KASHTAN REPORT ON CUBA

TORONTO — An insight into
the workings of a socialist socie-
ty, and particularly a frank look at
Its Communist Party — succes-
Ses, mistakes and plans — are
Provided by the Central Report to
the historic 1st Congress of the
Communist Party of Cuba (Dec.

)

At a public meeting here, Jan.
21, William Kashtan, general sec-
retary of the Communist Party of
Canada, reported on the Con-
8ress in a political address attuned
to this time of increased interest in
Socialism and the programs of

Ommunists:

(Invited as fraternal Canadian
delegates to the Congress were

‘William Kashtan, Jeannette
Walsh (Quebec) and William
tewart (Ontario).

The Central Report, read by
8eneral secretary of the Com-
Munist Party of Cuba, Fidel Cas-
to, ‘was a very well rounded out
analysis of development that
Went back to the struggle of the
Cuban people, which finally
achieved its fruition on J anuary 1,
1959,” Kashtan said.

It offered ‘‘a perspective of an
€normous development in Cuba,
relating it at the same time to the
Internationalist support that made
't possible to protect the revolu-
COT

Kashtan dealt with many as-
Pects of the Report, in which
€conomic development — since
the Revolution and for the five
years ahead — occupied a promi-
ent place. At the same time, it
Carefully examined the work of
the’ Communist Party and _ its
leadership, noted successes and
Some wrong directions, examined

€ missile crisis of October 1962,
Set forth clearly the relationships

tween the ‘‘old’’ and the pre-
Sent Communist Parties, and
analyzed Cuba’s relations with
anada, and with the USA, the
Viet Union and with Angola
4nd Puerto Rico.
€volution’s Achievements
at € Congress was, first, a
™ming up of what the Cuban
€Volution had- achieved. He
Woted Castro:

_ Today, we can proclaim with
Pride that
on unemployment, without ra-

IScrimination, without

we are a country with-.

ye #

hunger, without beggars, without
gambling, without prostitution,
without drug addiction, without
illiteracy, without barefooted un-
schooled children, without slums,
and without sick people aban-
doned to their fate. Our education
and our public health are models
of social achievements that are
admired by many throughout the
world.”
In this short paragraph, said
Kashtan, Castro ‘‘sums up the re-
sults of the revolution since
1959.’ In contrast, he said, one
has only to ‘‘look around in Latin

America to see the difficulties and -

the problems that the people of
Latin American countries are
faced with.

“Or, look at a so-called affluent
country like Canada, a rich coun-
try like Canada, which still has
slums, which still has poverty,
which still has hunger, and not to
speak . . . of political illiteracy ...
then certainly the Cuban people,
the Cuban Party and yes, re-
volutionaries of the world take
pride in what the Cuban Revolu-
tion has been able to achieve in
the short time of 17 years.”

A ‘Little Miracle’

This was taking into account
too, he said, that the period of
‘‘the first three years was given up
primarily to the necessity of de-
fence ... to assure that they
would not be attacked by Ameri-
can imperialism, and if they were,
that they would fight to the last
man and woman ...”’

Speaking. of the period Ob
growth and development” as a
“little miracle,’’ Kashtan cited
the increase in the growth rate of
the Gross National Product: 1.7%
annually from 1961 to 1965; 10%
from 1971 to 1975. In the last five
years, he reported, ‘industrial
production rose 8%, nickel pro-
duction doubled, steel and the en-
gineering industries tripled and

. whereas before they did not
produce any nitrogen fertilizer at
all, they now turn out more than
600,000 tons yearly of that neces-
sary fertilizer for development of
the land — for growing food . . .

Castro had spoken of the fact
that they still have rationing in
Cuba, Kashtan said. But he said
there is rationing in capitalist
countries also, where it is expres-

With the 45 CuRAN :
PARTY CONGREss

To
Kashtan

Tonto audience gets first-hand report from Havana by William

z, Fraternal delegates who joined leaders of the Cuban Communist

Party on the rostrum at the Party’s Congress, included Canadian Com-
munist leader, William Kashtan (arrow).

sed through wages. If you haven’t
enough money, you are rationed
as to what you can buy.

‘*So their rationing,’ said
Kashtan, ‘“‘is based on the fact
that they do not yet have abun-
dance of some things. Therefore
they insure the most equitable dis-
tribution of consumer goods...”

6% Annual Growth

In their new five-year plan, he
said, they have set a growth target
of 6% annually. But that is 6%
based on a figure of, say, 160, be-
cause of recent gains, rather than
on a figure of 100.

Noting that attempts to indus-
trialize in the first stage of the Re-
volution had been premature, the
Canadian Communist leader. re-
ported that ‘“‘now they believe
that the economic situation has
reached a stage of development
where the main poirt of emphasis
needs to be on industry, with ag-
riculture in a secondary role.”’
Agriculture is still a very impor-
tant part of the economy of Cuba,
he said. (Castro reported that they
now produce a million tons of
vegetables a year — a vast in-
crease.) But they will emphasize
steel, nickel, power and so on.
Since Cuba is not rich in natural
resources, Sugar remains a key to
the earning of foreign exchange.
(The country has limited oil,
water and minerals.)

