Although the period of Soviet boldness ended with the Iran hostage crisis, the US was worried that the USSR had established a broad arc of crisis from Africa to Southeast Asia.

After some hesitation, the Soviets and Cuba had worked hand in hand during a good part of the 1970s.

The Soviets gave strong backing to an independent Cuban initiative to intervene first in Angola, and later in Ethiopia and South Yemen, based on a need for landing and overflight privileges, tracking stations, and the possibility of acquiring base rights for naval vessels in the Atlantic or Indian Oceans.

The two nations also teamed up in Syria and Indochina.

Castro also provided advisory and training missions in Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea, and Somalia. He sent large numbers of combat troops to Angola and Ethiopia, and smaller contingencies to Libya and the Congo.

(As an aside, it is important to note that Castro’s  military involvements in Africa in the 1970s had no parallel in the Americas.)

Successes in Angola and Ethiopia were particularly important because they proved that Cuba could effectively advance Soviet objectives — as well as its own — in the Third World.

This realization created new possibilities for the Soviets at the same time that the US was noticeably weakened  by controversy surrounding Vietnam and Watergate.

By 1980, the Soviets had obtained basing facilities in Cuba, Angola, Afghanistan, and Ethiopia, while also acquiring military basing, port, or refueling facilities in Algeria, Libya, Mozambique, South Yemen, Syria, and Vietnam.

The Havana – Moscow symbiosis was crucial to Soviet achievements, with the Kremlin providing equipment and financing, and the Cubans providing personnel.

Castro did not rely simply on the content of Marxist – Leninist theory as the impetus to defeat imperialism and abolish colonialism. Rather he used the fact that the Cuban forces in Africa were primarily black or mulatto to reinforce solidarity with the Angolan population, and he contrasted the role of these groups in the struggle at the Bay of Pigs to their role in the current conflict. He said:

At Giron [the Bay of Pigs], African blood was shed, that of the selfless descendants of a people who were slaves before they became workers …. And in Africa together with the blood of the heroic fighters of Angola, Cuban blood also flowed. The victory in Angola was the twin sister of the victory at Giron …. Angola represents an African Giron.

Unlike either of the two superpowers, the Cubans also used everyday “hands on” activities as a means of attaining political objectives.

Cuba does not send construction materials; it sends people to build a road. It does not equip a hospital, but it sends health personnel to staff it. It does not provide weaponry, but it supplies military instructors to teach how to use Soviet weapons.

When Castro’s efforts proved successful in Africa, leverage with Moscow increased. The relationship was strong throughout the 1970s.

 

As chair of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1979 to 1983, Castro came close to gaining a seat for Cuba on the UN Security Council. He lost the bid when his Soviet supporters invaded Afghanistan.

Because of Cuba’s sensitive economic situation, Castro had no choice but to fall in line behind the Soviets, a position which greatly undermined his leadership position.

The United States attempted to convert Islamic and other Third World criticism of the Soviet Union into a trend accelerating association with the US; however, most of the non-aligned nations were intent on remaining so.

The era of Soviet boldness came to an end when — in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution — militants seized the American embassy.

The ensuing hostage crisis galvanized the Carter administration into action, spurring a US military buildup.

Third World governments — Oman, Somalia, Kenya — were soon approached regarding continuing American access to naval and air facilities, and a sizable American fleet came to be stationed in the Indian Ocean.

The problems in Iran exacerbated existing fears that the Soviets were involved in creating a broad arc of crisis reaching from Africa throughout Southeast Asia, representing a sweeping assault on the status quo.

Castro’s efforts in Africa proved so successful that his leverage with Moscow increased.

Beginning in 1977, the Soviets sent new weapons systems and military equipment to Cuba to replace the existing obsolete and exhausted Cuban inventories.

As Edward Gonzalez reports, infrastructure for “collecting intelligence, carrying out covert operations, training, guerillas, and disseminating propaganda in Latin America and the Caribbean” was strengthened as Cuba began to focus increasingly on the export of revolution.

