6    Cuba, the USSR, and the Non-Aligned Movement

Negotiating Non-Alignment

MICHELLE GETCHELL

Fidel Castro was never content with confining his ambitions to as small a stage as Cuba. Immediately after the triumph of the 26th of July movement, he held up the Cuban Revolution as an example for the rest of Latin America and the Third World. On 3 January, a mere two days after Batista fled the country, Castro delivered a speech in Santiago declaring that “all of America is watching the course of the fate of this revolution.”1 As early as November 1959, Assistant Secretary of State Roy Rubottom observed that Castro not only rejected the U.S. conception of hemispheric solidarity—which envisioned the Western Hemisphere as a united, anti-Communist front under the firm leadership of the United States—but also favored “a greater role for Latin America, if possible under Cuba’s leadership, in world affairs, though not as a component part of the Western community of nations, but rather as an independent force, associated closely with the Afro-Asian bloc.”2

Castro did seek a leadership role in the burgeoning Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), not merely to further his own personal ambitions, but also for strategic purposes. U.S. opposition to the Cuban Revolution, undeniable after the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, was a powerful goad to Castro’s efforts to establish and strengthen relations with Third World leaders. Moreover, the outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis had starkly revealed that the Soviet protective umbrella was leaky at best. After Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had denied Castro’s request for an open and public arms deal, preferring instead to cloak the stationing of nuclear missiles on Cuban territory in secrecy and thereby present U.S. leaders with a fait accompli, he then bargained away those missiles, without even deigning to consult the Cubans.3 In return for the withdrawal of the weapons, the Soviets secured U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s pledge not to invade Cuba—a pledge that Castro considered worthless, given the Kennedy administration’s open and obvious hostility to the Cuban Revolution. Becoming a part of the NAM was thus not only consistent with Castro’s worldview but also served as a strategy to shore up the Cuban Revolution and prevent it from becoming isolated in the international arena. Yet Castro’s international ambitions and aspirations to Third World leadership frequently conflicted with Cuba’s role as Soviet ally.4

Cuban foreign policy was among the most significant sources of tension with the Soviets. Cuban support for violent revolutionary movements in the Western Hemisphere contradicted the line of the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU), which emphasized peaceful coexistence with the United States and rejected the armed struggle. The Cuban Revolution and the deepening of the Sino-Soviet split radicalized Communist parties and national liberation movements in many parts of the Third World, threatening Moscow’s claims to revolutionary leadership.5 In the interest of appeasing the Cubans and smoothing out contentious theoretical disputes, the Soviets developed a series of doctrinal compromises aimed at bolstering Soviet-Cuban solidarity and preventing the Cubans from foraying into Peking’s ideological camp. These compromises continued to emphasize the peaceful path, while endorsing armed struggle in those Latin American countries where the Cubans were providing the bulk of their assistance to guerrilla forces.6 The Cuban leadership viewed its support for revolutionary movements in the Western Hemisphere as critical to Cuban national security, which they saw as being constantly threatened by real (and imagined) U.S. aggression. Though the Cubans had never toed the “peaceful coexistence” line, after the Cuban Missile Crisis they viewed it as a fundamental betrayal of Third World interests and shorthand for the imperialist collusion that had sold out the Cuban Revolution.7

As Cuba’s increasing dependence on the Soviet Union became obvious to Latin American leaders, and as the Kennedy administration sought to facilitate economic and political reforms through the Alliance for Progress, the aim of Castro’s foreign policy shifted from toppling regional dictators to the less laudable goal of discrediting reformist regimes in the hemisphere.8 Cuba had many reasons for supporting the national liberation movements battling such regimes: doing so was consistent with the Marxist-Leninist view that revolution on a worldwide scale was inevitable, it gave Cuba more authority and leverage in its relations with the communist world, and it enhanced Cuban prestige in the Third World, which would help Castro break out of the diplomatic, economic, and political isolation imposed by the United States.9 The Soviets, however, had identified many of these regimes as relatively independent of U.S. political influence or at least striving for such independence; therefore, Castro’s support for subversive movements aimed at toppling these governments undermined Soviet efforts to reestablish and strengthen state-to-state relations with them. Moreover, attempts to use Cuba’s leadership position in the NAM in order to enhance Soviet prestige were sometimes counterproductive.

On the basis of archival and published sources from the NAM, Cuba, and the former Soviet Union, this chapter advances a bold reinterpretation of Cuba’s role in the world. It argues that the radical turn in Cuban foreign policy was the result of Castro’s attempts to pursue Cuban national interests in the context of a Cold War superpower rivalry that largely defined the international system. This rivalry imposed constraints upon the policy choices of actors such as Castro while paradoxically opening up opportunities for such actors to manipulate the system in pursuit of goals that long predated the emergence of the Cold War—namely, goals of political, economic, and social justice. Castro’s attempts to balance his commitments as Soviet ally with leadership of the NAM were not wholly successful. Though he was able to negotiate continued aid from the Soviet Union and assert an independent foreign policy stance when he felt Cuban security interests were at stake, the Soviet-Cuban relationship was rocky at best, and Communist Cuban leadership of the NAM damaged the movement’s international reputation as a vehicle for the interests of the truly nonaligned. In addition to bringing new archival evidence to bear on this topic, this chapter also uses this evidence to reinterpret the scholarly literature on the NAM, Cold War Latin America, and Cuban foreign policy. Though the experience of Latin America in the Cold War is the subject of a good deal of recent scholarship, the literature on the NAM and Cuban foreign policy is still underdeveloped.10 Moreover, we continue to suffer from a very limited understanding of how Latin America as a region came to be identified as a part of the Third World. This chapter suggests that Castro himself, through his efforts to spread the revolution in the Western Hemisphere and adopt a leadership position in the NAM, played a significant role in the process by which Latin America became considered part of the Third World.

Cuba, the Third World, and the Non-Aligned Movement

In the earliest days of the revolution, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara demonstrated a desire to position Cuba as a leader of the Third World. Che believed that in order to consolidate the Cuban Revolution, its leaders should “go out fighting in the international arena.”11 Anticipating that the United States would adopt any conceivable measure to isolate Cuba from its neighbors in the Western Hemisphere, Castro and Guevara sought to strengthen relations with Third World leaders in Africa and Asia. In the summer of 1959, Che was dispatched on an international tour that included stops in many Third World capitals. The purpose of the trip was not merely to indicate Cuban interest in strengthening ties with the countries of the developing world, but also to utilize Third World outreach in order to make contact with representatives of the Soviet bloc.

