A Short History of Revolutionary Cuba by Antoni Kapcia

Author:Antoni Kapcia
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786726414
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

7

Debate III

1985–9

By the middle of the 1980s, therefore, the old internal battles and differing definitions of ‘revolution’, ‘The Revolution’ and ‘socialism’ were not just simmering below the surface (with the cubanista radicals, in discrete pockets of the system, clinging doggedly to visible traces of their readings of Cuban history and of the Revolution’s essential meaning) but were beginning to come to the surface itself, as doubts emerged about some aspects of institutionalization. Therefore, some sort of reckoning, perhaps yet another debate, was due just as in 1962 and 1970.

But what exactly was the crisis behind this new round of debate in Cuba’s perpetual cycle? The reality was that it was complex and not necessarily visible, quite unlike the early 1960s crises (with the massive disruption wrought by rapid transformation and sudden isolation, and with the relatively public nature of the open discussion) or the 1969–70 crisis of confidence, active support and effectiveness. In fact, there were at least three parallel, but not necessarily related, developments, which together called into question many of the assumptions of the preceding decade.

The first was one of the most basic, affecting Cuba’s ability to survive and sustain the comfortable economic evolution widely enjoyed since 1972: the growing, but not yet fully evident, crisis within Comecon itself, with potentially serious implications for a newly Comecon-dependent Cuba. This crisis had long been brewing within the somewhat ossified Soviet-determined (and Soviet-benefiting) structures and processes: it chiefly affected the productivity of both the carefully constructed and rigid trade mechanisms of many Comecon countries’ own industrial and service-sector operations, both often depending on massive state subsidies and now becoming increasingly unsustainable and expensive. It also affected consumer purchasing power everywhere, in turn affecting production and income. For Cuba, Comecon membership had clearly become a life raft, much more so than any alleged direct Soviet support or subsidies; Cuba’s post-1972 opening to so many markets hungry for Cuban agricultural goods, together with those same economies’ ability to exchange (mostly manufactured) goods to a product-hungry Cuban market, had allowed the Cuban economy to grow and partly diversify impressively, something long sought by the rebel leadership. For the Socialist Bloc economies, however, the costs of Comecon’s operation were spiralling uncontrollably, breeding frustration at the system’s outdated regulation of what and how much each country could produce and trade internally, preventing development into new areas, investment in greater productivity and any incentive to move into new products or challenge competitor countries within the organization. Hence, by the mid-1980s, the organization’s credibility was being questioned, as was already seen spectacularly in Poland with its widespread discontent (expressed through Solidarity) and Jaruzelski’s martial law from 1981.

Cuba’s leaders, increasingly aware of this, prepared to seek ways out of the looming dilemma. Hence, a reassessment began, officially so in 1986 with the convening of the delayed 1985 PCC congress; that event formalized the ‘Rectification’ process which partly addressed ways of coping with Comecon’s imminent breakdown. Interestingly, it was within the FAR, under Raúl Castro’s pragmatic direction, that attention

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.