Cuban History: The Cuban Revolution

The Cuban Revolution that took place between 1953–1959 was an armed revolt lead by Fidel Castro. Fidel Castro began his career as a lawyer and activist. He accused the Cuban President, Fulgencio Batista, of being a corrupt tyrant. After Castro’s arguments were rejected by the Cuban courts, he took matters into his own hands. Rather than to continue to use the legal system, Castro organized a regime to overthrow Batista. The revolution began in July 1953 with the failed attack on the Moncada Barracks, an army facility in the city of Santiago de Cuba. The war against the Batista regime continued with guerrilla warfare attacks through rural and urban fronts which eventually forced Batista to flee Cuba. On July 26th, 1959, Castro successfully overthrew

Castro believed that the negotiations that the Soviet Union engaged in with the united States were made at the expense of Cuba’s defense. Castro was paranoid between the agreement that was made and displayed several mood swings while dealing with the Soviet Union. Anastas Mikoyan, was responsible for maintaining the relationship between the Soviet Union and Cuba during the missile transfer. Mikoyan, was a Soviet Union politician who had great power within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It was of vital importance that Castro not be able to maintain control of the missiles which had an explosive force equal to 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs. on November 22, 1962, Mikoyan successfully persuaded Castro to turn over the missiles. During a four hour meeting, Mikoyan convinced Castro that it would be in breach of an unpublished Soviet law which didn 't actually exist, to transfer the missiles back to Cuba. This caused Castro to return the weapons back to the Soviet

The repercussions of the collapse of the Soviet Union had vast effects on Cuba. Without the aid of the Soviet Union, an economic crisis took place in Cuba which lead to great famine. This time period in Cuban history became known as the Special Period. Cuba lost approximately 80% of its imports, 80% of its exports and its Gross Domestic Product dropped by 34%. Food and medicine imports were severely slowed. The loss of nearly all of the petroleum imports from the Soviet Union had the biggest impact on Cuba due to its dependency of fossil fuels. Without the petroleum of the Soviet Union, consumption levels decreased 20% of its previous level within two years causing the transport, industrial and agricultural systems to become practically non-existent. There was also an extensive losses of productivity in both Cuban agriculture and industrial capacity because of the inability to power modern machinery such as tractors, combines, and harvesters, all of which required petroleum to run. Additionally, Cuba had been re-exporting excess Soviet petroleum that was not consumed to other nations for profit. Petroleum had been Cuba 's second largest export product at the time before the economic