Reflecting the cultural and ideological cleavages that would fracture Third World solidarity, Che clashed with other Non-Aligned leaders. Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, for instance, was not amused by Che’s wild-eyed radicalism, and diplomats in Yugoslavia did not appreciate his “beatnik” appearance.12 His meeting with Indonesian Prime Minister Sukarno was abruptly terminated when Che nonchalantly dismissed him as a “latifundista [landowner].”13 Despite these personal affronts, Che’s trip allowed him to enter into discussions with the Soviets, while apparently leaving the U.S. administration in the dark about what was transpiring. U.S. policymakers seem not to have grasped the significance of the trip for the positioning of the Cuban Revolution at the vanguard of the emerging NAM.14

The guidelines for membership in the NAM were established in June 1961 at the Cairo Preparatory Committee and stipulated that the country in question should adhere to an independent policy based on the principles of peaceful coexistence, should “consistently support” national independence movements, and should not be a member of any “multilateral military alliance.” If the country did have a bilateral military agreement or remained party to a multilateral defense pact, those arrangements should not have been “deliberately concluded in the context of great power conflicts.” Moreover, if the country “has conceded military bases to a foreign power, the concession should not have been made in the context of great power conflicts.”15

According to these guidelines, Cuba’s membership in the movement was dubious. Although the country was not a member of the Warsaw Pact, it had concluded military agreements with the USSR in the context of the Cold War. However, if this criterion was applied strictly, most Latin American candidates for the NAM would be disqualified because they had signed onto the Rio Pact.16 The only basis upon which Cuba’s claim to nonalignment could be challenged was on the willingness of Cuban leaders to permit the Cold War superpowers to construct military bases on the island. Though Cuba welcomed the stationing of Soviet-supplied nuclear missiles on its territory in 1962, and then again in 1970, when Soviet nuclear missile submarines were allowed to operate out of Cienfuegos, these episodes were considered by the Cubans to be “ephemeral in nature.” And since Castro did not “willingly play host” to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba’s claim to NAM membership did not suffer from the presence of foreign military bases on Cuban soil.17

At the first NAM summit in Belgrade in 1961, Cuba was the only official Latin American member-state in attendance, though Bolivia, Brazil, and Ecuador sent observers.18 Cuba’s invitation to attend the 1961 Belgrade summit was based on Third World solidarity engendered by the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and Third World support for the removal of the U.S. military base at Guantanamo. In the early years of the movement, Cuban officials were careful to distance themselves from too close an association with the Soviet Union and did not begin to actively champion Soviet international positions until the late 1960s and early 1970s.19 Nevertheless, even at this early stage, some members of the movement, particularly the Yugoslav delegation, sought to balance Cuba’s anticipated anti-U.S. hostility by inviting other Latin American countries to attend.20

The Belgrade Declaration lauded “the peoples of Latin America” for their “increasingly effective contribution to the improvement of international relations,” affirmed Cuba’s right to “freely choose” its own social and political system, and condemned the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo as an affront to Cuban sovereignty.21 Notably, the Belgrade Declaration did not mention the United States by name, though the Beijing-backed Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization (AAPSO) sent a statement to the conference praising “the valiant fight of the Cuban people against U.S. imperialism” and expressing hope that the NAM would “take concrete steps” to “expose and defeat the manoeuvres [sic] of the Colonial powers … supported by U.S. imperialism.”22

On 16 September 1961, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev sent a letter to Cuban President Osvaldo Dorticós, in which he described the importance of the Non-Aligned summit in Belgrade. “To a significant degree,” Khrushchev pointed out, “the views of the Soviet government on the current international situation coincide” with those of the Non-Aligned countries.23 He mused that it was virtually impossible “not to be happy” that the neutral nations, with a combined population “representing one-third of humanity,” had “raised their voice in defense of peace” and “decisively repudiated militaristic policies.”24 Considering that the “entire foreign policy” of the socialist bloc, which contained “another one-third of humanity,” was focused on the “struggle to prevent war,” this left the remaining one-third of humanity—the warmongers—outnumbered by a factor of two to one.25 The emergence of the NAM was thus a welcome development indeed.

At the Twenty-Second Congress of the CPSU, in October 1961, Khrushchev emphasized the struggles of the decolonizing world. Touting the “revolutionary struggle” of the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, Khrushchev was convinced that “the 1960s will go down in history as the years of the complete disintegration of the colonial system.” Yet “remnants” of the colonial system remained; Khrushchev singled out the U.S. military base at Guantanamo as evidence of U.S. neo-imperialism.26 The Soviet premier heralded the significance of the countries “often called neutralist,” expressing the conviction that “the basic issues of world politics can no longer be settled without regard for their interests.”27 As one scholar has suggested, Khrushchev’s formulation of the significance of Cold War neutralism was that it represented a form of anti-imperialism; therefore, the foreign policy goals of the neutralist states coincided with the political views of the socialist bloc.28

On 23 May 1963, Castro and Khrushchev worked out a theoretical compromise on the thornier issue of armed struggle. This compromise was crucial to shoring up Soviet-Cuban solidarity after the rupture in relations following the Cuban Missile Crisis. After refusing Castro’s request for a public arms deal, Khrushchev then negotiated the withdrawal of Soviet-supplied nuclear weaponry, without even bothering to consult the Cubans. The episode, which sparked an anti-Soviet backlash in Cuba, suggested to Castro that Moscow was an unreliable ally that prioritized good relations with the American imperialists over support for its socialist brethren. The compromise was also vital if the Soviet Union was to maintain its claim to leadership of the socialist world in view of the ideological threats posed by Chinese and Cuban radicalism. The Cuban and Chinese Revolutions had more in common with each other than either had in common with the Bolshevik Revolution. And both Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro believed that as the revolutionary leaders of agrarian, colonized, and underdeveloped countries, they had more to offer Third World revolutionary leaders than the Soviets did. The Soviet-Cuban joint communiqué stated that “the question of the peaceful or non-peaceful road to socialism in one country or another will be definitely decided by the struggling peoples themselves.”29 This theoretical shift was interpreted by orthodox Communist parties as a confirmation of their nonviolent tactics, while allowing Castro to continue Cuban support for guerrilla groups in the Western Hemisphere. The year after the issuance of the joint communiqué, he was already back to trumpeting the “inevitability” of the armed struggle.30

In the fall of 1963, Che Guevara published an article on guerrilla warfare. The piece, a slap in the face to the Soviet party line on the peaceful path to power, asserted “the necessity of guerrilla action in Latin America as the central axis of the struggle.”31 Then, in a speech in November, Che called for the Cuban people to demonstrate solidarity with the people of Vietnam, not out of an altruistic sense of “proletarian internationalism,” but because Vietnam was “the great laboratory of Yankee imperialism,” where the troops “are being trained … that one day will be able to defeat our guerrillas—ours in all America.”32 While Che’s view was clearly a Manichean one, pitting the forces of colonialism and imperialism against the righteous struggles of the mythical “people,” this speech can also be read as a tacit rebuke to the Soviet Union, which in the minds of the more radical Cuban leaders was not doing enough to support its socialist brethren in the Third World.

