Introduction

In the first years of the Cuban Revolution, sugar policy was synonymous with “national development policy”. The Cuban development strategy after 1963 was aimed to stimulate the development of the rest of the economy through the expansion of the sugar export trade. However, the expansion of the sugar economy was to be concluded by 1970, and its importance was to de crease at the expense of manufacturing industries.¹ In hindsight, we could see that this was easier said than done. After the early 1970s, when Cuba embarked on an even closer course of integration with the East European Socialist states, the importance of sugar for the Cuban economy not only did not decrease but also came to occupy a central place in Cuba’s trade with the Soviet bloc. In the secondary literature, Cuba’s political and economic relations with Washington and Moscow received considerable scholarly attention.² However, Cuba’s economic relations with the East European states garnered considerably less attention. Several notable studies attempted to elucidate the complexity of the relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union’s East European allies. W. Raymond Duncan, for example, interpreted the relationship as a good example of cooperation, founded on the coincidence of interests and objectives “connected with each country’s goals and capabilities”.³ Pamela Falk offered a counter-argument seeing the Socialist countries’ economic actions as further deepening Cuba’s dependence on a single export product, sugar.⁴ Building on the discussion of the distorting effects of Cuba’s monoculture economy, former Soviet diplomat Yuri Pavlov delivered a highly critical assessment of Soviet aid, which was detrimental to Cuba and had negative effects on the Soviet Union’s sugar industry.⁵ Much has also been written about Cuba’s dependence on sugar by both Cuban and foreign economists and historians; however, while the focus of foreign sugar trade moved from the United States to the Soviet Union in the Cold War period.⁶ Nevertheless, so far, the focus in this trade fell on Moscow, and its East European allies’ views have been largely overlooked in the literature.

Building on this scholarship, this article seeks to provide a more detailed examination of the role Cuban sugar played in finding the best balance between Cuba’s ambitious development plans, the limiting subjective factors of its leaders, the island’s natural environment, and the complicated international conjecture amid intense East-West competition. In so doing, this paper aims to cast more light on the tenuous relations Cuba developed with its East European partners outside and inside the CMEA framework. Cuba and the East European states had to maintain relations whose harmonious development was marred by a multitude of economic, ideological, political, and geographic challenges. This paper focuses namely on international trade by taking sugar as a prime example of the bittersweet trade the partners had to endure throughout the Cold War.

The multitude of critical views expressed behind closed doors by East European diplomats on the shortcomings of Cuban methods of economic planning, industrial organization, and international trade demonstrate the difficulties Cuban leaders endured in negotiating an economy that was unable not break the shackles of its sugar over-dependence. The country’s new leaders used the crop both as a tool of political mobilization at home and interpreted it as a source of international socialist solidarity, which often went against its East European peers’ economic interests. As this paper reveals, Cuba’s status of a “true Mecca for all Latin America” in early 1960 was replaced by the ebb and flow of economic integration of the 1970s and the failed reforms on both sides of the Atlantic in the second half of the 1980s, which presented constant sources of economic tensions between Cuba and the Soviet bloc. This article uses original documents originating from the foreign ministries, the former communist parties, and the security services of Albania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Serbia, in addition to some primary documents obtained from the Cuban foreign ministry archive. The multipolar archival research method applied for this research helps us better understand the thinking of the numerous East European diplomats and specialists in their economic engagement with Cuba over three decades.

The new material demonstrates not only the nuanced tactics and strategies the bloc states employed to help Cuba but also highlights their disagreement with Cuba’s obstinacy and hard-pressed approach in pursuing sugar trade in which it saw preferential prices as an expression of international solidarity as opposed to Socialist states’ planners, who interpreted it as economic aid. This contradiction might seem entirely theoretical at first, but, on the second reading, its practical dimensions capture the essence of Cuba-East European relations that were caught between the different interpretations of the priorities ruling international trade between the Socialist bloc and Cuba. Much like the Soviet Union until the mid-1980s, to Cuba, objective economic laws and principles trailed behind Marxist ideology, socialist solidarity, and Cold War geopolitics. The calculus was far more complex to the East European states, caught between their national interest and internationalist obligations. They had to contend with their own economic deficits by conceding to Moscow’s over-reach and Cuba’s pushy tactics.

While the existing literature abounds with “high politics” discussions, it seldom gives us an idea of the points of view of those who were directly involved in dealing with Cuba’s economic issues. Those diplomats, in their tasks to meet Cuba’s economic demands, Moscow’s political objectives, and the abilities of their own countries, painted a picture mixing faith and promise with criticism and unmitigated disappointment. As heterogeneous as Cuba’s Socialist partners from Berlin to Sofia were, they were unanimous that their preferential treatment of Cuban sugar was their way to help support the Cuban Revolution. The line intertwining sugar pricing’s economic realities with high politics caused continuous friction between Cuba and its East European trading partners. In their dealing, the Cubans not only sought to capitalize on their limited economic potential but also closely followed, and even pushed to the extreme, José Martí’s understanding that economics cannot be separated from politics.⁷ Eventually, this formula repeatedly tested the Socialist states’ resolve to materially support the Cuban revolution as the Caribbean island sought to extract the highest benefit from its most valuable, yet highly volatile, trading asset.

