Cuba: An exception in the 1989 capitalist restoration processes

In 1989, the world agreement for restoration between imperialism and the Stalinist bureaucracy was fulfilled with the capitalist restoration in China, in the USSR and in the Eastern Europe countries. Such a leap towards the restoration could be taken because during the revolutionary uprising in 1968-1974, Stalinism led the fights of the “French May”, the “Italian hot autumn” and “the revolution of the carnations” in Portugal to a defeat, smashed the political revolution of the “Prague Spring” in Czechoslovakia, expropriated the process against the bureaucracy of Poland and defeated the miners’ strike in Romania. Meanwhile, Maoism, after the agreements between Nixon and Deng Xiao Ping in 1975, was in charge of organizing a fratricide war between the Chinese proletariat and the one from Cambodia and Vietnam, which destroyed, massacred and demoralized the proletariat in the Far East, after the victory over the US troops who ran away from Vietnman, hanging from the choppers. With these defeats to the world revolution in the West and to the political revolutions in the workers state, the bureaucracy advanced in becoming a direct agent of the imperialism, taking a leap towards the restoration in the 80’s by introducing capitalist measures in China and in the USSR, allowing the international imperialist bourgeoisie to fully recover for the world capitalist economy the places of the planet the revolution had expropriated.
Despite that the capitalist restoration won in China, USSR and in Eastern Europe in 1989, imperialism wasn’t able to apply it in Cuba at that moment. The fights of the working class and the exploited in Latin America were not desynchronized from that of their class brothers and sisters in Cuba, different to Europe and Asia. The Latin American proletariat, one of those who fought the most in the last 50 years, had started heroic revolutions such as Nicaragua and El Salvador at the end of the 70’s, the overthrowing of Duvalier in Haiti and the hard struggles against the military dictatorships in the South Cone.
These struggles and revolutions were what allowed the Cuban workers state to still survive. But this was despite and against the policy of Castroism, continuity of the policy applied by Stalinism during the agreements for containing the world revolution, signed in Yalta at the end of WWII. Thus, Castroism, expropriating the Cuban revolution, acted in Africa and in Latin America as a counterrevolutionary agent, that is to say, as a fireman in every revolutionary fire that started.

The Castroism: Loyal perpetrator of the Stalinist policy of Yalta’s agreement
At the end of WWII, imperialism and the Stalinist bureaucracy signed the “Yalta agreement”, an agreement for containing the world revolution. In that agreement, the Stalinist bureaucracy and its parties, by using the inherited prestige of the October Revolution and the heroic Russian masses action that defeated the Nazi army invasion with 27 million casualties, committed themselves to dismantle the ongoing revolutionary processes in the central European imperialist countries, and also to prevent the revolution from expanding to the entire continent. It añsp committed to keep their bureaucratic and counterrevolutionary control in all the countries of Eastern Europe which were occupied by the red army.
At the end of WWII Stalinism played the role of contention, closing the revolutionary situation that was opened in Europe, disarming the Partisans in Italy, the French resistance, smashing the Greek resistance, and allowing Germany’s partition into a western capitalist part and another part in the East controlled by the bureaucracy of the Kremnlin. That agreement of contention was concentrated in the division of the working class: imperialism secured control of Western Europe, thanks to the betrayal of the CP, and by its weakness had to give up the control of Eastern Europe to its counterrevolutionary agent, the Stalinist bureaucracy, in order to stop the revolution.
During this period, exceptions that escaped Yalta’s control occurred; victorious revolutions that had counterrevolutionary leaderships ahead, as in China, Vietnam and Cuba. It happened the theoretical hypothesis posed by Trotsky in The Transitional program: “under the influence of completely exceptional circumstances (war, defeat, financial crash, mass revolutionary pressure, etc.), the petty bourgeois parties, including the Stalinists, may go further than they wish along the road to a break with the bourgeoisie”. Thus, they established workers and peasants governments which “would represent merely a short episode on the road to the actual dictatorship of the proletariat.” And we say they are exceptions, because the rule was the defeat and treasons of 99% of the revolutionary processes of this period by Stalinism and its pact with imperialism for counterrevolutionary contention.
After the victory of the Cuban revolution, where it was fulfilled the hypothesis stated by Trotsky, Fidel Castro and his camarilla played a key role in the policy of peaceful coexistence between USSR and imperialism. It was the “more to the left” cover that the Stalinist counterrevolutionary policy could get, since it turned the victory for the masses that meant the Cuban revolution in the strengthening of the counterrevolutionary leadership of the masses and its implacable acting.

