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The
Cuban Revolution and Western Intellectuals and Cuba: A
Personal Report Introduction: During the summer of 1973, I had the opportunity to travel to Cuba for close to a month with a small group of North American radical academics. I had received a visa from Cuba. In addition, I had been granted permission to travel to Cuba by the State Department, in order to pursue historical research and to establish contacts with my Cuban counterparts in the academic community. Upon returning, I wrote up my purely personal impressions of the visit for a monthly radical magazine, Liberation. I presented what I hoped was a balanced and yet critical report; one that frankly faced the many questions I had about recent developments in Cuba, and yet conveyed something of the solid and remarkable achievements made by the Cuban people during the previous fifteen years. I also concentrated upon one other aspect of my visit: the nature of how my fellow United States academics responded to Cuba. I was soon to find out that my tentative and personal impressions of Cuba were regarded as highly controversial, if not entirely heretical. For reasons outlined in the longer introductory essay I have written on the Cuban Revolution and Western intellectuals, Liberation received scores of letters outlining the objections to my report held by many on the North American Left. To some, I had gone beyond heresy and toward betrayal. "There is some good in everything," one reader proclaimed. "The blockade of Cuba kept the intellectual paws of Professor Ronald Radosh off the Cuban people for fifteen years." And with a bit more subtlety, but with equal disdain, the Marxist scholar Professor Philip S. Foner declared that my article would be of future value "only as demonstrating how a narrow prejudice against any form of Socialism which does not adhere to rituals of men like Radosh blind such people to the realities of historical, revolutionary developments." As I hope to show in "The Cuban Revolution and Western Intellectuals," it is those who adhere to an idealized and uncritical view of the revolutionary process in Cuba who are unable to accurately analyze and discuss the Cuban Revolution. What follows, therefore, are my own two contributions to a better understanding of the Cuban Revolution. In the first place, I comment upon the critical reaction to my personal view of Cuba. I have tried to show where that reaction comes from, and to respond to it. Finally, I take up the complex problem of material versus moral incentives, and try to show that Cuba's decision to adopt the formerly rejected system of incentives was more complicated than I originally understood. I have decided to use that essay as a reader's preface to my original piece--"Cuba: A Personal Report"--as it first appeared in Liberation. The Cuban Revolution and Western Intellectuals The title of my article, "Cuba: A Personal Report," was intentional. It was meant to be a personal view of impressions gained while traveling in Cuba. It was also meant to provide reflection on the Revolution itself, reflections growing from the clearly defined political context with which I viewed the Revolution. It also included comments about the reaction to Cuba by many members of the group with which I was traveling--"Cubaphiles," as writer Allen Young subsequently dubbed them. I never suspected that the article would create a controversy that brought more letters in response than to any article published during the past five years of Liberation. (The response, for those wishing to pursue it, may be found in the March-April, 1974 and the May-June, 1974 issues.) Those who objected to my account presented the following arguments: 1. It is both arrogant and counterrevolutionary to criticize the first Free Territory of America. The Cuban government and Cuban citizens know more about their nation than any radical tourist. It is sheer audacity to speak out after a trip of brief duration. 2. My report was selective and biased. Cubans receive free medical care, free education, almost entirely free rent, and a minimum monthly wage of 25 pesos per dependent. Despite problems in their society, they have more security than many North Americans. Cubans reveal a cooperative spirit visibly absent in the United States. "For all its flaws," one of my critics put it, the Cuban Revolution "is a profound and beautiful reality." 3. The Revolution has not made any basic shifts in its foreign policy. That policy is still anti-imperialist and revolutionary. Soviet influence is minimal. The Cuban government reveals a vigorous support of revolution wherever that is a real historical possibility. It gives active backing to guerrilla movements in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. 4. Soviet aid to Cuba has given the Revolution the breathing space and the means to overcome the attempts of the United States to destroy the Revolution. U.S. radicals must concentrate on defeating American imperialism. For that reason, they must refrain from criticizing repressive policies within Russia, such as persecution of the Soviet dissidents. To focus on the limitations of the Soviet Union serves only to "detract from the fight against US imperialism." Let us take up these arguments point by point, and then comment on some of them at length. 1. Cubaphiles do not mind those who speak out and present a view entirely in accord with Cuban governmental policy. If a visitor is there for ten days and his comments are laudatory, they have no objection. What they do object to is any account that shows awareness of the complexity, contradictions, and ambiguities of the Cuban experience. 2. In writing my report, I assumed that most people on the Left were already aware of what the Cuban Revolution has meant for Latin America. My readers already knew, I assumed, that like other socialist countries, Cuba provides free medical care, free education, etc. The article appeared in Liberation, not Time. I sought, rather than repeat the obvious, to raise questions about the meaning of the Revolution--rather than endorse every action of the Revolution as an example of how it is moving Cuba closer to Communist paradise. 3. Those who argue that the Cuban Revolution has not shifted its foreign policy refuse to accept reality. They refuse to acknowledge that the Cuban government now shows a friendly attitude toward conservative Latin-America governments. How will they be ready for Cuba's new willingness to come to terms with the United States--a position at odds with older, firm denials of any such intentions? There is, of course, nothing wrong with or surprising about Cuba's desire to break the blockade and resume normal relations with the United States. It does not mean that Cuba has sold out the Revolution because Castro now favors détente. It does become disconcerting, however, to find that in the interests of détente, the Cuban government has at times allowed its interests as a nation state to interfere with simple gestures of solidarity. Back in 1968, the Cuban government failed to protest the Mexican government's massacre of students--who were protesting in the name of the Cuban Revolution itself! Cuban then participated in the October Mexican Olympics at a time when lean-Paul Sartre, Bertrand Russell, and others were calling for an international boycott. 4. I do not contest the assertion that Soviet aid has saved the Cuban Revolution from collapse. That is obviously indeed the case. But it is another matter to argue that Cuba has not paid any kind of price for the receipt of that aid. It is also ludicrous to allow a concern for the Cuban Revolution's well-being to lead many who should know better to apologies for Soviet repression. Cubaphiles who make such arguments are thinking of how best to protect and win friends for the Cuban Revolution. They fear that if they criticize Soviet repression, they will be giving credibility to the anti-Communist cause. They do not seem to understand that the credibility of Soviet socialism is itself damaged by the repressive policies of the Soviet government--not by the willingness of radicals to condemn such repression.
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