Back of three-peso Cuban banknote depicting Ernesto "Che" Guevara cutting sugar cane
Che Guevara asked Soviet bloc to buy 4 million tons of Cuban sugar
Cubans described exact scenario of future Bay of Pigs invasion; asked for military training;
wanted USSR to think of Cuba as its own territory
Please do not tell Fidel: Raúl Castro and Che Guevara hid communist party affiliations from Cuban leader
Washington, D.C., November 3, 2022 – As Cuban-Soviet ties grew stronger from late 1960 through early 1961, the Cubans repeatedly asked for military assistance and security guarantees from the Soviets and expressed growing concern about the threat of a U.S. intervention, according to Russian archival documents published today by the National Security Archive. The Cubans described to the Soviet leadership detailed scenarios for a Bay-of-Pigs style invasion only months before the Kennedy administration mounted its failed covert operation in April 1961.
The newly published records of conversations between Cuban communist leaders and Soviet Presidium members during the visits of Cuban trade delegations in October 1960 and March 1961 provide indications that the Cuban revolution was gradually tilting in a more radical Marxist-Leninist direction, with the imposition of press controls and a crackdown on the Catholic church. The documents also depict a Soviet leadership caught unawares by the Bay of Pigs invasion, after having advised their Cuban allies to exercise restraint and caution, and shed light on Khrushchev’s motivations, later in 1962, when he decided to deploy nuclear weapons to Cuba, sparking the Cuban Missile Crisis. After the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Soviets felt they had let their allies down, having repeatedly assured the Cubans that the U.S. would not invade, and became increasingly worried about the defense of Cuba.
Since the visit of Deputy Prime Minister Anastas Mikoyan to Cuba in February 1960, which opened Cuba for the Soviet leadership, Moscow had watched developments there very closely. Fidel Castro was not yet a communist, and the Soviets were cautious about his July 26 movement, which they considered bourgeois-nationalist. At the same time, however, the Soviet leadership was genuinely enamored with the unexpected revolution in Latin America, hoping that, with time, it would move closer to the Soviet Union and adopt the Soviet model. Mikoyan was jokingly called “the Cuban in the Presidium” because of his attachment to the Cuban cause.
When the Cuban trade delegation came to Moscow at the end of October 1960, Guevara presented a proposal that even he said did not make sense “from the economic point of view”—that the socialist camp should purchase the entire, four-million-ton Cuban sugar harvest. From a political point of view, such a move would demonstrate solidarity and the commitment of the socialist block to the Cuban revolution. But it would also solidify Cuba as an monocultural economy, inhibiting the development of a more diversified agricultural sector. When Guevara tried to play the China card, suggesting that the Chinese would be happy to buy more sugar, Mikoyan said “it would be difficult for China to pay for the Cuban sugar due the lack of industrial goods and technology in their country.”
The top figure of the October 1960 Cuban delegation was Aníbal Escalante, one of the leaders of the People’s Socialist Party of Cuba, a harsh and committed Marxist who briefed the Soviets on the political situation and described the growing Marxist influence in Cuba. Later purged from the Cuban leadership by Fidel Castro specifically for his radicalism and inflexible adherence to Marxist dogma, Escalante revealed to the Soviets that both Raúl Castro and Ernesto "Che" Guevara were members of the Communist party, the PSP[C], and were recently promoted to its leadership. The Cubans asked their Soviet counterparts not to share this information with Fidel because they kept it secret from him. Castro would declare himself a Marxist only after the Bay of Pigs invasion.
As the ties between the two countries grew closer, the Cubans were trying to adopt more features of the Soviet model, citing parallels to the Russian revolution of 1917. The March conversation between Soviet leaders and top Cuban military leader Flavio Bravo reveals that the revolutionary government had begun to target the Catholic church for allegedly supporting counterrevolution and hiding weapons. The Cuban leadership saw Catholic schools as potential centers for the indoctrination of young people and the preparation of counterrevolutionaries. The government was also considering the nationalization of private schools.
An interesting reflection of the coming purge of leftists in March 1961 is the revelation by Bravo that Guevara was criticized internally for his hard leftist appeals to spread revolution in Latin America and his contributions to a Maoist organization. Bravo expressed the more moderate opinion of the Cuban leadership that other Latin American countries did not have to replicate the model of the Cuban revolution and could instead transform their societies nonviolently.
The predominant theme of the March conversation is Cuba’s urgent need for military assistance. Bravo suggested making Cuba “an invulnerable fortress,” which would require building its navy and air force. Emphasizing the growing danger of a U.S. invasion using mercenaries trained in Guatemala and Nicaragua, Bravo expressed the Cuban belief that “[P]resident Kennedy has taken a more aggressive position in his relations with Cuba than did Eisenhower.” Asking for Soviet help in drafting a plan for the Cuban defense buildup, the Cuban suggests that the Soviets should “think of Cuba as part of [their] own territory.” As Cuba became more and more dependent on the Soviet military and economic aid, the deepening Soviet commitment to the Cuban revolution as well as the need to maintain its reputation in the global communist camp created a persistent problem for Khrushchev—he could not “lose Cuba” to a U.S. invasion. In 1962, Khrushchev would try to follow Flavio Bravo’s advice—to make Cuba “an invulnerable fortress” by deploying nuclear weapons along with a major group of forces to the island.