Castro’s comments about the export of revolution were ambiguous, however. Even though he claimed that revolutions were inevitable, he argued that “Cuba cannot export revolution. Neither can the US prevent it.”

Nevertheless, Cuba supplied key material assistance to the Sandanista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) during the anti-Somoza struggle in Nicaragua, and later stepped in to shore up the regime of Maurice Bishop in Grenada.

Efforts in Nicaragua were particularly important in shaping Cuba’s continuing relationship with the Kremlin.

Cuba’s relationship with Nicaragua actually began in the 1960s when Cuba trained and armed “a then little-known fifty person Nicaraguan group, the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN). Within the next decade and a half  that organization grew in force to the point that it was able to take power.

The foundation for African involvement was also laid in the 1960s when (according to Eckstein) “Cuba provided Algeria, shortly after it attained independence from France, with some arms and troops when that North African nation was attacked by Morocco.”

Castro’s government also supported national liberation movements and “progressive” governments in Angola, Guinea-Bisseau, Mozambique, and Congo-Brazzaville in the course of the decade.”

There is dispute over the extent of Cuba’s involvement in both Nicaragua and Grenada, with Eckstein arguing that it was minimal, especially when compared to the Cuban involvement in Angola and Ethiopia.

There is agreement that Castro did provide a major level of assistance to the rebels in El Salvador, especially through his efforts to unify the various guerilla factions.

Cuba’s military presence was modest in most of Southeast Asia and the Middle East. However, combat troops were dispatched to Syria, South Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon.

The Soviets acknowledged the success of Castro’s activist policies, and, after 1979, supported the Cuban position as the one to be followed by the communist parties in El Salvador and Guatemala.

The Soviets felt that developments in Latin America were weakening US hegemony in the region, and they hoped that Marxist-Leninist regimes there would provide them with “port, landing, repair, and/or basing facilities that would facilitate the Soviet military presence in the [Caribbean] Basin, South America, and the South Atlantic,” just as they had in Africa.

It is clear that Cuba extended large amounts of civilian assistance to Third World nations worldwide.

By the 1980s, Cuba accounted for nearly one-fifth of all Soviet-bloc economic technicians working in the Third World, with only 2.5 percent of the bloc’s population.

Between 1982 and 1985, Cuba had one civilian aid worker for every 625 inhabitants, while the United States had only one worker in the Peace Corps and the Agency for International Development (AID) for every 34,704 inhabitants.

Construction projects were especially important, with major undertakings centered in North Vietnam, the Middle East, North Africa, and Latin America. The most controversial project was located on Grenada, a small island in the Caribbean, where the Cubans were working with an English company on an airport expansion project.

Contending that the airport was to be used for military purposes, the Reagan administration justified a US invasion of the island. However, the Cubans — and the English company supplying and installing airport electrical and technical equipment — dispute the claim.

Cuba also extended educational and medical aid throughout the Third World.

These activities, along with Cuba’s willingness to send troops in support of Third World Liberation movements, helped Castro in his bid to achieve leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement.

 

Castro’s relations with the Soviets had often been stormy, and Cuba had not been a complaisant satellite.

In the mid 1960s, Castro balked at siding with the USSR in the Sino-Soviet dispute for leadership of the world communist movement and, in 1968, the Soviets were forced to withhold petroleum shipments to win Castro’s approval of their invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Castro was contemptuous of the communist parties that Moscow sustained in Latin America, perceiving many Latin American communists to be timid middle-aged intellectuals who had no interest in making revolution.

The Cubans argued that the policies of their revolutionary government were unique, and not patterned on Soviet policy.

Instead, the Cubans argued that they were driven to adopt socialist structures by the logic of their own indigenous reform agenda, especially the requirements of the Agrarian Reform Law.

They further argued that Cuban leadership employed socialist mechanisms early, not in reaction to hostility from the United States, but as a response to national economic needs. Of  course, these economic needs were, in part, a function of the US trade embargo established in 1961.

