation NATO may have been disbanded, but instead of this taking place during the last decade of the twentieth century it actually expanded with a number of the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe gaining membership to this organisation. This was very worrying for the Russian Federation as NATO had after all been originally created to stop possible aggression from Moscow. The result of this NATO expansion was to increase both mistrust of the West and paranoia in the Russian capital.53 The NATORussia Council may have been created in 1997 but before this, NATO expansion was a very contentious issue between Russia and the West, and this remains the case. This has only been exacerbated by, as has been stated, the fact that from the mid-1990s the Liberal Westernizers began to be pushed to the periphery of the foreign policy decision making process in Moscow as nationalistic thinking once again returned to prominence in the Russian capital, which was gravely offended by NATO expansion. In addition, the Kremlin disliked the expansion of NATO as it was perceived

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as the West encroaching on their traditional “sphere of influence” in Eastern Europe, and in relation to this it has even been suggested that this played a part in Moscow’s decision to keep the listening post at Lourdes open as it countered NATO expansion to the east. The result was that this facility continued to have a geostrategic significance for the Russian Federation. These reasons were all vital in explaining Russian attempts to reassert itself in international relations and increase Russian prestige in general with a closer relationship with Cuba fulfilling a number of different objectives in this desire. It not only graphically illustrated to Washington Moscow’s growing global influence but Russia also believed it helped to counter NATO expansion to the east and specifically the continued use of Lourdes achieved this, particularly due to controversy surrounding this facility. In these matters the importance of Cuba for Russia was increased due to the continued strained nature of Cuban-U.S. relations. As part of Russia’s attempts to increase their global influence from the mid-1990s Moscow wished to “tickle the Americans’ underbelly” and closer relations with Cuba certainly did not go against this desire.54 In a similar manner to this, Russia also disliked NATO action in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s which culminated in the bombing of Belgrade in March 1999 with Russian displeasure being shown by Boris Yeltsin describing this as “undisguised aggression.”55 Moscow was unhappy about this for a number of different reasons, not least that it once again felt that it was being marginalised in one of its traditional “spheres of influence.” Besides this, it also disliked the treatment which their fellow Serbs were receiving from the West with Boris Yeltsin commenting upon the affect that the Kosovo crisis had for the Russian populations when he wrote, “the Kosovo crisis increased the anti-Western sentiment in society.”56 This did not only upset Russian sensibilities but again also provided powerful reasons for Moscow’s desire to play a more assertive role in international relations and illustrate to the West that it had not been pushed to the periphery of geopolitics. This was very different from the period immediately after the disintegration of the Soviet Union when Moscow had pursued a foreign policy that had been closely aligned to the West. Again a closer relationship with Cuba would eloquently make this point to Washington in particular, but it was an important reason in explaining why Moscow wished to pursue a closer relationship with Havana from the mid-1990s onwards. This did not go unnoticed in Cuba with academics on the island commenting that the situation in the former Yugoslavia resulted in a number of problems appearing between Russia and NATO with Dr Francisco Brown of CEE writing, “the aggression in Yugoslavia caused major differences between Moscow and the West to appear.”57 Moreover, the Cuban

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government was in complete accordance with the Russian one when they too criticised NATO action in Kosovo describing it as, “in direct correlation of this organisation’s new strategic doctrine of organised aggressive war.”58 This process was also seen in Moscow’s reaction to the West’s treatment of Iraq throughout the 1990s. Russia may have backed the Allied forces during the first Gulf War in 1991 but the Kremlin disliked the sanctions subsequently put in place against the Arab country and most certainly did not side with the United States and the United Kingdom over their action in 2003. Again, this was a sentiment that was shared with the Cuban government, who perceived it as another example of U.S. aggression.59 Some in the West may have questioned Moscow’s motives regarding Iraq but the Russian government did not only believe that the invasion went against international law but Moscow had enjoyed a relationship with Baghdad throughout the second half of the twentieth century. This was shown by the fact that Saddam Hussein was one of the first foreign leaders to travel to Moscow after Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in March 1985.60 In a similar manner to NATO expansion, Moscow wished to make the point to the West and Washington in particular that Russian concerns could not simply be ignored as it attempted to reassert itself in international relations. Again, closer relations with Havana would vividly make this point with the result being that geopolitics, and Russia jockeying for increased global influence, once more provided powerful reasons for the improvement in Russian-Cuban relations. In the late 1950s and early 1960s the geostrategic importance of the island for the Kremlin had been a very important reason for Moscow’s interest in the Cuban Revolution. International relations may have changed massively by the 1990s when compared to this earlier time but it appeared that even in the 1990s and 2000s Cuba retained some of this importance for Russia. Again an old pressure from a previous age had reappeared, but at a reduced level. Washington’s “war on terror” has also affected the relationship between Moscow and Havana in other ways. The Kremlin dislikes the fact that U.S. influence has increased in Central Asia due to the continued and prolonged presence of both U.S. troops being stationed in Afghanistan and also the U.S. air force use of facilities in the region as part of this war. Again, it felt that the West, or the U.S. in particular, has encroached on one of its traditional “spheres of influence.” This has only further increased Moscow’s desire to reassert itself in international relations with, as stated, improved Russian-Cuban relations being very much part of this wish. As has been discussed at some length both earlier in this chapter and also in previous ones, Moscow’s voting behaviour at the UN Convention

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on Human Rights in Geneva in the 1990s was very different from the Soviet era as the Russian Federation voted against Cuba in the period 1992 to 1994. As this was truly historic it attracted much international attention. Furthermore, evidence also exists that Russian authorities passed information to the West about political prisoners on the Caribbean island.61 As stated in chapter 2 the removal of Marxist-Leninism from the relationship was important in this but D. Cobaliev, head of the Russian delegation in Geneva, explained some of the other reasons for this decision to Cuban émigrés as, “the moment has come for Russia to pay its debt to the international community of human rights.”62 In 1998 Vladimir Parshikov, deputy head of the Russian delegation to the UN commission in Geneva, spoke of Russia’s early voting behaviour when he said it had been, “to demonstrate its resolve not to allow double standards where respect for human rights is concerned.”63 Moscow’s wish to appear a responsible member of the international community and repay it for some of its own previous human rights abuses was important in this, but in light of the importance of Russian-U.S. relations to Moscow at this time it may also have been an attempt to gain favour in Washington. However, from 1995 onwards Russia began to once again vote with Cuba in this forum, with this practice since continuing. This occurred not just for the variety of reasons that have been previously outlined but also due to Russia’s involvement in the Chechen war. As the situation in Chechnya deteriorated and the Russian army became embroiled in this war, an increasing number of reports began to appear of human rights abuses perpetrated by the Russian military against the Chechen population. As stated, the Russian Federation very much wanted to appear a responsible member of the international community but these reports greatly damaged this. International attention on this and Moscow’s voting behaviour in the UN only increased due to the groundbreaking nature of the way it had voted regarding Cuba. Moreover, Fidel Castro managed to bring further international focus to the Chechen situation by dispensing with diplomatic protocol and stating, “This made me think of Chechnya. Strange things happen in this world. Let me be clear: I am against the disintegration of any country. . . . However, the dispatches carried news of who knows how many thousands of cannons shelling the region, hundreds of planes and helicopters bombing the region, tens of thousands of soldiers fighting, and civilian casualties. Yet, they voted against Cuba at the Human Rights Commission, against a country that has never had a single missing person, where never in 36 years of Revolution has there been a political crime, where no one is tortured.”64 This was very different from the traditional situation as it had been extremely unusual for the Cuban leader in Soviet or post-Soviet times to make such comments about Moscow’s actions.

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However, a number of other motives appeared to lie behind these comments apart from a simple dislike of the events in Chechnya. Cuba could not understand why the United States had such focus on this situation but not on what they believed to be human rights abuses that were being perpetuated in Israel against Palestinians.65 This they believed was just yet another example of both Washington’s selective attention on human rights and also its double standards. As human rights is such a contentious issue between Havana and Washington, Castro’s comments can be seen as an attempt to draw international attention to what he perceived as U.S. hypocrisy. Specifically regarding Russian-Cuban relations his comments could be perceived as both a throwback to an earlier time and also an illustration that perhaps both counter dependency and Cuba’s ability to influence the Russian ruling elite were not completely extinct. If it had been an attempt by Castro to try and once again influence Moscow’s Cuba policy it appeared to have worked, as the Kremlin did change the way in which it voted in this forum from this point onwards. However, the Russian government hoped that by beginning to vote with Cuba again in the UN Convention on Human Rights it would result in international attention moving away from events in Chechnya, which although not strictly part of the “near abroad” was certainly a new problem for Moscow in the post Soviet era. However, events in Chechnya were highly significant in Russia changing its voting behaviour and again backing Cuba in this forum but any role that Castro may have played in this was a peripheral one as Moscow very much wanted to be perceived as a responsible member of the international community. This desire was further illustrated by Putin’s government framing its actions in Chechnya not as a question of Chechen independence but rather as part of the global “war on terror.” As has been stated, Moscow voted against Washington in the UN on the resolution condemning the Helms-Burton Act, and in addition it very much appeared as if the Russian Federation was going to ignore this piece of U.S. legislation. Moscow voting in this manner was not just the Kremlin showing its support for Havana or due to the profits that its companies could make in Cuba, but was also the result of being unhappy at Washington’s policy on the situation in Latvia and Estonia, where the U.S. administration believed that non-Russians were being subjected to human rights abuses. In a similar manner to Castro’s comments on Chechnya, the Kremlin believed that by voting against the U.S. on the Helms-Burton Act it was highlighting the double standards that Washington was employing with regards to human rights because Washington was unconcerned about the implication of this legislation for Cuba, which the Kremlin perceived as infringing the human rights of the island’s population, but very concerned about the situation in the Baltics.66 Therefore, Moscow’s backing of

