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Cultural and Scientific Collaboration Between Czechoslovakia and Cuba in the 1960S, 70S and 80Se Words and Silences, Vol 6, No 2 December 2012 Pp Hana Bortlova “It Was a Call from the Revolution” – Cultural and Scientific Collaboration between Czechoslovakia and Cuba in the 1960s, 70s and 80se Words and Silences, Vol 6, No 2 December 2012 Pp. 12-17 cc International Oral History Association Words and Silences is the official on-line journal of the International Oral History Association. It is an internationally peer reviewed, high quality forum for oral historians from a wide range of disciplines and a means for the professional community to share projects and current trends of oral history from around the world. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. wordsandsilences.org ISSN 1405-6410 Online ISSN 2222-4181 “IT WAS A CALL FROM THE REVOLUTION” – CULTURAL AND SCIENTIFIC COLLABORATION BETWEEN CZECHOSLOVAKIA AND CUBA IN THE 1960S, 70S AND 80S Hana Bortlova Oral History Center Institute for Contemporary History Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic [email protected] Although traditional relationships between Cuba Culture was established in Prague. In the scientific field, the Czechoslovak Academy of and Czechoslovakia, economic above all, go back Sciences contributed significantly to the creation further than the second half of the twentieth of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba; starting in century, the political and social changes in Cuba at 1963 there was an agreement to directly the end of the fifties and the beginning of the collaborate between the two organizations. The sixties and the rise of Fidel Castro to power and his institutes intensely collaborated above all on inclination to Marxism-Leninism were what biological science, but there was also important marked the start of the close contact between the collaboration in the fields of geography, geology, two countries that would last three decades. The electronics and meteorology. Apart from growing political, ideological and economic sending experts for long stays (between 100 and convergence of Cuba and Soviet bloc countries was 200 Czech experts per year over the first half of also reflected in a significant way through cultural the 60s), the Czechoslovak Academy offered the and scientific collaboration. In 1962, the House of Cuban institutes material support: apparatus and Czechoslovak Culture had already been founded in equipment. Havana.1 Later, in reciprocity, the House of Cuban Another important part of the cultural and 1 This was the first and only cultural and informative center scientific collaboration that will be discussed of a foreign country in Cuba. It came to be very popular later in this text constitutes granting university amongst Cubans for its film and music programs and also for its open buffet that was sometimes offered. The scholarships that represented one of the concrete number of visits to the House of Czechoslovak Culture forms of the so-called “fraternal international was around 50,000 people in the year 1962, and it support,” later-called “socialist.”2 Apart from continued to grow annually. In 1978, the House was visited by more than 800,000 people through about 200 Republic Ministry of Foreign Affairs), f. Dokumentace events. See "Information on Czechoslovak-Cuban TO- Kuba (Regional Office Documentation – Cuba), Cultural Cooperation", 3 May 1979. Archiv ministerstva 1979, dossier 19, folder number 19. zahraničních věcí - AMZV (Archive of the Czech 2 Ideologically Cuba went from the “colonial and 12 14 Words and Silences Vol 6, No. 2 | December 2012 receiving solid professional training, Cuban youth, considered an unusually high number of during their several-year stays, were to develop a scholarships which reflected the rise of Cuba´s positive attitude towards communism, and it was political importance for the Socialist Republic of supposed that upon returning to Cuba they would Czechoslovakia. So many scholarships, in actively participate in, among other things, the general, were only granted to countries development of mutual relations.3 considered to be of “priority interest” (in this The Czechoslovak government offered university period Iran, Iraq, Algeria, and some sub-Saharan scholarships to Cuba for the first time in the African countries). summer of 1960. Although there were only ten The selection of scholarship recipients –done openings, the political importance of the gesture in the beginning by Cuban authorities, first and was considerable.4 A significantly greater number foremost by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and of scholarships was negotiated in the fall of the the Ministry of Higher Education (some same year, during Ernesto Che Guevara´s stay in scholarships were granted by the International Prague. Czechoslovakia granted Cuba some 250 Student Union)6– were subject to certain criteria. scholarships for university studies, particularly in A clear condition was to sympathize with the technical fields, and some 350 short term stays for revolution (be