(Post)-Soviet Diaspora in Cuba

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.8.2.0263
• Pages: 263-295
• Published date: 01 December 2016
• Date: 01 December 2016
• Author: Jenny Cruz Cabrera,María Regina Cano Orúe,Dmitri Prieto Samsónov
• Subject Matter: Cuba,USSR,migration,gender,diaspora,post-Soviet studies,visibility,ethnicity,empowerment,citizenship

IJCS Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals www.plutojournals.com/ijcs/

ACADEMIC ARTICLES

(POST)-SOVIET DIASPORA IN CUBA

Jenny Cruz Cabrera, María Regina Cano

Orúe and Dmitri Prieto Samsónov

AC&SE Group (Cuban Chapter), Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO)

Abstract

The Cuban (post)-Soviet diaspora is the human collective comprising the persons

coming from the territories of the (former) Soviet Union, who immigrated to Cuba

and nowadays live in this Archipelago – as well as their descendants. This migration

occurred during the period of close ties between Cuba and the USSR, that is, 1960–91.

Compared with the other overseas ethnic communities now living in Cuba, the (post)-

Soviet diaspora is the largest one, surpassed only by the Spanish immigration, which

– however – is not usually perceived by Cubans as a diaspora, because Spain is a major

contributor to the ‘mainstream’ Cuban culture. So, the (post)-Soviet diaspora may

legitimately be considered as the largest ‘clearly foreign’ human contribution to the

Cuban population in recent times. The most important character of this collectivity

is that its first generation (i.e., the immigrants from the [post]Soviet countries) is

overwhelmingly female, constituted by women from the USSR who in the period

between ca. 1961 and ca. 1991 married to Cuban students affiliated to Soviet

government’s scholarship programmes. This ‘romantic’ stance makes this diaspora very

unusual when compared with the standard causes making people migrate. The numeric

strength of the (post)-Soviet diaspora contrasts with its very low visibility in the Cuban

cultural, media and academic discourse, especially comparing with that of the relatively

minor – in the numeric sense – diasporic constituents of the Cuban population: the

Chinese, Arab, Jewish, etc. We analyse the main demographic, gender, ethnographic,

historical, cultural and political aspects of the (post)-Soviet diaspora in Cuba.

Keywords: Cuba, USSR, migration, gender, diaspora, post-Soviet studies, visibility,

ethnicity, empowerment, citizenship

264 ACADEMIC ARTICLES – CABRERA, ORÚE & PRIETO

InternatIonal Journal of Cuban StudIeS 8.2 WInter 2016

Introduction

The transdisciplinary field of post-Soviet studies emerged in 1992 as a sort of

‘adaptive gesture’ intended to assimilate the former USSR and the areas previ-

ously exposed to its geopolitical influence to a post-colonial status.1 Geopolitically

speaking, before 1990 such areas obviously included Cuba.2

While political and economic relations between Cuba and the USSR (as well

as between Cuba and Russia: before 1917 and after 1991) have inspired numer-

ous publications (although not normally branded – at least in the Cuban

Archipelago – as part of the post-Soviet studies field), the number of media pro-

jects3 and research papers –especially in Cuba4 – about the Soviet and post-

Soviet5 cultural impact on the Cuban society is much smaller. For most Cubans

who stayed in the country after the 1990s debacle, the geographically distant

Soviet influence on Cuba had been lived as something nigh and visible in many

spheres of professional activities, academia and everyday life, including litera-

ture, cinema, drama, sciences, visual arts, TV and the domestic market. Also, the

post-Soviet condition in Cuba is emphatically linked to the (later re-interpreted

as commonplace) experiences of Cubans who travelled or temporarily lived in

the USSR (and other countries under its geopolitical influence) during the 30-year

period of political closeness. Cuban geography itself – both at macro (polity/

country/nation/Archipelago) and micro (neighbourhoods, workplaces, land-

scapes) levels – provided settings in which Cubans shared social-space proximi-

ties with some ‘Soviet’ or ‘Russian’ (‘Ukrainian’, etc.) person(s) – or their children

– who years ago came to live here. Nonetheless, the persistence in Cuba of a

large diaspora of Soviet origin is still one of the less publicised aspects of the

Cuban post-Soviet condition. This appears rather surprising, as the (post)-Soviet

diaspora has stable family, kinship, friendship and professional links with

Cubans, particularly those (ca. half a million) who studied in the USSR in 1961–

91, many of whom keep key roles in the country’s technical, military, entrepre-

neurial, intellectual, administrative and professional milieus.

