IPS-English CUBA: Separating the Wheat from the Chaff - Studying the Soviet Legacy Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 15:03:12 -0700 Dalia Acosta HAVANA, Oct 26 (IPS) - Although Cuba survived the demise of its communist allies in the early 1990s, the legacy of its close relationship with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe may still have a bearing on the future of socialism on this Caribbean island nation. Cuba's ties with the now defunct socialist bloc from the 1960s onwards heavily influenced the ways of doing politics, the teaching of Marxist-Leninist doctrine, the functioning of institutions, the structure of the economy, the management of national culture, and even what people wore and how they decorated their homes. ”The greatest harm this legacy has caused is the formation of citizens who lack independent judgement and revolutionary creativity that would enable them to pass on their individuality and knowledge,” Professor Julio Antonio Fernández, of the University of Havana faculty of law, told IPS. In Fernández's view, ”the worst political practices at the worst time of the Soviet state, which was not a revolutionary time, have influenced the way some state policies are determined” on the island. But some characteristics of Cuban political culture do not necessarily originate from the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). ”The revolution began with a strong component of authoritarianism because of the need to defend itself, and to adopt a vertical structure in order to survive,” said Alexander Correa, a researcher at the state Juan Marinello Centre for Research and Development of Cuban Culture. Correa maintains that mass military preparedness, organised shortly after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 to defend the country against U.S. harassment, and the teaching of Marxism-Leninism to the armed forces and militias, led to the spread of authoritarian social structures and ideological practices in society. Fernández and Correa belong to a group of intellectuals who have organised an ongoing workshop, ”Bolshevik Revolution, the History of the USSR and Cuba: 21st century critical socialist analysis,” at the Juan Marinello Centre with the support of the Ministry of Culture. The workshop attempts to ”reconstruct the history of the Bolshevik revolution, as the world's largest historical project to challenge the system of class domination, and at the same time to reconstruct the relations between Cuba and the USSR as they have been inherited and survive into the present,” said professor and writer Julio César Guanche. The workshop organisers give public lectures, and a Working Group made up of 40 people from different disciplines meets in private to pursue the analysis, using methods for the collective construction of knowledge, similar to those used in popular education. ”The idea is to uproot what has been introduced in the name of socialism into the ideology we defend, but which really contradicts its very essence,” Guanche said. ”Our goal is to contribute to the victory of socialist ideas in Cuban society,” he said. ”Cuba had various relationships with the USSR, but there was always conflict between the revolutionary project and its autonomy to exist as an independent entity,” said historian Ariel Dacal, of the non-governmental Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Centre. From 1960, when Moscow bought Cuba's sugar harvest after Washington turned it down, the USSR took on the role of the island's protector within the geopolitical context of the Cold War. And after Cuba's failure to make an economic leap forward with the 1970 harvest, Soviet influence on Cuban socialism became decisive. By the early 1990s, the USSR was Cuba's main trading partner, buying 80 percent of its sugar, 70 percent of its nickel and 40 percent of its citrus production. Moscow also supplied the energy demands of its Caribbean ally, providing 12 million tons of oil a year. Analysing the mistakes that led to the collapse of the USSR is an urgent task, according to the intellectuals who organise the workshop. ”It would be foolish not to consider these problems, as if they had nothing to do with us here in Cuba, or as if history could not repeat itself,” said Fernández, 32. Among the erroneous practices still current in Cuba, the academic listed ”bureaucratic practices in the single party system, ‘verticalism' (top-down hierarchies), lack of popular participation and irreverence for the institutions of participatory government,” including those created by the revolution, like the National Assembly of People's Power, the country's parliament. ”Today much more needs to be done, especially on the ideological plane, if socialism is to continue to be a viable prospect. It's no longer just about not repeating the mistakes of the USSR and of ‘real' socialism,” said Fernández, who is convinced that his generation faces ”an uphill task” in this respect. University professor Hiran Hernández, the editor of the quarterly publication Temas, said that the major problems facing Cuba today, ”as a nation and as a revolution, are the emigration of young people, the ageing of the population, the future of the revolutionary project, and the future of socialism as both project and dream.” In Hernández's view, young people have generally been used ”as shock troops, or simply as mouthpieces to repeat slogans. A more creative and active attitude, with fresh ideas, is needed. The Revolution needs this in order to continue, and socialism needs it in order to be possible,” he said. Thus the future of socialism on the island would appear to depend, to a large extent, on reconstructing the social consensus about the system, which has without a doubt been eroded in the last 15 years by the introduction of capitalist elements into the economy, and their effects on society. ”Socialism isn't just for one sector, like the poor, black people or women, say, but should be understood as a system that embraces the whole of society and all people, not replacing some people by others, but liberating all of them, which was originally the purest emancipatory idea of Marxism,” Guanche said. ”We are part of a process that is going on in other parts of Cuban society and that will continue to develop in the medium term; part of a current that, for the Revolution's sake, should broaden and deepen in the near future,” he said. ***** + CUBA: Social Beefs, Proposals Voiced in Widespread Debates (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39620) + POLITICS-CUBA: Women, Local Elections and People's Power (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39734) + CUBA: Raúl Castro Acknowledges Day-to-Day Hardships (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38680) + Taller Permanente ”Revolución bolchevique, historia de la URSS y Cuba. Análisis crítico socialista desde el siglo XXI” - in Spanish (http://www.cuba-urss.cult.cu) + Revista Temas - Cultura, Ideología, Sociedad - in Spanish (http://www.temas.cult.cu/) (END/IPS/LA IP CR CS PR CV/TRASP-VD-SW/DA-BLC/DM/07) = 10261750 ORP013 NNNN