Soviet TV Reports a Castro Diatribe Against Gorbachev’s Reforms

Bringing the Soviet Union’s growing political differences with Cuba into full public view, Soviet Television in its main newscast Friday night reported that President Fidel Castro “had for the first time in public criticized reforms” under way here and in other socialist countries.

While Castro’s speech earlier this week, at a rally honoring Cuban soldiers who died fighting in Angola and elsewhere in Africa, was far from his first criticism of perestroika and glasnost, it was the first time that Soviet Television has reported it--and in the process pointed up Moscow’s differences with Havana.

“In their press and media, there is not a single word about internationalism and anti-imperialism,” the nightly news program Vremya quoted Castro as saying. “You do not see these two notions at all in the Soviet media today.

“Instead, they are trying to participate, together with capitalist countries, in splitting the profits made at the expense of the Third World.

“If we are destined to remain the only socialist country in the world, so be it,” Castro was quoted as telling the rally. “We will fight to the very end to protect the gains of socialism.”

While Soviet news media have been freed increasingly from the old restrictions that prohibited publishing or broadcasting any material critical of a socialist ally or that might harm Moscow’s relations with it, airing such harshly critical comments would have required close consultation with Communist Party headquarters, according to knowledgeable journalists.

“Telling our people what is going on in Eastern Europe is one thing--we favor the reforms under way there and that region is close to us,” a senior newspaper editor said.

“Broadcasting Fidel’s attack on us is quite another matter. It suggests to me that we are moving toward a serious and open break over perestroika. “

Another motive, however, could be an attempt to influence domestic Soviet politics, other observers argued. Because the Soviet Union’s massive economic and military assistance to Cuba, estimated at about $5 billion a year, is highly unpopular among rank-and-file party members as well as ordinary people, linking Castro with criticism of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reforms could be an attempt discredit the critics at home.

Soviet news media have also begun carrying critical reports on the situation in Romania and published without comment President Nicolae Ceausescu’s defense of his uncompromising adherence to his hard-line policies and his rejection of the need for any reforms there.