Our current aim is systematizing the basic facts about the (post)-Soviet dias-

pora in Cuba, as part of a broader area of post-Soviet studies, nowadays emerg-

ing in Cuba. Firstly, we want to make public the very existence of the diaspora

as a relevant element of the Cuban reality: despite its numeric strength, the

(post)-Soviet diaspora is barely mentioned in Cuban and foreign research, refer-

ence and media materials devoted to the ethnic composition of the present-day

Cuban people. Although analysing the very causes of this ‘invisibility issue’ per

se merits a separate paper, we start with some considerations on this topic. Next,

we establish terminological conventions, provide some basic – statistical and

socio-historical – information gathered in our research, and discuss some

(POST)-SOVIET DIASPORA IN CUBA 265

IJCS Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals www.plutojournals.com/ijcs/

relevant fieldwork findings, centred in the diaspora’s subjectivities. Our main

goal is elucidating the core demographic, gender, ethnographic, historical, cul-

tural and political aspects of the (post)-Soviet diaspora in Cuba. Our methodol-

ogy is based upon in-depth interviews, life histories, participant observation and

analysis of the census data.

An Invisible Diaspora?

As a set of ethnicities relatively recent in entering the Cuban ‘Ajiaco’,6 (post)-

Soviet cultural and demographic components ‘enjoy’ a sort of ‘dual’ hermeneu-

tics of [in]visibility in the current Cuban imaginary: on one hand, provided that

the 35+ generations perceived the close Cuban-Soviet ties as commonsensical,

the diaspora tends to be (sort of) ‘naturalized’ as a predictable part of the (post)-

Soviet Cuban landscape7 (and for being so normal it is assumed not requiring

any special attention, both from socio-political institutions, and the intellectual/

cultural/media actors); on the other hand – and paradoxically, in a sense – it is

still felt as somewhat ‘alien’, so it is not normally mentioned in the standard set

of the ‘ethnic roots of the Cuban nationality’ (i.e., the initial African-Hispanic

background plus –later – Chinese, Filipino, Yucateco, Arab, Jewish contribu-

tions8). Unlike other Cuban ethnic communities, such as Arabic,9 Hebrew10 or

Chinese,11 the (post)-Soviet diaspora still does not have any associative structure

officially recognised by the Cuban institutions, which could supply means for

self-organisation and socialisation. However, some socialisation occurs in the

milieu of the two Orthodox churches in Cuba (canonically belonging to the

Moscow and the Constantinople Patriarchies), but this obviously applies mostly

to Orthodox believers, or those interested in the spiritualities, traditions and

histories of the Eastern Slavic peoples.

Many Cuban memories relating to the USSR-connected experiences had been

relegated to the realm of nostalgia. The post-Soviet social amnesia is normally

felt, for example, in the very common avoidance to mention – even in ordinary

conversations – the traumatic everyday life experiences during the ‘special

period’ – the Cuban structural crisis following the Council for Mutual Economic

Assistance (COMECON) and USSR debacle in 1989–91 – when the entire

Cuban society had to modify the previously normalised (naturalised) shared

habits and notions. Before 1989, almost all the Cubans – mostly via an all-

encompassing rationing system – enjoyed regular access to COMECON goods,

which contributed to establishing a suitable level of comfort. Although some of

such imports (e.g., electric devises, TVs, radios, etc.) normally were ranked quite

below12 their Western analogues, most food products and drinks are still remem-

bered as some of the unsurpassed pieces contributing to the peculiar pre-1989