To promote a peaceful transition to a Cuba that respects human rights
and political and economic freedoms
Remembering Mikhail Gorbachev and the Castro regime's rejection of Glasnost
September 1, 2022
Mikhail Gorbachev visited Cuba in April 1989.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, died on August 30, 2022. He is best remembered for his efforts to reform the Soviet Union through policies of Perestroika, and Glasnost, and the relatively peaceful liberation of Eastern Europe in 1989, and dissolution of the USSR in 1991. Perestroika recognized that economic central planning was a failure. Economic policies were pursued reforming and restructuring the Soviet economy. Glasnost, initiated by Gorbachev in 1985, was a policy that sought "more open consultative government and wider dissemination of information." These policies were viewed with great hostility, and rejected by Havana.
Fidel Castro rejected these reforms, and repeatedly criticized them before and after Gorbachev’s April 1989 visit to Cuba. During the visit there was an attempt to highlight the continued good relationship between the two countries, but strains were evident.
The aftermath of the visit underscored the divisions between Castro and Gorbachev.
The June 12, 1989 arrest, show trial and execution on July 13, 1989 of Cuban Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez, who had studied in the Soviet Union, and had close ties there was seen as sending a message to officials sympathetic to Glasnost and Perestroika.
In August 1989, the Castro regime censored the Soviet publications, Sputnik and Moscow News.
Cuban Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez had close ties to the Soviet Union
In a speech published in Granma on December 8, 1989 months after Gorbachev's April 1989 visit to Cuba the Cuban dictator expressed his revulsion for the changes taking place, and defended censoring Soviet publications.
"It is disgusting that many are now dedicating themselves, in the USSR itself, to denying and destroying the historical feat and the extraordinary merits of that heroic people." ..."We could not hesitate to prevent the circulation of certain Soviet publications which have been against the policies of the USSR and socialism. They are for the ideas of imperialism, change and the counterrevolution."
Gorbachev was a committed Marxist-Leninist, but unlike Fidel Castro, he was unwilling to engage in the wholesale violence to attempt to hang on to Eastern Europe. Violent efforts to crack down on the Baltic States to keep them from leaving the USSR failed. This led to a failed coup by hardlinersagainst Gorbachev in August 1991 that combined with the fiascos in Afghanistan (1989) and Chernobyl nuclear disaster (1986) led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Paul Kengor in his August 30th essay in The American Spectator " Mikhail Gorbachev Meets His Maker Did he die a Christian? Only the Lord knows" cites an excerpt from the Soviet leader's speech on December 25, 1991 that [Gorbachev] had stood “firmly … for the preservation of the union state, the unity of the country. Events went a different way. The policy prevailed of dismembering this country and disuniting the state, with which I cannot agree.” He lamented the “breakup” of Soviet “statehood” and “the loss” of, curiously, “a great country.” Gorbachev would reiterate that position over and over in years ahead. In April 2006, he told USA Todaythat “The Soviet Union could have been preserved and should have been preserved.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Cuban President Fidel Castro talk before signing agreements in Havana, Cuba on December 14, 2000.(AP: Alexander Zemlianichenko)
This is a sentiment shared by former KGB officer, and current Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, who invaded Ukraine, to recreate the Russian empire. In 2005, Putin said “First and foremost it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” Both are wrong. President Ronald Reagan, who correctly identified the Soviet Union as an evil empire, was right and “it was time to shut it down.”
Cuba in 2022 is the most miserable country in the world, according to Hanke’s Annual Misery Index, with a regime that is willing to visit violence on its citizenry, and to continue to export its communist model to other countries is further evidence that Gorbachev made the right choice on Christmas day in 1991.
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