Enter Fidel Castro: new leader old dependencies

Sugarcane cultivation occupied a central place in Cuba for centuries. Paradoxically, it played a crucial role in bringing the island closer with the U.S. in the early 1900s and the Soviet Union in the second half of the twentieth century. It also allowed Fidel Castro, after coming to power, to blame Washington for distorting Cuba’s economy by increasing its over-reliance on a single crop. To Castro, the signed into law by President William McKinley on March 2, 1901, Platt Amendment -which stipulated the conditions for the withdrawal of U.S. troops remaining in Cuba at the end of the Spanish-American war- helped the U.S. to de facto colonize Cuba by seizing its most fertile land and grow sugarcane from which to obtain the cheapest possible sugar, which started the deformation of Cuba’s economic development.⁸ The monoculture deformation was coupled with over-reliance on a single client, the United States. Paradoxically again, despite Cuban leaders’ attempts to depart from this pattern, the trait was developed with the Soviet bloc after Cuba lost its access to the U.S. market and failed at its initial push at industrialization. The twin dependence on a single crop and a single client attracted strong criticism of Cuba’s new East European trading partners. The new Cuban leaders’ complex relationship with the island’s most prevalent crop was a source of the biggest mistakes committed by the Cuban leadership, as Czechoslovak specialists observed.⁹ The rush to negate the pre-revolutionary legacy in politics was followed by similar actions targeting the economy. Consequently, there was a spontaneous effort to reduce or even destroy cane plantations in almost all areas. This, Prague’s envoys deemed as a mistake causing the record cane harvest of seven million tons of raw sugar in 1961 to drop to less than five million in 1962, which caused Cuba to miss its agreed sugar deliveries.¹⁰

Cuba’s relations with the United States began to worsen dramatically in the first half of 1960. At the same time, this was a sign that the Cuban economy needed moral, political, and, most of all, economic assistance from the Soviet Union, as the Yugoslav ambassador observed.¹¹ At the same time, On January 3, 1961, after consulting with President-elect John F. Kennedy, President Dwight D. Eisenhower broke diplomatic relations with Cuba.¹² Before the revolution, 70 percent of all Cuban trade was made with the United States, and, at the time of Castro’s ascendance to power, the main branches of the country’s economy depended totally on U.S.’ equipment.¹³ Following a modest opening of trade with the Soviet Union in 1959 and early 1960, the situation for Cuba changed abruptly by the harsh economic warfare which broke out between Cuba and the United States in the summer of 1960.¹⁴ On July 3, 1960, Congress sanctioned the U.S. government to reject the remainder of Cuba’s sugar quota for the current year. Two days later, Cuba’s Council of Ministers announced the appropriation of U.S. industrial, banking, and commercial operations in Cuba. On the next day, President Eisenhower introduced economic sanctions against Cuba, canceling the remaining 700,000 tons of sugar imports from the 1960 quota.¹⁵ Moscow acted swiftly and, on July 20, proposed to buy the sugar which the U.S. refused. In retaliation to the U.S. move, Cuba seized the three largest American sugar mills on the island, which further increased the tensions with its northern neighbor. By the end of July, the National Institute for Agrarian Reform had already nationalized millions of acres of land, and, without further ado, Che Guevara announced the “Marxist” character of the Cuban revolution.¹⁶ On September 17, three U.S. banks and their branches and dependencies in Cuba were appropriated, making the United States respond with the imposition of a partial trade embargo on October 19. Days later, Cuba retaliated by seizing the remaining 166 American-owned businesses in Cuba. Consequently, the nationalizations of September and October 1960 transferred all sugar mills, 83.6 percent of the industry, 42.5 percent of the land, most of the trade, the banks, and the communications networks into state hands.¹⁷