Document 1
State Archive of the Russian Federation, GARF; Translation by Svetlana Savranskaya and Sarah Dunn
The Cuban trade delegation comes to Moscow with an unusual proposal: that the socialist countries buy the entirety of Cuba’s unexpectedly large sugar harvest—four million tons—at higher than the world market price. Guevara tells the Soviets that after visiting Moscow the delegation is headed to China, and the head of the delegation, Aníbal Escalante, says they expect the PRC to buy one million tons of Cuban sugar. The Soviets suggest that the Cubans should bring the proposal before the upcoming conference of ambassadors of socialist countries. Mikoyan advises the Cubans to not reorient their trade completely toward the socialist bloc because “[i]t is necessary to preserve normal relations with capitalist countries.”
In a major revelation, Escalante, a hard-core Marxist, tells the Soviets that Raúl Castro and Che Guevara are both members of the communist leadership but that their affiliation was kept secret from Fidel for the time being. In Escalante’s view, Fidel was moving closer to the Marxist understanding of the situation and had even spoken in favor of having one united Marxist party in Cuba. At the same time, and by his own admission, Fidel had not yet even finished reading Marx’s Capital. Still, Escalante clearly believes that in due time Fidel Castro would join the communist party.
Another constant theme in Soviet-Cuban interactions is the looming threat of a U.S. invasion. This time, the Cuban delegation predicts it quite accurately: “the government of the U.S. is planning an assault on Cuba by various criminal groups from Batista’s supporters, war criminals and fascist elements taking shelter in the U.S. whom they have trained on the territory of Florida and Guatemala.” The Cubans said that the danger of such an invasion would be highest during the presidential transition—after the elections but before the new president assumes full powers. The Cubans propose that the Soviets prepare a U.N. resolution in defense of Cuba in which the non-aligned countries could also participate. In Escalante’s words, it was clear to everybody that “Cuba has now become a dangerous hotbed where a new world war may break out; and therefore, all progressive humanity, and primarily, the people of the countries of the Communist bloc led by the Soviet Union must take all necessary measures to extinguish the fire before it breaks out.” Asking for Soviet assistance with military training, Guevara concludes “that time was running out, an armed attack could be expected any day.”
Document 2
Mikoyan Personal Archive; Translation by Sarah Dunn
Anastas Mikoyan reminisces about his first visit to Cuba in February 1960 when he was able to travel around the country and meet with the Cuban leadership and regular Cubans. He notes how impressed he was by the way ordinary people interacted with their leader—they “gave a rousing cheer to Fidel Castro, and warmly hugged him.” No doubt the old Bolshevik was highly moved by such informality and expressions of genuine revolutionary spirit. Mikoyan also praises his own Premier Nikita Khrushchev for treating Castro as a friend and coming to his hotel in Harlem last September during a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City. Mikoyan says that when he “read about this in the news, I said; nice one Nikita! Well done!”
Document 3
Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, APRF; Translation by Adam Mayle and Svetlana Savranskaya
Members of the Central Committee of the Cuban communist party (PSP) visit Moscow to brief their Soviet comrades about the political situation in Cuba and to ask for military assistance in the face of a possible U.S. invasion. Flavio Bravo, who is responsible for defense issues in the Cuban Central Committee, comes as the head of a Cuban military delegation.
Bravo reports that the Cuban economy is being gradually reorganized on the basis of plans and that even Fidel Castro now understands the significance of a planned economy. In terms of political organization, the party was creating a network of local councils—“soviets,” just as in the USSR—and the Cubans had mobilized and trained 300,000 soldiers. Bravo describes a tense political struggle, comparing Cuba’s current situation to the Soviet “period of 1927-30, the years of war against the Kulaks.” He reports that the PSP had created 12 party schools to educate the cadres in Marxist-Leninist principles and reiterates again that Fidel Castro is in favor of creating a unified Marxist-Leninist party in Cuba.
Describing President Kennedy as more aggressive than Eisenhower, Bravo lays out a scenario for an invasion resulting in the installation of a puppet government by mercenaries who would immediately call for help from the U.S. and Latin American countries. Speaking of domestic counter-revolutionaries that such an operation would depend upon, Bravo singles out the Catholic church, which he says “has been turned into a blatant agent of imperialism.” He adds that “churches have been turned into warehouses of dynamite, weapons and counter-revolutionary pamphlets” and threatens to deport all the priests if such activities continued.
Bravo tells the Soviets that Castro is close to the Cuban communist party, supported all its decisions and would even take part in the upcoming meeting of the National Committee. At the same time, the party had “seriously criticized Ernesto Guevara for his ultra leftist attitude in relation to the expansion […] of the revolution” to other Latin American countries. Guevara is clearly under Chinese influence, Bravo says, and “repeated many of their positions” but had acknowledged the criticism of the party leadership. This discussion of the leftist tendencies among the Cuban leadership foreshadows the split that would occur later that month and that would result in the purge of several hardline communists.
The “main goal of [the] trip,” in Bravo’s view, is to augment the Soviet-Cuban military relationship and help “turn Cuba into a real invulnerable fortress” by building the strong navy and air force that Cuba needed. “We tell you directly that we cannot solve [these questions] ourselves and we do not have the necessary experience or personnel” for such a task. He asks the Soviets to send more military advisers and assistance. Bravo goes so far as to request that the Soviets help draft the plan for building the Cuban defense forces. Quoting Raúl Castro, Bravo says the Soviets should approve the Cuban request because they should think of Cuba as part of their own territory.