Soviet Subsidy and Voluntarism: The Economic Anomalies of Revolutionary Cuba

Abstract

The article analyzes the Cuban economy from 960 until the fall of the Soviet Union. It shows that after abolishing private ownership of the means of production at the beginning of the revolutionary period, Cuba could not establish a planning system because of Fidel Castro’s widespread intervention. The economic consequences were grave. Only the enormous economic aid received from the Soviet Union ensured the survival of the Cuban revolution and the implementation of the System of Direction and Planning of the Economy (SDPE), which was successively dismantled during the rectification process. What happened in Cuba during this period seems to have been an endemic problem of its political system, in which there was no effective counterweight to the comandante en jefe, on whom all major political and economic decisions depended. That problem was the main reason for Cuba’s poor economic performance.