March 4, 1964
From the Diary of A. I. Alekseyev, Record of Conversation with Prime Minister of the Republic of Cuba, Fidel Castro, 30 January 1964
This document was made possible with support from Leon Levy Foundation
[Stamp]: Declassified
from the diary of
A. I. Alekseyev
Secret Copy No 2
4 March 1964
No 64
RECORD OF A CONVERSATION
with the Prime Minister of the Republic of Cuba
FIDEL CASTRO RUZ
30 January 1964
Today a test was organized for the Cuban leadership of planters and self-propelled combines built in the Soviet Union that pick sugar cane.
Members of the National Leadership of the PURS present at the test were: Fidel Castro, Dorticos, Raul Castro, Guevara, Blas Roca, C. R. Rodriguez, F. Bravo, Sergio del Valle, G. Garcia, and Cuban specialists in cultivating and processing sugar cane.
The “Rostsel’mash” [Rostov Agricultural Machinery] self-propelled combine was given high marks by the Cuban leadership, which considers that after some improvement it will go out into Cuban fields and will be the main machine in their agriculture. As the easiest combine of the Lyubertsy plant to operate, in Castro’s opinion, it should also be widely used for work in the fields, at least initially.
Castro made several comments and made a number of valuable suggestions about both models. He requested that 300 self-propelled combines and 100-200 combines of the Lyubertsy plant be delivered to Cuba to gather sugar cane (the end of 1964), as the director of “Rostsel’mash” had announced in the press.
The Cuban friends consider it inadvisable to produce a tractor-drawn combine with a container leaving cut sugar cane in the field. [end of available text]
[Handwritten note at the bottom of the page]: “To the archive. The material is informative; used for a dossier. Desk officer of a CC CPSU sector. A. Kalinin 30.3.64.”[Some illegible initials are to the left of the note]
Castro attends a demonstration of new Soviet machinery for sugar harvesting and makes suggestions for improvement. Members of the National Leadership of the Cuban Communist Party were also present.
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