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Cuba over this matter was somewhat nuanced with some of Russia’s motives relating to events very much geographically closer to Moscow than Havana, and in addition also unrelated to the Caribbean island. As has been detailed, the common belief in the desire to create a multipolar world has been of great significance to the improvement in relations between Moscow and Havana from the mid-1990s onwards. The importance of this has even increased since Putin became the Russian premier, which was illustrated during his December 2000 trip to Cuba. While on the island he commented, “The unipolarity that we oppose is an attempt to monopolize and dominate world affairs. History has seen several such attempts. And what came of these is well known. There is no place for monopolism in today’s world.”67 His Cuban counterpart, Fidel Castro also spoke on this topic when he said, “Cuba is not alone in feeling alarm at the domination of a single country: This alarm is shared by such countries as Russia, China and the states of Europe.”68 This shared belief has also become apparent in both Cuba and Russia trying to increase their influence within Latin America. Havana’s interest in the region may appear logical for geographical, cultural and historical reasons but it became very important in the 1990s as the Caribbean island’s foreign policy evolved as it struggled to adapt to the loss of its former socialist allies. Increased ties with Latin America illustrated both the diversification of Cuba’s foreign policy and the prevalence of pragmatism within in it as new relationships had to be cultivated in order for the revolution to survive. This strategy can be perceived as having been a great success because although Cuba may still be excluded from the Organisation of American States (OAS), Havana now enjoys more cordial relations with the region when compared to previous eras. Moscow’s interest appears somewhat different as it does not possess the geographical, cultural or historical ties with the region that Havana has, and in addition the region has traditionally been perceived as being within the United States “sphere of influence.” In chapter 3 it was argued that economic reasons, and especially the sale of military hardware, have been very important in the increase in Russian interest in Latin America but so has the Russian Federation’s belief in a multipolar world. This has become apparent from the mid-1990s onwards due to the change in Russian foreign policy that has been previously outlined, which resulted in it moving away from a pro-Western perspective with Moscow trying to reassert itself in international relations. In December 1997 Yevgeny Primakov became the first Russian Foreign Minister to visit Latin America when he travelled to Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Costa Rica. During this he signed a number of bilateral agreements on a variety of different subjects including attempts to combat the international drugs trade but when questioned on the reasons for his visit he said, “Russia was and still is a great power. As

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a great power or one of the main players in the international arena, Russia, naturally, should have multilateral ties with all continents, with all regions of the world.”69 Further illustrating the increased importance of Latin America to the Kremlin was Vladimir Putin’s telegram, published by Latinskaia Amerika, welcoming participants to a conference on Latin America held in the summer of 2006 in Moscow in which he stated, “Russia believes that it is important to create political dialogue and economic links with Latin America. We are convinced that the construction of this will be mutually beneficial for our peoples and strengthen links in science, education and culture.”70 Moreover, in January 2006 Foreign Minister Lavrov published an article in Latinskaia Amerika in which he outlined the importance that Moscow placed in its relations with Latin America. He wrote, “In recent years the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean Basin (LACB) occupy an increasingly noticeable place in the system of contemporary international relations. Our contacts with them, representing a separate thrust in Russian foreign policy, integrally blend into the fabric of global and interregional cooperation and are an important component of the international efforts of Russia in tackling the problems common to the entire world community, in combating new challenges and threats, in maintaining strategic stability and reinforcing security.”71 In addition, Lavrov, but also Russian academics, attached great importance to Putin’s 2004 trip to Mexico, Brazil and Chile.72 What was also significant was that during Primakov’s 1997 trip he spoke out against the Helms-Burton Law that had been put in place in the previous year and was supported in his condemnation of it by the Latin American countries. This shared outlook on the state of Cuban-U.S. relations was very important as it was also symbolic of the improved relations that Cuba was enjoying with both Russia and Latin America. However, Havana’s relationship with Moscow was also significant for the Russian Federation attempts to cultivate closer ties with the Western Hemisphere. Professor Eugenio Larin has suggested that regarding this it was logical for Moscow to try and improve relations with Cuba before the rest of the region as it was the country that it had a history of relations with and knew best.73 However, just as economically Moscow had hoped that goods could be produced in Cuba for sale in Latin America, politically closer ties between the two Cold War allies increased Moscow’s prestige in the region. Russia could use its improved relations with Cuba to illustrate to the rest of the region its belief in a multipolar world and interest in the Western Hemisphere. In addition, it would have been problematic for Moscow to try and improve relations with Latin America if it did not have cordial relations with Cuba as accusations may have appeared of Moscow both having abandoned a former close ally but also of not trying to help it in the

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face of increased U.S. hostility. This increased in significance as Havana’s relations with the rest of the continent improved and was seen by the reaction to Fidel Castro throughout Latin America to his decision to stand down as Cuban President in February 2008. During the Cold War Washington had been very concerned that Cuba would act as a bridgehead for further Soviet penetration in Latin America, but in the late 1990s as Moscow’s interest in the rest of the region increased so too did the strategic importance of Cuba for the Kremlin. This may have resulted for very different reasons when compared to the earlier period, but the result was that it further increased the significance of Russian-Cuban relations for the Kremlin. However, this has become even more important with the political move to the left of many countries in the Western Hemisphere and appearance of an apparent anti-United States bloc within the region which Cuba in conjunction with Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela is at the forefront of. These leaders are not just challenging Washington politically within the region but also economically with the creation of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), which is based on very different principles to those that the United States had hoped would become predominant within Latin America.74 Cuba and Venezuela may be the most prominent members of this movement but they have been joined by Bolivia and Nicaragua since the respective electoral victories of Evo Morales and Daniel Ortega. Castro believes Morales’ electoral victory is particularly significant as it perfectly illustrates the political changes taking place within Latin America. On this he has commented, “He embodies a confirmation of the bankruptcy of the political system traditionally applied to the region, and the determination by the masses to achieve full independence. His election is the expression of the fact that the political map of Latin America is changing. New winds are blowing in this hemisphere.”75 The result of this has been to further complicate relations between Havana and Washington because although the Cold War may be consigned to history, the Caribbean island’s foreign policy is continuing to cause problems between the two countries. This was illustrated in March 2006 when the National Security Strategy was published which stated, “In Cuba, an anti-American dictator . . . seeks to subvert freedom in the region.”76 However, and conversely to this, it has also increased the importance of relations between Havana and Moscow for the Russian Federation. It not only shows both countries’ belief in a multipolar world but Cuba’s close links to this new wave of left-leaning Latin American countries has meant that Moscow’s association with Havana, and its unwillingness to have its Cuban policy dictated by Washington, with the appearance of the “Putin Doctrine” further reducing the chance that U.S. pressure may come to bear on Moscow’s foreign policy, has increased its

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prestige amongst these new leaders. This last point is particularly significant as U.S. prestige in Latin America is at the moment very low, which has led Egor Gaidar, the former Russian Prime Minister, to even state that “it is not necessary to be heroic or a powerful person” to be anti-American.77 The upshot is only to increase further the importance of relations between Cuba and Russia for the Kremlin. Russian interest in the appearance of this new wave of leaders in Latin America was shown by both the number of articles appearing in Latinskaia Amerika on this issue and also sections of the Russian press describing Morales victory as ending “ . . . years of crypto-fascist oligarchic regimes supported Washington, which has treated the continent like its back yard for decades.”78 This willingness to challenge the United States and a shared belief in a multipolar world has also been significant for the improvement in relations between Russia and Venezuela which was highlighted during Hugo Chávez’s trip to the Russian capital in June 2007. In an interview with the RIA Novosti news agency Russian Foreign Minister spokesman Mikhail Kaminin stated that Russian-Venezuelan relations were based on this principle and that Russia hoped that relations could be increased. Moreover, after his 2006 trip to Moscow Latinskaia Amerika described Chávez as a “remarkable individual.”79 This is significant because although trade is a very important element in this process, as discussed in chapter 3, closer links between Russia and Latin America also contain a political aspect. Closer ties between Moscow and Caracas has delighted Havana, which was illustrated by the Cuban newspaper Juventud Rebelede quoting the Venezuelan President during his 2007 trip as telling the Russian State Duma leader Boris Grizlov, “Venezuela is ready to increase the new wave of relations and bilateral cooperation.”80 This is the result of not only Venezuela and Russia both being major oil producers, which in an increasingly resource conscientious world has increased both countries importance, but also both governments have a distinctively anti-U.S. foreign policy which challenges Washington’s influence both in Latin America but also the apparent uniploar nature of international relations. If this relationship was to develop, despite recent political events in Venezuela, the Cuban regime would be extremely happy as it may result in the appearance of a substantial counterweight to Washington in international relations, a very different scenario from the early 1990s. Again, it appears Havana and Moscow have shared ideas with close ties between the two countries being mutually beneficial to both. On this Dr Alexander Sizonenko, a history professor at the Latin American Studies at the Institute of Cold War History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, has written, “the Russian Federation and Cuba have a common approach and desire to see the same conclusions to the world’s problems.”81

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Increased Russian interest in both Latin America and Cuba has not just been the result of reacting to the above geopolitical events or trying to reassert itself in international relations with regards to the United States but also due to the increased role of China and the European Union (EU) in the region, something which has not gone unnoticed in Russia. As U.S. influence within the region has waned and Washington’s focus has moved to the Middle East in the aftermath of 11 September 2001 China, the EU and Russia have all become more involved in the region. In the specific case of Cuba the diversification of the island’s foreign policy aided this process, but since the 2003 crackdown on dissidents on the island, CubanEU relations have suffered.82 Russia, however, is able to use the advantages that it has over both China and the EU, its shared thirty-year history with Cuba, to increase its own prestige for the reasons detailed above and therefore its influence in the region to prevent being pushed to the periphery in Latin America in general or more specifically in Cuba by China and the EU. This again increases the importance that Moscow attaches to its relationship with Havana. Close relations between Russia and Cuba continue to benefit both countries. For the Russian Federation this includes its belief in a multipolar world and attempts to reassert itself in international relations. Havana continuing to face U.S. hostility still perceives Russia as an important counterweight to Washington in various international forums and this again reduces the likelihood that Russian-Cuban relations may deteriorate in the near future. Even in the twenty-first century for a variety of reasons the relationship between Moscow and Havana remains mutually beneficial to both countries.

