On July 14, 1789, a precedent was set for a new brand of political struggle as Parisians stormed the Bastille, sparking the French Revolution and beginning a new era in popular government. This Revolution, in addition to reshaping Europe in the nineteenth century, would be the inspiration for many revolutions to follow, including the Russian Revolution. Furthermore, it established a collection of values which many revolutions would aim to uphold: liberty, equality, and fraternity. Chicago Historian Sheila Fitzpatrick, however, argues that these are aims that “almost all victorious revolutionaries inevitably dishonour.”1 By examining the Cuban and Russian Revolutions, this can be seen to be too general a statement. Under Lenin, the Russian Revolution instituted one of the most progressive constitutions yet seen,2 while Cuba, with its unique role in relations between two Cold War superpowers, stayed mostly true to its primary goals of attaining social justice and equality. The objective that tends to be the most fraught by revolutions is liberty, because in order to completely reshape a society, power must be, at least for a time, concentrated in the hands of few. Thus, the Russian Revolution, particularly under Stalin, can be said to have dishonoured the goals of the original revolution, while the Cuban Revolution under Castro, for the most part, did not.

The aim of eliminating inequality was central to both the Russian and Cuban Revolutions. Since before its independence, Cuba had been subjected to nepotistic governments that gave preference to Spanish immigrants; there was a distinct hierarchy in Cuban society that affected social and economic standing.3 Following independence from Spain, however, Cuba traded one dependence for another as it became heavily dependent economically on the United States, with a great deal of political interference from it as well. When the American-sponsored government was ousted in the 1930s, the government was in turn subject to much corruption, with grafting of funds an expected course of action.4 The result of this was a disproportionate, unfair allocation of resources, further affected by the gangster culture that arose in the 1930s. Cuban society was rife with this corruption, and as a result, equality was the last thing anyone could claim to have. Thus, when Castro began his revolution in 1953 with the attack on the Moncada Barracks, his primary objectives were social justice and economic reform.5 These objectives would form the basis of his leadership, and indeed he would continually return to them. Castro's leadership was not infallible, of course. What is noteworthy, however, was that in spite of the moderate cult of personality that grew up around him, he acknowledged the failures of his regime and his personal leadership, and during the seventies, restructured the government so that less of the power was concentrated in him. The struggle for economic equality was always one in which he himself took part. He led by example, encouraging morals of austerity, solidarity, discipline, and loyalty,6 and subjected himself to the same 'volunteer work' as he demanded of the Cuban people. Finally, he devoted himself constantly to economic reform and development in Cuba, always diverting a great deal of profits to the reinvestment in national development and funding universal services like education and healthcare. As far as the goal of equality went, Castro remained quite faithful to his revolution. The Russian Revolution was a more complicated case. Above all, the Russian Revolution always emphasized the class struggle and class consciousness. Consequently, fraternity and equality were hard to implement in any meaningful context. There was a great deal of hypocrisy in the idea of a worker-driven economy and government, as it openly demanded the subjugation of the formerly dominant upper classes to the proletariat. This was the stated objective of the revolution, and though the circumstances of workers and peasants before the revolution were abysmal, there does seem to be a discrepancy in the logic of claiming that equality was a revolutionary goal. When Lenin's government took power, during the Civil War, there was a great deal of progress made in terms of social rights for women—they were given equal access to divorce as well as freedom to have abortions.7 However, the ultimate objective of class equality was continually undermined, even for the working class, from whom the Bolsheviks drew their support. The workers were initially given control of the factories, but that control was eventually taken over by the state, and in the country, there was still extensive division between the kulaks and the poorer peasants, even after Stalin implemented collectivization. In fact, Lenin and Stalin both at different times relied on the continuing class difference in the hopes of getting the poorer peasants to work against the kulaks.8 Stalin's ultimate solution to this class inequality, however, was to seek to eliminate the wealthy classes—he began by sending out approximately 25 000 Communist Party members, including police and military forces.9 They commandeered land and forced the former occupants or owners to work in labour camps. Although this greatly helped the cause of collectivization, it cannot be said to have promoted any sense of fraternity among the revolutionaries, which shows that it was only ever a revolutionary value in name. Economically, it is much harder to assess the equality that was created. With collectivization the land was redistributed, but the peasants continued to suffer as war communism was implemented—not only did the state take a great deal of the peasants' produce for the purpose of industrialization, but they did so to the point of impoverishment of the already struggling people. Furthermore, with few consumer goods available to them, the peasants saw no reason to produce a surplus. The continuing struggles with agriculture would be a constant plague on the Russian Revolution, serving to remind the leadership that the people need more than ideals to keep a revolution active.

