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ABSTRACT
After breaking away from ‘Stalin’s isolationism’, Moscow saw the 1959 Cuban Revolution as an opportunity to expand its influence and granted Cubans numerous scholarships for postgraduate and technical training in the USSR. Facing international hostility, preparing new specialists was crucial to Cuba’s development. However, for many uneducated Cuban students, in addition to serious external obstacles (weather, language, depression), studying in the USSR was a highly politicised experience. They formed colectivos and were called on to induce a ‘revolutionary morality’ through incentives and sanctions; they also received ongoing political orientation from the embassy, shaping a well-entrenched ‘culture of militancy’.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 After the United States announced the reduction of the sugar quota they used to buy to Cuba, Nikita Khrushchev stepped in and warned the White House: ‘Figuratively speaking, if need be, Soviet artillerymen can support the Cuban people with their rocket fire, should the aggressive forces in the Pentagon dare to start intervention against Cuba. And the Pentagon would be well advised not to forget that’.
2 Odd Arne Westad, La guerre froide globale: le tiers-monde, les États-Unis et l’URSS (1945–1991) (Paris: Payot, 2007), 17.
3 Tobias Rupprecht, Soviet Internationalism after Stalin: Interaction and Exchange between the USSR and Latin America during the Cold War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
4 Reflecting the new Soviet doctrine towards the ‘Third World’, this concept was forged in 1959 to distinguish capitalist states from countries that had recently liberated themselves from colonial or ‘neocolonial’ dependency (a category in which Batista’s Cuba could fit given its bond with the United States). This new theoretical framework spurred Soviet assistance to these potential allies previously snubbed by the authorities, while breaking away from the Stalinist twofold representation of the world. Jeremy Friedman, Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 34–5; and Marie-Pierre Rey, ‘Introduction: l’URSS et le Sud’, Outre-mers 95, no. 354–5 (2007): 6.
5 Constantin Katsakioris, ‘The Lumumba University in Moscow: Higher Education for a Soviet-Third World Alliance, 1960–91’, Journal of Global History 14, no. 2 (2019): 282.
6 Frederick Barghoorn, The Soviet Cultural Offensive: The Role of Cultural Diplomacy in Soviet Foreign Policy (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1976), 83.
7 ‘Esta revolución se ha hecho para todo el mundo: Guevara’, Revolución, Havana, January 7, 1961, 5–6, 14.
8 As noted by the Soviet diplomat and journalist Alexander Moiseev, no official data are available to determine how many Cuban students trained in the USSR. Alexander Moiseev and Olga Egorova, Los rusos en Cuba. Crónicas históricas: juicios y testimonios (La Habana: Editora Abril, 2010), 119. Bárbara Saravia, a Cuban official working at the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the People, predicts that nearly 22,000 Cubans studied in the USSR throughout the Cold War period.
9 The notion of Hombre Nuevo was introduced by Guevara in 1965, who promoted the emergence of a new revolutionary generation ‘educated for communism’. The construction of a ‘New Man’, according to Guevara, faces various obstacles such as the opposition of ‘class enemies, maladies of the past, and imperialism’. Ernesto Guevera, El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba (New York: Pathfinder, 1992), 51–71.
10 See, for instance, James Blight and Philip Brenner, Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba’s Struggle with the Superpowers after the Missile Crisis (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002); Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, ‘One Hell of Gamble’: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (New York: Norton & Company, 1997); Ángel García and Piotr Mironchuk, Esbozo histórico de las relaciones entre Cuba-Rusia y Cuba-URSS (La Habana: Academia de Ciencias de Cuba, 1976); Anne Gorsuch, ‘“Cuba, My Love”: The Romance of Revolutionary Cuba in the Soviet Sixties’, American Historical Review 120, no. 2: 497–526; Bruce Jackson, Castro, the Kremlin, and Communism in Latin America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1969); Leila Latrèche, Cuba et l’URSS: 30 ans d’une relation improbable (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2011); Jacques Lévesque, L’URSS et la révolution cubaine (Paris: Presse de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1976); Yuri Pavlov, Soviet-Cuban Alliance: 1959–1991 (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1994); and Blanca Torres Ramínez, Las relaciones cubano-soviéticas (1959–1968) (Mexico: El Colegio de México, 1971).
11 Julie Hessler, ‘Death of an African Student in Moscow: Race, Politics, and the Cold War’, Cahiers du monde russe 47, no. 1 (2006): 33–63; Maxim Matusevich, ‘Black in the USSR: Africans, African Americans, and Soviet Society’, Transition, 100 (2008): 56–75; Maxim Matusevich, ‘Expanding the Boundaries of the Black Atlantic: African Students as Soviet Moderns’, Ab Imperio, 2 (2012): 325–50; and Vladimir Bartenev, ‘L’URSS et l’Afrique noire sous Khrouchtchev: la mise à jour des mythes de la coopération’, Outre-mers: Revue d’Histoire 95, no. 354–5 (2007): 63–82. In 2017, the journal Cahiers d’études africaines published a special issue on African students in the USSR, titled ‘Élites de retour de l’Est’, no. 226 (2017); Rupprecht delivers a ground-breaking account of Latin American students’ lives in the USSR. Rupprecht, Soviet Internationalism after Stalin, 191–229. For an analysis of the case of Chilean students in the USSR, see Rafael Pedemonte, ‘Le sort des lumumbistes chiliens face aux enjeux de la guerre froide (1964–1973)’, Caravelle, 108 (2017): 149–68; One exception is the master’s thesis of Isabelle DeSisto, From the ‘Island of Freedom’ to the Iron Curtain: Rethinking the Role of Soft Power in Soviet-Cuban Educational Exchanges Programs (Cambridge: Harvard University, 2020).