By 1964, Cuban support for armed guerrilla movements in the hemisphere had become a major source of tension in the Soviet-Cuban alliance. The Soviets, for their part, were frustrated with Castro’s revolutionary ambitions, as they tended to complicate relations with other Latin American countries and to impede efforts at détente with the United States.33 Castro and other Cuban leaders did not hesitate to sharply criticize the Soviets, whom they deemed opportunistic and eager to pander to U.S. interests. The Cubans also rebuked the Soviets for being too stingy in their aid to Third World countries and not doing enough to help their struggling Third World allies—not just Cuba, but North Korea and North Vietnam as well.34

The 1964 summit of the NAM was held in Cairo in October and the list of Western Hemisphere countries sending observers expanded dramatically. Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Jamaica, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, and Venezuela all sent observers to Cairo. The summit convened mere months after the Organization of American States (OAS) had adopted a resolution mandating that all member-states sever diplomatic and consular relations with Cuba and suspend all trade and sea transportation, except for humanitarian purposes.35 The aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis had witnessed not only an increase in anti-Cuban sentiment in the Western Hemisphere, but also a growing aversion to the ways in which the Cold War superpower struggle continued to dominate U.S. relations with Latin America. Many Latin American leaders were dissatisfied with both Cuba and the United States, and this was partially reflected in their rising interest in Non-Alignment.36

Though the bulk of the summit was devoted to the African independence struggle, the Cairo Declaration drew attention to the case of Puerto Rico and condemned all “manifestations of colonialism and neo-colonialism in Latin America.”37 The statement on the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo went further than it had in the Belgrade Declaration, which had described it as a “North American” base and merely acknowledged Cuban opposition to it, noting that its presence affected Cuban sovereignty. Reflecting the influence of the Cuban delegation, the Cairo declaration urged the United States “to negotiate the evacuation of this base.”38

In November, a conference of Latin American Communist parties was held in Havana, symbolizing Cuban leadership of the region’s Communists. Moscow availed itself of the opportunity to assail the Chinese and to block Beijing’s ideological influence. Present at the conference were doctrinaire Communists loyal to the Soviet party line, and while the CPSU sent observers, the Chinese Communist Party did not. The proceedings were thus buffered against Chinese and even fidelista ideological heresies.39 The final communiqué issued by the conference exhorted Latin American revolutionaries to strengthen the “unity of the international communist movement,” which can be read as a statement of support for the USSR in its dispute with the Chinese, who believed that revolutionary forces could succeed only by rejecting the “revisionism” of the Cubans and Soviets.40 A compromise was reached on the issue of armed struggle, which was approved in the case of six countries. The Communist parties would support the “freedom fighters” of Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Paraguay, and Venezuela, while the parties of the other countries would continue to follow peaceful means.41

After a year of aggressive Cuban support for guerrilla movements throughout the continent—and not only in countries approved in the late 1964 Communist Party agreement—the Havana-based Afro-Asian-Latin American Peoples’ Solidarity Organization (OSPAAAL) convened its inaugural summit in January 1966. Also known as the Tricontinental Conference, the idea had germinated at the most recent meeting of the Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Organization (AAPSO) in Accra, Ghana, in May 1965. Prompted by radical African states such as Algeria, AAPSO devoted special attention to Latin America, and its delegates decided to launch the broader OSPAAAL organization in Havana the following year.42

Often contrary to the wishes of its allies in Moscow, revolutionary Cuba rejected moderate nonalignment throughout the 1960s, adopting a more radical position that culminated in the 1966 launch of the Organización de Solidaridad de los Pueblos de Africa, Asia y América Latina (OSPAAAL, Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America). Commonly known as the Tricontinental, OSPAAAL created a series of iconic images typically including a map, images of a face or fist of a revolutionary fighter, and a rifle. Produced for the third anniversary of the Tricontinental’s January 1966 launch, this late 1968 poster by Cuban artist Alfredo González Rostgaard suggests the global scope of Havana’s independent foreign policy and its linkage of Latin America’s anti-imperial struggle with similar movements elsewhere in the Global South. (Image courtesy of Lincoln Cushing / Docs Populi.)

The introduction to the conference proceedings clearly stated that the historic goal of the meeting was to unite “the two great contemporary currents of the World Revolution,” the socialist revolution spearheaded by the USSR and the “parallel current of the revolution for national liberation.” It was noted as especially appropriate that the meeting place was in Havana, because the Cuban Revolution was “in effect the concretization [sic] of the union of these two historic currents.”43 Cuba was thus recognized as the tangible link between the socialist bloc and the Third World. The text of the conference reflected the strong influence of the Cuban delegation, with repeated references to the machinations of Yankee imperialism and a description of the OAS as the “Yankee Ministry of the Colonies.”44 The central references to the Soviet Union in the conference proceedings and declarations were laudatory, praising the Russian Revolution and crediting the socialist bloc with providing crucial support to the national liberation movements of the Third World.

The Tricontinental Conference took place during a period of heightened Sino-Cuban conflict, and Castro’s opening remarks included explicit criticisms of the Chinese leadership.45 Soviet aims for the conference were to enhance Cuba’s prestige in the Third World while undermining China’s.46 Yet the Cubans continued to promote armed struggle as the only means of achieving revolutionary socialism and to make statements that were implicitly critical of the Soviets. Che Guevara sent a message to the conference, which focused on the plight of the Vietnamese people, whom he characterized as “forgotten” and “tragically alone.” In a more direct critique of the USSR, Che blamed not only “U.S. imperialism,” but also “those who … hesitated to make Vietnam an inviolable part of the socialist world.”47 Insisting that the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America “must answer imperialist violence with revolutionary violence,” the conference asserted that “the effective channel to reach victory is armed insurrection.”48

Castro’s speech at the closing session of the conference echoed these themes. “Sooner or later,” he asserted, “the peoples will have to fight, arms in hand, for their liberation.”49 The Cuban leader’s hostility toward the OAS was reflected in a resolution declaring that the OAS “has no juridical or moral authority whatsoever to represent the Latin American continent.”50 The conference further resolved “to lend the most determined assistance to the revolutionary movements in Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Panama, Ecuador and other Caribbean and South American countries.”51 In Castro’s view, any Latin American government that adhered to the principles of the Inter-American System—principles that were designed as a mere smokescreen for Yankee imperialism—was by definition a puppet government serving the ends of U.S. monopolies and local oligarchs.

In August, the Soviet Foreign Ministry prepared a report on the U.S. government’s “aggressive actions” against Cuba, which involved a propaganda campaign aimed at discrediting the Tricontinental. Secretary of State Dean Rusk had informed Congress that the Havana conference “reflects the strengthening of terrorist and subversive activity.”52 The Soviet Foreign Ministry also reported on the successful use by the United States of the OAS to further its anti-Castro agenda. The OAS had been used as a mechanism to pressure the countries of the Western Hemisphere into isolating Cuba. Moreover, the United States continued to push for the creation of “permanent armed forces,” under the auspices of the OAS, to use as a “tool in the struggle against the national liberation movement in Latin America.”53 This reflected the Cuban view of the creation of the Inter-American Peace Force and its deployment in the Dominican Republic the previous year. The Tricontinental had issued a resolution “condemning the so-called Inter-American Peace Force” as “the armed counter-revolution of Yankee imperialism,” which, through the “participation of the Latin American puppet troops,” was “disguised as Latin American.”54 The prominence of the issue in the Soviet Foreign Ministry report suggests that to a significant extent, Cuban fears and preoccupations remained central to Soviet perceptions of U.S.-Latin American relations.

In an environment of rising Soviet discomfort over Cuba’s persisting support for armed liberation movements in Latin America, in January 1967, Castro and Dorticós penned a letter to the general secretary of the CPSU, Leonid Brezhnev, chairman of the Supreme Soviet, Nikolai Podgorny, and chairman of the Council of Ministers, Alexei Kosygin. The letter affirmed the loyalty of Cuba to the Soviet Union, assuring the Soviet leaders that the “friendship and cooperation between our peoples will continue to strengthen in the joint struggle against the reactionary and exploitative forces oppressing the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.”55 Dorticós and Castro expressed their strong desire for “the unity of all progressive and revolutionary forces of the world in their struggle for the utter annihilation of U.S. imperialism,” and for the “definitive victory of the communist and socialist cause.”56 These statements were aimed at reassuring the Soviets of Cuban friendship in the face of the ongoing tensions over Havana’s Latin American activities and Cuba’s previous critical statements regarding the USSR’s lack of revolutionary zeal.