The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Trade (MINCEX) declared that the nationalization of the main means of industrial production and banking, together with the agrarian reform, eliminated the U.S.’ economic dominance over Cuba and served as the economic basis of the new regime and its socialist reforms.¹⁸ As a Hungarian foreign ministry report recommended, this fundamental change justified the support of the socialist states.¹⁹ The imposition of the U.S. embargo strengthened Castro’s legitimacy and brought Cuba closer to the Soviet bloc. According to MINCEX, the “criminal blockade” imposed by the United States forced Cuba to seek new markets for its products and new sources of supplies. At the same time, led by the principles of “proletarian internationalism”, the Soviet Union and the rest of the Socialist countries offered Cuba their "fraternal and selfless help”.²⁰ Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, one of the new regime’s foremost economic leaders, noted a decade later that the U.S. "blockade" oriented the island’s economy towards the Socialist camp, as the country dedicated itself to survive the “brutal acts of U.S. imperialism in the economic, military and political order”.²¹ On October 21, two days after Washington introduced the island’s partial blockade, Che Guevara embarked on a long trip to the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and China.²² Castro tasked Guevara with finding a market for two million tons of Cuban sugar. Using the world’s political conjuncture, Che managed to achieve this goal. As the Soviet Union also aimed to reduce its beet plantings,²³ it acquired 1.2 million tons of Cuban raw sugar, while the European socialist countries agreed to buy another 600,000, and China the remaining 200,000 tons.²⁴

According to William LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh, the reason behind the economic tensions between Cuba and the United States from the summer of 1960 was the Soviet oil rather than Cuban sugar.²⁵ Indeed, the Cuba-US economic confrontation that led to the embargo was not initiated by cutting the U.S. sugar quota but rather with the refining of Soviet oil in Cuba following the nationalization in this sector. However, as Fidel Castro noted on numerous occasions, the issues of oil supplies and sugar trade were intertwined and inseparable. According to Castro, the Soviet Union pursued a bold policy in deciding to support Cuba against the "imperialist blockade" by buying Cuban sugar and supplying the country with the essential for the functioning of its economy oil.²⁶ However, recently declassified documents show that the process leading to the decision to buy the Cuban sugar at higher than the world’s prices might not have been as uniform as the bloc’s official narrative would suggest. Behind closed doors, at a meeting on Cuba’s economic issues between Soviet and Eastern European representatives on September 16, 1961, the First Deputy Chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers Aleksei Kosygin stressed Moscow’s willingness to satisfy Cuba’s request to purchase more sugar at higher international prices.²⁷ On the other hand, the representatives of Poland, GDR, and Czechoslovakia had reservations regarding purchasing Cuban sugar, as they were already large sugar exporters. Despite this, the Socialist states’ officials unanimously spoke to expand the economic ties and closely coordinate their economic plans with the Caribbean nation.²⁸ At the time, the Cubans seemed to have already developed a line, which it persistently pursued through to the end of the 1980s. On October 2, 1961, Anibal Escalante, a member of the Political Committee of the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations, briefed the heads of the Socialist countries’ missions in Havana on Cuba’s economic and political situation. Escalante stressed the Cuban government’s conviction that the purchase of its sugar by the Socialist camp was a manifestation of proletarian internationalism and a great help to the revolution.²⁹

However, Che’s visit to Moscow signaled out the Cuban government’s ideas of parting with its dependence on sugar. He developed the idea that the Soviets should finance Cuba’s long-term industrialization rather than making it a sugar mill for the Socialist Bloc.³⁰ Che’s ideas reflected on the Cuban leadership’s ambition to eliminate the one-sided orientation of the economy towards sugar production, diversifying agricultural production and rapidly industrializing its modes of production. As a Czechoslovak report claimed, in the first years following the ouster of Fulgencio Batista’s regime, the new leadership followed Ernesto Guevara’s formula, which sought the development of all branches of the economy while retaining its standing as a sugar superpower.³¹ Nevertheless, the realization of this policy and the insufficient consideration of the Cuban economy’s internal and external conditions resulted in notable neglect of the national economy’s traditional mainstay, especially sugar production. The decline of the Cuban economy’s main production branch had reduced the domestic potential for economic construction, an analysis of GDR’s foreign ministry concluded.³² The subjective mistakes and shortcomings of planning and managing the country’s economy were decisive factors, another East European analysis posited.³³ The great political and economic efforts of the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries had succeeded in replacing the North American sugar quotas with significantly higher quotas at very favorable prices for Cuba. The socialist states also provided substantial loans, as well as considerable assistance by skilled personnel. The Cuban leadership, however, failed to make effective use of socialist states’ assistance for the development of productive forces and for the maintaining an average standard of living for the population, which, in itself, with a fair social distribution of income, would mean a profound improvement in the social status of the broadest, previously exploited sections of the population.³⁴

The early 1960s: experimenting with sugar reforms

The political and eventually economic relations between Cuba and the Soviet Bloc deteriorated notably immediately after the October 1962 missile crisis.³⁵ Stemming from the unsuccessful attempt at economic reform of 1961-1962, an important theoretical debate took place on the Cuban revolution’s economic structure in 1963-1965. The Cuban leaders insisted that their country should not copy any other developmental model. The one they tried to build was “purely autochthonous”, based on the “particularities of the country and its people”.³⁶ In 1963, there was a fundamental change in the direction of economic development. The process of hasty industrialization gave way to the priority of reconstructing and expanding the sugar industry. The new concept sought to maximize sugar production, develop the cattle industry, and expand the cultivation of tropical fruits. However, the new conception of economic development also relied on the cooperation and the help of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, which mainly took the form of long-term sugar agreements based on substantially higher than the world market prices.³⁷

