Comrade Of the Revolution: A Book Review
Nitheesh Narayanan
Cuba continues to survive, holding its firm conviction and commitment towards building socialism. The journey, however, has not been an easy one. On the one hand, Cuba has had to build a ‘new’ country that was liveable for all its people, addressing and accommodating the aspiration of the entire society. It was an enormous task considering the constraints Cuba had regarding the availability of natural resources, raw materials, its geographical limitations etc. On the other hand were the more challenging hurdles — not from within, but less than a hundred miles away from their shores — the six decades old, ongoing, multi-faceted war unleashed by US imperialism, which is probably the longest wars in history, affecting the lives of multiple generations of an entire society and aimed at destroying every single pillar of Cuba’s existence. Their economic stability, foreign relations, credibility, survival as a sovereign state, and the right to make decisions for their own nation — all of these are under continuous assault by the US. Cuba has had to resist each of these from time to time, making its society accessible for and accountable to its entire population, as well as maintaining their committed towards the world community.
Cuba continues to thrive, despite all such efforts to quash its existence. This small island of eleven million people has been fighting US imperialism over the last sixty years. As it has been the target of a ‘war criminal’ nation that has attempted to invade the most significant number of countries in human history, Cuba’s survival is certainly a matter of wonder. Fidel Castro, who was once asked about the reason behind Cuba’s existence all these years, despite all the hardships brought about by the imperialist camp, replied, “We have a people armed with ideas and their unity”.
People were at the centre of Cuba’s socio-economic-political policymaking, aimed at building socialism. The revolutionary leadership maintained a strong link with the masses by making them an active part of the socialist re-construction of the country. People united around an ideology that they believed was capable of creating a better society. Every time the country faced a new challenge or assault, it was communicated to the people. Castro was one of the champions involved in leading this revolutionary process of mass political education. Comrade of the Revolution: Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro, published by LeftWord in 2021 brilliantly summarises an active part of this journey.
Comrade of the Revolution, edited and introduced by Monolo De Santos and Vijay Prashad, comprises of seven speeches delivered by Castro to the people of Cuba at various junctures of the crisis from 1967 to 2005. These include the speech he gave at the solemn ceremony in memory of Ernesto Che Guevara, the speech about the 1970 sugar harvest during the year of the Ten Million, the speech at the memorial service for the victims of the act of terrorism against the Cubana airline’s plane destroyed in flight, speeches delivered months before the fall of USSR, the speeches that expose the inhumanity of the neoliberal era, and also the speeches which explain the inevitability revolutionary process.
The foreword to the book is written by Fernando Gonzalez Llort, one of the ‘Cuban five’, unfairly imprisoned in the USA for fighting terrorist organisations that have operated from the USA’s territory against Cuba. He writes about Fidel as follows,
“With his permanent vigilance for the present and future of our people, Fidel played a notable role as a popular educator in history. His extraordinary vision showed us that there is no possible revolution without political education”.
In the introduction, Manolo and Prashad luminously encapsulate Fidel’s astonishing clarity and approach while facing the extraordinary challenges of his time and proposing the way forward. The speeches of Fidel are learning material for revolutionaries across the world forever. His approach is not confined to a particular era, but offers political and revolutionary methods and lessons for all times. As the editors state in the book, Fidel is the conscience of the third world and the mirror of its aspirations. This book welcomes the readers to a world of conviction and the battle of ideas.
(Comrade of the Revolution: Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro, published by LeftWord books, is available here)
Nitheesh Narayanan is the editor of Student Struggle, a Central Secretariat member of SFI, and a PhD scholar at the Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy. He is also a Researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
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