CARLOS RIPOLL
577
However, while the intelligentsia celebrated the Cuban chal–
lenge to Soviet dominance and the creative freedom that it had fos–
tered, behind the scenes Moscow's reaction was sanguine, for Soviet
control over the Cuban economy was such that it could be used to
bring Castro to his knees at any moment. As was learned later, a
high-level official of the Soviet embassy in Havana had said as much
shortly before the Cultural Congress of 1968, boasting, "All we have
to do is say that repairs are being stalled at Baku for three weeks and
that's that." Indeed, all that was necessary to bring Castro's heresy to
a halt was a lowering in the quota of oil shipped to Cuba; months la–
ter, when tanks were necessary to eliminate the heresy in Czechoslo–
vakia, Castro defended the invasion. In the cultural arena the end to
the Cuban heresy brought a swift and sweeping wave of repression
the effects of which are still being felt .
The rebellions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia had begun with
restive, dissatisfied intellectuals. The experience the Kremlin had
had in these situations dictated stricter vigilance of artists in Cuba.
In reality Castro himself had been the heretic ; others, nevertheless,
would have to go to the pyre.
In 1968 Cuba's Stalinists loudly denounced the awarding of
national
lite~ary
prizes to Padilla and Arrufat and condemned the
publication of unorthodox works by others . Their views were again
expressed at the Congress of Writers and Artists held in October of
the same year, when writers were reminded of their duty "to con–
tribute to the revolution through their works." Dissidents abroad and
on the island were attacked in
Verde Olivo,
the magazine of the armed
forces, in a series of five articles deploring "the low political level in
art and criticism." It advocated "cleansing" Cuban culture of "counter–
revolutionaries, the extravagant, and the soft" by means of "politi–
cally alert criticism" and concluded that the enemies of the Cuban
revolution were the "false apostles who decided to leave the country"
as soon as they were confronted with their "dishonest counterrevo–
lutionary games." Many writers had already left: among the older
ones, Jorge Mafiach, Gast6n Baquero and Lino Novas Calvo;
among the younger ones, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Severa
Sarduy and Carlos Franqui. After the charges in
Verde Olivo,
the
doors of emigration were shut tight.
To demonstrate what was expected of cultural institutions, the
political leadership of the armed forces organized a literary contest
in which works were judged on the basis of political merit, not artis-
