Glasnost in Havana : Openness Is Tried, but ‘Reform’ Awaits a Cuban Definition

Many travelers to Cuba in recent times, including old friends of Fidel Castro, have been struck by the ironic tricks that history plays on those who have earned a place in its annals. In the decade following the Cuban revolution, Castro and his companions represented dissent and innovation when compared to the aging and unimaginative leadership of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Fidel was the enfant terrible of the Socialist Bloc. Now, with Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost , and the Cuban leadership’s apparent reluctance to implement similar reforms in the island nation, Castro looks more like the guardian of the faith.

In fact, the situation in Cuba relative to the reforms that are under way in the Soviet Union is far more complex than the metaphor of Castro’s graying beard indicates. It is also more ambiguous than seems the case in the Cubans’ insistence on their own rectification-- a renewed emphasis on Che Guevara’s moral incentives, a major effort to eradicate corruption and inefficiency, and the elimination of many of the “market-oriented” reforms of the late 1970s. The differences between rectification and restructuring (perestroika) are real, and they go beyond the simple contrast between a small tropical island and the cold immensity of the Soviet land mass.

Senior Cuban officials seem uncomfortable with Gorbachev’s reforms--be they matters of greater market orientation, price realism and autonomy for state firms, or in the area of political and cultural openness. But first they stress, with apparent sincerity, that state-to-state ties, and even the personal relationship between the two countries’ leaders, are in good shape. With the exception of minor economic disputes that have emerged from the greater autonomy that Soviet firms now have in their foreign trade, the Cubans show no resentment or discord in their relationship with the Soviet Union.

The same officials are quick to underline that, whatever their views on Gorbachev’s reforms may be, they believe that “pluralism” within the Soviet Bloc is necessary to their own survival. Breathing space is no small matter to nations like Cuba after years of the Brezhnev doctrine and of heavy-handed Soviet interference in the internal affairs of other bloc countries.

That said, the Cubans go on to where they differ with perestroika and glasnost. They insist on the inapplicability or irrelevance of many of Gorbachev’s reforms to Cuba. They are particularly skeptical about the economic restructuring being attempted in the Soviet Union, emphasizing that the shortcomings of the traditional socialist economy should not lead the Soviets to abandon it entirely.

Yet the most interesting aspect of the Cuban response to Gorbachev’s innovations lies elsewhere, in the enthusiasm and hope that the changes have awakened among many of the more sophisticated mid-level Cuban officials, the young and the population at large. Cadres in the Cuban party structure privately acknowledge that much more should be done in terms of reform, and that the Gorbachev winds of change will soon reach the island regardless of what the Cuban leadership does or wants. They note that the tens of thousands of Cubans working or studying in the Soviet Union today will come home eventually.

That Cubans--or in any case the inhabitants of Havana--are fascinated with events in the Soviet Union is clearly demonstrated by the speed with which Novedades de Moscu, the Soviet weekly in Spanish, sells out. Its readers, predictably enough, are the great numbers of young professionals that the revolution itself has educated and trained. No Cuban publication can boast of a similar popularity. None, that is, except the budding symbol of an incipient Cuban glasnost : Somos Jovenes, a magazine for the Cuban Communist youth organization, with a circulation of approximately 200,000. In one of its recent issues it ran two extraordinary articles, the likes of which had not been seen in Cuba since the early 1960s. One described prostitution in Havana, a sad and dramatic account of young Cuban girls plying their trade for foreigners. The second article, of a more substantive nature, dealt with “educational fraud,” exposing in great detail how teachers in Cuban high schools pass their students indiscriminately in order to comply with a quota system.

For Communist Party publications to touch on such delicate issues--prostitution, the one vice of old Cuba that the revolution was once most proud of having eradicated, and education, its most vaunted conquest--is unprecedented. Both articles were signed with pseudonyms, but they have been attributed to senior journalists working on Granma, the official party paper. Rumor had it that Castro had read both pieces and had approved their publication.

Both the University of Havana and journalism circles in general have become a sort of vanguard of the debate, which is cutting across traditional young/old, conservative/innovative lines in Cuba. Most important perhaps, Castro himself has not said the last word.

Cuba is a society that needs restructuring and openness as much as the Soviet Union does. Its leaders know this, but they seem awkward and hesitant in going about the changes that their country obviously requires. There is much more happening than meets the eye, but resistance is also greater than one might expect. As the Reagan years come to an end and Soviet-American relations improve dramatically, the new challenge that Castro has to face is how to implement far-reaching change after 30 years of institutionalizing a revolution.