The Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) emerged in the 1970s as the country’s governing institution at the same time that the weight of the military in its Central Committee moved toward the Soviet pattern. At this time, Castro asserted:

The party today is the soul of the Cuban revolution . . . .

The First Congress of the Cuban Communist Party took place in 1975.

Preparations for the conference spurred changes in Cuba’s appearance. Beautification efforts in key areas of the city were carried out through a program of Urban Revitalization implemented by the Department of Architecture and Urbanism of the City of Havana. The use of large murals called Super Graphics — still common in Havana today — and other elements of urban landscape architecture formed key components of the revitalization campaign.

The conference itself resulted in

the full incorporation of orthodox Soviet-style institutions and practices (making the PCC) resemble its Soviet counterpart in both style and substance.

The Congress approved five significant measures:

1. a draft of a socialist constitution
2. a five-year economic plan
3. a geographic-politico-administrative reorganization of the country
4. a new system of economic management, and,
5. a party platform.

Thus:

. . . the leading role of the Communist party, subordinate to the ruling leaders but with authority over the government, the society, and the economy, has been asserted with increasing emphasis and is backed up by the provisions of the new Constitution. Its leading role is perhaps clearest in its supervision of mass organizations.

Importantly for urban areas such as Havana, the supervision served to limit the freedom of action of groups like the CDRs or the Cuban Women’s Federation (CWF) as they attempted to respond to the needs of their members. For

whenever mass organizations or economic enterprises have sought to set goals, make policy, or undertake tasks on their own, their wings have been clipped.

The 1976 constitution established a presidential system of government and provided for the election of provincial and local governmental officials across the island. Notably, the USSR is mentioned by name in the Preamble, and many features of the Soviet counterpart were incorporated in the Cuban document.

Carmelo Mesa-Lago states that 32% of the articles of Cuba’s 1976 constitution come from the Soviet constitution of 1936, and 36% from Cuba’s constitution of 1940. Eighteen percent are influenced by both sources with Soviet predominance, and only 13% of articles are at least partially innovative.

The fundamental political bodies introduced in the new constitution closely resembled the Soviet model with Cuba’s National Assembly of People’s Power equivalent to the Supreme Soviet, the Council of State corresponding to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, and the Council of Ministers, the judiciary, and the Organs of People’s Power paired with similar institutions in the USSR.

As a result of the institutional changes discussed above, at the end of 1979, Castro stated that after 18 years of revolution the process of institutionalization was basically concluded. Soon the changes dictated by the process were to greatly change Havana’s urban landscape. For example, at the party conference, the government stated clearly that:

. . . it should fill the vacuum in building construction created by the ruralist approach of the 1960s. Housing assumed an important symbolic presence in the city, matching the availability of social services, schools, and recreational facilities. Some of the more noteworthy projects were Jose Antonio Echevarria University Campus, the Lenin Vocational School, Lenin Park, and the Botanical Gardens and Zoo, which were located at the city’s edge. High-rise public housing on the outskirts of Havana not only countered the presence of similar structures in Vedado, but became reference points for the Revolution’s modernization efforts in Havana. These high-rise structures spread to the most unlikely and remote corners of the city. Twenty-story high-rise housing in Havana during the first decades of the Revolution paralleled in many ways Stalin’s location of seven scrapers in Moscow at the end of the Second World War . . . . Soviet planning sought to show new features and rights of the unfolding socialist society.

Socialist housing in Havana was similar to the many complexes that existed in Prague, Budapest, Sofia, Dresden, Stalingrad, and Moscow.

 

As we learned in Cold War Cuba: Institutional Changes in the Cuban Military (Part 1), the military was increasingly professionalized.

After the military’s reorganization in 1972, only individuals with good military qualifications were allowed to remain in the structure of the regular Armed Forces (FAR). Greater emphasis was put on professional military education, and many officers were sent abroad for specialized training “such as that provided at the F.V. Military Academy and the K.E. Voroshilov General Staff Academy in the Soviet Union.”

The Professional Military

Most of the graduates of Soviet academies remained in the FAR, concentrating on strictly military tasks, and by the end of the decade “hundreds of FAR personnel were being sent each year for advanced training in Eastern Europe as well as in the Soviet Union.”

As previously mentioned, the officer corps had their ranking system reorganized into a hierarchy more equivalent to that of the USSR and international standards. Moreover, the military was now closely linked to the Communist Party.