Two months later, Castro vehemently denied that Cuba was a Soviet “satellite” and proclaimed that he would “never ask anyone’s permission … be it in ideology or in domestic or foreign affairs.” He even expounded upon the real meaning of Communism, arguing that in the context of the Western Hemisphere, “what defines a communist is … action in the armed revolutionary movement.”57 Clearly, Castro recognized that his reliance on Soviet largesse contributed to the labeling of Cuba as “Soviet satellite.” Yet he chafed under that label and the circumscribed independence of action it implied; seeking through reassurances to the Soviets to keep the aid flowing, Castro reiterated Cuba’s independent orientation for international consumption.

The first meeting of the Latin American Solidarity Organization (OLAS), which emerged from the Tricontinental Conference, was held in Havana in August 1967. The Cubans envisioned the conference as an opportunity for the revolutionary movements of the hemisphere to “strengthen their solidarity and renew for the benefit of world public opinion the accusations against the growing American imperialist domination of Latin America and the complicity of the native oligarchies in this repression.”58 Just as the Cubans were preparing for the opening of the conference, Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin paid them a visit to warn against the regime’s insistence upon the armed struggle and its continued provision of support for violent revolutionary movements in Latin America.59 Kosygin’s visit did not yield the anticipated results. Castro used the conference to snub the Soviets, by ensuring that most delegations were headed by non-Communist revolutionary leaders and by issuing provocative statements that were clearly aimed at Moscow. Arguing that “there is a much broader movement on this continent than the movement composed simply of the communist parties in Latin America,” Castro defiantly declared that “we shall judge the conduct of organizations, not by what they claim they are, but by … their conduct.” In case that was too subtle, Castro responded to those who claimed that socialism could be achieved peacefully with the retort that “this is a lie, and those who say in any place in Latin America that they are going to achieve power peacefully will be deceiving the masses.”60

The USSR had hoped to use Cuba to raise its prestige and increase its influence in Latin America and the Third World and had provided generous subsidies to the Cuban Revolution. Now Castro was blatantly rejecting the idea of solidarity with the Latin American Communist parties and developing his own international organization, thereby discrediting the Soviet Union among the non-Communist revolutionary movements in Latin America and the Third World.61 OLAS did not last long, however, but was folded into the Organization for Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (OSPAAAL). Moreover, subsequent events contributed to a rapprochement between the Cubans and the Soviets.

The Death of Che Guevara and Cuban-Soviet Rapprochement

Che Guevara’s attempts to establish a foco in Bolivia, from which it was hoped that the revolutionary struggle would spread throughout South America, was a major source of tension in the Cuban-Soviet relationship. Castro had apparently sent Che to Bolivia without consulting the Soviets, and his decision was frowned upon in the Kremlin. Che’s efforts in Bolivia threatened Soviet attempts at détente with the United States, which was more important to Moscow than fomenting guerrilla warfare in South America. Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin met with U.S. President Lyndon Johnson in New Jersey in June 1967, and apparently, an exchange of acrimonious letters between Brezhnev and Castro had prompted Kosygin to visit Havana on the eve of the OLAS conference before returning to Moscow.62 Though Kosygin’s efforts to bring Castro to heel were apparently unsuccessful, the failure of Che’s mission in Bolivia finally catalyzed rapprochement between Cuba and the USSR.

Che’s attempts to establish a foco in Bolivia ultimately came to naught, and there were several reasons for this failure. He was thoroughly unprepared for the level of acrimony between himself and Mario Monje, the secretary general of Bolivia’s Communist Party. The tension between Monje and Guevara reflected the broader doctrinal dispute between radical revolutionaries and orthodox pro-Soviet Communist parties over the proper source of leadership for the revolution. For orthodox Communists like Monje, the army was a tool to be controlled by the party, whereas for Che, the idea of subordinating his military leadership to the political leadership of the party was anathema.63 For Monje to accept Che’s leadership of the Bolivian struggle would entail revising his entire theoretical approach and sacrificing party leadership of the struggle to a ragtag band of foreign guerrillas. In addition to their failure to account for the opposition of orthodox Communists, Castro and Guevara also underestimated the strength of Bolivian nationalism. The widespread lack of support for revolution among the Bolivian peasantry was a reality check for the Cubans, who had posited their own revolutionary experience as the model for the rest of Latin America. They failed to consider that conditions in rural Bolivia were far from what they had been in 1950s Cuba.64

Moreover, Che had been an even more vehement critic of Soviet policies than Castro. In March 1964, he had delivered a speech to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in which he chided the socialist bloc for the terms of trade offered to underdeveloped countries. Observing that “the socialist camp has developed uninterruptedly,” he lamented that “in contrast to the rapid rate of growth of the … socialist camp […] the unquestionable fact is that a large proportion of the so-called underdeveloped countries are in total stagnation.”65 Thus, he suggested that the socialist countries, with their highly developed industrial economies, had more in common with the capitalists than with the underdeveloped world. In February 1965, at the second seminar of the AAPSO, he openly censured the Soviet Union for not doing enough to support decolonizing countries. Arguing that the development of such countries was the responsibility of the socialist bloc, he implied that the USSR had eschewed its international obligations. The socialist countries, due to the terms of trade based on world market prices, were “accomplices of imperialist exploitation.” Che argued that “the socialist countries have a moral duty to end their tacit complicity with the Western exploiting countries.”66

Che’s capture and execution by the Bolivian armed forces were virtually ignored in Moscow. The only public demonstration to commemorate Che’s life was a rally by a small group of Latin American students from Moscow’s Patrice Lumumba People’s Friendship University. Soviet news media continued to sneer at the brand of revolutionary “adventurism” exemplified by Guevara, and a month after his execution, the general secretary of the CPSU, Leonid Brezhnev, gave a speech in which he declared that socialist revolutions should be launched only in countries where the necessary objective conditions for revolution had already been fulfilled. The message was clearly a reference to Che’s failure in Bolivia. Orthodox Communist parties in Latin America followed suit, issuing denunciations of armed struggle and declaring their loyalty to the CPSU line.67

The death of Che and the obliteration of the nascent Bolivian foco he had nurtured, combined with guerrilla defeats in Guatemala, Colombia, and Venezuela, contributed to a very slow but gradual improvement in Cuba’s relations with the USSR. Though Castro continued to aid revolutionary movements in the Western Hemisphere, he was more selective in determining which movements to support, and he watered down his fiery rhetoric about the inevitability of the armed struggle.68 In November 1967, Cuban Foreign Minister Raúl Roa sent a telegram to his Soviet counterpart, Andrei Gromyko, expressing confidence that “friendly relations and mutual cooperation between Cuba and the USSR,” along with the “support rendered to all peoples struggling for liberation,” would remain an “important contribution in our struggle against imperialism, colonialism, and neo-colonialism.”69

However, two weeks later, the Soviet embassy in Havana reported that the Cubans were continuing to espouse the armed path. The Communist daily Granma had emphasized the significance of the “armed struggle against imperialists and exploiters.” The publication of Cuba’s National Association of Small Farmers had also printed an article lauding the Bolshevik Revolution, noting its significance for the peoples of Latin America, especially of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Colombia, where “with weapons in hand they battle against imperialism and the reactionary oligarchs for their freedom.”70 Virtually “all [press] materials” had focused on the “role and significance of the armed uprising in the fulfillment of the October revolution and accordingly, emphasized the importance and applicability of the armed struggle of the peoples of the modern era.”71 If the Soviets were looking for indications that Castro had moderated his stance in the aftermath of Che’s capture and execution, such expressions were certainly not reassuring.

