Newly revealed documents show early influence of Soviet Union on Castro’s revolution

Long before Fidel Castro proclaimed the “socialist character” of his revolution on April 1961, the new regime was already on the path to communism and was “discreetly” placing sympathizers in key positions in government, Castro’s younger brother Raúl told Soviet leaders, according to a rare document obtained by the Washington-based National Security Archive.

The recently declassified document from the State Archive of the Russian Federation, an official record of a conversation in Moscow between Cuba’s defense minister, Raúl Castro, and the Soviet premier at the time, Nikita Khrushchev, on July 18, 1960, provides previously unknown details of the crucial moment the two countries sealed an alliance that would push the world to the brink of nuclear war just two years later during the Cuban Missile crisis.

The transcript of that pivotal exchange also provides critical insights into what Cuban and Soviet leaders really thought of a potential U.S. economic embargo and how Fidel Castro disregarded Soviet advice to avoid provoking the United States.

“This document is very important because it shows how the relationship between the Soviet and Cuban leadership developed from very early stages,” said Svetlana Savranskaya, the National Security Archive’s senior analyst on the Soviet Union who obtained and translated the document.

The meeting took place amid growing tensions between Castro and U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The new revolutionary government had nationalized U.S. oil refineries and land owned by American companies, and Eisenhower retaliated by cutting the island’s sugar quota on July 6, 1960.

Three days later, on July 9, Khrushchev made a veiled warning that he might even use nuclear weapons to defend Castro, a prelude to the Cuban Missile Crisis that unfolded 60 years ago this month.

“It should not be forgotten that the United States is not so inaccessibly distant from the Soviet Union as it used to be,” he said during a speech. “Figuratively speaking, in case of need Soviet artillerymen can support the Cuban people with their rocket fire if the aggressive forces in the Pentagon dare to launch an intervention against Cuba. And let them not forget in the Pentagon that, as the latest tests have shown, we have rockets capable of landing directly in a precalculated square at a distance of 13,000 km.

“This, if you will, is a warning to those who would like to settle international issues by force and not by reason,” he added.

Days later, Fidel Castro dispatched his younger brother, who was known to be a committed communist with ties to the Soviet Union, to Moscow to figure out “to what extent actions of the USSR could be decisive in the spirit of what was said in comrade Khrushchev’s statement,” Raúl said during the meeting.

“What was surprising for me is that essentially the Cubans, after Khrushchev’s public statement of support for Cuba, come to Moscow hoping to get explicit Soviet security guarantees, a nuclear umbrella, just like the other countries of the socialist camp were given,” Savranskaya said.

“Khrushchev shows deep commitment to the Cuban revolution but tries to guide the young revolutionaries in a more moderate direction as not to create a violent crisis,” she adds. “This position, not taking the U.S. threat to Cuba seriously, might affect his thinking in 1961 after the Bay of Pigs invasion, when USSR did not do anything to protect Cuba, and his decision to supply the missiles in 1962.”

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Notably, the conversation reveals new evidence contradicting a mainstream position among academics and historians, who have argued that U.S. sanctions against Castro’s government were the main driver that pushed Castro towards communism and the Soviet Union.

In that Moscow meeting — and despite public assurances to the contrary — Raúl Castro told the Soviet leader that support for communism was growing on the island and that militants were securing key posts in government.

“The Cuban people have now realized what immense assistance the Soviet Union is providing to Cuba, and your role in it is exceptionally great,” Castro told Khrushchev, according to the transcript.

“There are many Communists in Cuba now, and some of them occupy high state command positions, even though they do not have an official party card,” he added. “It is done this way in order not to give foreign imperialists an extra excuse to say that Communists captured Cuba in their hands.”

Khrushchev’s response suggests that Soviet leaders were aware of the convenience of publicly blaming the United States for the warming relationship.

“So, like we say, that the U.S. actions are pushing Cuba toward the road of Communism,” he replied.

By July 1960, several people who had been prominent members of the Castro guerrilla movement in the 1950s that toppled the government of Fulgencio Batista had gone into exile or were in prison for opposing what they believed was the increasing influence of Communists and Cuba’s Popular Socialist Party on the revolution. Castro himself had publicly rejected communism, and the ideology was unpopular in Cuba at the time. But the head of the PSP’s propaganda office, Luis Mas Martín, who was also present during the Moscow meeting, told Soviet officials otherwise.

“All these years, the American propagandists were spreading false fabrications about the horrors of communism; now they are accusing the Cuban government of communism,” Mas Martín told Khrushchev. “However, the Cuban people, watching the measures undertaken by this government, are saying: ‘If all this is communism, one cannot even wish for better.’ ”

Mas Martin’s presence in such sensitive negotiations seems to confirm much of what former members of Fidel Castro’s inner circle, like Huber Matos, and foreign diplomats in Cuba were saying at the time: that the Cuban revolution was increasingly under the influence of communism.

