Cuba: Russian Ships Arrive

For months Russia seemed undecided about how to handle Brother Castro, as if hesitant to get too identified with his irrational words and his flopping economics. Now, it seems, the decision has been made to stand by him and prop him up.

As though a trickling tap had suddenly been turned full on, Soviet bloc aid is pouring into Cuba. Since July 26, some 20 Soviet ships have embarked from Black Sea, Baltic and Siberian ports; by Aug. 8 at least eight vessels had docked at Cuban ports to unload military goods and 5,000 “technicians.”

Rocket-Size Crates. Cuba’s Communist government tried to keep a security lid on the shipments. Casual citizens were cleared from dockside areas; unloading was confined to after midnight. The result was to proliferate rumors that most of the 5,000 new arrivals were Russian combat troops in helmets and short-sleeved uniforms: 18,000 RUSSIAN TROOPS IN CUBA, headlined the New York Daily News, going a step further. The size of the concerted shipments indicate that they were in the works before the visit to Moscow last month by Fidel’s 31-year-old brother Raul, though perhaps he was able to ask for a few more items and the Russians were in a position to extract a few more pledges.

U.S. intelligence identified the first cargoes as communications trucks, radar vans, general purpose trucks, mobile generator units—and, apparently, rockets. All the equipment pointed to large-scale coastal surveillance and air-defense systems. In other nations where similar Soviet help has been received, the contents of crates like the ones landed in Cuba turned out to be ground-to-air rockets, similar to the U.S. Nike-Ajax. Of the 5,000 technicians, according to the intelligence reports, one-half to two-thirds were military technical men sent to install and operate the electronic systems until Castro’s men learn to handle the equipment. The rest of the specialists seemed to be economists, agronomists, industrial engineers—types desperately needed to shore up Cuba’s collapsing economy.

Technicians, Yes. At last week’s press conference, President Kennedy was asked about Communist-bloc troops or supplies entering Cuba, and replied: “New supplies, definitely, in large quantities. Troops? We do not have any information, but an increased number of technicians.” Just the same, at week’s end the President sent his top military adviser, General Maxwell D. Taylor, on a hurry-up tour of U.S. military installations that would be involved if Cuban trouble flared up: the Panama Canal Zone, the new Strike Command headquarters at Tampa’s MacDill Air Force Base, and the Atlantic Fleet Headquarters at Norfolk.

The coast and air defenses should help ease Castro’s fear of a new invasion. He is forever beating his propaganda drums against U.S. planes and ships intruding on Cuban waters (which the U.S. denies). Last week he proclaimed that “enemy ships” standing a few hundred yards offshore had pumped 20-mm. cannon shells into a suburb of Havana. “We hold the U.S. Government responsible,” he cried. Actually, the bombardment was an unopposed nighttime firing on a waterfront Havana hotel housing Iron Curtain technicians, and the nearby Chaplin Theater, from a surplus PT boat and a fast cruiser manned by 20 members of the under ground Revolutionary Student Directo rate. The raid seems to have come as a surprise to Washington too.

It was also the week when Fidel Castro finally disabused his people of an old promise. When he came to power three years ago, Castro bragged that his land-reform program would rest on two principles: “The land should belong to those who work it,” and “Those who have no land must have some.” As a starter, he divided 13% (more than 3,000,000 acres) of Cuba’s total farmland into 630 cooperative farms. Fortnight ago, Castro conceded that the land distribution to peasants had been a flop, partly because it encouraged too much private initiative.

Now, like everything else in Cuba, the co-ops would be collectivized — and their peasants would become hired hands.

“Should we give each peasant a small piece of land?” asked Castro. “No! Be cause after one little piece of land the peasant would want a larger one, his live stock would multiply and soon he would not have just three, but 10, 20, 50 head of cattle. He would then be a large land-owner.”