Cuban reckoning
For decades, Cuba survived not because its economic model succeeded, but because its political system proved unusually durable under pressure.
For decades, Cuba survived not because its economic model succeeded, but because its political system proved unusually durable under pressure.
Eighty years ago, on 8 May 1945, the guns finally fell silent across Europe. Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender to the Allied powers marked the end of the bloodiest conflict the continent had ever known.
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin, the architect of Russia’s 1917 Bolshevik revolution, politician and political theorist was considered as one of the most significant and influential figures of 20th century world history.
On 10 June 1963, when President Dr S Radhakrishnan delivered his speech at the United Nations General Assembly, the world…
While exceptionally favourable conditions led to the emergence of the USA as the dominant world power in the post-1945 days, this dominance was never total during the cold war years and was constrained by the presence of the Soviet Union as an alternative centre of considerable power.
The period following the disintegration of the Soviet Union was the most critical in Cuba. Even the most optimistic thought Communist Cuba would die a natural death in the absence of Soviet economic and military assistance. What Castro did was to attempt further ideological rigidity. He rejected perestroika and simply fine-tuned the existing politico-economic structures without disowning Marxism-Leninism. Doing more with less became the battle cry of Cuban leaders. Today, that option doesn’t exist.
He would not rule out a faster pace in the later stage of the rover’s mission, depending on its operational state at the time.
Anyone who could not run his factory, which employed thousands of workers, just declared a lockout and the government was a ready taker. Sick textile mills were one example but also included many prestigious engineering names like Braithwaite which designed and built the first Howrah Bridge, a wonder in the 1930s.
Last month, Biden called for Navalny’s release, saying he was “targeted for exposing corruption and should be released immediately and without condition.”
It is a cruel fact of history that just as the Russian Tsar threw away a golden opportunity of transforming Russia into a working constitutional state if he had cooperated with the moderate liberal opinion after the revolution of 1905, Lenin repeated the same mistake by not attempting to create a constitutional government
