Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz, born on this day in 1926, was a Cuban communist revolutionary and politician who served as Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and its President from 1976 to 2008.
Castro came into power in early 1959 after years of revolutionary struggle against the U.S.-backed regime of Fulgencio Batista (1901 - 1973). Ideologically a Marxist-Leninist and Cuban nationalist, he also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1961 until 2011.
With Castro as Prime Minister, the Cuban government nationalized and expanded healthcare and education, redistributed land to the peasant class, and implemented rent controls. Within a year, Castro and his government had effectively redistributed 15% of the nation's wealth.
The longest-serving non-royal head of state in the 20th and 21st centuries. Many view him as a champion of socialism and anti-imperialist struggle whose revolutionary government advanced economic and social justice while securing Cuba's independence from U.S. hegemony.
"The fact is, when men carry the same ideals in their hearts, nothing can isolate them - neither prison walls nor the sod of cemeteries. For a single memory, a single spirit, a single idea, a single conscience, a single dignity will sustain them all."
- Fidel Castro
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Previous answer
In the first and fifth lines, the last digits add to 10, and the other corresponding pairs of digits add to 9. The sum of the numbers is therefore 1,000,000.
The second and sixth numbers, the third and seventh, and the fourth and eighth add to 1,000,000. The sum of all eight is 4,000,000.
Large segments instead of small
In the Soviet machine industry a marker is a worker who draws lines on a metal blank. The blank is cut along the lines to produce the desired shape.
A marker was asked to distribute 7 equal-sized sheets of metal among 12 workers, each worker to get the same amount of metal. They could not use the simple solution of dividing each sheet into 12 equal parts, for this would result in too many tiny pieces. What were they to do?
They thought awhile and found a more convenient method.
Later, they easily divided 5 sheets for 6 workers, 13 for 12, 13 for 36, 26 for 21, and so on.
What was their method?
Like usual have fun with this one :soviet-heart: and please dm @Wmill the answer.
gotta go fast so it's a quick mega waho
also I think a castro mega's been written already whatever here's another :ballin
Of all the revolutionary figures in the last few hundred years, Castro is far and away my favorite.
Same. Him and Che seem by far the most sincere and genuine to me. In addition to being absolute badasses and kinda hot
Dude had swagger but it wasn't all talk. He got shit done. He was also immensely positive - like how he celebrated with Harlem hotel workers. He didn't just do something nice as a gesture, he genuinely wanted to surround himself with the downtrodden and celebrate their existence.
And yeah, he was a badass. Knew his way around a basketball court too.
they were just genuine men of the people who lived, breathed, and died for the liberation of the working class
And looks at the results. Cuba still stands strong when every historical precident suggests the US should have been able to destroy them like they did so many other socialist states at the end of the cold war. It's inspiring really.
I have a hard time picking favorites between him, Che, and Sankara. I also wish I lived in the timeline where Lenin lived well past the revolution, so curious about the path the USSR would've taken
I mean the boring and materialist answer is I don't think it would've looked very different, outside of Lenin having the gravitas to prevent the smoldering, low level civil war between Stalin and Trotsky from ever becoming as big of a deal as it was in historical reality.
That's true, but I do wonder where global communism would be with different circumstances around Trotskyism in particular — either if he didn't have that personality cult boost from catching a pickaxe to the noggin, or if he had more influence on the USSR's foreign policy and other nations developing and achieving socialism
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Lenin's NEP was carried out and kept in place until the early 30's, at which point Stalin and co saw the need to rapidly industrialize to face off against a resurgent imperialist West. There's no reason to suggest that Lenin wouldn't have done the same; he wasn't tied to the NEP because it was "correct" for all times, just that particular era in which the working class in the post-Civil War Soviet Union was decimated and the nation's productive forces essentially non-existent.