Already in 1964, the Cuban revolutionary government focused its primary attention on sugar production. It was a broad effort, accompanied by all-around assistance from the Soviet Union, which led to a remarkable increase in sugar production from 3.8 million tons in 1964 to more than six million tons in 1965. It was a great success in both economic and political terms. Nevertheless, the result was primarily achieved at the expense of production in other sectors, from where the labor force was drained. In overcoming the orientation crisis of 1961-1962, the Cuban economy further diverted investment from engineering to sugar cultivation.³⁸ This made the national economy more susceptible to fluctuation in world sugar prices. However, the fall in sugar prices on the world market in the mid-1960s did not have catastrophic consequences for Cuba as most of its sugar production was exported to the socialist countries at a higher than the world market fixed prices.³⁹ This allowed Cuba to compensate for the downturns in its sugar production with some creative export tactics. For example, the total sugar sale contracts it concluded for 1967 amounted to 7.695 million tons. However, the production in that year reached about 6.2 million tons, with a 1.5-million-ton shortfall. Polish information critically remarked that to fill its quote, Cuba was trying to buy sugar on the London Stock Exchange, Mexico, and the Caribbean at lower world prices and re-export it to some socialist states at higher fixed rates.⁴⁰

Despite the ad hoc trading ingenuity demonstrated by the Cuban leaders, Czechoslovak envoys in Havana observed that while Fidel Castro possessed a masterful ability to ignite the fighting mood among the masses and the leadership, he failed to pay more attention to the issues of production and economic development.⁴¹ In April 1963, Prague’s observers offered another very critical assessment of the Cuban economic progress. In their alarming appraisal, the country’s dire economic problems posed more severe threats to the Cuban revolution than any forms of external aggression or potential internal "counter-revolutionary" reversal.⁴² Additionally, a report for the Politburo of GDR’s Socialist Unity Party (SED) provided a long list of subjective factors that caused the Cuban economy to deteriorate further. Those factors included the leaders’ insufficient maturity, their lack of experience in applying Marxism-Leninism, the manifestation of nationalistic tendencies in their political actions, insufficient consideration of the other Socialist countries’ experiences, and their skepticism in the effectiveness of the cooperation with the Soviet Bloc.⁴³ The Polish concurred with East Berlin’s assessment. It claimed that the Cuban society would need many years of austerity and economic assistance from the Socialist states due to the erroneous concepts developed by the local officials and their reluctance to follow the other socialist states’ experiences.⁴⁴ A few years later, Raúl Castro accepted these criticisms and shared with Todor Zhivkov his conviction that Cuba’s problems in the 1960s were caused by the great inexperience of its leadership, the “stinging” effect of its economic inventions, and its urges to ignore “objective” economic laws.⁴⁵

At the same time, the Cubans blamed the Socialist states for providing them with "insufficient" help and for neglecting Cuba’s vital interests.⁴⁶ For example, the Cuban side sought to develop economic relations with the GDR that disagreed with East Berlin’s interests. In the analysis of GDR’s foreign ministry, from the mid-1960s, Cuba sought to position itself as an underdeveloped state, shifting the dynamics of Cuba-East relations from economic cooperation to the provision of direct economic aid.⁴⁷ This closely mirrored a Czechoslovak assessment, which found that the trade between Czechoslovakia and Cuba was an international aid expression to the Caribbean nation, rather than economic activity based on mutual interest.⁴⁸ Similarly, in the second half of the 1960s, Cuba and Poland’s relations progressively deteriorated both politically and commercially, reaching their nadir at the beginning of 1969. The Cuban officials criticized the limited size of Warsaw’s economic assistance, which, in their opinion, remained disproportionate to Poland’s abilities.⁴⁹ Much in the same vein, the economic cooperation between Cuba and Bulgaria failed to reach the desired level despite its opportunities.⁵⁰ Speaking with GDR’s State Secretary Dieter Albrecht in 1968, Fidel Castro complained of the Hungarians, as well, who “would not buy Cuban sugar and were constantly criticizing Havana’s policies”.⁵¹

The big gamble: the ten million ton zafra

Disappointed from the level of Socialist Bloc assistance and in an attempt to assert their complete independence in the economic field, in the late 1960s, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez claimed that the sizeable help Cuba was receiving from the Soviet Union and the other Socialist and Western countries was not violating its sovereignty.⁵² This meant Cuba was retaining the final say about how it would run its economy. Addressing members of the Soviet communist youth union, the Komsomol, Carlos Rafael explained that Cuba, due to its specific economic, geographic, and climatic conditions, followed a different development path to the Soviet Union’s emphasis the development of the heavy industry. The central aspect of Cuba’s industrialization effort was the development of agriculture.⁵³ However, Bulgarian experts appeared unimpressed by Cuban obstinacy in this regard. Speaking to their Hungarian colleagues, Sofia’s experts noted that the Cuban economy continued to lack real planning. Although planning as a concept figured in Cuban leaders’ statements, its essence remained “very foggy” to them as they continued to reject the notion that it was impossible to build a new society without scientific planning.⁵⁴