Following the same pattern of the Soviet military and its Eastern European allies, the Cuban military maintains political sections throughout the entire military organization down to the squad level. Political commissars are tasked with the education of the rank and file in Marxist doctrine and maintain a high level of discipline and loyalty to the government and the Communist Party. As in the Soviet military, the political commissars have a high degree of authority which rivals that of the military commanders at all levels. All the flag rank officers are members of the Communist Party Central Committee. According to Fidel Castro . . . in December of 1975, 85% of the members of the Armed Forces were either members of the Union of Communist Youth or the CCP.

Each of the actions described above contributed to an increasing professionalization of the army which, as Fidel Castro argued

made possible an increase in the armed forces’ defensive power while at the same time maintaining their participation in economic tasks.

The growing expertise of the armed forces was accomplished primarily with the assistance of resident Soviet military personnel and hardware.

Conflict Among the Military Officers

It is important to note, however, that the increasing professionalization did not eliminate military conflict among the officers. There was an on-going friction among three groups:

• graduates of the Frunze Military Academy
• graduates of Cuban military academies
• veterans of the Sierra Maestra.

These groups differed greatly in power and status, with graduates of the Frunze Military Academy in the Soviet Union holding the most important posts, including control of missile and radar bases. Graduates of Cuban military schools held secondary positions, with Sierra Maestra veterans at the bottom of the hierarchy.

The Military Penetrates Every Sector of Society

After 1973, the military — under the advice and consent of the Soviets — increased its penetration of every sector of society and, at the same time, political control penetrated the military. According to Horowitz

The accelerated movement of the Cuban Revolution into militaristic forms reflects the multiple needs of the Cuban Regime. First, the regime employed the military . . . for internal police functions, through the CDRs. Second, it used the military to mobilize the  population after the less than successful phase in which moral incentives were used to spur economic development. During this phase, the youth brigades in particular were converted into  a paramilitary fight force subject to military discipline and at the same time able to perform as labor shock troops in the event of any decline in sugar production. Third . . . the regime encouraged the rise of a professional attitude in the military so that it could perform on international terrain . . . .

Military Impact on the Cuban Educational System

Strong military impact was also seen in the Cuban education system where a “fully articulated system of military schools” began to be established in the 1960s and had high level influence as the military became increasingly professionalized in the 1970s.

The education system included a tracking mechanism (beginning at the junior high school level) whereby the best students were either placed in a university preparatory school or sent to provincial military schools where they were trained to enter the senior military academies. Active participation in pro-regime youth groups was also required for admission. Those students with lover academic performance were sent to vocational schools.

The military schools graduated their first students in the 1971 school year.

Internal Security

Internal security forces were also reorganized in the early 1970s under the supervision of the Soviet Union. The two principal organizations that were reorganized were the Ministry of the Interior’s Directorio General de Investigaciones (DGI) and the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.

The DGI began to coordinate its activities much closer than in the past with Soviet intelligence services.

The CDRs were given expanded responsibilities while remaining “an instrument of the party, unable to set its own fundamental policies.” Also, most bars to membership were dropped and the CDRs ” sought to encompass virtually the entire adult population.”

________________________________

If you want to learn more about the Cuban military, you might find the following books useful.

Dominguez, Jorge I. “Institutionalization and Civil-Military Relations in Cuba” Cuban Studies Volume 16 nos. 1-2 (January and July 1976).

Fermoselle, Rafael The Evolution of the Cuban Military: 1492-1986. Miami: Ediciones I Universal, 1987.

Horowitz, Irving Louis,ed. Cuban Communism 1959-1995 8th ed. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1995.

 

The 1960s

It was logical for the military to play a guiding role in the new revolutionary government because, ever since the 1960s, the army was the only government entity that “grew increasingly professionalized, institutionalized, and efficient.” In fact, the army expanded its responsibilities over the decade, absorbing many nonmilitary functions such as the organization of production and cane cutting. By the end of the 1960s it pervaded almost all facets of Cuban society.

The 1970s

By 1970, the Cuban government and its Soviet technical advisors realized that a reorganization of the military was necessary in order to meet demands for increasing functional and technical specialization.

The Soviets had a great deal of input into the reorganization because Cuban arms were outdated and inefficient and the country’s only potential source of supply was from the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. As Uri Ra’anan notes in his article on Soviet Arms Transfers and the Problem of Political Leverage:

Clearly, one could expect the armies in question to adopt Soviet training and battle doctrine, since it would be self-defeating to use Soviet weapons in a military context other than the one for which they had been specifically designed. In turn, this meant that hardware from non-Soviet sources would become increasingly irrelevant to the needs of any country that had adapted itself to Soviet military standards. Moreover, Soviet and bloc experts would be required to assemble the newly arrived weapons in the recipient countries and to instruct local military personnel and technicians in their use. {Also} . . . officers would have to travel to bloc countries, often for prolonged periods, to be trained at Soviet staff colleges, so that they might be able properly to apply Soviet military doctrine. It seems probable that these exchanges would open up the military establishment . . . to Soviet ideological indoctrination, infiltration, and subversion. Moreover, such links to the USSR could hardly be confined to a single transaction. Once Soviet weapons and training had been accepted, it was assumed that the general staffs in question would naturally wish to go on receiving later models of aircraft, naval vessels, and tanks from the same sources in order to deal with the problem of rapid obsolescence. In that case, each subsequent transaction would expose the recipient to renewed Soviet demands and pressure. [This process certainly applied to Cuba.]

