[Marxism] Cuban student federation educates youth on history of revolutions, lessons for today

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Last night I dropped by the Cooper Union where the LEFT FORUM 2008
is being held. Looking through the impressive 52-page catalog for 
this three-day event, not a single panel on the Cuban Revolution
could be found. I've just attended a three-day academic conference
here in New York focused entirely on Cuba, while this event, which
felt a bit like a radical Woodstock, seemed to have no programs on
Cuba at all. How peculiar that struck me. Ocean Press had a terrific
table and books on Cuba could be found on some of the lit tables in
the conference hallways.

The article below is the current issue of THE MILITANT, just posted.

Whereas some groups on the political left are either so extremely
critical of or downright hostile toward the Cuban Revolution, here in
the heartland of world imperialism it's pleasing to see one left-wing
organization providing such highly-detailed information on how Cuban
revolutionaries today study their own country's political traditions.

Note, too, Cubans don't see the struggle within their own country as
isolated from, but rather, closely linked to the traditions of earlier
struggles for socialism, such as the 1917 Russian Revolution.

Five months ago, at the time of the 60th anniversary of the Russian
Revolution, the Cuban Federation of University Students held a big
public celebration of the event to which CubaNews posted translations
of the key speeches presented at that event, and made them available
in full. Links to those texts are provided here

I addition, here are two more closely-related Cuban items also giving
a contemporary appreciation of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and its
relevance to Cuba and its process today. At the first page you can even 
see the poster for the Havana event. 

This is a good example of how a left-wing organization in the United
States can present important information to the readership of its
publications and from which they and the rest of us can learn a great
deal if we're open to assimilating what's been made available to us.

Fernando Luis Rojas speech on the 
90th Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs1634.html 

Fernando Martinez Heredia: Recovering October:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs1638.html 

Ariel Dacal Diaz: Cuba, October, Youth and the future:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs1639.html 

Manuel E. Yepe: October at 90:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs1631.html 
=========================================================================
THE MILITANT
Vol. 72/No. 12      March 24, 2008
 
Cuban student federation
educates youth on history of
revolutions, lessons for today
(feature article)

http://www.themilitant.com/2008/7212/721250.html 
 
BY BEN O'SHAUGHNESSY  

HAVANA-Cuba's Federation of University Students (FEU) is campaigning
to involve youth here in actions and discussions aimed at increasing
their knowledge of revolutionary struggles in Cuba and
internationally and explaining their relevance for today.

The FEU, which organizes 200,000 university students across the
island, decided at its last national congress in December 2006 to
sponsor actions marking anniversaries of major events in the class
struggle. In a March 3 interview here and a phone interview a week
later, FEU vice president Fernando Luis Rojas described some of these
activities.

The events held in 2007, Rojas said, culminated with celebrations of
the 85th anniversary of the FEU's founding on Dec. 20, 1922. Over the
decades the student organization has been marked by its involvement
in anti-imperialist and broad social struggles. The first FEU
president was Julio Antonio Mella, who three years later was a
founding leader of Cuba's first Communist Party.

Last year's events included a celebration of the 50th anniversary of
the March 13, 1957, assault on the presidential palace, in which FEU
president José Antonio Echeverría was killed during an attempt by the
Revolutionary Directorate to overthrow U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio
Batista.

On November 6, Rojas said, about 500 students packed into a
University of Havana theater for a rally organized by the FEU under
the theme "90 years of the Silenced Revolution." They celebrated and
discussed the October 1917 Russian revolution, when workers and
peasants in that country, led by the Bolshevik Party under V.I.
Lenin, overthrew the capitalist regime and established a workers and
peasants government, opening the door to the world's first socialist
revolution.

The rally was sponsored by the FEU along with the Antonio Gramsci
Studies Program of the Juan Marinello research center and a group
called the Workshop on the Bolshevik Revolution, the History of the
USSR and Cuba: Critical Analysis for the 21st Century, which is part
of the Gramsci program.

