Fidel Castro as a symbol

Today in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel unveiled a monument to Fidel Castro Ruz, the leader of the Cuban revolution.

“Fidel Castro devoted his whole life to the selfless struggle for the triumph of the ideas of goodness, peace and justice. For the freedom of oppressed peoples, for a decent life for ordinary people and social equality. He is rightfully considered one of the brightest and most charismatic leaders of the turbulent, dramatic 20th century. A truly legendary personality,” said the President of Russia.

“The personality of the Commander-in-Chief is most closely connected with the friendship that has been tempered between our peoples and governments for more than 60 years. Fidel very well understood the essence of the brotherhood relations that unite our countries,” the Cuban President said.

Fidel Castro Ruz led the Republic of Cuba for half a century – from 1959 to 2008. Then he transferred power to his younger brother Raul. He died on November 25, 2016, having lived for 90 years. Four months after his death, in April 2017, a square in Moscow, in the Sokol district, at the intersection of Novopeschanaya and 2nd Peschanaya streets, was named after him. There is also a monument here.

The decision to erect a monument to Fidel was accompanied by two remarkable moments. In 2020, the council of the Sokol district asked the Council of Municipal Deputies to find out how the inhabitants of the district feel about this proposal of the Russian Military Historical Society. In the course of a short poll, 35 people voted in favor and 293 voted against. Nevertheless, in February of this year, the City Duma Commission on Culture approved a proposal to perpetuate the memory of Fidel Castro. There is also an opinion … of the leader of the Cuban revolution himself. The day before his funeral, at a rally, Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother, said that Fidel asked not to be named after the square and street, and also not to erect monuments in his honor: “The leader of the revolution rejected any manifestations of the cult of personality, and was consistent in this matter until the last hours of his life. In Cuba, there are no monuments to Fidel Castro, streets and squares named after him. Prohibited by law. In Moscow, yes. Both the square and the monument. At the beginning of the year, after the decision of the Moscow City Duma commission, Moskovskaya Pravda wrote: “Any monument to any historical figure is a monument to something. Why are we erecting another monument in Moscow?”

Undoubtedly, Fidel Castro Ruz remained in the memory of the older generation of Russians, in the memory of many citizens of the USSR, as a bright, romantic figure, as the last symbol and banner of the Revolution. His arrival in the USSR in 1963 made a stunning impression on the Soviet people. He visited Moscow, Volgograd, Murmansk, Tashkent, Bratsk, Leningrad, Kyiv, Samarkand, everywhere met with jubilation. In a military shirt with an open collar, in a beret, young, smiling, bearded! In our eyes, he became a kind of antipode to the Soviet official leaders of the country, a kind of challenge to the Soviet dreary bureaucratic system and reality.

But … over the decades, the romantic veil subsided. It became clear that a communist regime had been established in revolutionary Cuba – with repressions, with the suppression of freedom of speech, any dissent. And – with devastation, food shortages. In 1962, a card system was introduced there, which still exists today. And this is in a country that, before the revolution, ranked first in Latin America in terms of socio-economic development. So, the monument to Fidel Castro in Moscow is opened. The main question is: what does it symbolize for us?

The Moscow City Duma Commission on Culture on the same day, February 11, 2022, in “one package” voted for both the monument to Fidel Castro and the monument to Andrei Sakharov.

Sergei Baimukhametov.

On the picture: opening of a monument to Fidel Castro in Moscow.