By 1969, the worsening state of the Cuban economy became the critical variable in the relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union. The turning point was reached with the overambitious attempt to produce a record-breaking sugarcane harvest of ten million tons in 1970 that became known as the Zafra de Los Diez millones. The Cuban leaders seemed to have employed various political, ideological, and economic reasons for this experiment. For several years in the mid-1960s, world sugar prices had been very unfavorable for Cuba and, as its leaders had no real development program, they focused only on meeting the minimum economic conditions for its survival, a Hungarian report observed. Therefore, they considered that increasing sugar production was the only way to improve the economy’s situation.⁵⁵ Arguably, there was another, more sinister reason for the ambitious zafra. Apparently, the Cuban leadership did not abandon the ideas formulated by Fidel Castro in several speeches in the spring of 1964, stipulating that the significantly increased Cuban sugar production would provoke a sales crisis. Castro believed that as Cuba had secured the socialist countries’ purchases, other producers would be ruined by Cuban production’s increased rate.⁵⁶ A third explanation was the “soldier and worker” argument, developed by Carlos Rafael in Matanzas province in 1964. He claimed that every worker was a soldier and that every stalk of processed sugarcane was both a weapon and a victory against imperialism. Therefore, the decisive success of the sugarcane harvest was of particular importance in thwarting the imperialist aggression.⁵⁷

Later, speaking to students at the University of Havana in September 1969, Carlos Rafael claimed that achieving ten million tons of sugar would be like Cuba’s "second national liberation”.⁵⁸ In his push for the record harvest, Fidel also focused on the more pragmatic economic utilities this achievement would have for the nation. According to him, if the 1970 zafra reached its goal, the country would have many reasons for joy, as

there would be an absolute abundance of food, more clothes, more shoes, and better communications. The services will continue to improve, and the years of the next decade would not be the same as the previous ones.⁵⁹

This achievement was, therefore, a matter of great prestige to the Cuban leadership. It also had significant importance to the revolution, as it was to solve the country’s economic problems and help with its underdevelopment.⁶⁰

However, the zafra failed. The enormous effort, involving Cuba’s entire workforce, nearly wrecked the national economy, as all available resources were concentrated on the sugarcane harvest, seriously neglecting the service sectors and the industry, essentially negating previous attempts at balancing agriculture with the remaining sectors of the economy.⁶¹ From the beginning, the zafra plan provoked long-ranging criticisms from Cuba’s eastern partners. According to Hungarians, the plan to produce ten million tons of sugar was an extraordinary but unrealistic effort.⁶² The Czechoslovaks offered similar conclusions. In their calculations, to ensure the production of ten million tons of sugar, Cuba had to hire extra 500,000 people, untenable, given the continuous migration of people from rural areas to the cities. Additionally, to achieve the record production level, a staggering investment of USD 870 million had to be implemented during 1966-69, of which about USD 300 million in the peak year of 1968, which was five times the size of all investments made in this sector in 1965. The Czechoslovak analysis concluded that, despite all the agreed credits from the Socialist states, these volumes of investment and imports would far exceed the Cuban national economy’s real capabilities in 1968.⁶³

Due to the 1969 drought, Cuba could harvest only 8.5 million tons of sugar in 1970. This was followed by an even worse campaign in 1971 when only 5.9 million tons were harvested. As sugar production for 1972 was estimated at four million tons, Cuban officials were forced to reduce sugar export quotas for all socialist countries for the year. The decline in sugar production significantly increased Cuba’s indebtedness in both socialist and capitalist countries. Cuba’s indebtedness to the Socialist countries was 3.5 billion rubles, of which 3.1 billion rubles to the Soviet Union.⁶⁴ The all-out effort also diverted the Cuban government’s attention from cooperating with the East European states, suspending projects with its socialist partners, including a glass plant built with Hungarian investments.⁶⁵ After the zafra gamble failure, which was personally identified with Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader reportedly drew his lessons.⁶⁶ Consequently, Castro admitted that the concentration of all the party’s attention on pursuing the ten million-ton plan was a political mistake as it caused backlogs in other industrial sectors.⁶⁷ While the Cuban people behaved “like heroes” in this production battle, as Castro stated, the country’s leadership saw the missed zafra target as the revolution’s first failure. Fidel even went as further as offering to resign, which the crowds in Havana vehemently rejected.⁶⁸ Similarly, a piece of Polish information remarked that the "collapse" of the Cuban economy in 1970 forced the Cuban leaders to concede that the economic and political concepts they used to steer the economy were incorrect and based on false premises.⁶⁹ However, unimpressed with this admission, the Soviets told Fidel that if they were going to continue aiding the island, the Cuban economy had to be centralized along Soviet lines. To ensure this, Moscow dispatched 10,000 technicians and advisers to Cuba to run the country.⁷⁰ The Bulgarians supported the move, believing that in all areas of Cuban economic development, the Socialist states had to extend additional help to stabilize the country and make it a showcase for Socialism in Latin America.⁷¹