CONCLUSIONS During the Soviet era world events have always impacted on the Cuban Revolution and affected its relationship with Moscow and this has remained the case in the period since the disintegration of the Soviet Union with a number of these providing very powerful reasons for both the downturn in relations between Moscow and Havana in the early 1990s and its subsequent upturn from the middle of the last decade of the twentieth century. This was most certainly the case with the United States which attempted to take advantage of the disintegration of Soviet-Cuban relations to hasten the demise of the Cuban regime by tightening its economic embargo against the island. Moreover, Washington continued the practice of trying to influence Moscow with regards its relationship with Havana. At first this appeared to be successful as the Kremlin attached such importance to an

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improved relationship with the U.S. This manifested itself in Moscow’s voting behaviour in the early 1990s in various UN forums where it either abstained or voted against Cuba. This was very different from the Soviet era. Although this was the case, the U.S. also had an unwitting part to play in the upturn in Russian-Cuban relations. As the 1990s progressed, Moscow became increasingly disillusioned with its relationship with Washington partly it is thought because Russia may not have gained what it had hoped from the United States. Moreover, the Kremlin began to dislike the unipolar nature of international relations, a belief shared with Havana, and wanted to reassert itself in global politics. Nationalistic sentiments started to become much more prominent in Russian politics, with many being deeply unhappy at the decrease in Russian global influence and how the country had been pushed to the periphery of international relations. The result was that from the mid-1990s a change in Moscow’s foreign policy took place and part of this was the wish to reassert itself in global politics. This would eventually lead to the “Putin Doctrine,” and an improvement in Russian-Cuban relations, only increased in significance for Moscow due to the continued strained nature of U.S.-Cuban relations, was very much part of this desire to reassert itself on the global stage and was an important reason for the upturn in the relationship. The appearance of a unipolar world and Russian feelings of being marginalised with regards global events were also apparent in NATO expansion to the east, the treatment that their fellow Serbs in the former Yugoslavia received from this organisation throughout the 1990s and, due to Russia’s long friendship with Iraq, by the West’s action towards Saddam Hussein that culminated in the U.S. and UK led invasion of the country in 2003. These all gravely offended Russian nationalistic sentiments with again the belief that closer relations with Havana illustrating to the West and Washington in particular that Moscow still possessed a global influence. At the inception of the Soviet-Cuban relations this had been a very important element in Moscow’s interest in the Cuban Revolution but although international relations may have been vastly different in the mid-1990s compared to the late 1950s and early 1960s, it was again a highly significant reason for the improvement in the relationship from the middle of the last decade of the twentieth century. Again, a pressure from the Soviet era, although at a much reduced level, had remerged in the 1990s to impact on the relationship. This was repeated after 11 September 2001 with the continued presence of U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan, Moscow perceived this as to be infringing on its “sphere of influence,” and also in the decision in the previous decade to keep Lourdes open as it could be used to counter NATO expansion to the east. The significance of Lourdes for Moscow was only increased due to its contentious nature for Washington. It appeared that once again Cuba had a geostrategic importance for the Kremlin.

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This was also the case with regards to Russia’s increased interest in Latin America that began in the late 1990s and has continued with the appearance of more left-leaning governments in the region with Russian interest again being an illustration of Moscow’s increased prestige in international relations. Good relations with Cuba were important with regards this as the Caribbean island was enjoying improved relations with the region as part of its diversification of its foreign policy in the 1990s. If RussianCuban relations had not been cordial it would have had a negative impact on Russian prestige in Latin America as it could be perceived that the Kremlin had left Cuba to fend for itself in the face of continued U.S. aggression. This, in conjunction with it making sense for Moscow to begin its increased interest in Latin America with the country it knew best, was another important element in the improvement in the relationship. However, new pressures also emerged in the 1990s that also impacted on the Russian-Cuban relations. The significance of Moscow having to cultivate ties with its “near abroad” immediately after 1991 was not just new but also resulted in the importance of relations with Cuba not being of the highest priority for the Kremlin at this time partly explaining the downturn in the relationship. Moreover, the situation in Chechnya would also impact on Moscow’s relationship with Havana. As an increasing number of reports emerged of human rights abuses, the Kremlin did not wish to increase international attention on this by continuing to vote against Cuba in the UN Human Rights Convention. The desire not to do this was very important in Moscow once again voting with Cuba in this forum. In addition, it may have been apparent that Fidel Castro had attempted to increase the pressure on Moscow with regards this, and both Cuba and Russia used this as a way to illustrate U.S. double standards on human rights due to what they perceived as its selective interest in this subject. However, the Russian desire not to draw more international attention was of great importance in this. Again events far removed from the Caribbean had impacted on RussianCuban relations but the improvement in the relationship did not just benefit Moscow but also Havana. As stated, in the 1990s the Caribbean island had diversified its foreign policy in an attempt to survive the end of SovietCuban relations. In the face of continuing U.S. hostility, Russia siding with Cuba in its various disputes was of great importance for Havana. Moscow’s influence on the global stage may not have returned to the level of the Cold War but it was still a permanent member of the UN Security Council and the Cuban government believed that it could act as a counterweight to Washington in not just this forum but also other ones. It was very much hoped that this could lead to the emergence of a more multipolar world with this common belief between Moscow and Havana being not just a reason for the improvement in the relationship but also symbolic of it.

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The change in Russian foreign policy that was so important for RussianCuban relations was symbolised by Yevgeny Primakov replacing Andrei Kozyrev as Russian Foreign Minister. However, Primakov himself was very important for relations between Moscow and Havana as it appeared that he had a similar political outlook to the Cuban ruling elite and had a personal affinity for the island. This again could be perceived as a throwback to an earlier time with members of the elite in Moscow championing Cuba’s cause. The importance of Primakov did not go unnoticed in Havana with Cuba believing that Putin’s policies towards the island were a continuation of what Primakov had started. Russian-Cuban relations may have been adversely affected by Moscow’s decision to close Lourdes but problems did not last for a substantial period of time despite Havana being deeply unhappy, with this being another illustration of the prevalence of realist pragmatism in the Cuban Revolution. However, it did appear that Washington had been able to influence Moscow with regards this decision with the Cuban government certainly believing this to be the case. However, it has not been the beginning of a trend but instead a ‘one off’ as relations between Moscow and Washington have since deteriorated and show no sign of immediate improvement. Dmitrri Medvedev won the March 2008 Russian Presidential elections, Raúl Castro has replaced his brother as Cuban President and a new resident of the White House will be in place by the end of January 2009 but it is unlikely any of these events will result in a massive change in relations between any of these three countries. The result is that for both Moscow and Havana the relationship between their two countries will continue to have benefits for both with regards the international situation. Global events have always had a large impact on this relationship and this has continued in the post 1991 period. They both partly explain the downturn immediately after the disintegration of the Soviet Union but also the improvement from the mid-1990s onwards.

NOTES 1. William M. LeoGrande, “The United States and Cuba. Strained Engagement.” in Cuba, the United States and the Post-Cold War World: The International Dimensions of the Washington-Havana Relationship, ed. Morris Morley and Chris McGillion (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005), 13. 2. LeoGrande, “The United States and Cuba.” Philip Brenner, “Overcoming Asymmetry: Is a Normal U.S.-Cuban Relationship Possible?” in Redefining Cuban Foreign Policy. The Impact of the ‘Special Period” eds. H. Michael Erisman and John M. Kirk (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006), 280–304. 3. John M. Kirk, “Defying the Odds: Five Conclusions about Cuban Foreign Policy,” in Erisman and Kirk, Redefining Cuban Foreign Policy, 336.

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4. V.A. Borodaev, “Russia-Cuba: Prospective Relations in a New Era,” Latinskaia Amerika, Nos. 10–11, (1992): 48. 5. Eugenio A. Larin, Politicheskaia istorii Kuba XX Veka. Moscow: Visshaya shkola, 2007), 164. V.A. Borodaev, “The Question of Foreign Military Presence in Cuba,” Latinskaia Amerika, No. 4, 1992, 27. Anton Dannenberg, “URSS-Cuba: the perfect model of collaboration,” Latinskaia Amerika, No. 2, 2006, 46. Nikolai Leonov, “I am confident of Cuba’s future,” Latinskaia Amerika, No. 12, (1993): 64. 6. Richard A. Dello, “The hostile tides of Cuban-U.S. Relations,” in Cuba in the Twenty-first Century: Realities and Perspectives ed. José Bell Lara and Richard A. Dello, (Havana: Editorial José Marti, 2005), 235–36. For the influence that Washington had regarding Moscow’s Cuba policy see: Francisco Brown, “La política exterior rusa en el periodo 1991–2000. Del romance con Occidente a la búsqueda de un mundo multipolar,” Revista Estudios Europeos, January–April 2001, 23–25. Iván Ruano, “Evolución de las reformas económica rusa en el nuevo año escenario política,” Revista Estudios Europeos, January–March 1995, 35. Ariel Dacal, “Rusia: el sueno postergado de una ‘gran potencia,” Revista Estudios Europeos, SeptemberDecember 2001, 66–68. 7. Jose Canton Navarro and Martin Duarte Hurtado, Cuba: 42 años de Revolución: Cronología historia 1983–2000, (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2007), 232. 8. US: Cuban Liberty and Democratic (Libertad) Act of 1996 (Helms-Burton Act). 9. Granma International, 17 April 1996, 13. 10. Anatoly Sosnovsky, “Russia and the Cuban Crisis,” Moskovskiye novosti, No. 10, 14-20, March 1996, 5. Jorge Domínguez, “U.S.-Cuban Relations: From the Cold War to the Colder War” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Volume 39, No. 3 (Autumn 1997), 64. 11. Dr Rodolfo Humpierre, Centro de Estudios Europeos (CEE) in Havana, made this comment about what Russia had gained from the United States in the early to mid-1990s during an interview conducted in Havana on 14 February 2008 in Havana. 12. Yevgeny M. Primakov, Minnoe pole politiki, (Moscow: Molodai gvardii, 2006), 149–152. Boris. H. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, (New York: Public Affairs, 2000). Brown, “La politica exterior rusa.” Revista Estudios Europeos, 26–28. Rodolfo Humpierre, “El pragmatismo como paradigma de la Política Exterior Rusa en el siglo XXI,” Revista Estudios Europeos, (January–April 2007): 31. 13. Humpierre, “El pragmatismo,” 31. Interview with Dr Rodolfo Humpierre conducted in Havana 14 February 2008. 14. “Situación actual y perspectiva,” Cuba Foreign Trade. Publicación Oficial de la Cámara de Comercio de la Republica de Cuba, No. 3, 2007, 78. This article also states that the U.S. embargo since its start has cost the Cuban economy about $86 billion. 15. For an example of this see Fidel Castro, Una Revolución Solo Puede ser Hija de la Cultura y las Ideas, (Havana: Editora Política, 1999). Fidel Castro, Cold War. Warnings For a Unipolar World, (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2003). 16. L. Newman, “Putin, Castro talk on trade, debt issues” 14 September 2000. See http://www.cnn.com (21 February 2003). 17. “Russian-American Trust and Cooperation Act,” March 2000. Morley and McGillion, Unfinished Business, 190–93.

