April 5 — If the Bush administration had anticipated an acrimonious meeting in Havana between General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union and Cuban Premier Fidel Castro, it was profoundly disappointed and frustrated.
The networks in particular virtually pulled out all stops when they sent a horde of media personnel to Havana in numbers usually reserved for inaugurations of U.S. presidents or other exceptional events. The high-priced anchors of ABC, CBS and NBC were there with full media gear. CNN, while it didn't send an anchor, gave the meeting live coverage.
When by Monday it became clear, however, that no sensational developments of a negative character would emerge from the meeting, the networks began to cut down their coverage.
On Sunday and Monday the New York Times had front-page headlines and stories full of speculation on what might occur at the Havana summit. By Tuesday morning, it had relegated the visit to page 14. On Wednesday, it could have printed lengthy excerpts from the speeches of the two leaders to the Cuban National Assembly. However, it gave few details of the talks or of the Friendship Treaty signed between Cuba and the USSR. The whole treatment was perfunctory.
It is plain from this that the hopes and expectations they had of exploiting the political differences between the two socialist governments ended in failure.
On the other hand, as far as the struggle of all the anti-imperialist and progressive forces in the world goes, the meeting was a plus. The representatives of these two socialist countries reaffirmed their anti-imperialist and socialist solidarity, and there was no loophole left open for the capitalist press to take advantage of.
For too long the entire Western Hemisphere has been regarded by U.S. imperialism as its proper domain, and it has expended great effort on trying to strangle the revolutionary struggle in this most critical area.
Even before the heads of the Soviet Union and Cuba began their talks, it became plain to all the world, by the massive turnout to greet Gorbachev, that the Cuban Revolution in its 30th year of existence is as alive as ever and solid as a rock. It must have been very frustrating for the imperialist media to admit that more than a quarter of the population of Havana turned out on this occasion.
While the imperialists were hoping for a rather drab pro forma diplomatic exercise, the capital was all aglow with revolutionary optimism and the kind of inner strength that only a government which has demonstrated internationalism of the highest type, extending revolutionary assistance to the embattled African movements for liberation, can show.
Notwithstanding all the publicity the capitalist press has given to the visit, deliberately exaggerating and lying about the magnitude of the differences, it has at the same time carefully concealed its own role. For instance, not one of the capitalist papers or media mentioned the continuing presence of the U.S. Navy in Guantanamo, which constitutes the illegal occupation of sovereign Cuban territory. Nor did it mention having 82nd Airborne units in Honduras, as though that never happened either. In their great concern for human rights, they also conveniently forget their success in ushering in a truly death squad government (in the literal sense) in El Salvador, headed by the new puppet, Christiani.
Since almost the beginning, the Cuban Revolution has had a tremendous impact outside the island. It became the magnet for the entire world anti-imperialist movement. And by that alone it earned the venomous enmity of U.S. imperialism.
How else could it be? The Cuban Revolution upset the monolithic domination of monopoly capital over the Western Hemisphere. Its existence is a beacon light for the complete liberation of all the oppressed and exploited in the hemisphere, whether in El Salvador and Guatemala, or Venezuela and Chile. Any revolutionary victory always redounds elsewhere. This process should not be inhibited. No effort should be made to limit it.
The success of the Cuban Revolution of course owes a great deal to the historic contributions of the USSR, which has been able to extend material as well as political support. This was impossible in the early days of the Russian Revolution.
After the Second World War, it became possible for the USSR to render material and military aid to revolutionary struggles, in addition to ideological support. This was a world historic turning point and reflected great material growth, even though the USSR itself was still very much a beleaguered fortress. Undoubtedly this represents a great sacrifice on the part of the mass of the people of the USSR. Today, as in the early 1960s, the U.S. is trying to exploit these sacrifices of an economic and military character.
The imperialist press has been taking malicious delight in asserting that the USSR intends to cut back its commitments to the Cuban government. Here it is necessary for us to understand the situation. It is one thing if the USSR, China, Cuba, or the German Democratic Republic temporarily cut back commitments they have made, both at home and abroad, because of new or unforeseen economic developments.
For instance, everyone understands this in connection with the disaster at Chernobyl, or the Armenian earthquake, and all the expenditures connected with them. Also there are new ecological revelations that may make it necessary to review some economic commitments. This is understandable as a relatively temporary situation. The USSR faced some of these problems at an earlier date and had to pull back.
Cutting back foreign aid, when it arises out of economic problems of a purely conjunctural character, is understandable. It is something else, of course, if what is involved is a manifestation of a reevaluation of anti-imperialist and fraternal socialist obligation and orientation. That would be a matter of serious concern.
There was nothing at all in the Havana conference to indicate this, despite the speculation of the imperialist press.
Of course, it is not appropriate to hide or try to forget the very real differences that exist among the socialist countries, particularly at this time between Cuba and the USSR. Considering the vast scope of the socialist countries, covering more than a third of humankind, it would be most extraordinary if differences did not exist. That would be an anomaly and not a real representation of the huge social and political forces which the respective socialist governments have to deal with.