At any rate, as a result of multiple pressures, as the 1970s progressed, the interests of Cuba and the Kremlin increasingly found common ground.

Among other things, Cuba’s growing dependence, and further integration into the Soviet bloc, produced a more accommodating client.

Soviet advisers were a common sight on the streets of Havana, particularly in the Vedado section surrounding the University.

Mesa-Lago estimates that in the summer of 1971 there were approximately 3,000 Soviet technicians and military advisers in Cuba.

Fifteen hundred Cubans (85% of them technicians and engineers) were being trained in the USSR in 1973.

Cuba’s total debt to the Soviet Union in 1972 was approximately $4 billion and Cuba’s merchant marine carried only 7-8% of the island’s trade — most of the rest was carried by Soviet vessels.

At the same time, Soviet economic models were becoming more pervasive.In 1972, Cuba joined the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA or COMECON — the Soviet ‘common market’) and, in 1975, Cuba began implementing the Soviet-directed System for Economic Management and Planning (SDPE). The new system required adherence to strict Soviet guidelines which dictated that sugar would remain the principal sector of the economy.

Cuba’s growing economic independence and further integration in to the Soviet bloc led the Soviets, after some hesitation, to give strong backing to an independent Cuban intiative to intervene first in Angola, and later in Ethiopia and South Yemen.

Photograph by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe

 

In 1968, in conjunction with the campaign to steadily increase the sugar harvest, Fidel Castro’s regime mounted a final assault against private enterprise in Havana. The remaining 57,000 private businesses — principally small retail shops, handicraft stores, service and repair centers, bars and cafes — were nationalized.

At the same time, efforts were also made to expand the distribution of free goods and services.

Fees were no longer charged for health services, day-care facilities, education, funeral services, utilities, sports events, local bus transportation, and local telephone service.

Rents were fixed at a maximum of 10 percent of income. In fact, by 1969, an estimated 268,000 households paid no rent, and the government even contemplated doing away with rent all together.

All possible urban resources were diverted to the sugar campaign which proceeded at the expense of all other sectors of the economy.

Projects in the built environment now centered only on road maintenance and on repairs along principle sugar transportation routes.

Port installations and harbor facilities designated to handle increased sugar production were expanded to the detriment of others.

Sugar mills were overhauled and emphasis given to the manufacture of mill equipment.

The labor needs of the harvest were met by the massive mobilization of the population.

An estimated 1.2 million workers from all sectors of the economy, as well as 100,000 members of the armed forces and 300,000 sugar workers, participated.

As might be expected, the effects of this effort on other sectors of the economy were disastrous. Production of consumer goods declined. Basic foodstuffs of every type — milk, vegetables, fruits, meat, poultry — were in short supply.

The goods that were produced often faced shipping difficulties, for much of the rail and road transportation was diverted to sugar.

The nationalization of small business in 1968 led to adverse and unforeseen circumstances. Large numbers of businesses were consolidated into sizable operations, or eliminated altogether.

As another 50,000 businessmen joined the ranks of the disaffected, renewed discontent swept the island, leading to additional population outflow and a marked loss of managerial personnel.

State enterprises could not adequately replace the goods and services eliminated. Bottlenecks in distribution followed, exacerbating old shortages and scarcities.

The suppression of 3,700 street vendors in urban centers effectively destroyed informal food distribution networks across the island and state stores were unable to make up the difference.

Food lines at stores and restaurants lengthened and absenteeism increased as waiters took time off to wait in line.

Absenteeism also increased as the incentive to work diminished,  approaching 15 percent in some sectors. Tardiness escalated.

Appeals to self-sacrifice and moral incentives failed to sustain consistently high productivity levels. Low productivity was exacerbated by poor performance.

Quality was often sacrificed to assure savings and meet production quotas. Poor quality was also due to the absence of adequate raw materials and poor manufacturing.

A scarcity of consumer goods and services and the abolition of wage differentials caused widespread demoralization.

Almost 100 acts of sabotage against industries, warehouses, and government buildings were reported, most of which were not committed by counter-revolutionaries from abroad but by disgruntled citizens at home.

In the end, despite a Herculean effort and the effective restructuring of the entire society, the 1970 harvest produced a record crop of 8.5 million tons —  short of the 10 million goal.

In trying to achieve the record sugar crop, the entire economy had suffered, so much so that in 1970 Cuba faced serious trouble.

The regime turned to the Soviets for assistance.

In December 1970 a Cuban-Soviet Commission on Economic, Scientific, and Technical Collaboration was established.  Its task was to help in restructuring inefficient Cuban institutions. The restructuring was to be based on a Soviet prototype.

Photograph by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe

Cuba’s effort to produce a 10-million-ton sugar harvest required a full-fledged military campaign that included the mobilization of Cuba’s entire population for agricultural work.

Factory workers from the cities volunteered to go to the countryside for a period lasting from two days to six months to engage in work vital to the country’s “civil defense.” Their wives filled in for them at their regular jobs..

Havana was virtually emptied as all available resources were directed toward ensuring the success of the ten-million-ton sugar crop.

The very prestige of the nation was at stake in this endeavor. “The question of a sugar harvest of ten million tons, ” Fidel Castro exhorted in March 1968, “has become something more than an economic goal; it is something that has been converted into a point of honor for the Revolution, it has become a yardstick by which to judge the capability of the Revolution … and, if a yardstick is put up to the Revolution, there is no doubt about the Revolution meeting the mark.”

To ensure success, the entire economy was reorganized in conformance with military models. Labor brigades were renamed battalions and placed under the direct control of the military. There were even special motorized battalions which were dispatched to various parts of the island to perform the more difficult work

The use of military models in agriculture was not new. They had been used since the mid-1960s when a special program, designed to ensure Havana’s self-sufficiency in food production, had been implemented.

This effort focused on the construction of the Cordon Urbano de Habana and involved the direct intervention of the army in agricultural production. Above all, it involved changes both in the organization of civilian work and in governmental methods of mobilization.

City residents were recruited for productive agricultural labor with the objective of bringing 340,000 hectares of formerly uncultivated state-owned and private land parcels into production. This land encircled the city at about 12 to 15 kilometers.

Habaneros, regardless of sex, became active in the agricultural effort. Notably, one of the first units organized was a female brigade of 110 tractor operators.  Eventually 4,000 women and 1,200 tractors worked together on the construction of the cordon.

In all, more than half a million individuals were ultimately involved in the planting of “50 million coffee trees, 3 million fruit trees, 1 million citrus trees, 2.5 million timber-yielding trees, 1 million trees that would beautify the area, and 14.5 million bean plants.”

The program met with so much success that, by 1968, for the first time in her economic history, agricultural exports from Havana province outnumbered imports.

In associated ventures, more than 50 ponds were created; five new towns were constructed; and city parks were created, including the Zoological Garden and Botanical Garden.

Construction of the cordon, therefore, was a successful precedent for both the militarization of labor and the use of urban labor in conjunction with the 10 million-ton harvest.

Photograph by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe.

 

Cuban efforts to consolidate the revolution were challenged early on. Within four years, the government’s approach to industrialization and agricultural diversification were abandoned. Failures were apparent everywhere.

Agricultural yield declined, especially in the output of sugar, with production dropping from 6.7 million tons in 1961 to 4.8 million tons in 1962 and then to 3.8 million tons in 1963. Not in 20 years had Cuban sugar harvests been so low. The effects reverberated across all sectors of the economy.

Foreign earnings declined and in some sectors disappeared altogether.

Domestic shortages increased.

Food supplies dwindled, and basic consumer goods of all kinds grew scarce.

By early 1962, shortages spread and became more severe. In March the government responded to increasing scarcity by imposing a general food rationing that soon came to include consumer goods of all types.

Cuban dependence on foreign imports actually increased, as did Cuban reliance on sugar exports. As a proportion of total exports, sugar increased from 78 to 86 percent.

