(Post)-Soviet Diaspora in Cuba

Abstract

IntroductionThe transdisciplinary field of post-Soviet studies emerged in 1992 as a sort of 'adaptive gesture' intended to assimilate the former USSR and the areas previously exposed to its geopolitical influence to a post-colonial status.1 Geopolitically speaking, before 1990 such areas obviously included Cuba.2While political and economic relations between Cuba and the USSR (as well as between Cuba and Russia: before 1917 and after 1991) have inspired numerous publications (although not normally branded - at least in the Cuban Archipelago - as part of the post-Soviet studies field), the number of media projects3 and research papers -especially in Cuba4 - about the Soviet and postSoviet5 cultural impact on the Cuban society is much smaller. For most Cubans who stayed in the country after the 1990s debacle, the geographically distant Soviet influence on Cuba had been lived as something nigh and visible in many spheres of professional activities, academia and everyday life, including literature, cinema, drama, sciences, visual arts, TV and the domestic market. Also, the post-Soviet condition in Cuba is emphatically linked to the (later re-interpreted as commonplace) experiences of Cubans who travelled or temporarily lived in the USSR (and other countries under its geopolitical influence) during the 30-year period of political closeness. Cuban geography itself - both at macro (polity/ country/nation/Archipelago) and micro (neighbourhoods, workplaces, landscapes) levels - provided settings in which Cubans shared social-space proximities with some 'Soviet' or 'Russian' ('Ukrainian', etc.) person(s) - or their children - who years ago came to live here. Nonetheless, the persistence in Cuba of a large diaspora of Soviet origin is still one of the less publicised aspects of the Cuban post-Soviet condition. This appears rather surprising, as the (post)-Soviet diaspora has stable family, kinship, friendship and professional links with Cubans, particularly those (ca. half a million) who studied in the USSR in 196191, many of whom keep key roles in the country's technical, military, entrepreneurial, intellectual, administrative and professional milieus.Our current aim is systematizing the basic facts about the (post)-Soviet diaspora in Cuba, as part of a broader area of post-Soviet studies, nowadays emerging in Cuba. Firstly, we want to make public the very existence of the diaspora as a relevant element of the Cuban reality: despite its numeric strength, the (post)-Soviet diaspora is barely mentioned in Cuban and foreign research, reference and media materials devoted to the ethnic composition of the present-day Cuban people. Although analysing the very causes of this 'invisibility issue' per se merits a separate paper, we start with some considerations on this topic. Next, we establish terminological conventions, provide some basic - statistical and socio-historical - information gathered in our research, and discuss some relevant fieldwork findings, centred in the diaspora's subjectivities. Our main goal is elucidating the core demographic, gender, ethnographic, historical, cultural and political aspects of the (post)-Soviet diaspora in Cuba. Our methodology is based upon in-depth interviews, life histories, participant observation and analysis of the census data.An invisible Diaspora?As a set of ethnicities relatively recent in entering the Cuban 'Ajiaco',6 (post)Soviet cultural and demographic components 'enjoy' a sort of 'dual' hermeneutics of [in]visibility in the current Cuban imaginary: on one hand, provided that the 35+ generations perceived the close Cuban-Soviet ties as commonsensical, the diaspora tends to be (sort of) 'naturalized' as a predictable part of the (post)Soviet Cuban landscape7 (and for being so normal it is assumed not requiring any special attention, both from socio-political institutions, and the intellectual/ cultural/media actors); on the other hand - and paradoxically, in a sense - it is still felt as somewhat 'alien', so it is not normally mentioned in the standard set of the 'ethnic roots of the Cuban nationality' (i. …