Into the 1970s: Cuba integrates with the Socialist bloc

The deepening military and economic reliance on the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1970s led to bringing Cuba and the Socialist camp even closer than had been, culminating with the Caribbean nation’s joining of the Council for Mutual and Economic Assistance (CMEA).⁷² Fidel’s visit to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in June 1972 played a crucial role in further shaping Cuba’s political and economic linkage with the planning institution of the Socialist bloc.⁷³ While seeking Socialist states’ support during his visit, the Cuban leader championed the notion that national selfishness is incompatible with socialism in domestic and foreign policy.⁷⁴ Just a month later, Cuba was accepted as a full member of the Council at the XXVI meeting of the Joint Parliamentary Assembly of the CMEA in Moscow on July 10-12, 1972. According to the Czechoslovak foreign ministry, Cuba’s entry into the Council sought to consolidate its economic cooperation with the CMEA members and represented a new stage in the development of the world socialist system.⁷⁵

In its introduction to the CMEA, Cuba was afforded a select developing-country membership alongside Mongolia and Vietnam, which allowed it to preferential trade relations with the more developed European CMEA states.⁷⁶ This particular position made Cuba’s trade with the Soviet bloc even more beneficial to the island. The Soviets agreed to increase the price they paid for the island’s sugar without increasing the prices it charged Cuba for its oil, so much that the terms of trade between the two countries favored Cuba as never before.⁷⁷ In an unpublished speech at the winter session of the National Assembly of People’s Power from 1980, Fidel Castro boldly stated that Cuba had concluded the most advantageous trade agreement with the Soviet Union in history. The agreement stipulated that Cuban sugar prices would automatically increase with those of Soviet raw materials and products. At a time where the world price of diesel per ton was around 200 pesos, Cuba paid three times less for Soviet oil. Accordingly, the price of Cuban sugar was set at 19 cents for all socialist states. Without this assistance, Cuba would not be able to stock up on fuel, buy technological equipment, cotton, fertilizers, and raw materials, Castro concluded.⁷⁸ By the mid-1980s, deliveries of Soviet petrol and petrol derivatives amounted to 13 million tons per annum, of which 50 percent was crude. The crude re-export revenue was estimated at half a billion U.S. dollars, surpassing foreign exchange earnings from its sugar exports.⁷⁹ Cuba’s economy, as a result, grew rapidly in the 1970s. Only in the 1971-1975 period, the country’s gross national product increased by an average of more than ten percent annually.⁸⁰ However, while Cuba’s CMEA membership brought its national economy even closer to the Socialist states, its further development remained mostly dependent on the cooperation with the Soviet Union. Accordingly, between 1976 and 1980, the trade between Cuba and the Soviet Union reached between 80-84 percent of all socialist states’ total imports.⁸¹ In other words, following Cuba’s integration with the CMEA, its commercial exchange with all of its member states rose from 56 percent in 1975 to 78 percent in 1979, while Soviet Union’s share increased from 48 to 67 percent.⁸²

After joining the Council, Cuba had to develop various basic planning capabilities, which needed to be redesigned to match standard CMEA economic practices, especially in terms of medium and long-range planning. Prague’s economic experts noted that, even after entering the East’s economic union, the deformations of Cuba’s national economy from the pre-revolutionary era remained intact as it retained the monocultural bias in its production. The attempt to embark on a socialist reconstruction path based on a proprietary Cuban model further strained the national economy.⁸³ To alleviate these negative factors, in 1975, the First Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba (Partido Comunista de Cuba, PCC) sought to introduce measures improving the planning and the management of the economy while restructuring the administrative division of the economic institutions.⁸⁴ At the XXXV CMEA session in Sofia in July 1981, Cuba also committed itself to participate in the socialist division of labor with the production of sugar and its derivatives, nickel, and citruses, for the benefit of the entire socialist system.⁸⁵ Still, the implementation of the planning and the Cuban economy’s management proceeded at a very slow pace, the East Germans observed,⁸⁶ and the vice-presidents of CMEA’s central planning bodies urged the Cubans to implement further measures in this regard.⁸⁷