The Cultural Congress of Havana, held from 4 to 12 January 1968, provided the Soviets with further evidence that Castro had not moderated his position in the aftermath of Che’s death. Cuban President Dorticós delivered the inaugural address to the congress, in which he declared that “noble revolutionary violence had to play an inevitable and decisive role … in that climb of man to the summit of his true liberation.”72 Mere weeks later, Castro made another display of Cuban independence from the Soviets. Aníbal Escalante had returned to Cuba in 1964 after a brief exile in Czechoslovakia and had resumed leadership duties in the Cuban Communist Party. In January 1968, behind closed doors, Fidel and Raúl Castro prosecuted the pro-Soviet “micro-faction” of the party, delivering a clear message to Moscow that it no longer had any Communist allies in Havana with whom it could intrigue against Fidel.73 The timing of the exposure of the micro-faction coincided with the anniversary of José Martí’s birthday and thus was symbolic of Cuban strivings toward national independence and sovereignty. Developments later in the year, however, would constitute a turning point in the Cuban-Soviet alliance, and Castro would begin to take active measures to improve relations with his patrons in the Kremlin.

The watershed moment was the crushing of the Prague Spring. Though Castro supported the Soviet invasion, he also continued to tacitly chastise Moscow for its unwillingness to provide military support to the peoples of North Vietnam, North Korea, and Cuba itself. By refusing to condemn the invasion, Castro was signaling to the Soviets that he would support their foreign policy line. However, his speech was not a wholehearted endorsement of Soviet policy; indeed, it contained several veiled criticisms of Moscow. Yet the occasion did represent a turning point, after which Soviet-Cuban relations were much closer and less contentious.

Castro would never really abandon his emphasis on the armed struggle, and he would continue to promote the necessity of revolutionary violence even after the election of Salvador Allende in Chile vindicated the CPSU line. Nevertheless, during the early 1970s, Cuban foreign policy became more moderate and aimed less at fomenting violent revolutions than at reestablishing traditional diplomatic and political relations with Latin American countries and reintegrating into the Inter-American community. By the mid-1970s, Cuba had largely broken out of the diplomatic and political isolation imposed by the United States. The coming to power of Allende in Chile, as well as the military coup that brought General Juan Velasco to power in Peru, marked the beginning of a progressive alliance in Latin America. Castro also modified his support for revolutionary movements in the hemisphere and became more open to bargaining with Latin American leaders. As a result, several Latin American countries reestablished diplomatic ties with Cuba and signed trade agreements.74

The Latin American governments had excluded Cuba from their caucus in the United Nations, but in 1969 Cuba was elected to a vacant spot in the U.N. Development Program’s Council. Cuba had also been excluded from membership in the Group of 77, a caucus for less developed countries within the UN Conference for Trade and Development. In 1971, at the initiative of the Peruvian government and with the backing of the nonaligned countries, Cuba was admitted to membership in the group.75 In 1972, Cuba became a member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, the Soviet-led economic assistance organization comprising the socialist bloc countries. Later in the year, the Soviets and the Cubans signed a series of trade, economic, and financial agreements, in which generous credits and the restructuring of Cuban debt featured prominently.76 Cuba’s economic dependence on the USSR at this point was almost total, and as a result, Castro moderated his anti-Soviet rhetoric and subdued his hostility toward regional Communist parties. Cuban support for the Soviet international agenda manifested in the United Nations and especially in the NAM.

The 1973 summit of the NAM in Algiers provided the occasion for Castro to demonstrate solidarity with the Soviets. Whereas previous Cuban delegates had deemphasized their country’s status as Marxist-Leninist, Castro declared up front that Cuba was a Marxist-Leninist state and expressed his gratitude to the Soviets, without the efforts of whom “the end of colonialism would have been absolutely impossible.”77 Castro put forth the “natural ally” thesis, which held that the Soviet Union and the Communist bloc were the natural allies of the NAM. It was a difficult sell. Influential states such as Yugoslavia, India, Tanzania, and Algeria rejected the thesis in favor of the concept of “equidistance”—a refusal to endorse one side or the other in the Cold War, thus remaining equally distant from both superpowers. The “two imperialisms” theory, moreover, which was spearheaded by the Chinese and viewed the United States and the Soviet Union as morally equivalent, was held by many Non-Aligned states, with Algeria and Libya among its strongest advocates. Castro strenuously repudiated the theory of two imperialisms, extolling the “glorious, heroic, and extraordinary services that the Soviet people have rendered to humanity.”78 Indeed, as others have pointed out, for Castro to accept the “two imperialisms” theory would “suggest that he is exchanging one imperialism for another.”79 Despite being unable to convince his colleagues of the natural ally thesis, Castro did succeed in removing any direct condemnation of the USSR from the official conference statements.80 Moreover, the Algiers summit marked the advent of the NAM as a reliably anti-U.S. voting bloc in the United Nations.81

In the statement’s various resolutions and declarations, the United States was repeatedly singled out for special condemnation. The Soviet Union was not mentioned by name, except for once in the context of a laudatory statement on the progress of East-West détente.82 The head of the AAPSO delegation to the conference, moreover, delivered an address in which the “false theory about ‘superpowers’ ” was denounced as an attempt to smear the socialist bloc with the imperialist label, when in fact the socialist states had proffered “multilateral and disinterested aid” to Third World national liberation forces.83 The Soviets rejected the view that had emerged among many in the underdeveloped world that the main schism of the times was not between East and West but between North and South, between the rich industrialized countries and the poor underdeveloped ones. To accept the latter view would be to acknowledge that the Soviet Union was in fact a rich, industrialized country and was therefore far removed from the daily challenges of the underdeveloped Third World. This points up a dilemma in the Soviet approach to the Third World. On the one hand, the Soviet Union touted its industrial development as a model for the nations of the Global South. On the other hand, the extent of that industrial development suggested that Moscow was perhaps out of touch with Third World realities. This was a dilemma the Soviets were never quite able to resolve.