However, the Havana summit gave both Cuba and the USSR a splendid opportunity to not only reaffirm revolutionary solidarity but to pointedly avoid the reefs on which China-Soviet solidarity of the 1950s was later wrecked. If we are to speak of the historic significance of this conference, it is precisely that the lessons of Sino-Soviet relations in general and the tragic consequences of the split have not been lost upon the leadership, either in the USSR or in Cuba.
Both Gorbachev and Castro seemed to be acutely aware that they were speaking not only to their respective socialist countries and to the region, but that they were addressing the world, which would learn on the basis of what occurred there whether serious political differences would lead to a breach in their state-to-state relations. No sign whatever of that was visible, even though the imperialist media were searching every nook and cranny for it.
The conference was instructive in many ways, and should be contrasted with what happened between Moscow and Beijing in the late 1950s, when the differences between the Soviet and Chinese Communist parties had fully emerged following several Moscow conferences of the world Communist parties.
As long as the debate was continuing on the level of an ideological and political struggle, the imperialist bourgeoisie, notwithstanding all its efforts to drive a wedge between the Soviet Union and China, had very little to gloat over.
The long struggle in Korea, in which so much life and property was lost as a result of the massive, utterly inhuman destruction caused by the imperialist aggression, may have frayed relations somewhat. However, as late as 1958, the solidarity between the USSR and China was a material factor of international significance that deterred imperialist intervention when the Iraqi revolution broke out in full force and overthrew the puppet imperialist regime there.
What finally led to a crisis in Sino-Soviet relations was when Premier Nikita Khrushchev, probably with support from the Politburo, suddenly withdrew the many hundreds of Soviet technicians and consultants who had been assigned to China to help in socialist construction on significant projects.
It is now more than 30 years later, and no light has been shed to justify this astonishing initiative on the part of Khrushchev. Up until then the debate between the Chinese and Soviet parties had been strictly on an ideological and political level. The meaning of the Soviet denunciation of Stalin, the initiation of new domestic reforms by the Soviet CP which China considered of a bourgeois character, and Khrushchev's version of peaceful coexistence, which the Chinese CP considered as accommodating and conciliatory towards imperialism — all these were matters strictly within the confines of an ideological, political struggle. It had not altered their state-to-state relationships or their mutual relations to the rest of the world, in particular to the imperialists.
By this one act of ordering home all the Soviet personnel, Khrushchev had transformed the ideological struggle into a state-to-state affair. It seemed like a punitive blow aimed at socialist construction in China. It could only be interpreted as hostility, not just as a disagreement with the positions of the Chinese CP on ideological questions.
This clearly showed that a political dispute regarding the ideological line of the two parties could deteriorate into a most venomous state-to-state struggle. No one knew where it would lead. It should not be surprising in the light of what subsequently happened that the sharp deterioration in state-to-state relations even led to a military conflict, fortunately of a very limited and short duration, along the Sino-Soviet border at the Ussuri River. Both governments at the present time would prefer to regard it as something in the very, very distant past.
Suffice it to say that at great cost to the revolutionary working class and the anti-imperialist movement, this propelled China into the imperialist orbit, from which it has by no means fully disentangled itself. However, over the last decade, as a result of substantial industrial progress, it has regained considerable independence.
It should be noted that in the period of the early 1950s, the Chinese proletariat was very small, although this was counteracted by its tremendous political and social weight. Today, however, China has tens of millions of new proletarians. Notwithstanding the regressive economic reforms of recent years, this new proletariat will ultimately become decisive for the future socialist China.
One can only hope that the forthcoming visit by General Secretary Gorbachev to Beijing in May, where state-to-state relations are expected to become fully normalized, will usher in a new era of socialist solidarity. There are no great expectations on that score, as of now, either in Moscow or Beijing, nor do the imperialist governments, especially the U.S., view the coming summit meeting in Beijing with much visible anxiety.
Regardless, however, of how the imperialists may view it as of now, the potential for a revival of anti-imperialist solidarity and of proletarian internationalism is inherently of far greater significance than are the immediate exigencies. It is to be noted that the projects left unfinished at the time of the withdrawal of Soviet technical experts have been resumed, and that trade and commerce between the two countries has vastly increased after virtually grinding to a halt in the 1970s.
The Havana conference, as well as the prospective one in Beijing in May, must be seen as significant steps forward in rebinding the tattered threads of the socialist world community. No one expects at this time a ringing affirmation of revolutionary anti-imperialist and socialist solidarity in Beijing, as happened in Havana. But the meeting could certainly be a mighty step forward in the reconstitution of the socialist camp at a time when centrifugal forces of an accumulating character have been driving it into the swamp of bourgeois politics.
Rather than a policy of "socialist isolationism," the needs of economic progress increase the urgency for coordination among the community of socialist countries to meet the increasing aggressiveness of imperialism. The latter is of both a military and an economic character, flowing from the new search for capitalist markets and avenues of lucrative capitalist investment under cover of joint ventures and other avenues of exploitation.
Last updated: 23 March 2018