‘We do not want war’

During the meeting, Raúl Castro anxiously repeated his brother’s request for clarification about how far the Soviet Union would go in defending Cuba from U.S. military aggression, insisting that “the ruling circles of the United States are aggressive.” At the time, the U.S. government was launching covert operations to support Cuban armed opposition groups inside the island and Cuban exile groups trying to overthrow Castro.

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But Khrushchev cautioned Castro against escalating a confrontation with the U.S.

“When you, our Cuban comrades, ask us, what further steps the USSR might take, we want to tell you: Do not be impatient to get an exact answer from us; there is no need for that,” he said. “We will try to do everything to not allow intervention against Cuba. But we do not want war. However, one has to keep in mind that one could unleash a big war defending Cuba. But one can also defend Cuba and not allow war to erupt.”

Khrushchev assured Castro that the Soviets had information suggesting the U.S. was “apprehensive” about launching an invasion of Cuba.

“The most acute moment of the recent events was when the Soviet Union stated that our missiles would reach those who try to launch an intervention against Cuba,” Khrushchev said. “In this connection, the USA stated that they did not plan to launch an intervention. This is a big victory for you and for us.”

Khrushchev said he believed “the United States does not want war either,” but also passed a warning to Havana.

“We warned the United States seriously so that they would not even think about an intervention against Cuba,” he said. “But you, the leadership of the Cuban Republic, should also restrain yourself so that you do not let yourself be provoked. By our statement, we, so to speak, hung heavy weights on the USA, but in a way, we also did it to you. We are counting on you not to let us down.”

Actions taken by Fidel Castro shortly after the meeting show he did not heed Khrushchev’s advice.

Nationalization of U.S. property

Raúl Castro said that one of the stated purposes of his trip was to probe the Soviet leadership about their views on future steps the Cuban government could take, since the Soviet Union was “the leader of the international revolutionary movement and the bastion of peace in the world.”

In particular, Castro floated the idea of nationalizing all American companies.

“In connection with the U.S. threats to cut the Cuban sugar quota, the prime minister of Cuba warned the American ruling circles that the Cuban government would confiscate all American property,” Castro told the Soviet leader. “The United States has already refused to purchase 700,000 tons of our sugar, but we still have not taken the retaliatory measures mentioned above in practice so far. We are not doing it because we do not know how the Soviet comrades would react to it. We would like to know your opinion on all the issues relating to our actions.”

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Once again, Khrushchev reiterated the message that the United States was not likely to intervene in Cuba, implying that the confiscation of U.S. assets was not advisable at that point.

“The policy of the Cuban government is revolutionary, correct and flexible. We believe, for example, that the Cuban government did the right thing by giving full authority to the president and the prime minister of the republic to nationalize American property in response to cuts in the sugar quotas, but it is also right that you have not done it in practice,” he said.

Apparently going against his Soviet ally’s call for restraint, three weeks after the Moscow meeting, on Aug. 6, Fidel Castro’s government passed a law nationalizing all U.S. companies on the island. The U.S. response: a comprehensive economic embargo on Cuba, key parts of which remain in place 62 years later.

Why Castro chose confrontation may have something to do with another promise Khrushchev made during the meeting with Raúl Castro.

‘This blockade is doomed to fail’

At the beginning of the conversation, Khrushchev offered Fidel Castro full support to ensure the regime’s survival even if the country was completely cut off from the U.S. economic orbit.

“The government of the Soviet Union is ready to take responsibility for supplies of oil and other goods in the amounts that would fully satisfy Cuban needs in exchange for Cuban products,” he told Raúl Castro.

Khrushchev boasted that the socialist bloc could compete economically with the West, and that Cuba could easily replace its trade with the United States by dealing with socialist countries.

Early on, Soviet and Cuban leaders referred to the sugar quota cut as an “economic blockade.” Khrushchev told the Cuban delegation he was confident “that nothing will come out of the economic blockade.”

“In our opinion, if the United States limits its actions to just the economic blockade, then, provided that the Cuban revolution is supported by the masses, this blockade is doomed to fail,” he said. “Under modern conditions, an economic blockade is just baby steps. One can say that the United States is just as stupid as it is rich.”

Castro intervened: “The economic blockade could even lead to the strengthening of the Cuban economy.”

Sixty-two years later, both the Cuban regime and the U.S. embargo remain in place. Cuba’s socialist economy is in tatters. The United States is again on a confrontation path with Russian leaders. And Raúl Castro, who formally retired in 2018, is still the ultimate ruler of Cuba.