Cuba Bans 2 Soviet Journals as Too Liberal

Cuba’s Communist Party has banned the circulation of two Soviet publications that it says promote bourgeois democracy and the U.S. way of life, the newspaper Granma said Friday.

The ban on the two Soviet publications, the weekly Moscow News and the monthly Sputnik, was disclosed in an editorial in the official Cuban publication headlined, “An unpostponeable decision, consistent with our principles.”

The disclosure seemed in line with recent comments by President Fidel Castro, who has held power since 1959 and has vowed not to bend Cuba’s hard-line Communist policies.

The two periodicals were accused of “justifying bourgeois democracy as the highest form of popular participation and with a fascination for the American way of life.”

“We are fighting for socialism and communism and therefore publications like these do no not correspond with our reality or interests and are not for us,” the editorial said.

It criticized “those who deny the guiding role of the party in the Soviet Union, call for a multi-party system, proclaim the free action of the laws of the market, exalt foreign investments, rediscover private property, question internationalism and solidarity with other nations.”

The editorial said Sputnik and Moscow News “give the idea that the U.S.S.R. has no history (and) that it is necessary to begin again starting from zero.

“They forget that thanks only to all that has been achieved in these years of Soviet power and under the umbrella of strategic parity has it been possible to develop the present process in that nation.”

The Soviet Union publishes Moscow News in Russian and a host of other languages, including Spanish, for sale both within the Soviet Union and outside the country. It is one of the most liberal publications in the Soviet Union and contains forthright criticism of Soviet society.

Sputnik, a popular publication in the Soviet Union, contains original material and reprints of other articles which are of less political importance within the country but certainly liberal in tone. It was banned by East Germany a few months ago for revelations about past Soviet-German relations.