The rectification
Toward the Party Conference (Part 5)
The rectification
By Jorge Gómez Barata
The sectarianism introduced into the Communist Party ranks in 1962 was manifested in the mistrust in the cadres who had not been members of the Marxist Party and in the conversion of the political organization into an administrative entity. In addition to the denaturization that that meant, the sectarianism prevented the CP from performing its ideological and political functions.
As an antidote, aside from criticism, Fidel Castro applied requirements for the construction of the CP that, while not excluding past merits, required the participation of the mass of workers who had to judge the merits of those who were joining the Party.
Once the errors were corrected, the Party accompanied the popular mobilization and the formidable advances in the economic, social and cultural development that characterized the 1960s and ’70s. Even before the formation of the government and people’s power institutions, the Party, due above all to the spirit of sacrifice of its members, took its place at the vanguard of the Revolution.
To carry out a process of such a magnitude in a short time, the Party adopted the experiences of countries like the Soviet Union, which (it then believed) advanced successfully in the construction of socialism. Those circumstances conditioned the mechanical transfer of Soviet experiences to our reality, a process that – despite Fidel’s warnings and the work done personally by Raúl Castro to clarify the role and attributions of the Party’s governing organizations and their respective auxiliary apparatus – was mechanical and exaggerated.
In the 10 ensuing years, which included the Second and Third Congresses, the organization devoted itself to carry out the agreed-upon plans. Among other things, that included creating and perfecting its apparatus, defining its nomenclature and assuming the guidance of the State, a most complex endeavor. In addition to being enormous, the task had conceptual flaws.
The task of reproducing the state’s structure in the organizations of Party leadership, of guiding from there the labor, social and mass organizations, of overseeing the execution of economic policy and social development, of guiding culture and ideological labor, of looking after the armed forces and public order, the judicial and legislative systems, and building a vertical organization with about one million members overwhelmed the abilities of the Party staff.
Meanwhile, the economic transformations, especially the creation of infrastructures, social development, particularly education and health, the building and supplying of schools and sanitary installations, as well as the formation of doctors and teachers, the development of sciences, the efforts to advance in sectors such as agriculture, cattle farming and construction, proceeded briskly, propelled by the presence, energy and dynamism of Fidel Castro. During that period, the armed forces experienced a formidable development, defense was considerably reinforced, and a new military doctrine was designed, based on the concept of All the People’s War.
Internationally, that stage marked the beginning of the Cuban internationalist mission in Angola, a pretext used by U.S. President Jimmy Carter to reprise the aggressiveness of the previous administrations, a situation that was worsened by the rise to power of Reagan in 1981. To those tensions were added Cuba’s collaboration with Nicaragua and the internationalist aid to Ethiopia.
Meanwhile, favored by political and ideological coincidences, Cuba’s relations with the Soviet Union were fully stabilized, with a reinforcement of agreements on subjects such as foreign policy and mutual political support. Because of Cuba’s influence in the Non-aligned Nations Movement, in the United Nations, and in the European and Latin American left, the importance of Cuba’s support for the USSR amply transcended the size of the Caribbean country.
In that context, deficiencies and deformations associated especially with economics and state and political structures began to become evident. Fortunately, those phenomena, associated above all with the application of Soviet experiences, were detected in time by Fidel Castro, who, in April 1986, called for a Process of Rectification of Errors and Negative Tendencies. Although the fundamental stress was directed at the economic activities, it overflowed into other areas of the State’s and the Party’s institutional development.
What that rectifying process was ongoing, Mikhail Gorbachev, who in 1985 had assumed the post of Secretary General of the Communist Party of the USSR, intensified his program of reforms known as perestroika. Those reforms fostered extreme situations in the socialist countries of eastern Europe and threw Soviet society off-balance. Successively, as in a “domino effect,” real socialism was liquidated.
In 1989, with a vision that very few people enjoyed, Fidel Castro warned of the worst that could happen. “If tomorrow, or any other day, we woke up to the news that a major civil conflict had occurred in the USSR, or if we woke up to the news that the USSR has disintegrated […] even in those circumstances, Cuba and the Cuban Revolution would continue to struggle and would continue to resist!” he said. Lamentably, his words were prophetic. In 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
Under such circumstances – which for the revolutionary and progressive forces, especially for socialism – meant the worst setback ever to occur, and that for Cuba meant a crisis added to the U.S. blockade and aggressiveness, Fidel, with realism and a sense of historical responsibility, discontinued his criticism and devoted his energies and abilities to manage the crisis that befell the country and the Revolution. The work of rectification remained unfinished and, in part, remains unfinished.
Jorge Gómez Barata is a Cuban journalist. He lives in Havana.