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18. Aleksandr Chudodeyev, “Caribbean Crisis” Sevodnya, 21 July 2000, 2. 19. In Russia, the Cuban Missile Crisis is known as the Caribbean Crisis and it is often perceived as a great humiliation for the Soviet Union and an example where Washington was able to dictate to Moscow its Cuba policy. Therefore, Chudodeyev using this title illustrates his dislike at Washington’s attempts to link the money that Russia paid for the use of Lourdes to its debt. Chudodeyev, “Caribbean Crisis.” 20. LeoGrande, “The United States and Cuba,” 13. 21. Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs Fact Sheet, 30 July 2003. http://www.state.gov. J. Miller, Washington Accuses Cuba of Germ-Warfare Research.” New York Times, 7 May 2002, 6. Bush also has very close ties to the exile community through his brother, Jeb, who is Florida’s state governor. 22. Dello, “The hostile tides,” in Cuba in the Twenty-first Century, 2005, 246. 23. Sorraya M. Castro Marino, “Cuba-US Relations 1989-2002. A View from Havana” in Erisman and Kirk, Redefining Cuban Foreign Policy, 321–22. 24. Fidel Castro and Ignacio Ramonet, My Life, (London: Allen Lane, 2007) 422. 25. “Fact Sheet: Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba,” 8 December 2003. See http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases (18 Aug. 2005). Domínguez, “U.S.-Cuban Relations: From Cold War to the Colder War,” 58. Morley and McGillion, Unfinished Business, 2002, 59–60. 26. “Remarks by the President on Cuba Policy,” 24 October 2007. See http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases (26 Oct. 2007). 27. “Remarks by the President on Cuba Policy,” 24 October 2007. 28. See www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/2005 (17 April 2006). 29. See www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/2005 (17 April 2006). On the involvement of the U.S. Interests Section Castro has recently stated, “all the leaders and all the ringleaders of all the counter-revolutionary groups, groups against the Revolution, are organised by the American Interests Section.” Castro and Ramonet, My Life, 426. 30. Pravda, 29 October 2001, 3. 31. Sevodnya, 12 November 1994, 2. 32. Granma, 18 October 2001, 1. 33. Castro and Ramonet, My Life, 287. 34. Humpierre, “El pragmatismo,” 49. 35. Vremya novostei, 19 October 2001, 3. 36. Fydor Lukyanov and Aeksei Slobodin, “Sharp Turn” Vremya novostei 19 October 2001, 3. 37. Professor Larin, Director of the Latin American Studies at the Institute of Cold War History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, made this point during an interview conducted in Moscow on 9 January 2008. Alexander Karmen, “Russia, Cuba, Military Base. Gift on the Occasion,” Vremya, 24 October 2001, 5. 38. Shaun Walker, “A new phase in the arms race is unfolding,” The Independent 9 February 2008, 2. 39. This point is made in the article written by Svetlana Babayeva, Andrei Lebedev and Aleksandr Chuiko, “Base Value. Russia is Giving Up Its Military Presence in Cuba and Vietnam” Izvestia 18 October, 1, 4. Professor Larin also stated that the technology had been superseded by that contained in satellites. Interview conducted in Moscow on 9 January 2008.

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40. Since the inception of relations between Moscow and Havana direct pressure from Washington on Moscow to change its Cuba policy worked on very few occasions. The times when it did appear to work were during the Cuban Missile Crisis, in 1970 over the discovery of Soviet nuclear submarines moored at Cienfuegos, Gorbachev’s 11 September 1991 announcement over the removal of the final Soviet soldiers from the Caribbean island, possibly over Moscow’s voting behaviour in various UN forums in the period from 1992 to 1995 and with regards to the closure of Lourdes. 41. Bobo Lo, Vladmimir Putin and the evolution of Russian foreign policy, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2003) 102-132. “Bush flies in to Russian Tensions” 8 May 2005. See http://www.news.bbc.co.uk (19 May 2005). Press Conference 7 March 2006. See http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases (12 April 2006). 42. “Putin warns of measures against U.S. missile shield in Europe,” Ria Novosti, 4 June 2007. See http://rian.ru/russia/20070604/66620997-print.html (7 June 2007). 43. Catherine Belton, “Medvedev to hand baton back to Puitn,” 11 December 2007. See http://www.ft.com/cms/s (3 March 2008). With relation to Cuba, Dr. Rodolfo Humpierre stated that a victory for either the Republican or Democratic candidate in November’s U.S. Presidential elections was unlikely to make any great change for Cuba or its relationship with the United States. Interview conducted in Havana on 14 February 2008. Granma, 3 March 2008, 1. 44. Andrei Zlobin, “Security: A Threat From Cuba is Science Fiction,” Vremya Novostei, 15 May 2003, 5. 45. “Cuba 9 USA 0,” 24 March 2005. See http://pravda.ru/printed.html (4 July 2007). W. Hoge, “New U.N. Rights Group Includes Six Nations With Poor Records,” New York Times, 10 May 2006. 46. Zlobin, “Security,” 5. 47. “Axis of Evil Stretched,” 8 May 2002. See http://pravda.ru/printed.html (4 July 2007). Interfax, Russia, 29 September 2004. 48. Only the United States, Israel, the Marshall Islands, and Palau voted against the resolution with Micronesia abstaining. Granma, 31 October 2007, 1. 49. Itar-Tass Weekly News, 4 November 2003. 50. “Cuba: Bush insists with the ‘dumbest policy of the world,” 5 October 2005. See http://www.pravda.ru/printed.html (27 October 2005). 51. “Ricardo Alarcón comenta la colaboración entre Rusia y Cuba,” Boletín Informativo, 2 November 2006, 5. 52. Castro commented upon the importance of this during Yevgeny Primakov’s visits to Cuba in May 1996 when he said, “For us it is indispensable to take into consideration the importance of that country, a permanent member of the UN Security Council. We must consider its power, its clout. We cannot be happy with the idea of a unipolar world under the control of the United States.” Radio Havana Cuba in Spa 000GMT 24 May 96-FBIS-LAT-96-102 p8 PA2405032096. 53. Throughout history Russia has always been concerned about possible invasion to such an extent that attempts to stop the possibility of this occurring has become part of the national psyche. 54. Vladimir Borodaev, “Perspectives for the development of international ties with Cuba,” Latinskaia Amerika, No. 1, (2001): 25. A. Sosnovsky, “On the Benefit of Routine Professionalism” Moskovskiye novosti, No. 21, 26 May–2 June 1996, 5.

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55. Rossiiskaya gazeta, 26 March 1999, 2. 56. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, 2000, 271. 57. Brown, “La política exterior rusa,” 28. Humpierre, “El pragmatismo,” 43. 58. Emil Dabaguian, “The Latin American opinion of the Kosovo Crisis,” Latinskaia Amerika, No. 3, (2000): 35. 59. For the Russian reaction to the events in Iraq in March 2003 see: John Tagliabue, “Threats and Responses: Discord; France and Russia Ready to use Veto against Iraq War,” New York Times 6 March 2003, 16. Humpierre, “El pragmatismo,” 45. 60. Pravda, 17 December 1985, 1. 61. Izvestia, 4 May 1992, 5. 62. Radio Rabelede Network in Spanish 1255 GMT 29 February 1992 (FBISLAT-92-041,9-10, FL2902181292). 63. Andrei Smirnov, “Moscow Decides Cuba is No Worse than Latvia.” Sevodnya, 23 April 1998, 6. 64. Castro Gives 5th FEU Congress Address, (FBIS-LAT-95-061 FL3003014895 Havana Tele Rebelde in Spa 2200 GMT 26 March 1995). 65. Dr. Rodolfo Humpierre stated both the importance of events in Chechnya to the change in Russia’s policies and he also made this comparison between Chechnya and the situation with regards Israel and Palestine during an interview conducted on 14 February 2008 in Havana. 66. Andrei Smirnov, “Moscow Decides Cuba is No Worse than Latvia” Sevodnya, 23 April 1998, 6. 67. Dmitry Gornostayev, “Putin and Castro Jointly Criticise the United States,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, 16 December 2000, 1. 68. Gornostayev, “Putin and Castro,” 1. 69. Trud, 3 December 1997, 4. Kommersant Daily, 2 December 1997, 5. 70. V. Putin, “Message from Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, to the participants of the 10th Congress of FIEALC,” Latinskaia Amerika, No. 8, 2001, 8. 71. Sergei Lavrov, Latinskaia Amerika, No. 1, January 2006, 2. 72. Lavrov, Latinskaia Amerika, 2. Interview with Professor Larin conducted in Moscow on 9 January 2008. 73. Viktor Sokoslov, “Moscow’s Constructive Approaches to Foreign Policy,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, 3 December 1997, 4. Interview conducted in Moscow on 9 January 2008. 74. For information on the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) see: http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/secciones/alba/ (19 May 2006). 75. Castro and Ramonet, My Life, 522. On a number of socio-economic problems that currently exist Castro has said, “and the FTAA is not a solution, and neoliberal globalization is also not a solution.” Castro and Ramonet, My Life, 537. 76. National Security Strategy, see http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2006 (19 January 2007). 77. The problems which face the United States in Latin America were evident with the poor reception which George Bush received when he attended the Summit of the Americas in November 2005. Larry Rohter, “Bush Faces Tough Tome in

