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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Someone pointed out aptly that for anyone who wants to romanticize communist cuba needs to inform themselves and at a minimim, should pick up a book. A great book on this topic is:  Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause[/quote]

I don't think anyone is romanticizing communist Cuba by saying that one advantage of the communist system is that you don't have people starving in the streets.  I don't know much about Cuba, but I know a ton about the Soviet Union.  Life in Soviet Russia was no picnic, but it's absolutely true that (once they were past the Stalin years), people weren't starving.  They might not have had meat, and the apartments might have been shit, but everyone had an apartment (even if they had to share with another random family), everyone received a pretty decent (although ideologically slanted) education, and everyone had food to eat.  People had jobs, unless they couldn't work, in which case they had pensions.  Once communism fell apart, you had a ton of old people and Afghani war veterans starving in the street and begging for money -- even people that were strong critics of the Soviet system felt embarrassed by that.  That doesn't mean that the Soviet system was a good one.  But it did have certain advantages over the alternatives.

I think it's a little ridiculous that people are beating OP up for visiting Cuba.  Castro is dead.  Opening up Cuba to foreigners is an incredibly important part of bringing freedom to the island.  They have been isolated too long.  Plus, with the type of tourist that OP is describing, I really doubt it's going to line the pockets of the ruling elite or prop up a dying system.  (I have more questions about the big cruise ship deals...both in Cuba and in some other countries that have pretty distasteful rulers at the moment).[/quote]

Uh...ok. Virgin Lands Campaign? 
[/quote]

That started in 1953--the same year Stalin died.  So, okay, maybe there was still famine in the years immediately post Stalin (who was a disaster in every way) but people were not starving in the Soviet Union of the 70s, 80s and 90s (and I think 60s).  The meat quality stank and some stuff was a PITA to get, certainly.[/quote]

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