12 On the Cuban disavowal of the USSR after the end of the Cold War, see Óscar Zanetti, ‘Medio siglo de historiografía en Cuba: La impronta de la revolución’, Cuban Studies, 40 (2009): 74–103; and Antoni Kapcia, Cuba: Island of Dreams (Oxford: Berg, 2000). A 1994 Cuban book reflected on Cuba’s reassessment of its Soviet past: El derrumbe del modelo eurosoviético (La Habana: Editorial Félix Varela, 1994).
13 Roger Faligot, Tricontinentale. Quand Che Guevara, Ben Barka, Cabral, Castro et Hô Chi Minh préparaient la révolution mondiale (1964–1968) (Paris: La Découverte, 2013), 371.
14 Menia Martínez (Cuban ballet dancer and former student in Moscow), in discussion with the author, November 29, 2017. Martínez’s last observation is not fully accurate. The brothers Evelio and Cecilio Tieles, sons of a prominent PSP leader, studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory (Moscow) from 1958 to 1966 after receiving a scholarship directly requested by Cuba’s communist party. Karelia Escalante, daughter of the famous PSP leader Aníbal Escalante, also studied at the same institution and eventually married Evelio Tieles, providing additional evidence of how tight and interwoven were personal interactions within the PSP community. Evelio Tieles (Cuban violinist and former student in Moscow), in discussion with the author, May 19, 2021.
15 Dirección de Cancillería, ‘Memorándum’, Archivo Nacional de Cuba (ANR), ‘Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores’, no. 6, número de orden 83, 129.
16 Víctor Pérez and Pablo Socorro, Dos pueblos hermanos (Havana: Editora Política, 1985), 216.
17 ‘Llegarán hoy a la URSS 1.000 campesinos Cubanos’, Revolución, Havana, June 30, 1961, 1–5.
18 ‘Allá todo el mundo es hermano’, Cuba 5 (1962): 64. Another student, 21-year-old Julio Acosta, shared a similar sense of duty. When he returned to Cuba, he said to the press: ‘It is time now to work in Cuba and leave in our land what we learned from our Soviet brothers’. Ibid., 67.
19 Juan Luis Hernán Milián (Cuban poet and former student in Moscow), in discussion with the author, March 8, 2014.
20 Francisco Pacheco to José Llanusa, Moscow, October 19, 1965, file ‘USSR’, cajuela 1965–67, Archivos del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba (Havana, Cuba: AMINREX).
21 Mena Millar (former student in Kaliningrad), in discussion with the author, May 14, 2021. According to another student who witnessed Raúl Castro’s speech, the Cuban leader also read aloud Guevara’s 1965 farewell letter to Fidel and alluded to a controversy sparked in Romania by a group of Cuban students who were eventually expelled. Antolín Bárcena, ‘Estampas de mi primer viaje a la URSS’ (unpublished).
22 Carlos Olivares and Antonio Díaz to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Moscow, April 4, 1963, file ‘URSS’, cajuela 1960–64, AMINREX.
23 Pilar Sa (former Cuban student in Minsk and Saint Petersburg), in discussion with the author, August 27, 2021.
24 Olivares and Díaz to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
25 Sergio Alpízar, ‘Estudiantes cubanos en la URSS’, Cuba 9 (1963): 72.
26 Sonia Bravo Utrera (former Cuban student in Moscow), in discussion with the author, June 7, 2021.
27 Mena Millar, ‘Recuerdos de un estudiante’ (unpublished), 8.
28 Mena Millar, discussion.
29 Carlos Olivares to Raúl Roa, Moscow, February 6, 1963, file ‘URSS’, cajuela 1960–64, AMINREX.
30 Olivares and Díaz to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
31 Valerio Panal (Cuban soldier and former student in Moscow and Leningrad), in discussion with the author, April 11, 2014.
32 Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, Un cubano en el cosmos (Havana: Verde Olivo, 2013), 55–6.
33 Mena Millar, ‘Recuerdos de un estudiante’, 42; Olivares and Díaz to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
34 Mena Millar, ‘Recuerdos de un estudiante’, 41.
35 Idem.
36 Olivares to Roa.
37 Olivares and Díaz to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
38 Mena Millar, discussion.
39 Idem.
40 Luis Soto, Un verano en Siberia (Druzhba Ediciones, 2008), 167–8, http://druzhba.se/druzhba/vivencias/unveranoensiberia.pdf (accessed June 3, 2021).