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South America,” New York Times, 2 November 2005. Egor Gaidar, “Interview with Egor Gaidar,” Latinskaia Amerika, No. 10 (2006): 62. 78. “Bolivia: Nightmare scenario for Bush.” See http://pravdaru/opinion /columnists/9306-bolivia-0 (23 March 2006). 79. “Reflexionando en viz alta sobre la visita de Hugo Chávez a Rusia,” Latinskaia Amerika, No. 9, (September 2006): 52. 80. “Reafirma Venezuela su alianza con Rusia y Bielorrusia” Juventud Rebelde 30 June 2007, see http://www.juventudrebelde.cu/internacionales (29 July 2007). 81. Alexandr Sizonenko, “The Presidential Diplomacy: The ‘model of visits’ with the New Actors in Relations between Russia and Latin America,” Latinskaia Amerika, No. 4, (2007): 45. The problems for international relations of there not being a counterweight to the United States was also commented upon by Vladimir Sudarev, another professor at the Latin American Studies at the Institute of Cold War History of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Vladimir Sudarev, “The United States and the ‘move to the left’ in Latin America,” Latinskaia Amerika, No. 5, (2007): 6. 82. Igor Sheremetiev, “Latin America in the twenty-first century: the start of problems,” Latinskaia Amerika, No. 4, 2006, 26.

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D

uring the Cold War, Soviet-Cuban relations attracted much international attention particularly during the Gorbachev era as a great change occurred in the relationship. However, even this final period of the Soviet era would appear ‘stable’ in comparison to the sudden and dramatic end to Soviet-Cuban relations that resulted from the implosion of the Soviet Union in December 1991, which had the effect of appearing to send the Cuban economy into a terminal tailspin. Not only has the Cuban economy recovered from this shock, but from the mid-1990s onwards a relationship between Moscow and Havana began to emerge from the rubble of Soviet-Cuban relations. This occurred for a variety of different reasons some of which had been responsible for the downturn in the relationship in the early 1990s but had subsequently evolved to again be significant in the relationship; others which were new and remarkably even some from the Soviet era, although at a reduced level, began to reemerge as the twentieth century drew to a close. By the end of 1992 it would have appeared to many as if the thirty-year relationship between Moscow and Havana had never existed due to the speed and degree of the end of Soviet-Cuban relations. This was both political and economic but of fundamental importance to this was that simultaneously many of the foundations of the relationship had also disappeared. Key to this was the complete removal of Marxist-Leninism from both Russia’s internal and external policies, which had been vital for SovietCuban relations. With Marxist-Leninism confined to history, Moscow’s ideological ties to the Caribbean island had been removed as Russian foreign policy was no longer underpinned by this theory. In relation to this, the 143

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Cuban government also no longer had people in the top echelons of the ruling elite in Moscow championing their cause as they had throughout the Soviet era due to the unpopularity of Marxist-Leninism in the ‘new’ Russia of the early 1990s. The removal of this ideology also affected Russian-Cuban relations in other ways as internally the Kremlin replaced it with the ideas of neoliberal economics. As Boris Yeltsin’s government wholeheartedly embraced these ideas and Russia entered its economic transition, trade with Cuba crashed partly as a result of Russian companies not being able to compete with other foreign companies in the Cuban economy as they struggled to survive the Russian economic transition. In addition, other Russian companies wished to see the terms of trade with Cuba decided by the market rather than by Marxist-Leninism ideology, which had the effect of making Russian goods prohibitively expensive for Cuba. This phenomenon can also be seen in Havana’s decision in September 1992 to stop construction of the nuclear plant at Juragua as a consequence of not being able to afford to pay for the Russian specialist working on this project. These changes were systematic of the debate taking place within Russia which regarding foreign policy was won by the Liberal Westernizers. They did not just want the removal of Marxist-Leninism from Moscow’s foreign policy but also for it to be much more pro-Western, with relations with the United States being particularly important. This was not just done for ideological reasons but it was also hoped that assistance in the Russian transition could be obtained. Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev was extremely closely associated with these policies. However, this also had a fundamental impact on Moscow’s relationship with Havana as a result of the continued strained nature of Cuban-U.S. relations which simply meant that the Kremlin could not enjoy good relations with both Washington and Havana and due to the importance which it attached at this time to relations with the United States, those with Cuba suffered. In relation to this it also appears that the U.S. administration may also have been able to bring pressure to bear on Moscow regarding its Cuba policy. They had continually tried to do this during the Soviet era and this practice not only continued in the post 1991 period but if anything increased. Washington believed that the end of Soviet-Cuban relations was a mere forerunner to the demise of the Castro regime and attempted to speed this by passing both the Torricelli Bill and Helms-Burton Act, which had a section specifically focused on the Russian Federation, during the 1990s. It was not just the U.S. administration who attempted to influence Moscow regarding its relationship with Havana but also the Cuban exiles. Washington certainly appears to have been able to do this regarding Moscow’s voting behaviour in various United Nations (UN) forums in

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the period from 1992 to 1995 when Russia either abstained or voted against Cuba. This was very different from the Soviet era with the desire to both win favour in Washington, and regarding human rights, appear a responsible member of the international community being key motivating factors in this. This change in Russian foreign policy, the improvement in relations between Moscow and Washington and the removal of Marxist-Leninism from Russian-Cuban relations had yet further ramifications for the relationship, as it resulted in the geostrategic importance of the island for the Kremlin falling dramatically when compared to the Cold War era. This in itself provided yet another reason for downturn in the relationship. Simply the importance of the Cuban Revolution for Moscow had decreased which was only exacerbated by Moscow’s need to cultivate relations with its “near abroad” in the immediate aftermath of the disintegration of the Soviet Union. This was systematic of the traditional low importance that the Kremlin attached to its relationship with Havana with the noticeable exceptions of the initial period of contact in the late 1950s and early 1960s and during the Cuban Missile Crisis. This situation was further complicated by the government in Havana’s refusal to fundamentally alter the socialist nature of the Cuban Revolution, which in the New World Order of the 1990s meant that it appeared to be swimming against world opinion and for some even made it an anachronism. This was most certainly the case in Russia where many people were delighted to see an end to both the Marxist-Leninist nature of their own country and its ties to Cuba. They disliked the Cuban political model and the economic burden that they believed the Caribbean country had been for Moscow. This process had first appeared in the Soviet Union of the late 1980s and early 1990s due to the effects of glasnost, but the result was that a legacy from the Gorbachev era, if not earlier ones, had a large impact on Russian-Cuban relations in the post-Soviet era. However, it undoubtedly accelerated after 1991, and was highly significant in the downturn in the relationship. As stated, by the end of 1992 it may have appeared as if the thirty-year relationship between Moscow and Havana had never existed, but it was never completely terminated. Mainly as a result of marriage a number of Russians remained in Cuba while some Cubans continued to live in Russia. Other aspects of a Soviet legacy also survived including the use of Russian names and cars in Cuba while partly the result of education programmes the island also possesses a unique Russian language ability in Latin America. Moreover, even in the years immediately after the end of Soviet-Cuban relations, oil for sugar swap deals were mooted. This not only illustrated the fact that the relationship was never completely terminated but also explained the surprising lack of comment

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from the Cuban government regarding both the situation within Russia and Russian-Cuban relations. Havana may no longer have been constrained by diplomatic protocol but it most certainly did not wish to endanger the possibility of these deals, vital for the very survival of the Cuban Revolution due to the dire economic situation it faced, by being overly critical. Criticism of the Council for Mutual Assistance (CMEA) did appear but this was a very different scenario as this organisation had been disbanded while, although massively reduced, a semblance of the relationship with Moscow continued to exist. Realist pragmatism was still very much in evidence within the Cuban ruling elite. What also illustrated this strong prevalence of realist pragmatism were the changes implemented by the Cuban government in an attempt to adjust to the situation which they faced in the 1990s. This entailed a diversification of foreign policy in an attempt to cultivate links with countries with which they had not previously had ties. Regarding its economic strategy a variety of legislation was passed which did not just try and take advantage of the increase in transnational investment and trade which occurred in the early 1990s, but also whose basis was very different from their previous economic model as parts of it were much closer to the ideas of neoliberal economics rather than a planned economy. The Cuban elite may have had an ideologically aversion to these, but they were of the utmost importance to the partial recovery of the Cuban economy while also having important repercussions for Russian-Cuban relations. Apart from helping the Cuban economy begin to recover from the shocks of the early 1990s these reforms also dramatically changed the composition of Cuba’s trading partners as its economy returned to the world economy after being removed from it for a number of decades. This was also vital for relations between Moscow and Havana as in short the pre-eminent position of the Soviet Union in the Cuban economy had been usurped. As the 1990s progressed the realisation began to form in Russia that they were losing out on the investment potential that the Cuban economy offered. A desire to try and remedy this was of great significance for the improvement in Russian-Cuban relations, and it was this and not the effects of globalisation that caused this as increased Russian interest was, at this time, not repeated elsewhere in Latin America. This was, however, a very much unforeseen result of these economic reforms as the goal of the Cuban government in instigating them had not been to specifically attract Russian interest but just much needed increased levels of trade. However, they were vital in the improvement in Russian-Cuban relations from the mid-1990s onwards. In a not dissimilar manner Russia also came to realise that the colossal investment from the Soviet era was simply being squandered as a result of the downturn in relations and the desire not to see this happen was

