On this day 58 years ago, Fidel Castro backed Russia's imperial venture in Czechoslovakia

 Today, thousands of Cuban troops are fighting for Putin's imperial venture in Ukraine.

Castro backs Brezhnev invading Czechoslovakia 29 years after Hitler-Stalin Pact.

Today marks two anniversaries. It is the “Day of Remembrance for Victims of Totalitarian Regimes,” and it is also a day to celebrate the “Baltic Way.” These two observances are connected through history, but the Castro regime has a connection to the first that is not well known.

Eighty seven years ago on August 23, 1939 Josef Stalin signed a treaty with Adolph Hitler formally known as a “non-aggression pact” but it came to be known after the names of their respective foreign ministers, V.M. Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop, as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Eventually it also became known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact.

It contained secret protocols to invade and conquer Poland, and split up the rest of Central and Eastern Europe into spheres of influence for Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union.

 Nine days later on September 1, 1939 Nazi Germany invaded Poland and World War II started. Sixteen days later the Soviet Union, exercising its secret agreement with the Germans, invaded Poland from the East and met their Nazi allies on September 22, 1939 in a joint military parade in Brest-Litovsk to celebrate their victory.

 The Nazi-Soviet alliance continued

230,000 Polish soldiers and officers and thousands of military service representatives were taken captive by the Soviets. On March 5, 1940 the order to shoot the prisoners was signed by seven members of the All- Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) authorities: Joseph Stalin, Lavrentiy Beria (proposer), Kliment Voroshilov, Vyacheslav Molotov, Anastas Mikoyan, Mikhail Kalinin and Lazar Kaganovich. Thousands of Polish Army officers and intellectual leaders were taken into the Katyn Forest near Smolensk in the Soviet Union, shot in the back of the head or in the neck and buried in mass graves.

Months later, the Soviet Union invaded and annexed the Baltic States in June 1940.

 How the alliance ended in 1941

This arrangement ended on July 22, 1941 when the Nazis double crossed their Soviet allies and launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. This alliance cost the Soviet Union 22 to 28 million Russian lives in World War Two.

However it also ended with the Soviet Union retaking and absorbing the Baltic states for decades, and Poland firmly under Soviet control as a satellite state. This was a legacy of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that did not end until fifty years later.

Czechoslovakia, a Soviet satellite since 1948, had its Prague Spring in 1968, a moment when reformers in the government sought socialism with a human face and it was ended on August 21, 1968 with the arrival of Warsaw Pact tanks on Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev’s orders followed by an occupation that crushed the reformist initiative.

Fidel Castro backed Soviet invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia on August 23, 1968

Two days after the Soviet led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 23, 1968 Fidel Castro publicly supported the invasion and occupation of the central European country.

 Castro’s support of Soviet imperialism on the 29th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact revealed the true nature of his regime in Cuba.

The Soviet empire collapsed through nonviolent resistance

On June 4, 1989 the Solidarity labor movement won in free elections and the Polish people finally regained their sovereignty from Soviet domination through nonviolent means.

The End of Molotov Ribbentrop

Thirty seven years ago today two million Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians joined hands together in a giant human chain stretching 370 miles on August 23, 1989. Fifty years to the day after the treaty that brought them so much grief had been signed. This non-violent act of defiance was a crucial event that led to the liberation of the Baltic States and their restored independence in 1991.

It was the end of the last vestige of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

Black Ribbon Day

Today, the European Union observes Black Ribbon Day. This anniversary is observed to honor the memory of all the victims of totalitarianism and authoritarianism in the world. This includes the victims of communism in Cuba.

Sadly, the Castro regime continues to back Russian imperial ventures in Europe, this time in Ukraine, and its own ventures in Venezuela to frustrate the sovereignty of their respective peoples.

Since 2022, according to Ukrainian intelligence, 20,000 Cubans have fought in Putin’s imperial war in Ukraine. There are currently between six to seven thousand Cubans fighting on the frontlines. Estimates are that up to 300 Cubans have been killed in the fighting.

The Center for a Free Cuba has prepared a CubaBrief to observe Black Ribbon Day.

 In Washington D.C. last year a delegation from the Center for a Free Cuba formed part of a human chain in McPherson Square in observance of the Baltic Way anniversary. Celebrating the nonviolent victory over Russian imperialism by the peoples of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia.

 Tomorrow, Monday, August 24, 2026 at 2:00pm in Washington DC at McPherson Square join the Joint Baltic American National Committee – JBANC, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and the Embassy of Estonia, Embassy of Latvia to the USA, and Embassy of Lithuania in Washington, D.C. for this commemoration of the Baltic Way anniversary, which marked the beginning of the end of the last remnant of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that was finally achieved in 1991.