41 Sergio Alpízar, ‘Estudiantes cubanos en la URSS’, 74.
42 Rolando de la Hoz (former student in Kaliningrad), in discussion with the author, July 1–8, 2021.
43 Manuel García Fuentes to Carlos Olivares, Moscow, April 15, 1963, file ‘URSS’, cajuela 1960–64, AMINREX.
44 A member of the Cuban diplomatic team was nicknamed ‘Robespierre’ for the ‘passion and energy with which virtue was demanded’. Millar, ‘Recuerdos de un estudiante’, 42.
45 Florencia Mallon, ‘Barbudos, Warriors, and Rotos: The MIR, Masculinity, and Power in the Chilean Agrarian Reform, 1965–74’, in Changing Men and Masculinities in Latin America, ed. Matthew Gutmann (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 182.
46 Millar, ‘Recuerdos de un estudiante’, 21.
47 Ibid., 47.
48 Bravo Utrera, discussion; Millar, discussion.
49 Cecil Johnson, Communist China and Latin America, 1959–1967 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970): 150–3; and Friedman, Shadow Cold War, 88.
50 Tieles, discussion; Hernández, discussion; Millar, ‘Recuerdos de un estudiante’, 47; Millar, discussion.
51 Millar, ‘Recuerdos de un estudiante’, 49–50.
52 Millar, discussion.
53 Millar, ‘Recuerdos de un estudiante’, 20–5; Bravo Utrera, discussion.
54 Ibid., 20.
55 Olivares and Díaz to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
56 Bravo Utrera, discussion.
57 Millar, ‘Recuerdos de un estudiante’, 21.
58 Antonio Díaz to Armando Hart, Moscow, December 16, 1963, file ‘URSS’, cajuela 1960–64, AMINREX.
59 On the attempt of leftist organisations to establish a direct link between political loyalty and fitting ‘revolutionary morality’, see Alfonso Salgado, ‘Making Friends and Making Out: The Social and Romantic Lives of Young Communists in Chile (1958–1973)’, The Americas 76, no. 2 (2019): 299–326; and Isabella Cosse, ‘Infidelities: Morality, Revolution, and Sexuality in Left-Wing Guerrilla Organizations in 1960s and 1970s Argentina’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 23, no. 3 (2014): 415–50.
60 Gianni Minà, Un encuentro con Fidel (Havana: Oficina de Publicaciones del Consejo de Estado, 1987), 111.
61 Sa, discussion.
62 ‘Kosygin’s Report on Trip to Cuba to Meeting of Communist Party First Secretaries’, Budapest, Hungary, July 12, 1967, Cold War International History Project Bulletin 17/18 (2012): 795–8.
63 Worries about the ideological and strategic abysm between the Cuban and Latin American communist parties preceded the years of highest tensions (1966–8). In 1963, a Cuban diplomat in the USSR had already urged the students to stay away from other Latin American students. Olivares and Díaz to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
64 Richard Gott, Las guerrillas en América Latina (Santiago: Universitaria, 1971): 197–211.
65 Carlos Olivares to Raúl Roa, Moscow, January 18, 1967, file ‘URSS’, cajuela 1965–1967, AMINREX.
66 According to Sonia Bravo Utrera, who returned to the USSR in 1967–8 to start a doctoral thesis, her teachers were conspicuously embarrassed by Cuba’s opposition to the Soviet ideal of ‘peaceful coexistence’. One of them, a professor of Spanish language and literature, privately acknowledged: ‘Sonia, if the Cubans continue like this, we are going to have to fight […] and we will have to take action’. Bravo Utrera, discussion.
67 Olivares to Roa.
68 Millar, ‘Recuerdos de un estudiante’, 50.
69 Matilde Zimmermman, Sandinista: Carlos Fonseca and the Nicaraguan Revolution (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 107.
70 María Teresa Erices (Chilean student in Moscow), in discussion with the author, September 6, 2016.
71 For a well-summarised account of Soviet-Cuban links in the 1960s, see Michelle Getchell, ‘Cuba, the USSR, and the Non-Aligned Movement: Negotiating Non-Alignment’, in Latin America and the Global Cold War, ed. Thomas Field, Stella Krepp, and Vanni Pettinà (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020): 148–73.
72 Raúl García Peláez to Osvaldo Dorticós, Moscow, January 9, 1969, file ‘URSS’, cajuela 1968–69, AMINREX.
73 On the Cuban 1961 literacy campaign and its effect on building a strong revolutionary commitment among younger generations, see Richard Fagen, The Transformation of Political Culture in Cuba (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969); and Rebecca Herman, ‘An Army of Educators: Gender, Revolution and the Cuban Literacy Campaign of 1961’, Gender & History 24, no. 1 (2012): 93–111.
74 Mi primera tarea. Directed by Catherine Murphy. The Literacy Project, La Rueda Films, and Centro Memorial Luther King, 2020.