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again important for the upturn in the relationship. As relations between Moscow and Havana soured in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a permanent schism had not occurred partly as a result of some within the Soviet Union not wishing to see the investment at this time wasted. Therefore, in the 1990s this very same pressure, although at a reduced level, had re-emerged to once again impact on Moscow’s relationship with Havana. Some form of legacy from Soviet-Cuban relations is not surprising due to the length and nature of the relationship, with the fear of the investment from the Soviet era being wasted constituting part of it, but it was and continues to be crucial for Russian-Cuban relations. As stated, this does not just entail Cuba’s unique Russian language ability in Latin America but also the Cuban use of Soviet machinery, for which the island required spare parts with Russia proving a more than willing vendor. In addition links between the two respective militaries are also important as they illustrated their more glorious pasts and the debt that the island had accumulated during the Soviet era. The debt was very important because although the two countries could not even reach agreement on its size, and Cuban payment was not forthcoming, the talks that took place regarding it throughout the 1990s illustrated that the relationship had never been completely terminated. Moreover, it also provided another reason for its continuation as Russia, due to the economic problems it faced during the 1990s, simply could not afford to write it off. Payment may remain unlikely but the Kremlin appears to cling to the hope that it may be repaid as illustrated in September 2005 when Moscow deferred its payment but crucially did not simply cancel it. This not only shows the debt’s continuing significance, but as it was a first for the Russian Federation it appeared Cuba had received very different treatment from other countries. This most certainly had parallels to the Soviet era. Another crucial element of the Soviet legacy was the fact that oil for sugar swaps remained important for both countries. Ironically this occurred in part as a result of price as not only did middlemen have to be paid if these commodities were bought on the open market but also they had to be paid for in hard currency and not in kind as had traditionally been the case in Soviet-Cuban relations. This was particularly advantageous due to poor states of both counties’ economies in the 1990s and therefore provided a semblance of stability for both in a fast changing world. In relation to this, Russian agricultural production plummeted due to its own economic transition but was further adversely affected by the end of Soviet-Cuban relations because its sugar mills could not work on a full twelve-month cycle without the import of Cuban sugar as a result of the differences in the timing of the two harvests. This increased the significance of the purchase of sugar but other Cuban primary products including citrus fruit and tobacco were also important due to the

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poor agricultural performance of the Russian economy. This appeared ironic for a variety of reasons including the fact that the purchase of Cuban sugar had been so heavily criticised within the Soviet Union in the final years of Soviet-Cuban relations, and that despite Havana’s repeated attempts during the thirty years of this relationship to end its dependency on the Soviet Union the sale of its traditional primary product retained its importance and was vital to the upturn in Russian-Cuban relations. The importance of trade to the improvement in relations cannot be overestimated but the reasons for this were very different from the Soviet era as it was not driven by Marxist-Leninist ideology but rather practical economic reasons, illustrating the existence of pragmatism within the Russian government. The significance of trade was highlighted by the creation in 1997 of the Russian-Cuba Commission on Commercial, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation, which gave trade a much more robust foundation. Moreover, in 1996 Russia had been Cuba’s most important trading partner, which had most certainly not been predicted in 1992. Other countries may have since overtaken the Russian Federation regarding trade with Cuba but this has not been the result of a loss of Russian interest in the Cuban economy. China and Venezuela have become increasingly important for the Cuban Revolution with relations between Havana and Caracas having a distinctive political aspect to it. In addition, Cuban sugar production has fallen but Russian interest in the Cuban economy has since diversified as illustrated by the large and varied collection of companies that have attended Cuban trade fairs in both Moscow and Havana. In addition, Cuba appears to want to entice Russian tourists to visit the island and although they constitute only a small percentage on those vacationing on the island it is hoped that their numbers will increase in the future, creating a new and possibly dynamic element to the relationship. As stated, Russia is no longer Cuba’s chief trading partner but this does not reduce the significance of either the effects of neoliberal economics on Russian-Cuban relations or Russian companies wishing to right the “wrongs” of the early 1990s when they witnessed the loss of their preeminent position in the Cuban economy. The improvement in economic ties for these reasons began before the increase in Cuban trade with either China or Venezuela and despite this subsequent fall in Russian-Cuban trade, the Russian Federation remains one of the island’s most important trading partners. What has also been significant is the perception which each country is held in within the other. As detailed, in the immediate aftermath of the end of Soviet-Cuban relations, Cuba was most certainly not well perceived within Russia, but as time has passed this has begun to change

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with the realisation forming that there are a number of benefits for both countries of the relationship’s continuation. In this manner a sufficient time period has now passed where the relationship can now be analysed more subjectively than in the early 1990s. This, in conjunction with feelings of nostalgia generally increasing, particularly in Russia, has resulted in even some cultural links re-emerging, but significantly also the relationship between Moscow and Havana being seen in a very different light. In a not dissimilar manner the change that has occurred within Russian thinking on global events has been of the utmost significance for the improvement in the relationship. A number of events throughout the 1990s including North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) expansion to the east, this organisation’s treatment of Russia’s fellow Serbs in the former Yugoslavia and Western action in Iraq amongst others all gravely offended Russian nationalism as many in Russia perceived them as the West in general and United States in particular encroaching on Moscow’s traditional “spheres of influence.” This returned to the age-old question of Russia’s place in the world as Russian pride had been dented by feelings of marginalisation with regards international relations. This, combined with nationalism in general becoming increasingly prominent in Russian politics has resulted in a seismic shift in Moscow’s foreign policy when compared to the period immediately after 1991. These feelings have continued with the prolonged presence of Western military personnel in Afghanistan in the aftermath of 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. However, Washington also played an unwitting role in this alteration to Russian foreign policy as it appears that Moscow did not receive what it had wished for from the United States in the early 1990s when it hoped that its foreign policy would win it favour within the U.S. administration. These feelings manifested themselves in Moscow’s dislike of the unipolar nature of global politics in the post-Soviet era. This belief was shared with Havana, but this change in Moscow’s thinking and consequently its foreign policy was vital for the upturn in relations with Cuba. The Kremlin wanted to reassert itself in international relations and improved relations with Havana was very much part of this belief as it illustrated to the United States Moscow’s increased role in the world. It has even been suggested that part of the decision to keep Lourdes open had been to counter NATO expansion to the east. The importance of Cuba to Moscow as it attempted to do this was only increased due to the continued strained nature of U.S.-Cuban relations. These very same reasons had been highly significant for the interest that Moscow had originally shown in the Cuban Revolution in the late 1950s and early 1960s. As the twentieth century drew to a close, international relations were vastly different to the Cold War era but despite this the geostrategic importance of the island

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for Moscow had increased when compared to the years immediately after the end of Soviet-Cuban relations. An old pressure had again re-emerged, although much reduced from the earlier period, to once again impact on the relationship. The strategic importance for Cuba for Moscow has further increased with its increased interest in Latin America which was representative of this change in its foreign policy. It is not only logical for Russian interest to begin with the country it has the longest history of relations with and knows best, but Russian prestige in the region could have been adversely affected if it did not have cordial relations with Cuba as Moscow could have been perceived as having abandoned Havana in the face of increasing U.S. pressure. This only became more important due to the good relations that the Caribbean island now enjoys with Latin America as a result of the diversification of its foreign policy and the low regard which the United States is held in by many within the region. Moreover, the appearance of left-leaning governments in Latin America, and in particular Hugo Chávez in Venezuela with the subsequent creation of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) and Chávez’s relationship with Moscow all appearing to show an end to unipolarity in world politics. This has delighted both Russia and Cuba due to their belief in a multipolar world. Yevgeny Primakov replacing Andrei Kozyrev as Russian Foreign Minister which was symbolic of this change in Moscow’s foreign policy was also important for Moscow’s relationship with Havana. This resulted from the fact that it very much appeared that he wanted to cultivate closer ties with Cuba due to both the personal affinity that he had towards the island and a common outlook on global events shared with the Cuban ruling elite. This again appeared to be a throwback to a previous time when Cuba had always had people within the top echelons of power in Moscow championing their cause. Havana certainly preferred Primakov to his predecessor Kozyrev, illustrated by Fidel Castro’s personal invitation to holiday on the island after his resignation. In addition, Primakov’s importance is increased due to the fact that Putin’s policies are perceived in Cuba as a continuation of those started by Primakov. This change in Moscow’s foreign policy and improvement in the relationship has also been of great benefit for Cuba. The aim of the diversification of the island’s foreign policy had been to cultivate links with a variety of different countries and close relations with Russia most certainly did not go against this desire. Moreover, the history of the relationship between the two countries aided this but Russia’s increased influence in international relations was of particular benefit for Havana as it could provide a potential counterbalance to U.S. hegemony. This has been particularly important in light of the continued poor state of U.S.-Cuban

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relations, which has continued to offend Cuban nationalism but became increasingly strained under the Presidency of George W. Bush. Russia still being a permanent member of the UN Security Council only increases its significance for Havana as since 1995 Moscow has once again voted with Cuba in various UN forums, a very different scenario from the years 1992 to 1994. In particular with regards to Moscow’s voting behaviour in UN resolutions regarding Cuban human rights other global events have also impacted on this. The Chechen war and reports of human rights abuses perpetrated by the Russian military were important in explaining this change in Moscow’s voting which significantly occurred in 1995, the year Russia became increasingly embroiled in this war. The Kremlin most certainly did not want to bring increased international attention to this situation which had occurred from the groundbreaking nature of it voting against Cuba in the years 1992 to 1994. Moreover, it appeared as if counter dependency and Cuba’s leverage in Moscow may not have been completely dead due to Fidel Castro’s attempts to exert some pressure on Moscow regarding Chechnya. However, any influence he may have had seems peripheral at best as the situation in Chechnya and not wishing to draw increased international attention to it were more significant. However, what may also have been a contributing factor to Castro’s speech on Chechnya was his desire to illustrate what he perceived as the double standards and selective nature of the focus which the United States employed regarding human rights. This most certainly had great relevance for U.S.-Cuban relations. Moscow also began to think that Washington did not have a uniform approach to human rights as it was very concerned about minorities in Latvia and Estonia but not about the effects that the U.S. embargo had on Cuban citizens, which they believed infringed the island’s population’s human rights. Russia no longer voting against Cuba on this matter in the UN was very important for the island but the reasons behind this decision were somewhat nuanced and in some cases geographically far removed from the Caribbean. There is one exception to this steady improvement of the relationship from the mid-1990s onwards. This was Russia’s decision to close the Lourdes listening post, with it appearing that Washington had been able to exert pressure on the Kremlin regarding this. Protests may have taken place in Cuba over this but any problems were short lived because although it may have enraged the Cuban government, they were not prepared to let it escalate and affect the relationship in the long term, again illustrating the strong prevalence of realist pragmatism within their thinking. Moreover, this decision appears very much a ‘one off’ as relations between Russia and the United States have since deteriorated for a variety of reasons making another similar one highly unlikely.