Fidel Castro became the chairman of the NAM in 1979, and the sixth summit was held in Havana that September. Though Castro would maintain his leadership position until 1983, the Havana summit represented the apex of Cuban influence in the movement. In his opening speech, he castigated the Chinese as “new allies” of U.S. imperialism and charged both China and the United States with having “contrived the repugnant intrigue” that Cuba would attempt to convert the NAM into an “instrument of Soviet policy.” Castro thanked the Soviet Union enthusiastically for providing crucial support to Cuba in its revolutionary struggle against Yankee imperialism, and he credited the “glorious October Revolution” with having “started a new age in human history.”84

The Havana Declaration reflected Castro’s preoccupations and priorities. The declaration expressed “particular satisfaction” with the “expansion of nonalignment in Latin America and the Caribbean” and “profound satisfaction” with the first NAM meeting to be held in Latin America.85 Special attention was accorded to Latin America, which had taken its place alongside its “African and Asian brothers and sisters” in the struggle against imperialism. At the Belgrade summit in 1961, Cuba had been the only Latin American country with membership in the movement, and only three Latin American countries had sent observers. By the time of the Havana summit, twenty-one Latin American and Caribbean countries were represented in the movement, either as permanent members or as observers.86

The 1979 Havana summit was not what critics of the NAM expected. Preparations for the summit were plagued by tensions between the radical faction headed by Cuba, with the support of Angola and Vietnam, and the more moderate faction headed by Yugoslavia, with the support of Indonesia and Somalia. Tito and Yugoslavian Foreign Secretary Josip Vrhovec disparaged the “natural ally” thesis and advocated a stance of “passive neutrality,” which implied the maintenance of “equidistance” between the two Cold War superpowers.87 On the second day of the summit, Tito delivered a speech urging the members of the movement to eschew bloc politics in favor of true nonalignment.88 The radicals within the movement did not carry the day, and indeed, the Cubans ultimately jettisoned the “natural ally” thesis, recognizing that it tarnished their Non-Aligned credentials.

The Soviet invasion of Non-Aligned Afghanistan, moreover, put the Cubans in an extremely difficult position. They had gone on record as touting the USSR as a benevolent protector and ally of the NAM, a stance that became untenable after the Soviet invasion. Some Non-Aligned member-countries even called for Cuba to be ousted from the movement, arguing that Cuban actions had proved that the country was a “Soviet agent.”89 The Chinese spearheaded an attack on Cuban “splittism” [sic] and contrasted Cuban servility to the USSR with Yugoslavia’s genuine independence and respect for nonalignment.90 The Yugoslavs, for their part, condemned the “small group of nonaligned countries” that was “linking itself ever more closely with the Warsaw Pact.”91 “Having identified itself so closely with the USSR,” one scholar observes, “[Cuba] now had to pay the cost of that identification.”92 The sinking of Cuban chances to occupy the UN Security Council seat reserved for a member-country of the NAM was one such cost.93

During Cuba’s tenure as chairman of the NAM, the Soviets attacked the concept of “equidistance” that had been championed by more moderate members of the movement anxious to maintain equal distance from both superpower blocs. Boris Ponomarev, the head of the Central Committee’s International Department, complained in October 1980 of attempts to split the movement, and Yevgeni Primakov, a Third World foreign policy specialist, criticized the striving for “equidistance.”94 In 1983, the presidium of AAPSO issued a statement to the NAM conference at Nicosia, Cyprus, in which the theory of “equidistance” between the two Cold War superpowers was disparaged because “the socialist community has proved to have a stand of friendship and alliance to the liberation movement,” while “the imperialist powers are, per force, the enemy that should and must be combated and defeated.”95

Though the prestige and credibility of the NAM had been damaged during the years of Cuban leadership, most members remained confident that the transfer of the presidency to India would reinvigorate the movement.96 At the NAM summit in New Delhi in 1983, Castro changed his tune. He failed to so much as mention the Soviet Union by name, and he lauded the achievements of national liberation as those of the NAM alone. Of course, Castro did not go so far as to criticize the USSR or to embrace the concept of “equidistance” or the theory of “two imperialisms.” Nevertheless, considerations of Cuban prestige and reputation within the movement demanded a more moderate approach. Having been denounced for his subservience to Soviet international policies, and especially the invasion of Non-Aligned Afghanistan, Castro undoubtedly sought to reassure the more moderate members of the movement that Cuba was not a Soviet satellite, but was indeed truly nonaligned.

Conclusion

Fidel Castro’s aspirations for Third World leadership complicated Cuba’s relationship with the Soviets. The Cuban Missile Crisis had ruptured the Cuban-Soviet alliance and exposed the reality of Soviet great-power chauvinism, proving that in times of crisis, Moscow would have no qualms about sacrificing the goals and interests of its Third World allies to the necessity of maintaining cooperative relations with the United States. Moreover, Castro’s support for revolutionary movements in Latin America had been a source of tension in the Cuban-Soviet relationship even before the Missile Crisis. Such support directly contradicted the CPSU line, which asserted that peaceful coexistence did not preclude socialist revolution and that the best way to achieve the latter was through the concerted efforts of regional Communist parties. Though ultimately the breach was repaired and the Cubans became consistent defenders of the Soviet Union in the United Nations and the NAM, this was reflective of Castro’s unwillingness to antagonize his revolution’s patrons in a changed situation of Cuban economic dependence on the USSR. Nevertheless, Castro attempted to straddle the line between dependence and sovereignty, asserting Cuban independence and leadership and thereby antagonizing the Soviets, but never to the point that the relationship was irreparably ruptured.

The Soviets, for their part, while attempting to use Cuba’s Third World standing to their own advantage, found that this complicated relations with other Third World countries and especially with the democratic reformist governments of Latin America, which struggled to combat guerrilla movements inspired (and often financed) by the Cubans. As Cuba scaled back support for these subversive groups and was gradually reintegrated into the Inter-American community, Cuban relations with both the Soviets and the governments of Latin America improved. Yet the attempts of the Cuban leadership to draw the NAM into a closer relationship with the socialist bloc ultimately led to a loss of credibility and prestige within the movement. Many in the moderate camp recognized that the “natural ally” thesis would undermine the movement’s claims to nonaligned status, and after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, such a stance became completely untenable. Ultimately, Castro was unable to successfully juggle the demands of loyalty to his Soviet patrons and the assertion of Cuban autonomy and leadership of the Third World.

Notes

  1. 1. “Fidel Castro Speaks to Citizens of Santiago,” speech by Fidel Castro, Santiago, 3 January 1959, Castro Speech Database, http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1959/19590103.html.

  2. 2. Quoted in Lars Schoultz, That Infernal Little Cuban Republic: The United States and the Cuban Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 105.

  3. 3. For more on this, see Sergo Mikoyan, The Soviet Cuban Missile Crisis: Castro, Mikoyan, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Missiles of November (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2012).

  4. 4. Jorge Domínguez has argued that when Cuba’s status in the Nonaligned Movement conflicted with its obligations to the Soviets, the latter took precedence. See Domínguez, To Make a World Safe for Revolution: Cuba’s Foreign Policy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 219.

  5. 5. For more on the impact of the Sino-Soviet split on the Third World, see Jeremy Friedman, Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015).

  6. 6. For more on the compromise between the armed struggle and the peaceful path in the Western Hemisphere, see Jacques Lévesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution: Soviet Ideological and Strategical Perspectives, 1959–1977 (New York: Praeger, 1978), 96–101.

  7. 7. James G. Blight and Philip Brenner, Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba’s Struggle with the Superpowers after the Missile Crisis (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 96.

  8. 8. D. Bruce Jackson, Castro, the Kremlin, and Communism in Latin America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969), 16.

  9. 9. Domínguez, To Make a World Safe for Revolution, 146.