Despite the resolutions of the PCC’s First Congress, Cuba’s overwhelming dependence on sugar remained.⁸⁸ In 1979, the so-called “Girón Campaign”, which was aimed at transforming the eighteenth anniversary of the defeat of U.S. imperialism at Playa Girón into a “girón of sugar production”, sought in several weeks to stimulate economic development with a focus on bringing in a higher sugarcane harvest than 1978’s campaign.⁸⁹ Political benefits aside, the Cuban leadership also planned to capitalize on the higher harvest using its preferential treatment within the Council’s framework. Following the rise in the price of raw sugar on the world markets, Cuba strived to sell maximum quantities of sugar on the “free sugar market” at the expense of its obligations towards the Socialist countries.⁹⁰ Simultaneously, as over 80 percent of its production, mainly sugar, nickel, sea products, tobacco, and citrus fruits, were exported, its economic progress depended on foreign trade. Accordingly, the Cuban actions, both in international organizations and in bilateral relations, were characterized by consistency and even tenacity, as a Polish embassy report critically observed. Cuba’s top management sought to sell where higher prices could be obtained and buy where prices were most favorable.⁹¹ According to this strategy, Cuba fought “very relentlessly” to ensure the highest possible sales level for its exports. In the 1970s, this approach yielded the results pursued by Cuba. With more or less resistance, the Socialist states were ready to accept increased prices, and Cuba’s leading trading partner, the Soviet Union, was willing to take any quantity of goods at almost any price.⁹²

Moreover, the Cuban government strongly disagreed with any government opposing its tactics. For example, Cuba criticized the Czechoslovak concept that Cuban sugar’s preferential pricing was a form of economic aid, which the Cubans sought as fair and, thus, insisted it did not constitute a form of assistance. Instead, Cuba’s official line presented the long-term price of sugar as the basis of Cuba’s cooperation with the socialist states.⁹³ While they never openly admitted after joining the CMEA that the preferential above-world market prices of Cuban sugar constituted a form of assistance, in some conversations with their Socialist partners, the Cubans inadvertently admitted it. In the late 1970s, speaking to GDR’s planning committee, the Chairman of the corresponding Cuban institution, Inceplan, Humberto Pérez, argued that the CMEA countries should continue to grant preferential prices to Cuba, upholding the principle that the exchanges between Cuba and the European members of the Council should not be affected by developments on the world market. Thus, Pérez, probably without realizing it, indirectly rejected the notion that sugar’s price was economically justified.⁹⁴

The long 1980s: onto the road to the special period

In the first half of the 1980s, the integration between Cuba and CMEA member states continued to deepen. In 1983 alone, 87 percent of Cuba’s foreign trade turnover was with the CMEA, with sugar taking 75 percent of its total exports.⁹⁵ Nevertheless, the sugar trade presented many problems and difficulties in Cuba’s relations with its East European partners. Since the mid-1960s, the Soviet Union and Bulgaria, among others, have agreed to apply preferential prices to long-term purchases of Cuban sugar. Similarly, in the early 1980s, the Politburo of the Bulgarian Communist Party accepted the fluctuation in sugar prices to be linked to the prices of Bulgarian exports, which sought to stabilize Cuban exports’ purchasing power. As a result, the accelerated increase in Cuban sugar price, which amounted to 460 rubles per ton in 1984, continued to deviate significantly from the international market price.⁹⁶ The Poles, however, offered very critical comments on the way the Cubans traded their sugar with them. Warsaw only imported token amounts of sugar from Cuba, which the Polish government perceived as an imposition as Poland produced and exported sugar.⁹⁷

In February 1986, PCC’s Third Congress proposed an ambitious economic program to compensate for these difficulties. It drew a confident line according to which the future the Cuban economy will develop in a coordinated manner with that of the other European CMEA members.⁹⁸ However, this contradicted the slowing economic pace in the Council’s member states, as the Warsaw Pact states’ foreign ministers stated during their December 1987 meeting in Moscow.⁹⁹ As Czechoslovak diplomats revealed, that in the 1980s, the Cuban government continued to intensely oppose the view that the higher price of sugar paid by the Socialist states was a form of economic aid. In line with their earlier insistence, the Cubans saw the long-term sugar price as a basis of long-lasting cooperation with socialist states and not as subsidy.¹⁰⁰ Repeating Che and Escalante’s mantras, Fidel Castro slightly tweaked the premise to reflect on Cuba’s special status with the CMEA, claiming that Cuba’s favorable treatment was an example of the just and fair trading relations that should exist between developed and underdeveloped countries.¹⁰¹

By 1986, the PCC and the Cuban state authorities became very concerned about the country’s deepening economic crisis and sought to launch accelerated change of Cuba’s political, social, and economic life.¹⁰² By launching the so-called process of rectificación, they aimed to tackle negative tendencies and historical errors in the economy by applying new solutions to old problems. In November 1988, meeting Mikhail Gorbachev, Fidel Castro iterated that his reforms rejected universally valid formulas and noted that each party was free to seek its way independently.¹⁰³ Ironically, this drive was shared by Communist Parties from Berlin to Moscow, and this was not playing in Cuba’s interests. As a result, Cuba’s economic relations with all of the East European Socialist states deteriorated as Mikhail Gorbachev’s new thinking was becoming the new political norm. Moscow’s junior partners significantly reduced their trade with Cuba by 1989, which came at a significant cost to the island. Additionally, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary refused to renew various trade agreements with the Caribbean nation.¹⁰⁴