Military Reorganization Under Soviet Tutelage

After military reorganization under Soviet tutelage, and beginning in 1972, the Armed Forces were rearmed with new and more sophisticated weapons, and several hundred Soviet troops arrived to assist with their assimilation.

New missile patrol boats were added to the Navy, MIG 23s were added to the Air Force, and the Army received state-of-the-art antiaircraft equipment and armor. As Cuba expanded its military arsenal, the structure of the Armed Forces became closer to that of the Soviet Union.

The (1975) Angolan War also demonstrated the close military ties between the Soviet Union and Cuba, and the eventual victory in Angola, along with other Cuban large-scale military operations overseas, were evidence of the effectiveness of Cuba’s military reforms. Moreover, the Cubans in Angola were said to receive more advanced arms from the Soviet Union than “even the weapons sent by Moscow directly to Cuba.”

Military or Economic?

So far as manpower was concerned, the army’s flexibility in adapting to changing political and economic circumstances — playing a role in such diverse activities as education and the sugar harvest — had been quite laudable. However, military experts now acknowledged that it would be more advantageous for specific units to perform either military or economic functions even though the armed forces as a whole would continue to perform both.

There was a new focus on the Reserves and their mobilizational capabilities as the backbone of national defense. Meanwhile, the military tasks of civilian agencies were expanded, extending the reach of the military and bringing many more civilians under the partial authority of the Armed Forces Ministry.

In order to implement the new policies, all military organizations created to carry out non-military civilian work were disbanded and reorganized into one organization, the Youth Army of Work, known also as the Army of Working Youth (EJT). This group, specializing in production, accounted for over a fifth of all cane cutters in the 1975, 1976, and 1977 harvests. During lulls in the production cycle the EJT was expected to prepare for combat under the direction of its own officers — military officers with their own training, ranks, and system of promotion.

The Militia, the paramilitary organization formed of armed workers and peasants in 1959 which played a crucial role in the consolidation of the revolution was also disbanded. Its political functions were taken over by the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, and other functions were passed to Civil Defense units which operated in every work center. The Militia’s more militarized successor, the Reserves, also replaced many of the demobilized, less professional units of the old Armed Forces

Photograph by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe

This post was originally published in March of 2012 as part of a series of posts on “Religion in Cuba.” I’m republishing it today in honor of Pope Francis’ visit to Cuba. Links to the other posts follow. I hope you’ll take the time to read them all.

Many of you are aware that Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Cuba recently.  His visit marks the 400th anniversary of Cuba’s patron saint, El Virgen del Cobre, and marks thawing relations between the church and the still communist state.

During the beginning  years of the revolution, the church struggled in Cuba. Many clergy were deported and church land was nationalized. Believers of all denominations were banned from the Communist Party and Cuba became an “atheist” state. But in recent years, the state has become more tolerant of religion.

Christmas was once again celebrated as a national holiday just in time for John Paul II’s visit 14 years ago in 1998. And the Catholic Church has found a more prominent role, led by Cardinal Jaime Ortega under Raul Castro who has ruled since 2008.

The pope’s visit to Cuba is something of a tightrope walk, balancing calls from dissidents and the demands of the Cuban state.  And Benedict XVI has his church’s mission and interests to consider as well. Since the revolution, many believers have left the church. Christian Evangelism and the syncretic West African religions — particularly Santeria — may now be more popular than Catholicism. At the very least they are major influences on the island’s religious landscape.

I recently completed a series on Religion in Cuba for my other blog Havana Project. If you are interested in this topic, I urge you to take a look.

RELIGION IN CUBA TODAY: THE CROSS OF PARRA

RELIGION IN CUBA: VIRGIN OF COBRE

A SNAPSHOT OF RELIGION IN CUBA TODAY

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF RELIGION IN CUBA TODAY

DIVERSE INFLUENCES SHAPE RELIGION IN CUBA TODAY

MULTIPLE BELIEF SYSTEMS MAKE UP RELIGION IN CUBA TODAY

WHAT’S UP WITH RELIGION IN CUBA TODAY?