  10. 10. Recent scholarship on Cold War Latin America includes: Hal Brands, Latin America’s Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Mark Atwood Lawrence, and Julio E. Moreno, eds., Beyond the Eagle’s Shadow: New Histories of Latin America’s Cold War (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013); Gilbert M. Joseph and Greg Grandin, eds., A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence during Latin America’s Long Cold War (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniela Spenser, eds., In from the Cold: Latin America’s New Encounter with the Cold War (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008); Renata Keller, Mexico’s Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015); and Stephen Rabe, The Killing Zone: The United States Wages Cold War in Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Most works on the Nonaligned Movement published during the Cold War can be described more accurately as propaganda than as scholarship. Recent scholarly work on the Nonaligned Movement includes: Sandra Bott and Jussi M. Hanhimäki, eds., Neutrality and Neutralism in the Global Cold War: Between or Within the Blocs? (New York: Routledge, 2015); Michelle Getchell and Rinna Kullaa, “Endeavors to Make Global Connections: Latin American Contacts and Strategies with Mediterranean Non-Alignment in the Early Cold War,” Südosteuropäische Hefte 4, no. 2 (2015): 25–35; Rinna Kullaa, Non-Alignment and Its Origins in Cold War Europe: Yugoslavia, Finland and the Soviet Challenge (London: IB Tauris, 2012); Mark Atwood Lawrence, “The Rise and Fall of Nonalignment,” in The Cold War in the Third World, ed. Robert J. McMahon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 139–55; and Robert B. Rakove, Kennedy, Johnson, and the Nonaligned World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). On the subject of Cuban foreign policy, Piero Gleijeses has published two excellent volumes based on unprecedented access to Cuban archives: Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), and Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976–1991 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013).

  11. 11. Quoted in Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life (New York: Grove Press, 1997), 423.

  12. 12. Simon Reid-Henry, Fidel and Che: A Revolutionary Friendship (New York: Walker Publishing Company, 2009), 203–6.

  13. 13. Reid-Henry, Fidel and Che, 209.

  14. 14. Robert Rakove has shown that the Eisenhower administration “balanced uneasily between expressions of sympathy for newly decolonized states and annoyance at their refusal to choose sides in the Cold War” and that “the 1950s were years of ambivalence for the United States in its dealings with the nonaligned world”; Rakove, Kennedy, Johnson, and the Nonaligned World, xx.

  15. 15. Mannaraswamighala Sreeranga Rajan, Nonalignment and Nonaligned Movement: Retrospect and Prospect (New Delhi: Vikas, 1990), 8.

  16. 16. Wayne S. Smith, Castro’s Cuba: Soviet Partner or Non-Aligned? (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1984), 1.

  17. 17. Smith, Castro’s Cuba, 2.

  18. 18. On Latin America and the nonaligned world, see Getchell and Kullaa, “Endeavors to Make Global Connections”; James G. Hershberg, “ ‘High-Spirited Confusion’: Brazil, the 1961 Belgrade Non-Aligned Conference, and the Limits of an ‘Independent’ Foreign Policy during the High Cold War,” Cold War History 7, no. 3 (2007): 373–88; Vanni Pettiná, “Global Horizons: Mexico, the Third World, and the Non-Aligned Movement at the Time of the 1961 Belgrade Conference,” International History Review 38, no. 4 (2016): 741–64; and Christopher M. White, Creating a Third World: Mexico, Cuba, and the United States during the Castro Era (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007).

  19. 19. Roy Allison, The Soviet Union and the Strategy of Non-Alignment in the Third World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 70.

  20. 20. Getchell and Kullaa, “Endeavors to Make Global Connections,” 29.

  21. 21. “Declaration of the Heads of State or Government of Non-Aligned Countries, Belgrade, September 1961,” in Main Documents Relating to Conferences of Non-Aligned Countries: From Belgrade, 1961 to Georgetown, 1972 (Georgetown, Guyana: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1972), 8, 11.

  22. 22. Message from the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization (AAPSO) to the First Summit Conference of Non-Aligned Countries in Belgrade, in AAPSO and Non-Alignment: Documents, 1961–1983 (Cairo: Permanent Secretariat of AAPSO, 1983), 6, 7.

  23. 23. Letter to Cuban President Dorticós from Khrushchev, September 16, 1961, Fond 104, Opis’ 16, Papka 8, Delo 9, List 40, Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation (hereafter AVPRF).

  24. 24. Letter to Cuban President Dorticós from Khrushchev, September 16, 1961, emphasis in original.

  25. 25. Letter to Cuban President Dorticós from Khrushchev, September 16, 1961, emphasis in original.

  26. 26. Nikita Khrushchev, “Report of the Central Committee to the XXII Congress of the CPSU, October 17, 1961,” in Diversity in International Communism: A Documentary Record, 1961–1963, ed. Alexander Dallin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 10.

  27. 27. Khrushchev, “Report,” 16.

  28. 28. Allison, The Soviet Union and the Strategy of Non-Alignment in the Third World, 23.

  29. 29. Jackson, Castro, the Kremlin, and Communism, 21.

  30. 30. Jackson, Castro, the Kremlin, and Communism, 22.

  31. 31. Che Guevara, “Guerrilla Warfare: A Method,” Cuba Socialista, no. 25 (September 1963), in Venceremos! The Speeches and Writings of Ernesto Che Guevara, ed. John Gerassi (New York: Macmillan 1968), 273.

  32. 32. Che Guevara, “On Solidarity with Vietnam,” speech at the Ministry of Industry, 20 November 1963, in Venceremos! The Speeches and Writings of Ernesto Che Guevara, ed. John Gerassi (New York: Macmillan 1968), 289.

  33. 33. Piero Gleijeses, The Cuban Drumbeat: Castro’s Worldview: Cuban Foreign Policy in a Hostile World (London: Seagull Books, 2009), 12.

  34. 34. Gleijeses, The Cuban Drumbeat, 14.

  35. 35. O. Carlos Stoetzer, The Organization of American States (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993), 282.

  36. 36. For more on the Latin American response to the missile crisis, see Renata Keller, “The Latin American Missile Crisis,” Diplomatic History 39, no. 2 (2015): 195–222.

  37. 37. “Programme for Peace and International Cooperation,” Cairo, October 1964, in Main Documents Relating to Conferences of Non-Aligned Countries: From Belgrade, 1961 to Georgetown, 1972 (Georgetown, Guyana: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1972), 21.

  38. 38. “Programme for Peace and International Cooperation,” 28.

  39. 39. Jackson, Castro, the Kremlin, and Communism, 28. See also Appendix A in William E. Ratliff, Castroism and Communism in Latin America, 1959–1975 (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1976), 195.

  40. 40. Jackson, Castro, the Kremlin, and Communism, 35.

  41. 41. Jacques Lévesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1978), 103.

  42. 42. “The First Tricontinental Conference, Another Threat to the Security of the Inter-American System,” a study prepared by the Special Consultative Committee on Security at its Sixth Regular Meeting, 2 April 1966, 11–13 (OAS Official Records, Pan American Union, 1966).

  43. 43. Introduction, First Solidarity Conference of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (Havana: General Secretariat of OSPAAAL, 1966).

  44. 44. “Antecedents and Objectives of the Movement of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America,” in First Solidarity Conference of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (Havana: General Secretariat of OSPAAAL, 1966), 10.

  45. 45. Domínguez, To Make a World Safe for Revolution, 69.

  46. 46. Lévesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution, 116.