 

 

Looking back at détente: Immoral policy that endangered US national interests

"I think detente had manifestly failed, and that the pursuit of it was encouraging Soviet expansion and rendering the world more dangerous, and especially rendering the Western world in greater peril." - Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick 

Détente: Mao with Nixon, Breshnev with Nixon, Breshnev with Ford

 Since President Barack Obama announced his new Cuba policy on December 17, 2014 there have been over 108 articles that mention both Cuba and détente with the vast majority viewing it as a positive.

However, if one is to revisit the policy of détente enacted by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger then carried forward into the Ford Administration. The word détente means an easing of tensions or relaxation and was a period of improved relations between the United States and the Soviet Union that lasted between 1971 and 1980. According to Professor Branislav L. Slantchev the Soviets used détente "to evolve from a great regional power into a formidable truly global superpower." It was also the worse period of great defeats internationally for the United States. At the same time the United States morally debased itself into a moral equivalency with the Soviet Union and Maoist China. Gerald Ford was so wedded to détente that he refused to meet with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn for fear of offending the Soviets. This led Jimmy Carter  on October 6, 1976 in a presidential debate to charge President Ford with being weak:

"He's also shown a weakness in yielding to pressure. The Soviet Union, for instance, put pressure on Mr. Ford, and he refused to see a symbol of human freedom recognized around the world -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn." 

This low point led to a struggle for the soul of the Republican Party at the time that led to a plank in the party platform that repudiated Ford's weakness titled "morality in foreign policy":

We recognize and commend that great beacon of human courage and morality, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, for his compelling message that we must face the world with no illusions about the nature of tyranny. Ours will be a foreign policy that keeps this ever in mind…. Agreements that are negotiated, such as the one signed in Helsinki, must not take from those who do not have freedom the hope of one day gaining it.

Despite not wanting to do so circumstances forced President Carter to scrap it as a matter of policy in 1980 in reaction to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan  and his Administration's focus on human rights. President Ronald Reagan had long repudiated this policy as immoral and completely departed from it upon taking office with regards to the Soviet Union. On January 29, 1981 in a news conference responding to a question from Sam Donaldson of ABC news whether detente was possible with the Soviet Union; President Reagan answered as follows:

"Well, so far detente's been a one-way street that the Soviet Union has used to pursue its own aims. I don't have to think of an answer as to what I think their intentions are; they have repeated it. I know of no leader of the Soviet Union since the revolution, and including the present leadership, that has not more than once repeated in the various Communist congresses they hold their determination that their goal must be the promotion of world revolution and a one-world Socialist or Communist state, whichever word you want to use.
Now, as long as they do that and as long as they, at the same time, have openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is what will further their cause, meaning they reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat, in order to attain that, and that is moral, not immoral, and we operate on a different set of standards, I think when you do business with them, even at a detente, you keep that in mind."

Reagan understood the nature of communist ideology something many have forgotten today in dealing with the communist regime in Cuba under the Castro brothers. At the same time it is also important to remember the role that American corporations played throughout the history of the Soviet Union in propping up and aiding that monstrous totalitarian regime. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on June 30, 1975 addressing the AFL-CIO labor union first thanked workers for their solidarity and then spoke of the alliance between Soviet communists and American capitalists:

But just as we feel ourselves your allies here, there also exists another alliance - at first glance a strange one, a surprising one - but if you think about it, in fact, one which is well-grounded and easy to understand this is the alliance between our Communist leaders and your capitalists.
      This alliance is not new. The very famous Armand Hammer, who is flourishing here today, laid the basis for this when he made the first exploratory trip into Russia, still in Lenin's time, in the very first years of the Revolution. He was extremely successful in this intelligence mission and since that time for all these 50 years, we observe continuous and steady support by the businessmen of the West of the Soviet Communist leaders.
      Their clumsy and awkward economy, which could never overcome its own difficulties by itself, is continually getting material and technological assistance. The major construction projects in the initial five-year plan were built exclusively with American technology and materials. Even Stalin recognized that two-thirds of what was needed was obtained from the West. And if today the Soviet Union has powerful military and police forces - in a country which is by contemporary standards poor - they are used to crush our movement for freedom in the Soviet Union - and we have western capital to thank for this also.

     Unfortunately in 2015 once again American corporations are falling over themselves to get American taxpayers this time to subsidize the totalitarian communist dictatorship in Cuba. Communist China and Vietnam are two other examples of short term greed ignoring the best interests of their home country much less the interests of the Chinese and Vietnamese suffering under these brutal dictatorships. After this brief historical review hopefully the word détente will not be viewed as positively as it has been over the past month and a natural question should arise: Why repeat this failed policy in Cuba?

President Obama with Chavez (2009) President Obama & Raul Castro (2013)