Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro [Illustrated] [Paperback]

Castro (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1992

Includes 1961 speech, "I Shall Be a Marxist-Leninist to the End of My Life," explaining why only a socialist revolution could bring about the profound changes Cuban working people had overthrown the Batista dictatorship to achieve.

Format: 8 1/2 x 11,

Product Details

• Paperback: 134 pages
• Publisher: Pathfinder Pr; 2nd edition (June 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0873487001
• ISBN-13: 978-0873487009
• Product Dimensions: 10.7 x 8.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,020,407 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A leader with an ear as well as a powerful voice!, June 13, 2006

By 

Peter Seidman (N. Miami, FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro (Paperback)

This is a collection of eight important speeches given by Fidel Castro during the first twenty years of the Cuban revolution. The talks will help anyone seeking to understand the profound impact that this revolution had--and continues to have--on working-class fighters, youth, and others in Cuba as well as throughout the Americas and the world.

Given at mass rallies and over Cuban TV and radio, these speeches are educationals demonstrating Castro's profound confidence that the socialist revolution's progress and defense are completely linked to the voluntary participation and developing political (increasingly communist and internationalist) understanding of its workers and farmers.

This idea comes across especially in the important 1962 talks "The Revolution Must be a School of Unfettered Thought" and "Against Bureaucracy and Sectarianism."

The later was a televised address attacking Anibal Escalante who endangered the revolution through his secret efforts to build a privileged, bureaucratic faction that was alienating masses of workers and farmers eager to assume a leading role in the revolution's work. Cuba's firm hand against these methods pointed a way forward for revolutionary-minded fighters seeking to reestablish continuity with the program and methods of the founding leaders of the 1917 Soviet revolution--a continuity that had been betrayed by some 40 years of Stalinist crimes carried out in the name of socialism.

Cuba's internationalist foreign policy also stands out in these speeches in sharp contrast to the functioning of Stalinist regimes and their allied parties. Castro's 1963 speech "The Road to Revolution in Latin America" and his 1967 "Those Who Are Not Revolutionary Fighters Cannot Be Called Communists" were part of an important debate on the lessons of the Cuban revolution for the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean. The latter of these--with its account of the lessons of the class struggle in Venezuela at the time--will be of great interest to those following the developing conflict between Washington and the Hugo Chavez regime today.

From the interplay Castro has with his listeners at rallies, it's easy to see through the imperialist-inspired myth that reduces everything about the Cuban revolution to one leader. In his own words, Castro emerges not only as a spokesperson for the revolutionary millions, but as someone who has an ear as well as a voice. He is himself shaped and educated by the revolutionary fighters of Cuba as much as he helps to educate them and lead them forward.

A 1980 talk by Socialist Workers Party leader Jack Barnes on "Twenty Years of the Cuban Revolution" provides an excellent introduction to this collection.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An inspiring witty primer on revolution, January 3, 2006

By 

Tony Thomas (SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro (Paperback)

Here are the great speeches Fidel gave in the initial construction of the Cuban revolution in the 1950s and 1960s. Castro realized that to reach and involve the population of Cuba, the speech, drawing hundreds of thousands to hear him, and millions more on radio and television was the real way to lead discussions, to pose questions, and to mobilize the Cuban people in action against imperialism and internal reaction. In doing so he provides an inspiring record and handbook for those of us who want to change the world. As always with Fidel, there is much wit as well as wisdom here.


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