Cuba: Fidel in Wonderland

He was halfway to Moscow aboard an Aeroflot TU-114 turboprop before the Cuban people were told that he was gone. Even to his Russian hosts, Fidel Castro’s visit seemed a surprise. Only two welcoming banners could be seen hanging in the 21° cold at Vnukovo airport. But out rolled a Red carpet, and Premier Nikita Khrushchev was on hand to snuggle into the beard when the Maximum Leader came bounding down the ramp.

Sleds & Rugs. Why was he there for the second time in ten months? Easy, said Fidel. For years he had yearned to see Russia’s winter wonderland. “I want to see the real hunters in Siberia and see how they live, how they battle with nature and how they prepare their food. It will be very interesting to live among these courageous people.” Then it was off to romp in the snow, pose for photographers on a sled and zip down a children’s playground slide on a rug. “I want to tell you the same thing I tell Cuban children,” he cooed to a bevy of Russian towheads. “Learn well, and master knowledge so as to set an example to all the children of the world.

Aside from that snow job, the Russian press allowed only that Castro and Khrushchev were “talking about matters of interest to both parties.” Washington’s Castrologists had some ideas about what those matters might be. One theory was that Castro’s recent talks with Soviet Presidium Member Nikolai Podgorny had ended in a fiasco in Havana, with Podgorny more than a little annoyed because the Cubans didn’t seem to know the value of a ruble. Though the Communists are pumping more than $1,000,000 a day into Cuba, the economy is on the verge of collapse. Castro is desperately searching for more trade with the West like the deal he made a fortnight ago for $10 million worth of British buses to bolster his transportation system. But Castro cannot pay for many such deals unless he can wheedle a further relaxation of the barter agreement under which Cuba sells its dwindling sugar crop to Russia at 6¢ a Ib. v. the world market price of 10¢ a Ib. And this might take some talking—since it would leave the Communists with even less than they already have to show for their aid.

Knocking Opportunity. Another possibility was that Castro had raced off to Moscow to talk about Panama and the opportunities for stepped-up Communist subversion in Latin America. But other than the standard Pravda denunciations of “Yankee imperialism,” there was little indication that Moscow was anxious to risk the fragile detente abuilding with the U.S. Khrushchev himself waited a full week before publicly mentioning Panama, then limited himself to a relatively mild attack: “Display some reason, gentlemen. Get out before it is too late, before you are chucked out.” What seemed to aggravate Khrushchev far more was the recent CIA report that Russia itself was in the throes of a grave economic crisis. In reply to that, he angrily shouted a new version of his famed “We’ll bury you” crack: “You will vanish as though the earth had swallowed you before you see our economy failing.”