Our Comrades in Havana
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In the immediate aftermath of its successful revolution, Cuba was heralded by socialist nations as the vanguard of communism in Latin America in the early 1960s. But by the late 1980s, Cuba's inability to adopt the modes of socialist planning and Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms had deeply soured the relationship between Havana and the Soviet-led socialist bloc. While secondary literature often highlights Cuba's political and economic relations with Washington and Moscow, Havana's ideological, political, and economic relations with the Eastern European states have received considerably less attention. This book aims to fill this gap by offering a detailed chronological account of how Cuba's post-revolutionary development was influenced by Eastern European diplomats.
Outside of their roles as representatives of their respective states, Eastern European diplomats were entrusted with the task of educating local Cuban leadership in the intricacies of Marxism-Leninism, steering Cuba's governors onto the "correct path of development," helping them eradicate "erroneous ideas" of economic development, and showing them the validity of socialist "morals and ideology." By considering these developments and analyzing firsthand accounts of Eastern European diplomats' experiences in Havana, historian Radoslav Yordanov reconstructs the thinking of Eastern European diplomats and specialists in their dealings with Cuba from the 1959 Cuban revolutionary victory to the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, shedding new light on Cuba's role in the global Cold War.
—Louis A. Pérez, Jr., author of Colonial Reckoning: Race and Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Cuba
"The British spies from Grahan Greene's Our Man in Havana were replaced by Radoslav Yordanov's Our Comrades in Havana—the East European socialist diplomats and advisors, almost immediately after Fidel Castro's revolution. By analyzing their reports preserved in East European archives, this book tells us the story of Cuba and its relations with the socialist block that was never told before. It is a missing page in the history of the Cold War that sheds a new light on the communist experiment in Western hemisphere that still goes on."
—Serhii Plokhy, author of Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis
"Meticulously researched and lucidly written, this book is indispensable reading for anybody trying to understand the complex dynamics of relations within the socialist bloc. Yordanov masterfully uses his multinational sources to show how Cuban independent spirit and unorthodox Marxism became a challenge to the Soviet leadership who were trying to educate the Cubans to be "true communists" and to restrain their internationalist policies."—Svetlana Savranskaya, co-author of The Last Superpower Summits: Gorbachev, Reagan, and Bush
"Yordanov consulted more than 20 archives across Eastern Europe, as well as in Russia, Cuba, and the United States, to craft this superbly-constructed history of Cold War diplomacy."—Richard Feinberg, Foreign Affairs
"Thanks to Yordanov's diligent, pioneering research in eastern European archives, Cuba's long relationship with the Soviet bloc can no longer be viewed in simple binary terms. The book proffers a more balanced account of Cuba's relationship with its main allies in the socialist world, as well as providing much-needed nuance. It affords considerable new insights into Cuba's outlook and policies in this fraught period, underscoring Castro's outsized personality as a central problem."—Philip Chrimes, International Affairs
"Radoslav Yordanov's Our Comrades in Havana is certainly a welcome contribution. It aims to correct some of the most persistent and unhelpful assumptions about Cuba's relations with the old Soviet Union and the wider socialist bloc between 1959 and 1991, which depict Cuba as a 'client-state' or 'puppet' that was dependent on Soviet ideas and priorities."—Antoni Kapcia, Jacobin
"Yordanov's remarkable ability to synthesize delivers a coherent and engaging narrative that offers a rich and precious account of three decades of relations. This carefully crafted work represents an engaging invitation for other researchers to continue refining our understanding of Cuba's interactions with the socialist world, especially from perspectives beyond the Soviet Union."—Rafael Pedemonte, NACLA Report on the Americas
"Ultimately, Yordanov's meticulous archival research and probing narrative provide a valuable contribution to Cold War historiography that challenges traditional East–West binaries by foregrounding Cuba's agency in global revolutionary movements."—Marc Becker, The Americas
"This impressive feat of archival and linguistic virtuosity will not soon be equaled, even as it speaks to a growing body of literature grounded in both Soviet and Cuban sources."—Jennifer L. Lambe, Hispanic American Historical Review