The international counterrevolutionary policy of Castroism
In Africa, in the beginning of the 60’s and in late 80’s, Castroism, with Che Guevara at the helm, sent thousands of soldiers, cadres and advisers to Congo, Angola and other countries in Africa to be the left wing of the army-parties of the bourgeois movement for national liberation, such as FRELIMO of Mozambique, MPLA Angola, SWAPO Namibia, ANC South Africa. Castroism prevented the proletariat and the African masses in their anticolonial struggle to expropriate imperialism. In Angola, just to give an example, in the middle of a war against the Portuguese army, the Gulf Oil Company continued to extract oil in Cabinda, paying taxes to the government of Agostinho Neto (MPLA), who paid with that money the salary of the Cuban troops. Castroism showed its true role completely when the Portuguese troops in Angola were defeated and the white power was disarmed in Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa: Castroites were part of the native bourgeois governments which expropriated the revolutionary struggle of the masses.
While this was its function in Africa, in Latin America the Cuban bureaucracy also took care of leading the revolutions to defeats. In Chile, 1973, the masses with their revolution of the armed industrial cordons imposed embryos of dual power, seizing the factories and organizing the production against the boss lock-out, guaranteeing besides the distribution of the food. Fidel Castro himself went to claim the “pacific road to socialism” and tell the Chilean working class that they had to disarm since Chile was not supposed to be a new Cuba, since “comrade Allende” was president. The “pacific road to Socialism” with the bourgeois Allende meant the shortest way to counterrevolution and fascism: “comrade Allende” appointed Pinochet as the commander of the army, who was introduced as a “democratic and patriot general” by Castroism and who later made the coup ending in the revolution in a blood buff. This is how the defeats of the revolutionary processes were imposed in the whole south cone, installing bloody military dictatorships in Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and so on.
But in the 80’s Castroism had to deal with revolutions of the masses that started in Central America. In 1979 the Nicaraguan masses started a revolution overthrowing dictator Somoza, and again the Cuban bureaucracy, leading the Sandinist Front of National Liberation expropriated the revolution, preventing the masses from destroying the bourgeois state in order to not make “a new Cuba out of Nicaragua” and backing the emerging of a bourgeois “democratic of national reconstruction” government integrated by Sandinism and the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie “anti-Somoza” who made nothing to overthrow Somoza. At the same time, the revolution in El Salvador starts and quickly Castro stated to the Salvador masses “do not make a new Nicaragua out of El Salvador”, that is to say do not overthrow the government. To prevent the overthrowing of the government and defeating the vanguard, they set up the guerrilla Farabundo Marti Front of National Liberation (FMLN), urging it not to advance on El Salvador capital city and for it to make a position war, occupying territory, which meant the massacre of thousands of workers and peasants.
Backed in the treacherous policy of Castroism, US imperialism with the butcher Reagan in the government, seeing the peril of that Central American revolution could enter inside the imperialist beast heart, organized sending troops, weapons and money to form, from Honduras, a counterrevolutionary army, the “Contra”, with the assignment of liquidating the Central American revolution. But the masses smashed “Contra” and defeated the US. Castroism then rushed to sign the agreements of Esquipulas and Contadora to disarm the workers and peasants, and make the guerrilla to become the bourgeois army of Nicaragua and El Salvador, giving back to the bourgeoisie in those countries the power it had lost.

After 1989, the bureaucracy imposes a Menshevik restoration-of-capitalist government in Cuba
Despite and against Castroism, these fights of the Latin American proletariat prevented that in 1989-1990 the restoration from being imposed in Cuba, when imperialism led the world restoration pact to victory in Eastern Europe, USSR and China. The Cuban masses, despite the defeat in 1989 were part of a continental fight against imperialism, of the victory of smashing “Contra” in Nicaragua and the overthrowing the bloody dictatorship of “Baby Doc Duvallier” in Haiti in 1985, just to give a few examples. For that balance of forces, Castroism didn’t have the conditions to apply a restorationist policy.
The fall of the former workers states in 1989 put the Cuban workers state into a deep crisis, since it depended and was subsidiary of Moscow. USSR was the only country Cuba could trade with, while US imperialism harden the blockade imposed since the 60’s, sinking extremely the productive forces in Cuba, already undermined by the utopian reactionary narrow frame of the “socialism in only one island”. These conditions allowed the Castroite bureaucracy to begin to introduce restorationist measures, taking the workers state into a deep decomposition. This passing to the restoration side was defined with the constitutional reform in 1992 and the foreign investments law in 1995, with which the bureaucracy imposed each time broader and deeper restorationist measures, such as the dual currency, deepening the breach between the impoverished masses and the Castroite camarilla, preparing the imposition of the restoration and the bureaucracy’s coming into bourgeoisie. With these events, from the 90’s, the Castroite bureaucracy became a direct agent of the restoration, imposing a Menshevik restoration government, giving to the imperialist monopolies the most profitable branches of the economy, like the nickel and tourism while the state is still running the deficient branches of the nationalized economy. 
But once again it was the revolutionary fight of the proletariat and the Latin American exploited that started at the end of the 90’s what imposed a limit to the bureaucracy, making it harder to restore capitalism in Cuba. For that, in order to complete its passage from restorationist bureaucracy to bourgeoisie, Castroism dedicated to play a key counterrevolutionary role in the early 21st century.