ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the evolution of Cuba's launching into a global market and identifies the ways in which the island's economy has changed over the past ten years or so. It discusses the political economy in which these changes occur. The chapter presents some observations about the Eastern European experience and the challenges that await the Cuban Revolution. The traditional measures that define the role of the state show that Cuba is far from the socialist state it was ten years ago. Cuba’s role in the international socialist alliance was unique. Unlike Afghanistan, it was not a buffer state between the USSR and economically and politically threatening nations in South Asia and China. The tenacity of the Cuban regime is noteworthy and the proximate causes of the demise of socialism elsewhere have not phased Castro. In Poland, and less so in other Eastern European nations, a domestic political alternative challenged the Communist parties.
