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Michael Radu is Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia and Contributor Editor of ORBIS.
Since this is not intended to be an academic paper, I neither expect the audience to have much time to spend on what academics have to say, nor blame it for not doing so. There are, however, a few relevant studies from which lessons relevant to Cuba could perhaps be drawn. The best analysis of the pitfalls and mistakes made by Western governments and aid agencies in Eastern Europe and Russia, and one strongly recommended to all those likely to be involved in Cuba is Janine R. Wedell’sCollision and Collusion. The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe 1989–1998, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1998. A more general description of the problems related to the pain associated with the transition to free markets in Russia is to be found in Rose Brady,Kapitalizm. Russia's Struggle to Free its Economy. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1999. For the role of the military in the transition, a useful volume isThe Military and Society in the Former Eastern Bloc, edited by Constantine P. Danopoulos and Daniel Zirker, Westview Press, Boulder, 1999. For a more general comparative overview of the issue of transition, specifically centered on Cuba and the former Soviet Bloc, Michael Radu'sCollapse or Decay? Cuba and the East European Transitions from Communism, The Endowment for Cuban American Studies, Miami, 1998, may be of some use.
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Radu, M. Festina lente: United States and Cuba after Castro—What the experience in Eastern Europe suggests. Probable realities and recommendations. St Comp Int Dev 34, 7–22 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02687441
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02687441