ABSTRACT
The collapse of the Soviet bloc came as a stunning blow to Cuba. According to official figures, widely believed to understate the impact, between 1989 and 1993 Cuba’s gross domestic product shrank by 35 per cent, exports fell by 79 per cent and imports by 75 per cent.1 Russian oil imports declined from 13.3 million tons in 1989 to 1.8 million tons in 1992, and while imports became more expensive, prices for sugar and nickel (Cuba’s principal exports) fell.2 In August 1990, Castro put the country on a war footing, declaring a ‘Special Period in Peacetime’. As the Soviet-Cuban relationship unravelled, Bush officials alerted Moscow that Congress would be reluctant to provide economic assistance while support for Cuba continued, a warning confirmed by congressional votes in summer 1991.3 After the failure of the Soviet army coup in 1991, led by officers well-disposed towards continued cooperation with Havana, Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) leaders, who had established contact with Boris Yeltsin two years earlier, visited Moscow together with Representative Lawrence Smith (D-Florida) and Armando Valladares.4 They delivered a letter to Yeltsin from House Foreign Affairs Committee chair, Dante Fascell (D-Florida), requesting an end to Soviet support. Yeltsin agreed that all subsidies would be terminated when the current trade agreement expired.5