In attendance were students from the University of Havana and other
campuses in the city, as well as other youth. Rojas noted that,
unlike some campus activities where youth groups and faculty
departments organize attendance by assignment, those who participated
did so on their own initiative. The turnout was larger than expected,
with students packing the theater and overflowing into adjoining
hallways.

Rojas said the students had publicized the rally through their own
resources, producing a colorful poster they put up all over the
campus and in nearby areas.

The FEU organized the event to encourage Cuban youth to learn more
about the Russian Revolution. "The example of that revolution, which
is relevant for us today in order to defend the Cuban Revolution and
confront capitalism," Rojas told the Militant.

The theme of the event was "The Revolution Silenced," he said,
because "imperialism has tried to silence the gains of the first
years of the Russian Revolution. Those advances were also silenced by
Stalinism, when the socialist state degenerated in the Soviet Union"
under the regime headed by Joseph Stalin.

The two speakers at the rally were Rojas, as vice president of the
FEU, and Fernando Martínez Heredia, a veteran revolutionary fighter
and writer on Marxist politics who currently heads up the Gramsci
Studies Program.

Early years of Russian Revolution

Speaking to the students on November 6, Rojas noted that many young
people in Cuba know little about the October 1917 revolution. He said
that studying the revolution's early years under Lenin's leadership,
especially, "can offer us clues to understand the relevance of our
road."

Rojas said that while "nothing can be expected from capitalism," a
revolutionary perspective cannot be built without a program, and an
"antiprogram" of criticizing capitalism is not enough.

In arguing for a way forward, it is important to point to "the
experiences of the October Revolution and its early years," he said.
For example, the emergence of soviets (councils) of workers and
peasants as vehicles for "popular decision-making" in revolutionary
Russia offer a contrast with "the false and deceitful schema of
bourgeois 'participation'" in politics. "The soviets were the state,"
he underlined.

Martínez Heredia said the socialist revolution in Russia, involving
millions of people, "went beyond any conceivable boundaries with its
organized, conscious actions, and it dared to win and change
history." It helped internationalize the struggle for socialism, "and
national and popular liberation movements everywhere in the world
found their horizons remarkably broadened by the Bolshevik
revolution."

Martínez Heredia emphasized that young people today need to learn the
real history of revolutionary struggles in Cuba, and its continuity
from Mella and Antonio Guiteras-a leader of the 1930-35 revolutionary
upsurge in Cuba-to the 1959 revolution under the leadership of the
July 26 Movement headed by Fidel Castro, Ernesto Che Guevara, and
others.

Following these speeches, the assembled students marched to the plaza
in the middle of the University of Havana campus and waited until
midnight. Then they celebrated the November 7 anniversary with a
singing of the Internationale and Hymn of the July 26 Movement. The
date of the Bolshevik-led insurrection is November 7, or October 25
according to the old Julian calendar.

Excerpts of the speeches by Rojas and Martínez Heredia were published
in the university magazine Alma Máter, and the full text was posted
on the magazine's website, www.almamater.cu. The November 11 issue of
the Cuban daily Juventud Rebelde ran excerpts of Rojas's remarks, and
a news report on the event appeared in the cultural magazine La
Jiribilla and in Caminos, the magazine of the Martin Luther King
Center in Havana.

Rojas told the Militant that the FEU has decided to extend its
campaign of political education into 2008, leading up to the 50th
anniversary of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on Jan. 1, 2009.
It will be organizing celebrations of events including the popular
uprising in Colombia on April 9, 1948, known as the Bogotazo, in
which Fidel Castro participated as a radicalizing youth; the May 1968
revolutionary upsurge in France; and 80th anniversary of the birth of
Che Guevara on June 14.



========================================
WALTER LIPPMANN, CubaNews
Los Angeles, California
http://www.walterlippmann.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
"Cuba - Un Paraiso bajo el bloqueo"
======================================== 



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