The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered

Almost half a century ago, a profoundly radical revolution transformed Cuba. The movement that put that revolution in power in January 1959, however, was far from radical at the start. Its shared goals were ousting Fulgencio Batista, who had assumed power in a military coup in 1952, and creating a stable democratic government that respected the progressive Constitution off 1940. Yet from January 1959 to the spring of 1961, under the leadership of Fidel Castro, a very different revolution took root in Cuban society. That revolution transformed Cuban society in ways unimaginable on the eve of its victory. It obliterated the ruling class, dissolved the national army, and virtually eliminated private property. The transformations were seismic internationally as well, as the country renounced its role as a client state of the powerful empire next door to become the eager ally of that empire's avowed enemy. In The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered, the sociologist Samuel Farber focuses precisely on this process of radicalization. Using recently declassified U.S. documents as well as new scholarship based on previously unavailable Soviet sources, Farber reconsiders the question of how the Cuban Revolution evolved so rapidly from a multiclass, antidictatorial movement to an avowedly socialist revolution.