“Yet, no other Latin American
country had achieved such a
move from backwardness to
economic, scientific, technologi-
cal and cultural progress, said
Kashtan. ‘‘This development,”
he said, will have an enormous
impact on the people of Latin
America,’ who “‘see that even a
little country like Cuba,”* with the
aid and solidarity of the socialist
world. could not only survive, but
prove “that socialism is viable
and advances the interests of the
people.”

Self-Critical Report

Turning to the proceedings of
the Party Congress itself, William
Kashtan mentioned that among
other documents. they adopted a
Communist Party Program, and
Party Rules. They adopted as

} well a Constitution for the coun-

‘try, to be voted on by referendum
on Feb. 15.

“*We found it of great interest,”
said the Canadian Communist
leader, ‘‘that in the course of his
report, Comrade Castro dealt
quite self-critically with a number
of errors which the Party had
made in the course of its de-
velopment.

“He dealt with the erroneous
understanding of economic laws
under socialism, when the ten-
dency was to believe that your
will was sufficient to deal with the
building up of a socialist system of
society.

““As he said: We were re-
volutionaries; we knew how to
make a revolution, but we did not
have the experience of how to
build socialism in our country.
And there is sometimes a very
great difference between making
a revolution. and building
socialism, in the sense of the very
difficult, arduous tasks of making
the economy work in the interests
of the people.”

Kashtan went on: ‘‘We made
mistakes, Castro said, in our un-
derstanding of the role of the Par-
ty, when the tendency was to
make the Party a substitute for the
government, for the trade unions,
for everything, and replace these
necessary forms of organization
of the working class and of the
people in the building of a socialist
system of society.”” °

Facts and Realities
- Kashtan reported:

‘Castro said in his report: ‘It is
necessary to speak about mis-
takes. Revolutions usually have
their utopian periods, in which
their protagonists, dedicated to
the ‘noble task of turning their
dreams into reality and putting
their ideals into practice, assume
that historical goals are much

nearer and men’s will, wishes and ~

intentions, towering over. objec-
tive facts, can accomplish any-
thing. :

‘** ‘Tt is not that revolutionaries
should lack either dreams or a
firm will. Without some dreams
and utopia there would be no re-
volutionaries. Sometimes men
stop. because they regard as in-
surmountable obstacles that are
not really so. Our own history
shows that difficulties that

seemed to be insuperable could

| be surmounted.

‘* ‘But the revolutionary is also

; obliged to be a realist, to act in

keeping with historical and social

laws, and to drink from the in-

exhaustible wellspring of political
science and universal experience
the knowledge indispensable to
guide revolutionary processes.
We must also know how to learn
from facts and realities.

‘** ‘Sometimes the utopian at-
titude is likewise accompanied by
a certain contempt for the experi-
ence of other processes.

***The embryo of chauvinism
and of the petty-bourgeois spirit
affecting those of us who reached
the roads of revolution by a
merely intellectual way develops,
sometimes unconsciously, cer-
tain attitudes that may be re-
garded as self-sufficiency and ex-
cessive self-esteem.’

Missile Crisis

“But it wasn’t only with re-
spect to these errors that Com-
rade Castro spoke,’’ said
Kashtan. ‘‘He also spoke about
some mistakes . . . with respect to
the struggle for peaceful co-
existence that the Soviet Union
had been fighting for for years.
This expressed itself particularly
in the period of the October crisis
(1962) ... the missile crisis and
the confrontation between the
United States and the Soviet
Union.

At that time there was a feeling
among many revolutionaries
throughout the world,’’ Kashtan
recalled, ‘‘that perhaps the Soviet
Union had let Cuba down, had let
the Revolution down. Aad in
Cuba itself emerged such at-
titudes and such opinion. Com-
rade Castro made the point that
life had shown who was right and
who was wrong. The Soviet
Union was right in what it did.
And this guaranteed the existence
of our Revolution and by virtue of
the strength of the fight for peace-
ful co-existence helped to ad-
vance the revolutionary struggle
throughout the world.

“*As Castro. said: At that time it
was difficult for Cubans to under-
stand that formula — that is the
formula of peaceful co-existence,
of finding a way of settling the
crisis then.

‘We find objectively, Castro
said, that the October crisis meant
the victory for the revolutionary
camp. The USSR is now even
mightier: the co-relation of forces
has changed considerably in favor
of the revoJutionary forces. And
the United States could not avoid
fulfilling its commitment because
the United States at that time was
compelled to agree that it would
respect the independence of
Cuba. It was only on that basis
that the Soviet Union withdrew
the missiles from Cuba. It wasn’t
a retreat.”

Expressing the views of the
Cuban Communists, William
Kashtan pointed out that in this
situation the USSR’s moves had
succeeded in “‘preserving peace
at one of the most dangerous mo-
ments without sacrificing funda-
mental political objectives.”’

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 13, 1976—Page 7