a revolutionary). Applicants were mid-degree youth interested in completing an also subjected to various “endurance” and internship in Czechoslovak industry.5 It was “ethics” tests, which formed part of the general revolutionary and combat mood of Cuban economically underdeveloped” country category to the “national-democratic” country category in mid-1961. In society at that time. The test could consist in, practice, this meant and implied that, from then on, for example, the applicant climbing up and down Czechoslovakia would have a similar relation with Cuba the highest mountain in Cuba (1,974 m.), as it had with other European countries in the "socialist participating in reforestation efforts, etc. We cite bloc" and offer similar benefits, first and foremost from the recollections of those that decided to economical. 3 Besides students, some 30 thousand Cubans passed subject themselves to the selection tests in order through Czechoslovakia as part of the so-called to study at Czechoslovak universities: “Temporary Work and Professional Training Program for I went to MINREX to receive information [about] Cuban Citizens in Czechoslovakian Organizations,” that the scholarships and the first thing that you had to lasted from 1978 until 1989 and in which Cuban youth do in order to participate in the call for applicants workers were principally placed in businesses in the Czechoslovak textile industry. This group´s history and was to climb up and down Turquino Peak. [Later] stay in Czechoslovakia, as well as individual destinations, they granted me the scholarship and then I spent go beyond the subject of this investigation and will be the three months planting eucalyptus trees, we had to topic of another text in the future. reforest the country, then they picked up the 4 The definite decision to grant the scholarships was made students that were to study in the socialist during the office of the Czech Vice-Minister of Foreign countries, we were like two thousand in total.7 Affairs Jiří Hájek in Cuba. “Kuba – udělení stipendií “ (Cuba –Granting of Scholarships) 14 July 1960. Národní A psychologist would see you, you had the notes archív – NA (National Archive), f. Ministerstvo školství a and then they had you do volunteer work for a time kultury (Ministry of Education and Culture Collection), in very difficult places to see if you could stand it. Zahraniční stipendisté v ČSR 1959–1964 Kuba (Foreign We for example [worked] two months to replant Scholarship Recipients in the Socialist Republic of forests on the peninsula of Guanahacabibes. They Czechoslovakia 1959–1964, dossier Cuba), unorganized sent everyone they punished there and they sent us material, inventory number 26. 5 “Letter from F. Krajčír to Dr. E. Che Guevara” 14 November 1960, Archiv ministerstva průmyslu a obchodu 6 From the Czechoslovak side the only condition for the - AMPO (Archive of The Ministry of Industry and Trade), acceptance of university students was to have finished f. MZO (Ministry of Foreign Trade Collection), dossier secondary school. “Právní, mez. smlouvy, Kuba” (Legal Matters, 7 Interview with J. B. (former student of SVŠT – Slovak International Contracts, Cuba) unorganized material, box Technical University of Bratislava, Faculty of 2. Engineering, 1961–1968) 22 September 2009, Havana. CULTURAL AND SCIENTIFIC COLLABORATION BETWEEN CZECHOSLOVAKIA AND CUBA 15 there [too], we the students were there.8 We understood that the two countries with the most Everyone filled out an application to go study abroad, advanced socialism were the Soviet Union and and you might or might not receive a response or you Czechoslovakia and I wanted to see how this might receive a response three years later. An obvious system behaved and… logically I asked to go to the requirement was to be in favor of the Revolution but Soviet Union, most of us wanted to go to the Soviet no one asked you, you didn´t write it anywhere Union, but there weren´t any more spaces so I was because all the students at that time were in favor of able to choose between other countries and I chose the Revolution because those that weren´t had gone to Czechoslovakia (…) Most of us students were Miami.9 young, nineteen, twenty years old, so all of us wanted to help our country and they called us The young peoples’ motivations to study in a far together and at that moment the Minister of away socialist country, another topic to which we Industry was Che Guevara and Che Guevara had a paid attention in the interviews, were varied and lot of influence over the youth. So he made the call changed according to the period. While in the 60s and made it clear that we had to develop industry in an ideological and patriotic motivation prevailed, the country in order to have a more promising the generation that went to study in the 70s and 80s future and that the youth who identified with perceived this opportunity in a more pragmatic way revolutionary attitudes and wished to help the and one could argue that the motivation that country could study in socialist countries that as prevailed was not ideological.
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