Castro Rubbing Soviets in Cuba Wrong Way--but They’ll Be Patient

Fidel Castro’s sharp rejection of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s program of reforms has irritated members of the Soviet community here, but they have adopted a policy of courteous patience, confident that Cuba will eventually adopt similar reforms, according to Soviet citizens with long experience in Cuba who say they are expressing Moscow’s view.

“We are convinced that as time goes by, Cuba will have to realize these (reform) measures, but we don’t think it is appropriate to force them,” said one of three Cuba-based Soviets who agreed to a rare private interview on condition that their words be “taken in the context of Cuban, Soviet and American friendship” and that they remain unidentified. “We have to have patience.”

Soviet economic aid to Cuba, now running at a rate of about $5 billion a year, will continue as it has, they said. But they cautioned that there is growing impatience with Cuba’s inefficient waste of the money under its rigidly ideological, centrally planned system. They implied that at least some improvements are urgent, not only because the Soviets can ill-afford to waste aid money at a time when resources are scarce at home, but because the Soviet enterprises upon which Cuba depends to buy its goods are now becoming autonomous and competitive and Havana will face a tougher task in dealing with them.

Some Things Will Change

“We are not satisfied with the efficiency of Cuban industry and agriculture,” said one. “We are helping Cuba. We will continue to help. But we now have to search for more effective forms of our economic help. The nature of it won’t change, but some methods of our relations will have to change.”

Castro has become increasingly critical of Gorbachev’s program of perestroika, or restructuring, in speeches during the past six months, dismissing them last July as “methods that reek of capitalism.” In December, he criticized Moscow by warning of “difficulties that may come from the camp of our own friends.” On Jan. 1, he provocatively contrasted his self-proclaimed ideological purity with Gorbachev’s new openness by proclaiming “Marxism-Leninism or death.”

Some diplomats here have seen Castro’s caustic criticisms as portents of a major split between the two countries whose special relationship dates back to mid-1960 and has cost the Soviets, by Washington estimates, at least $40-billion in economic aid. Some experts estimate that Soviet aid makes up almost 30% of the Cuban gross national product.

Rupture Not Expected

But the Soviets who were interviewed said that a significant rupture is not in the cards. “We have maintained good political and economic relations for 30 years, and these relations are going to be maintained,” one said.

Three major Western embassies here agreed that such a break is highly unlikely in the foreseeable future.

“There are sores there, call them micro-cracks,” said one diplomat, “but both countries have too large a stake in preserving their relationship to let it slip away. They’ll work it out.”

One European diplomat cited evidence in two recent Castro speeches suggesting that a modus vivendi may already have been established that permits the Cuban leader to continue his relatively harmless criticism of Soviet domestic policy in the name of ideological purity but that forbids him to criticize the Kremlin’s foreign policy as he did in speeches last July and again on Dec. 5.

Critical Remarks

The diplomat pointed especially to the December speech in which Castro derided Gorbachev’s peace policies by railing against a peace between the powerful--the United States and Soviet Union--that allows “war with the small revolutionary, socialist or simply independent countries of the Third World.” It was the same speech in which Castro warned of “difficulties . . . from the camp of our own friends.”

“I think Moscow jerked his chain for that,” said the diplomat, who cited as evidence a sharply contrasting Castro speech last Wednesday in which the Cuban leader extolled Soviet peace policies and Gorbachev’s policy of detente. “That sounded like abject rectification,” the diplomat said.

“It irritates them when he implies that the Soviets with their perestroika aren’t true to Communist principles, but they can live with that. But when he talks about the peace of the rich and says keep an eye on the camp of our friends, that’s going against the grain of Soviet foreign policy, and they won’t permit it.”

Could Lose Leverage

Another diplomat underscored Castro’s growing sense of insecurity in the face of the new Soviet policy of detente with the United States. “He has to get in the flow of U.S.-Soviet relations or lose his leverage with Moscow,” he said, adding that Cuba’s agreement to withdraw its troops from Angola demonstrated that Castro recognizes increasing pressures from both East and West against such regional conflicts.

Whatever the difficulties over foreign policy, most experts here, including the Soviets who were interviewed, agree that Castro’s economic difficulties and his economic relations with the Soviets are the most overriding.

“Cuban economic life is mainly dependent on our economic relations,” said one of the local Soviets. “The exchange of products with us represents 75% of total Cuban trade. . . . Cuba has to trade with other countries. It isn’t good when all of the foreign trade is with one partner.”

Sympathy, Not Anger

According to the Soviet source, Moscow feels more sympathy than anger over Cuba’s predicament in the face of Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union.

“We’ve lived with this (Communist) system for 70 years and Cuba for only 30,” he said. “Historically, they began with a sort of semi-colonial economy. They didn’t have the base of trained specialists nor the conditions to organize efficiently. Now, the same things that are being criticized in the Soviet Union are what is happening here. We’ve been teaching them how to work all this time, and now we’re telling them that it isn’t efficient. Yet we ourselves do not yet have the results of perestroika. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell who is bad, the students or the teachers.”

But he said the new Soviet economic approach, which includes borrowing productive ideas from the West, will inevitably be adopted by Cuba and other socialist countries when it proves itself. “What is required is that other countries adapt themselves to our new economy,” he said. “In the light of our new approach, we don’t see any problem if one country criticizes the other or thinks the other way.

‘Time Will Show’

“Fidel doesn’t agree with us, and we don’t agree with him,” he added. “If he criticizes the perestroika process, we don’t want to answer that in public discussion now. Time will show.”

Significantly, the Soviet source said that Soviet advisers here are now studying what many Washington policy planners will recognize as a particularly capitalist idea for Cuban industrial development.

“We’re working on the question of producing shoes and clothing from our own materials here with Cuban workers,” he said.