Cuba's Transition: Institutional Lessons from Eastern Europe

1995 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Radu
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Economic Organization ◽  
Jose Marti ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Socialist System ◽  
National Hero ◽  
Multiparty Politics

An emerging consensus holds that Cuba's communist regime is moving away from Fidel Castro's brand of orthodox Marxism-Leninism and toward — something else. Cuban officials now publicly profess their indifference to labels such as “socialism” and “communism,” referring, instead, to some vague “Cuban way” of social and economic organization. Even Castro himself claims that his hostility to multiparty politics stems less from an adherence to Marxism and owes more to the calls of José Martí, Cuba's national hero, for national unity of purpose and organization.All of this may point to a growing belief in Havana that communism cannot long endure as a legitimizing factor for the regime and a corresponding attempt to locate a new source of legitimacy in the alleged uniqueness of Cuba's socialist system. The implication of such an attempt would be: (1) that the Cuban regime differs fundamentally from the collapsed Eurasian communist regimes, and (2) that its future is therefore likely to differ also — and fundamentally. In other words, it has a future.

scholarly journals Backwardness of Central and Eastern Europe as a Heritage of the Soviet Period

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (338) ◽  
pp. 61-66
Author(s):  
Sandris Ancans
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
European Region ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Planned Economy ◽  
Command Economy ◽  
Centrally Planned Economy ◽  
Communist Countries ◽  
The Eu

AbstractThe economy of Latvia lags behind economically developed nations approximately fourfold in terms of labour productivity in the tradable sector, which is the key constituent of a modern economy, thereby affecting future sustainable development in the entire country, including the rural areas. The economic backwardness is characteristic of the entire Central and Eastern Europe. This is the heritage of a communist regime that lasted for about half a century and the economic system termed a (centrally) planned economy or a command economy. However, such a term for the communist-period economy is not correct, as it does not represent the purpose it was created for. Accordingly, the paper aims to assess the effect of the communism period on the economic backwardness of the Central and Eastern European region of the EU. A planned economy that existed in all communist countries, with the exception of Yugoslavia, was not introduced to contribute to prosperity. It was intended for confrontation or even warfare by the communist countries under the guidance of the USSR against other countries where no communism regime existed, mostly Western world nations with their market economies. For this reason, it is not correct to term it a (centrally) planned economy or a command economy; the right term is a mobilised (war) economy. An extrapolation of a geometric progression for GDP revealed that during the half a century, Latvia as part of the USSR was forced to spend on confrontation with the West not less than EUR 17 bln. (2011 prices) or approximately one gross domestic product of 2011. The research aim of the paper is to assess the effect of the communism period on the economic backwardness of the Central and Eastern European region of the EU.

Freedom and democracy

2018 ◽  
pp. 74-131
Author(s):  
Andrea Mariuzzo
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Central Eastern Europe ◽  
The Past ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Central Eastern ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter explains the importance of the values of freedom and democracy in the Cold War struggle between Italian Communists and anti-Communists. As soon as Cold War tensions broke down the ‘national unity’ of anti-fascist forces, both fronts claimed to be the exclusive representatives of ‘true’ democracy, and compared their competitor with the defeated fascist enemy. The Socialist-Communist alliance acquired the programme of ‘progressive’ (or ‘people’s’) democracy inspired by the experiments in Central-Eastern Europe, and made it the base for its opposition to the supposed Christian-Democratic ‘restoration’ of a new ‘reactionary clerical fascism’, along with the defense of the guarantees for parliamentary opposition established by the republican Constitution of 1948. The anti-Communist front, on its side, found strong unifying motifs in the description of Soviet dictatorship and the ‘sovietization’ of the countries occupied by the Red Army filtered beyond the Iron Curtain, and in their comparison with ‘totalitarian’ experiences lived by Italians in the past years.

Tensions of Transnationalism: Youth Rebellion, State Backlash, and 1968 in Poland

2020 ◽  
Vol 125 (4) ◽  
pp. 1232-1259
Author(s):  
Malgorzata Fidelis
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Alternative Interpretation ◽  
The State ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Totalitarian Regime ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
National Community ◽  
Dominant Narratives

Abstract This article looks at Polish students who attempted to challenge the communist state’s hegemony with their own alternative interpretation of leftist politics during the pivotal era of the global sixties. This challenge culminated in student and youth demonstrations in March 1968 and the state’s violent reaction. In contrast to dominant narratives that depict 1968 in Poland and Eastern Europe as primarily shaped by the domestic political context, this article shows Polish students not simply as protesters against a “totalitarian” regime, but as active participants in a contemporary global search for a new kind of leftism. This quest involved turning away from the state as a potential vehicle for a socialist transformation, reformulating ideas of justice and solidarity, and engaging in leftist conversations across borders. The concept of transnational imagination is central to this discussion as both the young people and the state projected different visions of transnational solidarities and were influenced by crises happening elsewhere, including the Vietnam War and the Six-Day War in the Middle East. In Poland, the communist regime deployed and weaponized the transnational imagination against the protesters by launching a powerful antisemitic campaign. Stigmatizing protesters as Zionists and foreign agents alien to the Polish national community, the campaign solidified the racialized understanding of the “Polish nation,” which had lasting political consequences, including the shape of oppositional politics in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Quesadas of Cuba: Biographers and Editors of José Martí Y Pérez