As Moscow was also confident that its aid could not be further increased, Cuba sought to improve its relations with the developed capitalist states to compensate for the deteriorating relations with the Socialist states and expand its international political room to maneuver in undermining the U.S. economic "blockade”.¹⁰⁵ Despite some sporadic and inconsistent efforts, by 1990, Cuba once again failed to diversify its industrial structure, and the island nation retained its low-productivity monoculture economy, a critical Polish report stated. Based on a moderate technological level and fragmented ability to self-sufficiency even in the field of food production, the Cuban economy was characterized by a high degree of monopolization and almost total nationalization.¹⁰⁶ The impact of the crisis with the cessation of Soviet oil deliveries and the dwindling foreign markets of Cuban exports, especially sugar, caused the Cuban gross domestic product to decline by 34.8 percent between 1990 and 1993. Left on its own, Cuba faced the so-called Special Period in Time of Peace, one of its darkest moments.

Conclusion

As this paper has shown, sugar occupied a complicated place not only in Cuba’s national economy but also in the relations with its East European Socialist partners. The original documents from a variety of East European archives consulted for this paper have demonstrated in closer detail that Moscow’s junior partners from Berlin to Sofia had various reservations in their economic relations with the Caribbean nation. In the 1960s, the economic ties between Cuba and the Socialist states went along a winding path, ranging from the warm opening of 1960 through the near-freezing years following the 1962 Missile Crisis and the thaw in the late-1960s. Buoyed from preferential sugar prices and increased economic integration with the Socialist bloc, Cuba joined the Socialist commonwealth’s planning organization, the CMEA, in 1972. In the mid-1970s and the early 1980s, the management of the Cuban economy and sugar exports faced the bloc’s major criticism and disagreement. However, following the tenuous trade relations, which the Soviet bloc tolerated for the sake of maintaining the Cuban revolution as the “beacon of Socialism” in the Western Hemisphere, starting in the mid-1980s, the structural reforms undertaken by the new Soviet leadership caught Cuba off guard. Launching its reform program, which ran against the course of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika, Cuba had to deal with a winding down of the economic cooperation with East European states, which came to a complete standstill in late 1991.

The East European diplomats seemed to uniformly accept that as sugar production remained the most important commodity for the country, it limited its agricultural and industrial development, distorting Cuba’s entire foreign trade.¹⁰⁷ Cuba’s fixed preferential prices consistently pursued from its East European partners allowed it to maintain an illusory semblance of short-term economic stability. However, the highly volatile prices on the world markets and the rise in the price of imported goods from the West presented the Cuban leadership with extremely critical situations.¹⁰⁸ Cuban planners realized the shortcoming of their monocultural economy and sought to develop nickel, fishing, and engineering industries, in addition to citrus production and processing, as the main ways to get rid of their country’s sugar dependence.¹⁰⁹ Their plans were cut short by the very international conjecture within the very Socialist bloc, whose preferential treatment helped its economy survive for three decades under the U.S.’ economic embargo, cyclic natural disasters, and nonessential main export commodity.

Primary sources

Archiv Bezpečnostních Složek [Security Services Archive, Prague] (ABS).

Arhiv Jugoslavije [Archives of Yugoslavia, Belgrade] (AJ).

Archiwum Ministerstwa Spraw Zagranicznych [Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Warsaw] (AMSZ).

Archiv Ministerstva Zahraničních Věcí [Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Prague] (AMZV).

Die Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR zu den Beständen des Bundesarchivs [ Foundation Archives of the Political Parties and Mass Organisations of the GDR in the Federal Archives, Berlin] (SAPMO BArch).

Diplomaticheski Arhiv na Ministerstvoto na Vŭnshnite Raboti [Diplomatic Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sofia] (DAMVnR).

Drejtoria e Përgjithshme e Arkivave [General Directorate of Archives, Tirana] (DPA).

Instytut Pamięci Narodowej [Institute of National Remembrance, Warsaw] (IPN).

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár [Hungarian National Archives, Budapest] (MNL).

Centro de Gestión Documental del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores [Document Management Center of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Havana] (CGD/ MINREX).

National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.

Národní Archiv České Republiky [National Archives of the Czech Republic, Prague] (NAČR).

Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts [Political archive of the Federal Foreign Office, Berlin] (PAAA).

Tsentralen Dŭrzhaven Arhiv [Central State Archive, Sofia] (TsDA).