Castro coupled this with adopting a rogue elephant role in relation to the stalinist movement.
In Venezuela, he supported a 1966 split from the official CP of its guerrillaist wing led by Douglas Bravo. The new Cuban CP also lined up with the parties of North Korea and North Vietnam, voicing strident support for the Vietnamese struggle against US imperialism in terms which could only be seen as tacit criticism of the lukewarm line taken by Moscow.
In 1965 Castro declared that: 'We are in favour of giving Vietnam all the aid that may be necessary, we are in favour of this aid being arms and men, we are in favour of the socialist camp running the risks that may be
Even at the point of his eventual capitulation to Kremlin policy in 1968, Fidel was to hedge his support for the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia with barbed references to inadequate Soviet backing for Vietnam. Quoting the Tass report of the unbreakable Warsaw Pact 'solidarity' with Czechoslovakia against any 'outside threat', Castro, unquestionably aware of the irony, observed:
... We ask ourselves: "does this declaration include Vietnam? Does that statement include Korea? Does that statement include Cuba? Do they or do they not consider Vietnam, Korea and SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 7 May/june 1988
1968: end of an era for Castro
'Castro adopted a rogue elephant role in relation to the
stalinist movement' Cuba links of the socialist camp to be safeguarded against the imperialists?
'In accordance with their declaration, Warsaw Pact divisions were sent into Czechoslovakia. And we ask ourselves: "Will Warsaw Pact divisions also be sent to Vietnam if the Yankee imperialists step up their aggression against that country and the people of Vietnam request that aid?' s
The road to this statement had begun from economic and political problems facing the Cuban leadership. In Latin America, Castro's perspective of guerrilla struggle had proved an unmitigated disaster in every country outside Cuba, leading to crushing setbacks in Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay, and in Bolivia, where it brought the tragic
The Cuban model of revolution stubbornly resisted attempts to export it. It depended for its survival on a flow of Soviet imports, especially oil, of which 99.3 per cent came from the
Castro was not in a strong position
economically or politically to defy the revamped and impatient Kremlin leadership under Brezhnev and Kosygin.
By early 1968, with crucial trade talks about to begin, the relationship came to a crunch. Castro's ministry of the interior had late in 1967 arrested a "microfaction' of pro-Moscow supporters of veteran Cuban stalinist Anibal Escalante, organised inside the new CP and on its central committee. They were accused of being closely linked to Soviet officials and opposing the Castro leadership (though in 1968 there was no formal ban on opposition factions inside the Cuban CP). In all, 35 defendants were sentenced by the CP central committee to prison terms ranging from 2 to 15 years.
This tweak to the nose of the Moscow bureaucracy was followed by an ostentatious Cuban boycott of an international meeting of communist parties in Bucharest in February 1968, and Cuban denunciation of the new US-Soviet nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
Such a show of defiance was not to be tolerated indefinitely by the Kremlin leaders. They hit back early in 1968 with economic sanctions — slowing down deliveries of oil to Cuba. Within a month, Castro had capitulated. Later came the Cuban endorsement of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Since 1968, Cuban public pronouncements and political orientation have steered clear of even tacit criticism of the Soviet bureaucracy. Though still a distinct element, with its own unique history and its own specific problems dictating the precise shape of its foreign policy, the Castro leadership had become politically assimilated and subordinated in its global objectives and initiatives to the general line of Stalin's heirs in the Kremlin o 23
24 which in December 1960 fused with though it should be noted that in two
Vietnam: