Our Comrades in Havana

https://youtu.be/--pF1ndld4Q?is=ndQK9Ien7QLcL-H0

Join Radoslav Yordanov (Harvard University) for a discussion on his book, Our Comrades in Havana.  In the immediate aftermath of its successful revolution, Cuba was heralded by socialist nations as the vanguard of communism in Latin America. But by the late 1980s, Havana’s relationship with the Soviet-led socialist bloc had soured over its inability to adopt modes of socialist planning and Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. Yordanov examines Cuba’s ideological, political, and economic relations with the Eastern European states. Eastern European diplomats were entrusted with the task of educating local Cuban leadership in the intricacies of Marxism-Leninism, steering Cuba's governors onto the "correct path of development," helping them eradicate "erroneous ideas" of economic development, and showing them the validity of socialist "morals and ideology." By analyzing Eastern European diplomats' and specialists’ experiences in Havana from the 1959 Cuban revolutionary victory to the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, he sheds new light on Cuba's role in the global Cold War