  47. 47. Ernesto Che Guevara, “Message to the Tricontinental,” in Venceremos! The Speeches and Writings of Ernesto Che Guevara, ed. John Gerassi (New York: Macmillan 1968), 415.

  48. 48. “Antecedents and Objectives,” 22.

  49. 49. Speech Delivered by Major Fidel Castro Ruz, Prime Minister of the Revolutionary Government and First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, in the Closing Session, First Solidarity Conference of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (Havana: General Secretariat of OSPAAAL, 1966), 169–70.

  50. 50. “Resolution on the OAS,” in First Solidarity Conference of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (Havana: General Secretariat of OSPAAAL, 1966), 71–72.

  51. 51. “Resolution on Aid to the Revolutionary Struggle of the Peoples of Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru,” in First Solidarity Conference of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (Havana: General Secretariat of OSPAAAL, 1966), 104–5.

  52. 52. Briefing on U.S. Aggressive Actions in Relation to Cuba—USA Department of Soviet Foreign Ministry, 23 August 1966, Fond 104, Opis’ 21, Papka 17, Delo 14, List 11, AVPRF.

  53. 53. Briefing on U.S. Aggressive Actions in Relation to Cuba—USA Department of Soviet Foreign Ministry, 23 August 1966, Fond 104, Opis’ 21, Papka 17, Delo 14, List 16, AVPRF.

  54. 54. “Resolution Condemning the So-Called Inter-American Peace Force and the Governments that Support It,” in First Solidarity Conference of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (Havana: General Secretariat of OSPAAAL, 1966), 69–70.

  55. 55. Telegram to Comrade Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Comrade Podgorny, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, and Comrade Kosygin, Chairman of the Council of Ministers, from Osvaldo Dorticós and Fidel Castro, January 24, 1967, Fond 104, Opis’ 22, Papka 18, Delo 9, List 1, AVPRF.

  56. 56. Telegram to Comrade Brezhnev.

  57. 57. Quoted in Jackson, Castro, the Kremlin, and Communism in Latin America, 114.

  58. 58. Text of questionnaire prepared by OLAS Organizing Committee, reprinted in “The First Conference of the Latin American Solidarity Organization, July 28–August 5, 1967,” A Staff Study Prepared for the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other International Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1967), 28.

  59. 59. Richard Gott, Cuba: A New History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 232–33.

  60. 60. Fidel Castro Speech at LASO Closing Session, 11 August 1967, Castro Speech Database, http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1967/19670811.html.

  61. 61. Lévesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution, 132.

  62. 62. Henry Butterfield Ryan, The Fall of Che Guevara: A Story of Soldiers, Spies, and Diplomats (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 62.

  63. 63. Ryan, The Fall of Che Guevara, 65.

  64. 64. Ryan, The Fall of Che Guevara, 156–57.

  65. 65. Ernesto Che Guevara, “Freedom of Competition or ‘A Free Fox among Free Chickens’?,” address to the Geneva Trade and Development Conference, 25 March 1964, in Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, To Speak the Truth: Why Washington’s ‘Cold War’ against Cuba Doesn’t End (New York: Pathfinder, 1992), 103.

  66. 66. Che Guevara, quoted in Smith, Castro’s Cuba, 18.

  67. 67. Ryan, The Fall of Che Guevara, 164.

  68. 68. See Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, 220–21.

  69. 69. Telegram to Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko from Cuban Foreign Minister Raúl Roa Garcia, 6 November 1967, Fond 104, Opis’ 22, Papka 18, Delo 9, List 27, AVPRF.

  70. 70. Soviet Embassy in the Republic of Cuba, 21 November 1967, Cuban press coverage of the 50th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution (press review), Fond 104, Opis’ 22, Papka 18, Delo 9, Listy 30–31, AVPRF.

  71. 71. Soviet Embassy in the Republic of Cuba, Listy 32–33.

  72. 72. Dorticós, quoted in “Cultural Congress of Havana,” Study Prepared by the Special Consultative Committee on Security against the Subversive Action of International Communism at Its Tenth Regular Meeting (Washington, DC: General Secretariat of the Organization of American States, 1968), 14.

  73. 73. Blight and Brenner, Sad and Luminous Days, 135–37.

  74. 74. Domínguez, To Make a World Safe for Revolution, 225.

  75. 75. Domínguez, To Make a World Safe for Revolution, 222.

  76. 76. Nikolai Zaitsev, “The Soviet Union, Russia, and the Latin American Countries: Major Issues in Trade and Economic Cooperation,” in The Soviet Union’s Latin American Policy, ed. Edmé Domínguez Reyes (Gothenburg, Sweden: Göteborgs Universitet, 1995), 55–70.

  77. 77. Quoted in Smith, Castro’s Cuba, 26.

  78. 78. Quoted in Leon Gouré and Morris Rothenberg, Soviet Penetration of Latin America (Miami, FL: University of Miami Press, 1972), 73.

  79. 79. Gouré and Rothenberg, Soviet Penetration, 74.

  80. 80. Smith, Castro’s Cuba, 27.

  81. 81. Richard L. Jackson, The Non-Aligned, the UN, and the Superpowers (New York: Praeger, 1983), 28.

  82. 82. Jackson, The Non-Aligned, the UN, and the Superpowers, 44.

  83. 83. Speech by the Head of the AAPSO Delegation at the 4th Summit Conference of Nonaligned Countries in Algiers, in AAPSO and Non-Alignment: Documents, 1961–1983 (Cairo: Permanent Secretariat of AAPSO, 1983), 19–20.

  84. 84. Castro’s Opening Speech to the 6th Summit Conference of Non-Aligned Countries, 3 September 1979, Castro Speech Database, http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1979/19790903.html.

  85. 85. “Havana Declaration,” 3–7 September 1979, in Summit Declarations of Non-Aligned Movement, 1961–2009 (Kathmandu: Institute of Foreign Affairs, 2011), 118, 119.

  86. 86. “Havana Declaration,” 119. Western Hemisphere member-states were Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, and Trinidad and Tobago. Belize was accorded special status, and Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, St. Lucia, Uruguay, and Venezuela sent observers.

  87. 87. Jackson, The Non-Aligned, the UN, and the Superpowers, 30.

  88. 88. James Daniel Ryan, The United Nations under Kurt Waldheim, 1972–1981 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001), 143.

  89. 89. Quoted in Allison, The Soviet Union and the Strategy of Non-Alignment in the Third World, 72.

  90. 90. Quoted in Allison, The Soviet Union and the Strategy of Non-Alignment, 72–73.

  91. 91. Quoted in Jackson, The Non-Aligned, the UN, and the Superpowers, 201.

  92. 92. Smith, Castro’s Cuba, 35.

  93. 93. Jackson, The Non-Aligned, the UN, and the Superpowers, 33. See also Ryan, The United Nations under Kurt Waldheim, 144–45.

  94. 94. Allison, The Soviet Union and the Strategy of Non-Alignment, 47.

  95. 95. Statement of the AAPSO Presidium Committee on Non-Alignment, 22–23 January 1983, Nicosia, Cyprus, in AAPSO and Non-Alignment: Documents, 1961–1983 (Cairo: Permanent Secretariat of AAPSO, 1983), 86.

  96. 96. Statement of the AAPSO Presidium Committee on Non-Alignment, 36.