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Rául Castro succeeding Fidel as President of Cuba in February 2008 and Dmitri Medvedev winning the Russian Presidential elections in March 2008 are unlikely to affect the relationship with it continuing to evolve and remain in place for the foreseeable future. The relationship not only survived the end of Soviet-Cuban relations but began to improve from the mid-1990s onwards with this improvement having now been in place for over ten years. A variety of reasons explain this, including the reemergence, although at a reduced level, of some from the Soviet era. Changes to both Russian and Cuban foreign policies, resulting from the importance of pragmatism and nationalism in both cases, have been key as it has led to Moscow and Havana having similar global outlooks and in particular a shared desire for a multipolar world. International relations may now be very different from both the Cold War era and the early 1990s, but Russian-Cuban relations continue to benefit both countries in a number of different ways with continuing camaraderie being a central element to this.

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Index

Afghanistan, 32, 35, 45n8, 126, 134, 149 Africa, 11, 22, 26, 31–32, 35, 43, 52, 112 Agreements and treaties, 66, 72, 95, 97–99, 129. See also Putin; sugar; trade Alarcón, Ricardo, 72, 126 Aldana, Carlos, 39 Alekseev, Aleksandr, 22 Allende, Salvador, 28 Andropov, Yury, 7 Angola, 31, 39, 47n42 Arbenz, Jacob, 24 August 1991 coup, 40–41, 43–44, 50n77. See also “Cuban lobby” “axis of evil,” 117, 122 Azicri, Max, 61–62

Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), 10, 12, 16, 70, 131, 150 Bolivia, 131. See also Evo Morales Brezhnev, Leonid, 30; “Brezhnev Doctrine,” 5, 17n14, 35. See also Czechoslovakia; “Prague spring” “Brothers in Arms,” 109n52, 114, 117. See also Cuban American National Foundation; Cuban exiles Brown, Francisco, 125 Bush, George H. W., 40, 50n74 Bush, George W., 117, 120–21, 123, 140n77, 151; meeting with Putin, 8, 119; relations with Cuba, 118, 122, 138

Baker, James, 41, 50n78. See also troop withdrawal from Cuba Balaguer, Jose Ramón, 37 balsero crisis, 13, 54, 57, 77n12, 91, 13 Batchikov, S., 65–66, 94 Batista, Fulgencio, 3, 21 Bay of Pigs, 22, 24, 36, 42 biotechnology, 62, 66, 98–99, 103, 105, 117–18, 122

Cabrisas, Ricardo, 67 campaign of rectification of errors, 36 Canada, 62, 67, 72 Castro, Fidel, 1, 14, 21, 31, 102; speeches, 26–28, 36–37, 49n61, 118, 127–28, 151; meeting with Putin, 7, 13, 68–69, 94, 96–99, 129. See also; Chechnya; Cuban foreign policy; fidelismo; glasnost; globalisation;

163

164

Index

Gorbachev; “new thinking;” neoliberal economics; Russia, perestroika; Soviet Union; United States; Yeltsin Castro, Raúl, 23, 45n11, 54, 57, 60, 95; President of Cuba, 12–13, 96, 121, 136 Castro, Sorraya, 118 Central America, 31–32, 36, 43 Centro de Investigaciones de la Economia Internacional (CIEI), 58 Centro de Estudios Europeos (CEE), 57, 65, 106n12, 115, 125, 137n11 Chávez, Hugo, 70, 81n56, 131–32, 150. See also Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, Venezuela Chechnya, 127–28, 135, 140n65; Castro and, 58, 127, 151 Chernenko, Konstantin, 32 Chernobyl, 46n56; convalescence of child victims in Cuba, 98, 103, 108n43 Chile, 22, 130 China, 22, 42, 62, 71–72, 102, 106, 129, 133, 148 Churkin, V., 90, 101 Cold War, 2–3, 22–24, 41–42, 92, 111, 123–24. See also; Cuba; Soviet Union; United States colonialism, 22–23, 42, 85, 90, 104 Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, 118; See also Cuban American National Foundation, Cuban Americans, George W. Bush communism, 22, 32 Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), 3, 23, 26, 101; congresses of, 22, 28, 30, 49n61, 50n77 Consulting Associates (CONSAS), 60 Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), 28–31, 37, 43, 46n33, 46n35, 49n61, 49n62, 58, 146. See also Nikoli Ryzhkov Cuba, 3, 7, 13–14, 21, 60, 67, 85. See also agreements and treaties; Castro; Cuban foreign policy;

Cuban economic reforms; debt; joint collaboration projects; Russia; trade; United States Cuba Union, 52, 85 Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), 47n47, 52, 112. See also “Brothers in Arms,” Cuban exile community, Mas Canosa Cuban Armed Forces (FAR), 10–11, 60, 95 Cuban Communist Party (PCC), 10, 26, 28, 30, 32, 36–37, 39, 61, 63 Cuban Democracy Act (Torricelli Bill), 52, 63, 90, 112, 114, 144. See also HelmsBurton Act; United States economic embargo against Cuba Cuban Economic Reforms, 59–64, 146; impact on Russian-Cuban relations, 64–68, 69–75, 146 Cuban exile community, 34, 40, 52, 112, 117, 121. See also Cuban American National Foundation; Mas Canosa Cuban foreign policy, 9–10, 13, 45n14, 47n39, 99; dependency within, 3, 11, 15, 64, 75, 90, 95, 103–04, 148; pragmatism within, 9, 12, 15, 27, 32, 40–41, 61, 64, 75, 91, 104, 120, 122, 129; nationalism within, 11–12, 15 Cuban Liberty and Solidarity Act (Helms-Burton Act), 63, 67, 114, 124, 128, 130, 144; effect on Lourdes listening station, 113, 116. See also Torricelli Bill; United States economic embargo against Cuba “Cuban lobby,” 23, 40, 42–43, 56, 58, 92–93. See also “August 1991 coup” Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX), 15, 113 Cuban Ministry of Foreign Investment and Economic Cooperation (MIECE), 60 Cuban Ministry of Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR), 10 Cuban Missile Crisis, 3, 24, 37, 46n18, 46n25, 138n19, 139n40; effects on

Index Soviet-Cuban relations, 25–27, 29, 42, 86–87, 119, 145, 147 Cuban Revolution, 9, 13–14, 21, 32, 71, 91, 133, 145; prevalence of nationalism in, 26, 60, 83, 103, 116–18, 151. See also Cuba; Cuban Foreign Policy; Russia; Soviet Union; United States; United States economic embargo Cuban Socialist Party (PSP), 23 Czechoslovakia, 5, 9, 17n14, 21, 27. See also “Prague Spring” debt, Cuban debt to Moscow, 6, 62, 86–87, 92, 96–97, 104–05, 147 Dependency, 3, 83. See also prevalence of dependency within Cuban Foreign policy Domínguez Jorge, 9, 19n37 Dorticos, Osvaldo, 28 Engels, Frederick, 5 Erisman, Michael, 9–12, 15, 45n14, 46n25, 47n39 Escalante, Aníbal, 28 Ethiopia, 39 Fanqui, Carlos, 52 Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), 10, 50n73 Feinsilver, Julie, 62 fidelismo, 10 five-year plans, 33, 46n19 Fonte, Rodolfo, 50n70 Fradkov, Mikhail, 72 France, 8, 14, 62–63, 72, 83, 91 Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), 70, 140n75 Fukuyama, Francis, 2, 4 Glasnost, 15, 25, 37–38, 43, 48n56, 84, 87, 106n5, 145 globalisation, 2–3, 12, 12, 59, 61; effects on Cuba, 60; effects on RussianCuban relations, 60, 7–68, 75, 95, 144. See also neoliberal economics

165

González, Edward, 32, 47n38 González, Elian, 109n52, 117 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 23, 34–44, 49n61, 50n74, 50n78, 54–56, 59, 91, 126, 139n40, 143; legacy from Gorbachev era, 85, 103, 145. See also Castro; Cuba; glasnost; “new thinking;” perestroika; troop withdrawal; United States Great Man Theory, 3, 10. See also Fidelismo Gridchina, Olga, 90 Gromyko, Andrei, 21, 48n55 Grupo GAZ, 72 Guantánamo, 122 Guatemala, 24 Guevara, Ernesto,10, 24, 26–27, 46n18 Haig, Alexander, 47n42 Hart, Armando, 26, 28 Hernández, Sofia, 57, 78n19 Humpierre, Rodolfo, 65, 77n15, 78n20, 106n12, 108n32, 115, 119, 121, 139n43, 140n65 Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA), 22, 25 institutionalization, 9, 30 Inter-American Development Bank, 63 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 7, 56–57, 63 International Relations, 9, 12–13, 84–85, 111, 122–23, 125–26, 150. See also multipolar: New World Order; unipolar; internationalism, 10, 30, 98 Iraq, 8, 126, 134, 149 Israel, 128, 140n65 Italy, 62, 72 Ivanov, Igor, 96, 116 Ivanov, Nikolai, 77n15 joint collaboration, 33, 42, 84, 92, 145. See also agreements and treaties; Cuba; Soviet Union Juragua, 52, 55, 144