The balance of trade deficit increased from $14 million in 1961 to $238 million in 1962 to $323 million in 1963, almost all of which was incurred with the socialist bloc nations, $297 million with the Soviet Union alone.

By the mid-1960s, Cubans realized that the strategies of the early 1960s had failed to meet even their most modest objectives. Instead, efforts at import substitution, industrialization, and agricultural diversification had resulted in widespread social distress and economic dislocation.

New strategies after 1965 involved increased emphasis on all sectors of agricultural production with a renewed prominence on sugar production, but including dairy products, beef, citrus fruits, tropical agricultural products, coffee, and tobacco. This was to be a means of generating foreign exchange and a way of increasing imports of machinery and equipment. It was believed that this activity, in turn, would increase production of agriculture and agricultural commodities.

Industrial planning shifted to the development of those sectors that utilized Cuban natural resources most efficiently, with special attention to those industries that supported agricultural production.

The renewed emphasis on sugar offered an obvious and relatively cost-effective method of reversing a mounting balance of trade deficit by mobilizing efforts around a sector in which Cuba possessed adequate personnel and sufficient experience to achieve success.

The rise of the world price of sugar in 1963, moreover, served to confirm the wisdom and timeliness of once again promoting the expansion of sugar production.

After the mid-1960s, sugar production once again received preference and priority. Output was expected to increase steadily and was to climax in 1970 with the production of a 10-million-ton sugar crop.

The objective became an obsession.

Virtually all national resources and collective resolve were diverted to the task.

The campaign implied more than a commitment to forming a new economy. It also involved forging a ‘new consciousness,’ the conciencia discussed earlier.

Photograph by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe.

 

While Soviet efforts to strengthen their position in the Middle East were less than successful, the push continued in other parts of the Third World where Cuban and Soviet interests were only beginning to coalesce.

As Cuba’s actions in the early 1960s indicate, it would be a mistake to think of Castro as merely a Soviet surrogate or “puppet.”

Throughout the 1960s, there was an intensive effort to militarize the capital city of Havana. However, this process was shaped by forces working to consolidate the revolution rather than forces reflecting the Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Much of Havana’s transformation focused on a militarized paradigm of development which, at first, was concentrated on the diversification of agriculture. This strategy, while bearing some similarity to models employed in communist China, was not based on Soviet methodology.

While emphasizing a strong need for planning, Cuba’s focus was on decentralization and provincial self-sufficiency.

A good example can be seen in Castro’s efforts to ruralize Havana and urbanize the countryside. Programs were designed to make the capital more able to provide for its own food production.

More importantly, to overcome conditions of underdevelopment, during the early 1960s, the central focus was on the reduction of the historic dependence on sugar exports.

Sugar symbolized the sources of old repression – slavery when Cuba was a colony of Spain, subservience to foreigners when the island was a republic, and, always, uncertainty in the context of volatile market conditions.

Lessened dependence on sugar was to be achieved in two ways: industrialization and agricultural diversification.

Still, efforts to reduce dependency on sugar did not signify a total abandonment of sugar production, but rather an attempt to pursue lower production at stable and predictable levels of output. At the same time, greater emphasis was given to non-sugar exports.

Cuban planners also hoped to achieve self-sufficiency in food production.

These strategies were expected to reduce Cuban susceptibility to the vagaries of the world sugar market, reduce the need for foreign imports through internal production, improve the Cuban balance of trade, and create new employment opportunities.

Industrial objectives included the development of new import substitution industries, specifically, metallurgy, chemicals, heavy machinery, and transportation equipment.

The investment component of this strategy, Cuba expected, would originate from credits from socialist countries and would allow the organization of new industrial and manufacturing units.

Domestic consumption was to be curtailed to divert resources into industrialization and rapid economic growth.

It would be wrong to interpret Cuba’s actions in these early years as an attempt to spread Marxist – Leninist ideology. Instead, the emphasis was on conciencia, the creation of a fresh mindfulness that would lead to a unique revolutionary ethic.