MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

High-level corruption, not a few dissidents, is the main threat to communist Cuba

Renowned Cuban historian Esteban Morales warned about a repeat of the “Russian oligarchs” following the demise of the revolution

Corruption at the highest levels of government - not the meddling of a small band of dissidents - is the greatest threat to Cuba's communist system, a leading academic said in a highly unusual opinion posted Thursday on a state Web site.

The article by Esteban Morales - a historian who has written extensively on race and relations with the United States - crossed a number of red lines in tightly controlled Cuba, including openly discussing corruption rumours surrounding the dismissal of a top government aviation official who had fought alongside Ernesto “Che” Guevara and the Castros in the 1950s.

Morales said some top Cuban officials are preparing to divide the spoils if Cuba's political system disintegrates, like the shadowy oligarchs that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s.

“In reality, corruption is much more dangerous than so-called internal dissent,” Morales wrote in the piece, which appeared on the Web site of the state National Artists and Writers Union of Cuba.

“The latter is isolated ... but corruption is truly counterrevolutionary because it comes from within the government and the state apparatus, which are the ones that really control the country's resources.”

Members of the artists union have been surprisingly critical of the government in the past, but often with little effect. Criticism can also appear in government newspapers, but rarely on such hot-button issues as corruption among senior officials.

Morales is a prominent intellectual who only Monday appeared on a state television program defending the government on another topic. The frank assessment on the Web site went far further than what is normally tolerated.