1966 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 389-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Gray
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Close Friend ◽  
Jose Marti ◽  
American States ◽  
National Hero ◽  
Father And Son

Students of the life and writings of José Martí y Pérez (1853–1895), the National Hero of Cuba, will be forever indebted to the lifelong efforts of Marti’s close friend, fellow revolutionist, and “literary heir,” Gonzalo de Quesada y Aróstegui, and to those of his son, Gonzalo de Quesada y Miranda. Through painstaking research and editing they have preserved, over a period of nearly seventy years, the record of Martí’s prodigious writings as a revolutionist, journalist, novelist, dramatist, and poet. It is no exaggeration to say that most of the writing on this remarkable Cuban is derived from their carefully edited collections of his works. Gonzalo de Quesada y Aróstegui, as one of the architects of Cuban independence, Cuba’s first Minister to the United States, and major participant in the early International Conferences of American States, is deserving of special attention by scholars in the Americas. Now that a third official edition of Marti’s writings is nearing completion by Gonzalo de Quesada y Miranda in Cuba, a biographical and bibliographical sketch of the Quesadas, father and son, is in order.

Exit, Voice, and the Fate of the German Democratic Republic: An Essay in Conceptual History

1993 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert O. Hirschman
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Federal Republic ◽  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Special Shape ◽  
Public Protest ◽  
History Of

The revolutionary events of 1989 in Eastern Europe took a special shape in the German Democratic Republic: large-scale flights of citizens to the Federal Republic of Germany combined with increasingly powerful mass demonstrations in the major cities to bring down the communist regime. This conjunction of private emigration and public protest contrasts with the way these distinct responses to discontent had been previously experienced, primarily as alternatives. The forty-year history of the German Democratic Republic thus represents a particularly rich theater of operation for the concepts of “exit” and “voice,” which the author had introduced in his book Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970). The events of 1989 are scrutinized in some detail as they trace a more complex pattern of interaction than had been found to prevail in most previous studies.

Explaining Political and Economic Change in Post-Communist Eastern Europe

1995 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
BEVERLY CRAWFORD ◽  
AREND LIJPHART
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Research Methodology ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Regional Research ◽  
Causal Factors ◽  
The Past ◽  
International Pressures

This article presents a framework for the analysis of regime change in post-Communist Eastern Europe. It examines two competing approaches, the “legacies of the past” and the “imperatives of liberalization,” as alternative causal factors shaping the trajectories of regime change. The article argues that the debate between these two approaches has important implications for comparative research methodology and design; to the extent that past legacies dominate the path of post-Communist regime change, comparisons with other regions emerging from an authoritarian past will yield less insight. The authors claim, however, that the immediate context of norms, institutions, and international pressures shapes the particular way that legacies influence outcomes. Thus they conclude that cross-regional research is likely to be fruitful and should be pursued.

On the Economic Organization of Eastern Europe: Discussion

1955 ◽  
Vol 121 (4) ◽  
pp. 465
Author(s):  
W. G. East ◽  
R. Ogilvie Buchanan ◽  
K. C. Edwards ◽  
T. McKitterick ◽  
J. A. Steers ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Economic Organization

scholarly journals José Martí, fine sand. Archive and reading in a short story by Marcial Gala

Anclajes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-70
Author(s):  
Irina Garbatzky ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Fine Sand ◽  
Special Period ◽  
Jose Marti ◽  
National Hero

The article addresses the problem of the reading and archive of José Martí in the short story “Three months before Pilar’s death” (2010), by Marcial Gala. Towards the end of the 20th century, the Cuban intellectual field made breaking with the national hero a requirement for its own legibility. Gala is a contemporary of these debates and the short story presents similar themes to other narratives of the Special Period, as well as a critical treatment of the figure of Martí. Nevertheless, it enables an exploration of the remainders of Martí’s archive, organizing and systematizing his discourse in different, though not canonical fashion. These archival operations are put forward through two actions: detonating Martí’s poem “Los zapaticos de rosa”, published in La Edad de Oro in 1889, reorganizing its fragments and placing the exercise of reading at its center.

The Montage Connection between John Heartfield and László Lakner

2019 ◽  
pp. 565-588
Author(s):  
Cristina Cuevas-Wolf
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Visual Language ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The West ◽  
Weimar Germany ◽  
Cross Pollination ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Visual Cultures

This article argues that during the 1960s the Hungarian conceptualist and painter László Lakner defined through his works a paradoxical, yet distinctive lineage of a New Leftist visual culture. Based in the tradition of transnational communist, antifascist visual expression, Lakner’s art responded and critiqued the communist regime in Eastern Europe during the 1960s. The German political photomonteur John Heartfield initiated such an alternative leftist visual language in Weimar Germany in his antifascist photomontages, published by the German magazine Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung, to create a politically engaged viewer from within the communist international movement. This essay compares the work of Lakner and Heartfield to show how the montage connection between these two artists stemmed from a transnational cross-pollination between communist visual cultures in the West and East that shared an international and oppositional character informed by radical social movements in the thirties and sixties.

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