CUBA : A Run-Down Revolution

President Reagan’s foreign-policy obsession is Nicaragua: that, unless he prevents it, the Central American country will turn into “another Cuba”--a Marxist-Leninist state “exporting” revolutions throughout Latin America and posing a security threat to the United States.

But whatever the validity of Reagan’s fears, it is imperative--for perspective--to take a long look at the “first Cuba,” the island where Fidel Castro’s revolution has just entered its 29th year. What sort of an example does it offer the region?

Let Castro himself be the expert witness, offering testimony in speeches last month before the Third Congress of the Cuban Communist Party. Never before had Castro so fully and bitterly acknowledged how flawed his society has become, how his revolution now faces the deepest crisis in its history. He bluntly described the overall situation as being “anarchy and chaos.” Castro accused the labor force of widespread absenteeism--many Cubans working no more than four hours a day for a full day’s pay, while the nation paradoxically also suffered from unemployment. He said all forms of production were in disarray, as people cared more for money than for revolutionary principles. He found corruption in institutions, even in party ranks.

Inevitably, Castro had to combat this dismal state of affairs and on Dec. 26 he proclaimed a new era of austerity for his already-deprived nation. The 20 “austerity measures” he announced to the National Assembly ranged from further tightening the consumption of rice, milk, meat and gasoline to curtailments of television programming in order to conserve electricity.

The consumption of rice, a basic staple in the Cuban diet, had to be cut by 18%, Castro said, because the Soviets would not increase rice shipments (he did not explain why); Cubans should instead eat potatoes with their black beans. Castro also left unexplained why Cuba, traditionally a rice producer, is unable to produce enough for domestic needs nearly three decades after a revolution that emphasized creation of rationally developed agriculture on an island of fertile soil.

Castro has made clear in his latest pronouncements that revolutionary Cuba is caught up in a systemic crisis and not simply in temporary difficulties attributable to bad weather, adverse international economic conditions or United States economic pressures--all of which marked the last few years, although the American sanctions go back a quarter-century. Put succinctly, Castro’s fundamental problem appears to be that his revolution has come to a dead end; in his words, “workers do not work” and “students do not study.”

And what infuriates him most is that the great “revolutionary spirit” has faded away despite incessant ideological indoctrinations of Cuban youth. As Castro put it, the nation is sliding back into the pre-revolutionary capitalist penchant for material profit, stealing, cheating and cultivating “bourgeois attitudes.” He scolded his own party leaders for tolerating bribery. One would have thought, he suggested in his National Assembly speech, that “the years of lean cows would have served to teach Cubans to be more efficient and thrifty, eliminating negligence and other bad habits lingering from the pre-revolutionary era.”

Castro, however, may be unjust in blaming fellow-Cubans for revolutionary lapses. The fault may lie more with his style of government and management, both eccentric and overcentralized, with virtually every aspect of decision-making held by Castro personally. Many decisions and innovations seem to have been capricious, such as his sudden, single-handed 1984 rewriting of the annual national economic plan. Ministers and managers never know what to expect, so they shy away from routine decisions and, in the end, the whole apparatus of government comes to a standstill.

These faults have existed all along, but for at least a quarter-century Castro’s nation was carried by the momentum of the revolution. The turning point seems to have been reached early in 1985, and the momentum has been downhill--faster and faster--ever since. From the outside, Castro’s revolution still commanded international attention, and even acceptance. Democratic Latin American leaders visited him in Havana. The U.S.-encouraged international diplomatic isolation was eroding. At home, however, cracks in the revolutionary edifice were deepening.

During 1986, Castro carried out a far-ranging purge in the highest ranks of his regime, firing without explanation some of his oldest and closest associates and proclaiming a “strategic revolutionary offensive” to recapture evanescent fervor. Political controls and repression of dissent were further strengthened. Cuba went on a virtual war footing as People’s Militia units were trained and kept on alert against an American invasion Castro insisted to be imminent.

But the economy kept worsening. Unable to produce enough sugar to meet export commitments to the Soviet Union, Cuba had to use precious dollars to buy sugar from the Dominican Republic. Unemployment, supposedly impossible in a communist country, rose; the country had to pay 70% of lost salaries to tens of thousands of furloughed workers.

That some 30,000 Cuban soldiers are serving abroad, mainly in Africa, does not seem to alleviate unemployment. Last fall, Havana and Moscow signed an unprecedented agreement for Cubans to work a huge forest area in frozen Siberia, allegedly to meet Cuba’s lumber needs. As long ago as 1980, Castro allowed some 110,000 Cubans to flee from the port of Mariel to Florida, lessening unemployment pressures. Curiously, Cuba, a nation of 10 million, seems to be exporting people rather than revolutions.

Still, Castro does not find the Cuban crisis to be managerial. His current political offensive aims at changing human attitudes while hardening the system, in contrast with other communist societies--including the Soviet Union--where the new accent is on liberalizing and relaxing the system. While the Kremlin last year allowed minimal private enterprise for the first time in 60 years, Castro moved to liquidate peasants’ free markets, the only vestige of market economy in Cuba, in the name of revolutionary purity.

Then, before the closing session of the Party Congress in December, he denounced “negative trends” for “the whole activity of the Revolution.” Exhorting his communists to turn away from the profit motive and back to idealism, Castro was the voice of Marxist-Leninist apostles of yesteryear. “We must demonstrate to the capitalist,” he cried, “that we socialists, we communists are capable of doing with pride, honor, principles and consciousness, that we are more capable than they of solving the problems posed by the development of a country . . . that a communist spirit, a revolutionary will and vocation . . . will always be a thousand times more powerful than money!”

But while Cuba struggled through this process, she had to keep her economy afloat, and this was where Castro invoked Soviet aid. “How will we get by?” he asked. He answered, “with the help of the goods and raw materials we get from the socialist countries.” Never before had Castro so fully conceded his total dependence on Moscow to stay alive economically. Cuba’s day-to-day economic survival depends more than ever on continued but no longer entirely adequate Soviet economic assistance--worth $4 billion annually, including food.

In the harsh light of “negative trends,” it is hard to see how Castro’s Cuba can remain a revolutionary model for development elsewhere. The Soviets cannot abandon Castro for obvious political reasons--he is a formal ally--but he is a growing burden, as illustrated by Moscow’s current refusal to provide more rice.

Economic aid and limited military equipment are provided to Nicaragua by the Soviets, but it almost seems begrudgingly. Kremlin resources are finite and, moreover, the Soviets have no desire for a confrontation with Washington over Central America. Given the performance of the Castro revolution, perhaps not even the Soviets want “another Cuba” anywhere--surely not in the hands of demonstrably inept Sandinista leaders.

One must wonder whether, in his concern over Nicaragua, the President has real awareness of what is happening in the “first Cuba.” Curiously, the Cuban story, including Castro’s new complaints, was virtually uncovered by the U.S. press. We seem to ignore what is most visible only 90 miles from our coast--and then base policy on such ignorance.

DR, BARBARA D. CUMMINGS / for The Times