By mid 1961, the proliferation of mass organizations dictated the need for a central ‘umbrella’ organization to take over the complex task of uniting various groups and coordinating their activities.
The Popular Socialist Party — the Cuban communist party — emerged as the only body with the necessary skills and experience to accomplish the task. After all, the PSP knew about socialism, vanguard parties, and the Soviet Union.
Soon all revolutionary groups in Cuba were merged into a single National Directorate of the Integrated Revolutionary Organization (ORI) under PSP leadership.
The ORI provided the nucleus for the new Cuban Communist Party (PCC) which was formed in 1965.
Problems soon developed.
In March 1962, Fidel Castro accused the ORI leadership ofsectarianism, abuse of authority, and disdain for the people. Charging that the new party was causing popular disenchantment, Fidel observed:
We were witnessing a veritable loss of faith in the revolutionary leadership . . . .[T]he masses had more sense of what was going on than the revolutionary cadre . . . . [W]e were living in an ivory tower . . . actually we had lost contact with the masses.
The regime was under a great deal of pressure.
Inventories in Cuba had been exhausted and Havana was facing shortages of almost everything.
Making the situation worse, the Soviets had failed to respond promptly to Cuba’s bid to join the Socialist bloc with assurance of the full military and economic aid which such status would imply.
Consequently, Castro launched a purge of old Communist party officials to convince Moscow that he was in charge and that socialism had been achieved through his revolution and not through the working class led by the Party, as envisioned in classical Marxism.