The revolutionary ideal in which seem to be most prone to failure is in ensuring or gaining liberty for the population. However, it is characteristic of communist revolutions in particular to implement a (presumably temporary) dictatorship, which by its very nature infringes on the liberty of the people. This is the goal which both Lenin and Stalin in the Russian Revolution and Castro in the Cuban Revolution did the most dishonour to their revolutionary ideals. When Castro came to power, he encouraged a state of discipline and hard work. Because he was so intent on avoiding the domination of the United States, he implemented policies that would ultimately lead to conflict between the two countries, and lead to little economic freedom for Cubans. Furthermore, he nationalized to such an extent that, by the late 1960s, a third of retail sales were under state-control.10 However, economic freedom was never one of the tenets of the revolution, so it is perhaps unfair to criticize the lack of liberty in this regard. Where both Castro and particularly Stalin began to severely limit liberty was in culture. Under Stalin, artists were severely limited; socialist realism was made popular, and then essentially the only accepted art movement because it glorified the revolution and sought to legitimize it in the eyes of the proletariat.11 Meanwhile, artists who went against Stalin's ideals were deemed counter-revolutionary and blacklisted, threatened, had their works banned from performance, and their careers greatly hindered. The careers of many notable artists and intellectuals, including Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Aram Khachaturian were greatly affected by the Revolution regime's control over art.12 Although Castro was not as restrictive of art, he was opposed to or at least distrustful of pluralism in intellectual areas, preferring one unified, national style, of the pro-revolutionary variety.13 By the 1960s, he was quite controlling of intellectual culture. Where artists produced work that was considered counter-revolutionary, artists were forced into 'voluntary' exile or had to publicly confess to their 'counter-revolutionary' views.14 As such a skilled propagandist, it is not surprising that he would be opposed to art outside his sphere of influence, but it is nonetheless damaging to cultural and artistic endeavours for any state under such a regime, and thus is one of the areas in which revolutions most often fail their people or garner criticism. Related to cultural expression, and another area in which people experiencing a revolution tend to lose freedom, is freedom of speech and press, and these two areas suffered under the Russian and Cuban Revolutions as well. In his youth, Castro was highly critical of censorship of any sort, and was certainly aware of its pervasiveness in Cuba prior to his revolution. At his trial following the Moncada Barracks assault, he distinctly mentioned the role of censorship in the media,
Let me remind you, your laws of procedure provide that trials shall be 'public hearings;' however, the people have been barred altogether from this session of Court. The only civilians admitted here have been two attorneys and six reporters, in whose newspapers the censorship of the press will prevent printing a word I say.15
Though censorship of the media was not actively employed by his regime, Castro nonetheless used the media to his advantage, broadcasting attacks on his opponents and depicting events in his favour. In addition, it was not until the first half of the 1970s, after the government was restructured, that public important became important to the way to policy planning.16 Thus, a certain amount of freedom of speech continued to be allowed. For his part, Castro was reasonable about taking criticism, but it still came as a great surprise to him when 100 000 people were willing to leave Cuba as dissenters after Castro made it easier to do so in light of a conflict with the United States.17 However, this reflects a freedom of movement that was granted to the Cuban people at this time. Throughout the regime though, there were a lot of instances of exile and Cubans living on the east coast of the United States not being allowed to return to Cuba. Overall then, Castro's regime did somewhat infringe on the liberty of the people, and can be said to dishonour the goal of the revolution, but none of his measures were as severe as those implemented by Stalin in the later part of the Russian Revolution. Under the Russian Revolution, most personal freedoms ceased to exist altogether. Those who expressed opinions unfavourable to the revolution were quite frequently arrested, and sent to labour camps or executed, deemed as they were “dangerous accomplices of the external and internal enemies of the Soviet Union.”18 During the the period of the purges, however, freedom of speech would not be the greatest concern of most civilians because of the state-imposed terror that affected all areas of life. In this period, the state was purged of all non-communists, or those who were deemed as such or had the gall to claim it. Those who were deemed enemies of the Revolution were rounded up, interrogated, and killed.19 Thus, the loss of liberties experienced by the Russian people under the rule of Stalin were much greater than those experienced by the Cubans, and stand as testament to the extremes that can be enforced by an out-of-control revolutionary leader. Without question, the revolutionary objective of liberty is quite often subject to dismissal, but to varying degrees, revolutionary governments have been faithful to other of their objectives. Sheila Fitzpatrick's claim that revolutionaries “inevitably dishonour” their values of liberty, equality and fraternity is too general as an academic statement. Credit must be given where its due, in which case it is important not to forget the circumstances that existed in a country prior to a revolution, and the circumstances that developed around the world throughout their duration. The Russian Revolution became a dictatorial regime that was greatly damaging to the people both personally and economically, but Fidel Castro was successful for many years in balancing a very delicate economy between global powers, and helped it develop very rapidly. Although Lenin and Castro find many critics, it cannot be said that they did not dedicate their lives to implementing changes in their respective countries, as per the goals of the Revolutions that they started.

Bibliography
Balfour, Sebastian. Castro. Harlowe: Pearson Education Limited, 1995.

Castro, Fidel. “History Will Absolve Me.” Spoken 1953. Translated by Pedro Álvarez Tabío and Andrew Paul Booth. La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1981. Online edition prepared 1997, revised 2001, http://marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1953/10/16.htm.

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Russian Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Grischow, Jeff. “Russian Civil War.” Lecture, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, October 23, 2007.

Grischow, Jeff. “Stalin Revolution.” Lecture, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, October 30, 2007.

Grischow, Jeff. “Two Mountains.” Lecture, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, November 1, 2007.

Slusser, Robert M. “Soviet Music Since the Death of Stalin.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 303 (1956), http://www.jstor.org.remote.libproxy.wlu.ca.