166

Index

Kasyanov, Mikhail, 117 Katushev, Konstantin, 40, 50n70 KGB, 7, 45n11, 68 Khachaturov, K. 86 Khrushchev, Nikhita, 22; Cuban Missile Crisis, 3, 25–26; relationship with Cuba, 21, 23, 42 Kirk, John H. 12, 112 Kolesnikov, M. 88, 92 Kozyrev, Andrei, 7, 14, 56–57, 78n20, 114, 136, 144, 150 “Kozyrev Doctrine,” 53, 113, 115 Larin, Eugenio, 94, 96, 107n19, 108n30, 112, 120, 130, 138n39 Latin American Aero and Defense (LAAD), 18n28, 70 Lavrov, Sergey, 55, 121–22, 130 Liberal Westernizers, 6–7, 55–56, 124, 144. See also Russian Foreign Policy League of Nations, 2 Legacy, from the Soviet era, 14–16, 67, 83–87, 89, 91–106, 113, 118, 123, 145, 147 Lenin, Vladimir, 5, 46n31, 85 LeoGrande, William, 111, 117 liberalism, 2, 6, 57 Ligachev Yegor, 35, 37, 49n61 Light, Margot, 5 Lourdes, 13, 68, 70, 88, 92, 102–03, 105, 120, 125, 134, 136; effect on RussianU.S. relations, 67, 87–88, 102, 113, 116, 118–23, 138, 139n40, 149, 151 Machado Ventura, José Ramon, 12 Marquetti, Hiram, 58, 89, 99 Marti, José, 30, 76n4, 100 Martínez, Jorge, 72–73 Marx, Karl, 5 Marxist-Leninism, 16, 51–52, 54–56, 59, 65, 67–70, 74–75, 85, 127, 143–45. See also “new thinking;” Soviet foreign policy Mas Canosa, Jorge, 40, 50n74, 112, 117. See also Cuban American National Foundation; Cuban exile community

Medvedev, Dmitrii, 8, 12, 95, 121, 136, 152 Mesa-Lago, Carmelo, 13, 46n33, 76n10, 79n32 Mexico, 62, 72, 81n61, 130 Mikoyan, Anastas, 23, 25, 28, 38 Mikoyan, Sergo, 38 Monroe Doctrine, 25, 144 Montaner, Carlos, 10, 52, 76n4 Morales, Evo, 131–32. See also Bolivia Multipolar, 7, 114, 116, 123, 129–33, 135, 150, 152 National Assembly People’s Power, 39 national liberation movements, 22, 26, 49n61 “near abroad,” 5–6, 124, 128, 135, 145 neo-liberalism, 2 neoliberal economic policy, 2; effects on Cuba, 61, 63–64, 75, 116, 146; effects on Russia, 55, 57, 61, 65, 71; impact on Russian-Cuban relations, 2, 55, 65, 67–68, 70–71, 74–75, 144, 148. See also globalisation neo-realism, 2 “new thinking,” 5, 35, 44, 48n55 New World Order,10, 15, 44, 74, 112, 122, 124, 145 Nicaragua, 31, 131. See also Daniel Ortega Nickel, 33, 58, 63–64, 69, 80n54, 94, 103. See also trade agreements Nixon, Richard, 31 Nonaligned Movement, 12, 32, 112 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), 119, 124; expansion to the east, 7, 88, 124–26, 134, 149; treatment of Serbia, 7, 125–26 North Korea, 7, 27, 68 Ochoa, Arnaldo, 39, 52 Oil, 58, 60, 89–92, 132. See also agreements and treaties; trade On the Eve of Collapse, 52, 85 Organization for Latin American Solidarity (OLAS), 26

Index Organisation of American States (OAS), 129 Organs of People’s Power (OPP), 61 Ortega, Daniel, 131. See also Nicaragua Palavinos, 86, 103 Panama, 81n61 Pankin, Boris, 50n74, 50n78 Pavlov, Yuri, 55, 76n3 “peaceful coexistence,” 5 perestroika, 35, 37, 43, 85 Pérez, Humberto, 36 Pérez-Lopez, Jorge, 62 Pérez-Stable, Marifeli, 36 Peru, 27 Plankton, Nadya, 55–56, 100–01 Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), 31 “Porno para Ricardo,” 100 pragmatism: prevalence within Cuban elite, 58–60, 68, 150; prevalence within Russian elite, 146; prevalence within both Cuban and Russian elites, 89–90, 92, 95, 104, 136, 152 “Prague Spring,” 28. See also Czechoslovakia “Prayecto mir_xxi_cu,” 100 Primakov, Yevgeny, 7, 14, 116, 129–30; “Primakov Doctrine,”115; visit to Cuba, 86, 96, 115, 139n52; impact on Russian-Cuban Relations, 64, 96, 114–15, 136, 150 Putin, Vladimir, 7–8, 12, 18n27, 68, 115–16, 119–22, 128–30, 136, 150; “Putin Doctrine,” 8, 115–16, 119, 131, 134; visit to Cuba, 7, 13, 68–69, 94, 96–99, 129. See also Russian foreign policy, United States Radio Marti, 118 Reagan, Ronald, 32 realism, 2, 9 Revuelta, Alina Fernández, 14, 77n11 Rice, Condalezza, 121 Ritter, Archibald, 76n10 Rodríguez, Carlos Rafael, 9, 25, 30, 34, 37, 39, 47n42

167

Roca, Blas, 30 Robaina, Roberto, 96 Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana, 116 RosKuba, 65 Rosoboronexport, 18n28, 72 Rosvooruzheniye, 67 Russia, 1, 58, 84, 86, 121–22, 133, 135, 146. See also Cuba; globalisation; neoliberal economics; New World Order; Russian Foreign Policy, Soviet legacy; trade; United Nations; United States RusiaAutomotriz, 72 Russian Communist Party, 93, 104, 121. See also Gennady Zyuganov Russian-Cuban Commission on Commercial, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation, 66, 80n45 Russian Economic Reforms, 55, 57, 65–66, 71, 74, 85, 144 Russian Foreign Policy, 6–8, 15, 102, 105, 121, 129–30, 145. See also “Kozyrev Doctrine”; Liberal Westernizers; “Primakov Doctrine”; “Putin Doctrine” Russian State Duma, 6–8, 66, 87, 93, 104, 114, 122, 132 Ryzhkov, Nikolai, 37, 49n62 Salyut, 72 Sandinistas, 31. See also Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua Shearman, Peter, 27–28, 30, 47n35 Shevardnadze, Eduard, 48n55 Shmelyev, N. P. 49n66 socialism, 3, 17n14, 27–28, 46n25, 50n73, 52, 76n4, 93. See also Czechoslovakia; international socialism; Marxist-Leninism; “Prague Spring” Soskovets, Oleg, 66 Soto, Lionel, 89 Soviet Union, 1–11, 21–44, 45n18, 50n77, 65, 74–75, 83–90, 101, 133, 136, 146–48; Disintegration of 51–52; 64; 66, 72; 112; 125; 143; 145.

168

Index

See also agreements and treaties; Castro; Cuba; Gorbachev; joint collaboration; New World Order; troop withdrawal; United Sates Soviet-Cuban Intergovernment Commission on Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation, 28 Soviet foreign policy, 5, 22, 41. See also “new thinking” Spain, 11, 62–63, 67, 71–72, 111 “spheres of influence,” 7, 125–26, 149 Stalin, Joseph, 3, 5, 22 sugar, 21, 28, 37, 49n66, 58, 80n45, 89–92, 101–04, 107n18, 107n19, 145, 147–48. See also agreements and treaties; Cuba; five-year agreements; Soviet Union; trade surrogate/superclient thesis, 11, 45n14 terrorist attacks on the United States, 4, 8, 117, 133–34 Tikhonov, Nikolai, 33 Tobacco, 33, 63, 65–66, 147. See also trade, treaties Tourism, 39, 59, 61–62; Russian tourists, 73–74 trade: Cuban trade with third party countries, 71–72, 81n61; levels of Russian-Cuban trade, 53–54, 59, 62–70, 72, 76n9, 80n54; RussianCuban trade; 55, 57, 74–75, 77n15, 90, 101–04, 132, 144, 146, 148; Soviet-Cuban trade; 33–34, 38, 40–42, 45n8. See also agreements and treaties; five-year agreements; nickel; oil; sugar; tobacco trade fairs, 72, 99, 148 Transchemexport S. R. L., 72 Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, 38 Tricontinental Conference, 26 troop withdrawal from Cuba, 40–41, 44, 51 TV Marti, 118. See also Radio Marti

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). See Soviet Union United Nations (UN), 1, 32, 86, 112, 144; Human Rights Commission, 127; Human Rights Convention, 52, 121–22, 127 United States, 2, 13, 16, 32, 52, 57, 90, 150. See also Bush; Castro; Cold War; Cuba; Cuban exile community; economic embargo; Gorbachev; Putin; Russia; Soviet Union; Yeltsin; Reagan; Rice; Russia; Soviet Union United States economic embargo against Cuba, 13, 35–36, 57, 62–63, 88 109n52, 116–17, 133; impact on Russian-Cuban relations, 89–90, 122, 151. See also Helms-Burton Act; Torricelli Bill Unipolar, 70, 114, 116, 129, 134, 139n52, 149–50 Urrutia Leo, Carlos Manuel, 21 “velvet revolution,” 39 Venezuela, 8, 62, 70–71, 102, 106, 131–32, 148, 150. See also Hugo Chávez Vietnam, 22, 49n62, 119–20 Vorotnikov, Vasili, 14, 77n17 Waltz, Kenneth, 2 “war on terror,” 117, 126, 128 Warsaw Pact, 9, 17n14, 27, 29, 46n33, 124 White, Stephen, 4–5, 7, 17n11 World Bank, 7, 56–57, 63 Yeltsin, Boris, 65, 77n17, 87, 114–15, 125, 144; relations with Cuba, 78n23, 112–13 Yugoslavia, 7, 125, 134, 149 Zvezda SA, 72 Zyuganov, Gennady, 93

About the Author

Mervyn J. Bain (M.A, MPhil and PhD, University of Glasgow) is a Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Aberdeen (United Kingdom). His research interests are Latin America, but specifically Cuba’s relationship with the Soviet Union and Russia. He has presented papers at various national and international conferences and has published articles on Cuba’s relationship with the Soviet Union and Russia in journals including the Journal of Latin American Studies, the Journal of Transatlantic Studies and International Politics. He has a chapter in Redefining Cuban Foreign Policy. The Political Impact of the ‘Special Period,” published by the University Press of Florida in April 2006. He is also the author of the book “Soviet-Cuban Relations 1985 to 1991. Changing Perceptions in Moscow and Havana,” published by Lexington Books in January 2007.

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