Communist Party of Cuba

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The Communist Party of Cuba (Spanish: Partido Comunista de Cuba) is the ruling party of Cuba. It operates on a Marxist-Leninist model. The original Communist Party of Cuba was formed in the 1920s and was a member of the Comintern. It was later renamed the People's Socialist Party for electoral reasons. Its policy was dictated from Moscow, and supported Batista in whose government it had Ministers Without Portfolio. The People's Socialist Party was initially critical of Castro but changed its line when it was directed to do so by Moscow.

In July 1961, the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations (ORI) was formed by the merger of Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement, the People's Socialist Party led by Blas Roca and the Revolutionary Directory March 13th led by Faure ChomÃÂÃÂ³n. On March 26, 1962 the ORI became the United Party of the Cuban Socialist Revolution (PURSC) which, in turn, became the Communist Party of Cuba on October 3, 1965. The Communist party remains the only legal political party in Cuba.

For the first ten years of its formal existance, the Communist Party was relatively inactive outside of the Politburo. The 100 person Central Committee rarely met and it was ten years after its founding that the first regular Party Congress was held. In 1969, membership of the party was only 55,000 or 0.6% of the population making the CPC the smallest ruling Communist party in the world. In the 1970s the party's apparatus began to develop. By the time of the first Party Congress in 1975 the party had grown to just over 200,000 members, the Central Committee was meeting regularly and the organisational apparatus giving the party the leading role in society that ruling Communist parties generally hold. By 1980 the party had grown to over 430,000 members and grew further to 520,000 by 1985. Apparatuses of the party had grown to ensure that its leading cadres were appointed to key government positions throughout the bureaucracy. Thus, by the 1980s, the role of the Communist party and its membership approximated that of the role Communist Party members had as the nomenklatura in the Soviet bloc.

The crisis created by the collapse of the Soviet bloc led to the Fourth Party Congress in 1991 being one of unprecedented openness and debate as the leadership tried to create a wide public consensus to respond to the "Special Period". Three million people engaged in pre-Congress debate and discussions on issues such as political structure and economic policy. The 1991 Congress redefined the party as "the party of the Cuban nation" rather than the "party of the working class". The prohibition on religious believers joining the party was lifted. As well, JosÃÂÃÂ© Marti was elevated to the level of Karl Marx and Lenin in the party's ideological pantheon.

Much of the debate resulted from an internal struggle between the reform faction of the party which called for the use of market mechanisms and the liberalisation of strictures on free speech and dissent and a conservative faction that argued that speedy reforms would undercut the unity of the nation and the party's political dominance and possibly lead to the regime's collapse as had happened to Communist states in Eastern Europe. While the reformers initially had the upper hand, the conservatives ended up regaining dominance and political reforms fell far short of reform demands to permit candidates to office to campaign for office on competing programs (which would have created the roots of a multiparty system). Economically, however, some modest market reforms were introduced, particularly in agriculture, in an effort ot reverse the country's econmic decline after the end of subsidies from the USSR. Increased tensions between the US and Cuba also gave the conservatives the upper hand in the mid-1990s and the government responded more and more harshly to dissident groups.

By the time of the Fifth Party Congress in 1997, political liberalisation was no longer on the agenda. The economic resolution debated at the conference called for the expansion of tourism in order to bring in more hard currency but did not call for ecnomic reforms while the political resolution opposed any political liberalization and constituted a defence of the one party system.

The Communist Party of Cuba held its first Party Congress in 1975 and has had additional congresses in 1980, 1986, 1991 and 1997. The leading bodies of the party were the Politburo and the Secretariat until 1991 when the two bodies were merged into an expanded Politburo with over twenty members.There is also a Central Committee which meets between party congresses. At the Fifth Party Congress the size of the Central Committee was reduced to 150 members from the previous membership of 225. Fidel Castro has been the party's First Secretary (or leader) since its inception and Raul Castro is the party's Second Secretary.

The party had a membership of over 780,000 when the Fifth Party Congress was held in 1997. 32.1% of the membership are classifed as workers while 13.8% are "professionals and technicians", 8.2% teachers and professors and 7.5% are "service workers".

The Communist Party of Cuba has a youth wing called Union of Communist Youth modelled on the Komsomol that operated in the Soviet Union. It also has a children's group called the Young Pioneers.

Communist Party of Cuba

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